Some apologies amount to someone asking for permission to keep doing something bad.
These apologies generally shouldn’t be accepted.
(But it can be really hard not to, because who want permission to do bad things tend to lash out when they don’t get it.)
(If you have to accept a bad apology to protect yourself, it’s not your fault.)
Eg:
Moe: “I’m sorry, I know this is my privileged male opinion talking but…”
Or, Moe: “I’m sorry, I know I’m kind of a creeper…” or “I’m sorry, I know I’m standing too close but…”
At this point, Sarah may feel pressured to say “It’s ok.”
If Sarah says, “Actually, it’s not ok. Please back off” or “Yes, you’re mansplaining, please knock it off”, Moe is likely to get angry.
The thing is, it’s not ok, and Moe has no intention of stopping.
Moe is just apologizing in order to feel ok about doing something he knows is wrong.
Another example:
Sam is a wheelchair user. He’s trying to get through a door.
Mary sees him and decides that he needs help.
Mary rushes to open the door. As she does so, she says “Oh, sorry, I know I’m supposed to ask first”, with an expectant pause.
At this point, Sam may feel pressured to say “It’s ok”, even if the ‘help’ is unwanted and unhelpful.
If Sam says, “Yes, you should have asked first. You’re in my way. Please move”, Mary is likely to get angry and say “I was just trying to help!”.
In this situation, Mary wasn’t really apologizing. She was asking Sam to give her permission to do something she knows is wrong.
More generally:
Fake Apologizer: *does something they know the other person will object to*.
Fake Apologizer: “Oh, I’m sorry. I know I’m doing The Bad Thing…” or “I guess you’re going to be mad if I…”
Fake Apologizer: *expectant pause*
The Target is then supposed to feel pressured to say something like “That’s ok”, or “I know you mean well”, or “You’re a good person, so it’s ok for you to do The Bad Thing.”
If the Target doesn’t respond by giving the Fake Apologizer permission/validation, the Fake Apologizer will often lash out. This sometimes escalates in stages, along the lines of:
Fake Apologizer: I *said* I was sorry!
Fake Apologizer: *expectant pause*
The Target is then supposed to feel pressure to be grateful to the Fake Apologizer for apologizing, and then as a reward, give them permission to do The Bad Thing. (Or apologize for not letting them do The Bad Thing.)
If the Target doesn’t respond in the way the Fake Apologizer wants, they will often escalate to intense personal insults, or even overt threats, eg:
Fake Apologizer: I guess you’re just too bitter and broken inside to accept my good intentions. I hope you get the help you need. And/or:
Fake Apologizer: Ok, fine. I’ll never try to do anything for you ever again. And/or
Fake Apologizer: *storms off, and slams the door in a way that causes the person who refused their intrusive help to fall over*.
Tl;dr Sometimes what looks like an apology is really a manipulative demand for validation and permission to do something bad.
I think one of the consequences of SJ’s tendency to refuse to empathise is that people who are oppressed for reasons that aren’t often discussed get pushed away, often to anti-SJ places, simply because their axis of oppression isn’t the most commonly discussed.
A lot of disabled people need to discuss the oppression they face as disabled people. Sometimes disabled men try to discuss the ways in which they are abused and oppressed primarily by women. There are patterns of abuse of disabled men which are predominantly done by women. There are ways in which non-disabled women use the power they have as non-disabled people to hurt disabled men, sometimes using gender and sexism as a way to portray themselves as victims. These situations are complicated, and it can be hard to tell just by looking at them who is the victim.
SJ forgets disability so much, and is so used to looking at easily visible things like race and gender, that sometimes people look at a situation, and go “clearly that man is privileged over that woman, she must be the victim in this situation”. If you’re a disabled man trying to talk about this, having your experiences of oppression dismissed as “male tears” or “privileged whining” is alienating in a way that could easily push you away.
The MRA belief that women have “female privilege” is inaccurate. But if your experiences of oppression as a disabled man have been primarily at the hands of women, and your foray into SJ spaces didn’t identify this as disability based (because no one remembers disability), then what anti-SJ and MRA spaces are saying sounds like a more accurate description of your experiences.
Yes! And on a similar note, a lot of the time NT feminist leaning people tend to sort of… ignore neuroaytypical women’s stories, or get outright angry at them for being outside the approved narrative. Other people have spoken about this much more eloquently than I ever can, but the main examples I’m thinking of was all the furore over that autistic STEM woman’s article on how she found the STEM world, or the whole “sisterhood” thing, which weird women like me are told and shown very early on that we’re not a part of. Which at least in my experience, has made me a lot less willing to call myself feminist even if I have similar goals and beliefs as particular brands of feminists.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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