#concern trolling

Officially, concern trolling is "the action or practice of disingenuously expressing concern about an issue in order to undermine or derail genuine discussion," but that's a little narrow since I've found it's also done to undermine or shame someone, regardless of whether or not a discussion is being held. It comes in two forms that I've labeled individual and social.

Individual is, as the name implies, directed at an individual's actions and shaming that one person, but it can impact others. The most common form of this I see is accusing someone fat of eating "unhealthy" because then their blatant fatphobia doesn't come across as fatphobia to people who don't recognize the dogwhistle, it's a genuine concern for their health.

The kind I'm experiencing, social, often comes from people who want the chance to flaunt their moral superiority by shaming others for discussing or, god forbid, liking someone or something problematic. It doesn't matter if their claims are true or not, it's about being able to wave it in someone's face and put the person they're talking to on the defensive.

For example (and this is not one I have received, but I have seen it recently because of her comments at the grammys), a concern troll may come into your inbox after you reblogged a picture of Billie Eilish and say "she's against Indigenous people reclaiming the land." This is obviously false, but regardless of the voracity of the claim, it puts the onus on you to justify yourself, wasting your time and energy.

Some of these people will actually sound concerned and polite ("hey, you probably don't know this since it's just come out, but Billie is really problematic; she's refused the rights of Indigenous people to take back their land") and some will be outright nasty about it ("ew you like Billie Eilish, the girl who thinks Indigenous people should just get over themselves and live on reservations?"), but they've all got the same goal: to make you feel bad and attack your credibility.

Odds are the most recent ask came because I included a trigger warning in one of the polls because I happened to check the lyrics before posting and was worried about someone getting hurt; trolls tend to see this as an invitation to try to exhaust you emotionally since you've made it clear you care about other people.

I'm sure you can imagine the kinds of complaints I'm getting running a music poll blog, and I admit I broke the rule a little bit and fed the troll a nibble by commenting on the asks at all, but I refuse to respond to the asks themselves. If you dig far enough, you can find dirt on anyone, and I'm not interested in playing arbiter for the moral purity of musicians, so I'm just gonna block anyone who complains about the artists in the future.

If someone who has staunchly antizionist views, like I'm talking thinly veiled genocidal fantasies about destroying Israel and reveling in the chaos that would bring, and having no concern for the future of 7 millions Jews, their concerns about Medinat Yisrael's treatment of minority groups are not valid.

This is Concern Trolling.

If someone is derailing you to accuse Israel, through accusing you, of sterilizing Ethiopian women, stealing Mizrachi babies and having them raised by "white" parents, trying to destroy Yiddish, all these alleged violent assimilationist policies that Israel employs against fellow Jews?

A non Jew barging into your space and bringing up intra-community issues and grievances is a red flag. Do not fall for the sealioning trap. Do not turn out your pockets. Do not fall for the concern trolling.

Because what is their solution to these problems? To eliminate Israel as a state? And what about these minority groups within Israeli society then? Their answer is the same as their answer for the Ashkenazim: who cares? They largely imagine all Israeli Jews can simply move to the United States or France or something. The fact that over 95% of Israelis cannot just go to the countries of their parents or grandparents is of no concern to them.

That's why it's concern trolling. They're trolling you by pretending to be concerned, and baiting you into discussing an intra-community issue because they think that'll be the argument that finally gets you to disavow Israel. Because now you'll have no choice but to agree Israel is irredeemably problematic, because now it affects other Jews. So they are exhibiting a kind of bitterly envious brand of antisemitism. They think that all Jews believe in Jewish supremacy. They're quite mad about it. This is an aspect of the Chosen People canard.

But the main reason concern trolling is bad is because they don't care about these groups they bring up. They're not defending them, they're not championing their rights. They're trying to distract you and make you look like a hypocrite. When they cheer for Hamas raping and pillaging and spraying bullets into Israelis, they don't care if it happens to Beta Israel women who've supposedly been mass sterilized against their will. They cheer all the same. So much for their legitimate concerns that Israel is antisemitic in of itself I guess?

If the solution to a problem faced by a minority group within a country is "destroy their country which they also believe has saved them from ethnic cleansing and mass death, and figure out the rest later," you're not an ally to that group; stop pretending you are!

This is tied into pinkwashing, but from a sort of opposite approach. If any societal progress that Israel makes for minority groups is a psyop and a marketing ploy to cover up Palestinian Genocide, the concern trolling is antizionists holding Israel hostage to any societal progress it has not made. But they never intend on letting Israel improve these relationships. Israel is too nice to gay Jews, and not nice enough to African Jews. The only course of action therefore, is to let Hamas butcher them alongside straight Jews and "European" Jews.

