purity culture? virtue signaling? or could it be...
my friends, i’ve had a realisation. all of the neverending Discourse(tm), the intra-community clashes that occur among marginalised people of all stripes, the exclusionism, the attempts to draw lines in the sand ... there’s an underlying mechanism we may have overlooked.
it’s hypervigilance.
think about it! we’re a bunch of hurt people yelling at other hurt people because we disagree on matters such as who gets to use which words. and yes, our oppressors love to stoke the flames - divide and conquer, as they say. watch out for subtle TERF manipulation and right wing trolls.
but one reason this is working out so well for them is that we’ve all been hurt, many of us to the point of trauma. traumatised people are prone to hypervigilance. i’ve been there.
and here’s the thing: the more open-minded i become, the more i fear voicing my opinions because there’s a real chance i’ll be perceived as some kind of ... traitor? wet blanket? naive goody-two-shoes who’s not safe to follow because they won’t immediately shun anyone you’ve declared evil??
that is a sign something’s seriously wrong with the communities i’m a part of.
but we need each other. marginalised people, all of us! we need to get better at facilitating growth and mutual support instead of tearing each other apart.
now, don’t get me wrong - it’s perfectly fine to protect yourself, to avoid spaces that suck at intersectionality, to block people and mute tags. on the personal level, that is all healthy and often necessary. it’s when you warn your friends away from people based on relatively minor infractions that we get into dangerous territory.
i know: to you, it was presumably not a minor infraction. and i get that, i really do. but what would you say if, anytime i saw one of you using the word “stupid,” i made a call-out post along the lines of “[your name here] is an ableist, by the way” and didn’t even elaborate or provide sources until someone asked?
most of the call-out posts i see these days are about as useful as that. i can’t take them seriously anymore, and not just because i’ve seen a lot of “proof” floating around that was less than convincing. it’s like we’ve lost all sense of scale, of comparative severity.
again, this doesn’t necessarily apply to personal safety precautions! but before you take it upon yourself to warn others, maybe take a step back and consider if you’re being hypervigilant.
in fact, even though i am very much against exclusionism of any kind, i’ve decided i will not regard marginalised exclusionists with the same anger and suspicion as out-group oppressors. they’re just trying to protect the community from perceived invaders, fuelled by their own hypervigilance. it’s wrong, but i can’t say i’ve never been wrong myself.
we have to find our way back to compassion. think about how much more we could accomplish if we stopped fighting each other and combined forces!
start by giving the most marginalised among us a little extra leeway. just those less privileged than you are, to make sure you’re not missing out on their points of view. if there’s someone you’d love to follow if only they weren’t using that one word you hate, consider blacklisting the word itself in xkit and following them anyway. think twice before criticising people you’ve got power over. consider how their trauma may have led them to arrive at that opinion you disagree with, and practise patience.
i swear to you, most of the people on this hell planet aren’t half bad and can learn if given the chance.
