feotakahari

I didn’t pick this argument at the time, but if being a black woman gave that one blogger more authority to discuss how black women suffer under patriarchy, shouldn’t being a man give someone more authority to discuss how men suffer under patriarchy? I mean, she claimed that when people said men suffer under patriarchy, they were contradicting her “personal experience,” but I don’t think she had personal experience of being a man.

You might think it’s contradictory that I say mean things about religion on the Internet while also wanting a truce with religion, but I think saying mean things is part of the truce. An ideal world doesn’t necessarily mean we like each other, or even particularly respect each other. An ideal world just means we don’t try to kill each other, and if your religion isn’t killing people, we can grudgingly accept each other’s continued existence.

Note that “the Internet” here refers to neutral ground. I don’t really mind if someone replies to my blog posts and calls me an idiot, but there are people who think of their blog as their personal space where they can say things without getting yelled at, so I try to remember not to get in their space. After all, I wouldn’t want to deal with the Westboro Baptist Church picketing at a private funeral.

“i was going to reblog this but realised that's the rapist with a muslim fetish who wears hijab”

You know damn well the part that matters there is “rapist.” “The lettuce on this hamburger is wilted, and also someone took a dump on it.”

I see people complain about folks who think Walter White is the good guy. I’ve seen folks complain about folks who think Tyler Durden is the good guy. But I’ve never seen anyone complain about folks who think Tony Soprano is the good guy. Did people not think he was good, or did people not complain about people who thought he was good?

I am still thinking about that post that’s like “‘Believe POC’ is cultural Christianity. When you unlearn Christianity, you know to listen to POC without necessarily believing.” It’s condescending, but it’s also an astounding rhetorical move I can only hope to equal someday.

Multiple posts: “Even if you don’t buy Harry Potter, if you post about it, people who read your blog will buy it, and Rowling will use the money to hurt trans women, and it’ll be ALL YOUR FAULT!”

Everything to do with Harry Potter is now a screaming flame pit.

A recent post: “Even if you don’t buy gacha, if you post about it, people who read your blog will buy it, and they’ll get addicted, and it’ll be ALL YOUR FAULT!”

I don’t like where this is going.

A very common chain of arguments on Tumblr:

“People would become happier if they watched more X.”

“No, I would not become smarter if I watched more X. I’m smart enough already.”

“If you were smart, you wouldn’t have made this dumb reblog.”

It continues like that, and everyone forgets the original post was about being happy, not smart. Which sucks, because I’m much more interested in the contention about being happy!

Personally, I think it’s false, and there’s no fiction these people could read or watch that would make them happy. Their problems run a lot deeper than media consumption.

I don’t think groups as a whole have agency in the same way individuals do. You may choose not to do something, but you can’t make every single person stop doing it.

When you’re part of some marginalized group A, it’s common to lash out at your “oppressors.” In practice, this generally means lashing out at oppressed groups B, C, and D. It’s dickish and pointless, but since groups don’t have agency, this is something you have to be prepared for if you’re trying to be an “ally” to group A.

When you’re part of group A, it’s easy to get sick of when groups B, C, and D self-abase about how they’re responsible for bigotry against A. You want to grab them by the shirt collar and go “I don’t want you to talk about how bad you are! I want you to stop being bad!” But it’s common to internalize when you’re told you’re a shit person. The group doesn’t have agency to stop doing so.

It’s important to stop people from playing the Harry Potter game.

Don’t question how much impact a player actually has. It’s too important for that.

Don’t question whether suicide baiting Twitch streamers will help anything. It’s too important for that.

Why are you arguing? Don’t you recognize how important it is? You must be one of the bad guys. That makes it important to stop you.

Sometimes I feel like the only one who remembers how important it was to tell that one fanartist to kill herself for drawing Rose Quartz too thin.