glumshoe:

glumshoe:

glumshoe:

An unfortunate side effect of The Internet being what it is, is that there is no line drawn between the personal and political. Any statement is readily interpreted as a political opinion, and any voiced frustration with one’s personal life that in any way intersects with broader political issues is read as “this person believes that they experience systematic oppression for this”.

@wellofloneliness What I am talking about is when something like “Man, it sucks how no one wants to visit my house because I own a pet python” is instantly interpreted as “Oh, you think you’re oppressed because you own a snake!” Or, if you complain about how you are afraid that high rise jeans are going to go out of style and you won’t be able to find them in stores again, it becomes “Oh, you think you’re oppressed because department stores don’t cater to your 90’s mom preferences?”

Innocuous personal griping gets amplified and skewed into ‘oh this is an expression of your secret problematic beliefs’. I saw it recently on a post where a straight girl mentioned sadly that she gets less desired attention from guys after she cut her hair and people jumped on her for all kinds of stuff she wasn’t actually implying at all. There was no reason to think she had anything against sapphic women, or that she thought that men should hit on butches, or anything like that… but it was taken as a Grand Statement rather than the mild personal struggle it was almost certainly meant as.

Oof yeah I’ve seen that before. I think ‘aimless complaining with no real purpose, malice, or political motive’ is a pretty natural human behavior and I’m not sure why people are so reactive to it. Some folks are suggesting this is an American thing, and maybe so. I wonder why that should be.

There’s a related idea that ‘if you complain about it, you must want to do something about it’. If you disliked how someone was rude to you, you must want some kind of retribution, right?

I remember when I made a post about being frustrated at how difficult it is to find well-made manual labor clothes in women’s sizes that are actually meant to be worn for working. People took this to mean that I think that women dressing fashionably in flimsy clothing are like… bad or foolish people, while others were offended that I would complain about an inconvenience rather than Taking Action and learning to sew heavy denim or petitioning companies or whatever.

Edit: Another manifestation of this is "Oh, you don’t like X show? Why – what’s problematic about it?” as if disliking something for trivial, non-ethical/political reasons is unthinkable, which I think leads people to try to force ethical justifications for their not liking things. Which is… honestly really destructive.