So if you see someone trying to engage in this game, ignore them! Your time is worth so much more, and the vulnerable minority groups of Jews (both in Israel and the Diaspora) are much safer with Jews who discriminate against them than goyim who tout social justice rhetoric but want to see them dead. Plus, so many Jews are already doing the work, learning and listening, and trying to improve. This enrages the concern trolls like nothing else.

Call out Israel's bigotries, but you know, maybe don't trust the people who aren't affected by those bigotries invading your space and demanding your allyship to groups of people they'd be content seeing die en masse. Like "Israel is actually antisemitic against this vulnerable group of Jews!" and "All Israelis are settlers, none are truly civilians, and any form of violence against settlers is justified" are two stances that do not mesh very well...

Because at the very least, they're separating good Jews from bad Jews again, just based on what they perceive intra-Jewish oppression to be like. And they expect these good Jews to cheer and happily live as dhimmis in the absolute chaos that is a 100% inevitable Hamas-Fatah civil war and total societal collapse... and spit on the graves of their kinsmen.

people with covert and vulnerable manipulative traits, tend to be indirect when it comes to things like undermining you and destroying your confidence. it becomes especially damaging, if it happened to you when you were still a child and essentially did not know any better. especially if it came from authority figures such as guardians or parents. you will not even know to defend yourself and internalize what is essentially a manipulation that has more to do with the person telling you this stuff, than anything about you. it’s also known that children are most likely to internalize any criticism and negative treatment they receive as a survival technique, since they are helpless and likely to die without support and protection from parents and other adults. so anything flung your way at that age might have you concluding there must be something wrong with you, unable of even questioning the situation at such a young age or doing anything about it.

The YouTube channel is for a fat person who regularly posts very short fat positive videos. I cannot imagine how much strength it takes to continue posting fat positive content while receiving massive amounts of harassment and hatred every day, especially since YouTube is probably in the top two spots for most fatphobic social media website along with Reddit (I don't even want to imagine 4chan's fatphobia). When I tried to defend this person in their comments on a single video a month ago, it was fighting a losing battle from the start. The amount of harassment and bigotry this person endures just for existing on YouTube is immense. I don't know if I've ever met someone so strong. Fellow fat people really are brave. Not for having the "confidence" to exist like thin people often say as backhanded insults, but because we endure so much abuse every day and still live our lives while giving fatphobes the middle finger.

[EDIT] This person has apologized; they were unclear about the context of the original Anonymous Ask I received and did not realize that Anon was being transphobic. I'm turning off reblogs since I don't want anyone to accidentally dogpile this user because they don't see this edit.

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[Original post]

I can't see your reply on my post (Link) and I can't seem to tag you.

Have you heard of the term "concern trolling"? Have you heard of the "compassion" Christians have when they're trying to pray for and convert gay people into straight people? What about the "concern" of Scientologists when they lock people in rooms and force them off psych meds? What about the "concern" doctors had when they gave healthy women lobotomies just because those women were "misbehaving"?

"Compassion" is not what these people have. It is bigotry masquerading as "concern".

Secondly, I am not hurting myself. Transition is not harm.

It is not "compassion" for a TERF to wring her hands and pretend she gives a shit what's gonna happen to my body on T. The fact that she wants me to remain a fertile feminine female who can give birth to widdle babies is actually, in fact, fucking horrific, not "compassionate". She is not listing these changes with a sense of concern, she is listing them with a sense of disgust and revulsion. She is disgusted by what I will become, because she is a bigot.

I'm Romani, When I'm tanned, I look really Indian/Middle Eastern/Something not white, when I'm not, I could pass for Irish/Scottish/whatever.

I think it's really telling that people who go dark/not white looking when they're tanned are the ones told not to tan, by people who are tanning.

First of all, I'm really sorry you have to deal with that sort of concern-trolling and hypocrisy. That sounds absolutely appalling.

Secondly, yes, that's a very important point. Like many objectively good things, sun protection and the conversation around it can unfortunately be leveraged in support of really horrible viewpoints- in this case, racism. Which does make looking at the context of the message and who is giving it to whom, important.

Sun protection is a wise health measure to take, no matter your skin tone- because yes, dark-skinned people can get sun damage and skin cancer, too. But the reason for taking that measure is NEVER because one skin tone is "better" than another.

(And frankly, as a very pale white woman with a pretty vigilant sun protection routine, I get told that I should tan all the time. By intentionally/unnaturally tanned white people. This makes me wonder what they might be saying to PoC on the other side of things.)