Activists (irl activists) are told to clearly separate their two main tasks which are providing help and making demands. You cannot help anyone in an environment where you are also making demands. You cannot help anyone in an environment where you are also complaining about systematic oppression or asking for change.
Tumblr completely conflates the two. The result of this is:
> Tumblr transgender activists, for instance, tell transgender people they are valid and important, then in the same breath, in the same post and on the same blogs, remind transgender people that they are unloved and unwelcome by society, along with factual proof of transphobic violence.
This is incredibly destructive. I don’t think I even need to explain why. It’s the best way to crush transgender people’s self-esteem, bar none. The message it carries is, “even those on your side know the whole world hates you”. It’s just plain dangerous.
> In so-called LGBT safe spaces on tumblr, for instance, there is near-constant bickering about straight passing privilege versus monosexual privilege versus allosexual privilege. It often escalates to absurd levels of aggressiveness (because it’s the internet, duh) and occurs nearly everywhere, making safe spaces unsafe. The solution tumblr found is to build tiny, microscopic safe spaces for each minority within the LGBT.
Because segregation fixes everything. Spoiler alert: it only makes people more afraid of each other and breeds wariness, misunderstanding and conflict.
When you want to help a marginalized community, you either provide help to individuals, OR you raise awareness about their struggles and make demands for social change. You can have a blog for each, and if you do irl activism you most likely have a separate schedule for each.
The most basic rule for helping minorities is that shelters, help lines and safe spaces should never host debates. The most basic rule of safe spaces is: everyone fitting the requirements to enter is equally welcome, no questions asked, no debate allowed on anyone’s legitimacy or identity or privilege.
Safe spaces, shelters and help lines must be happy, uplifting places where people feel welcome, loved, and important. Otherwise they’re unsafe and toxic. If you can’t provide acceptance and compassion for all members in equal measure regardless of their background, privilege or opinion, you’re not fit for the job, stay away from administrating safe spaces.
Raising awareness and making demands is something tumblr does very well an OP explains well how compassion fatigue works and how destructive activism can be, so I’m not going to dwell on it.
Just remember that not everyone has the emotional strength for it, including those in the community you’re trying to help. Most men who have sex with men, for instance, don’t want to hear about how their community makes up 40% of the french population tested positive for aids. We know, and we also know that nearly 20% of that population has aids, but we also need to think about something less dreadful from time to time. It’s a matter of survival. Also, when you’re staring at your or someone else’s misery 24/7, you become so bitter you lose the ability to help anyone. Self-preservation makes us more useful, as activists.Â
(Apparently a lot of tumblr activists missed the point of OP’s post, which was compassion fatigue, by a few hundred miles; and assimilated it with something like “hahaha I’m so privileged I can afford not to think about discrimination evar”. I’m not surprised.)
