Tag: bigotry

pastel-kawaii-shitpunk-pokefurry:

star-anise:

robotbisexual:

memestealingasexual:

hottestaceinthisplace:

If you don’t believe being asexual has any negative affect on people I was told by a psychiatrist that none of my relationships count because we didn’t have sex, and
I can’t say I’m gay since I don’t want to have sex with girls.

and I was taken off my antidepressants because they may be lowering the libido I never had in the first place (plus various other reasons, but still immediately, cold turkey, which should NEVER happen unless they’re switching you to something else)

But aphobia doesn’t exist and asexuals are privileged, right?

Sorry to add to this but I wanted to say since I’ve had bad experiences with mental health professionals and biphobia, I usually get asked “but are you sure you are sexually attracted to both sexes, are you sure it’s not just an emotional attraction?!” Like my dude don’t you think I can tell the difference between wanting to date someone and wanting to be friends? Also, due to be gray ace 90% of the time I am not even attracted to anyone but like sure, make me feel guilty that I can’t “prove” my bisexuality.

Sorry too but to add on, being aro isn’t much different. I told my therapist and she was immediately concerned that my meds were repressing “all my emotions” and wanted to take me off them. My insurance ran out and I went off them bc of no money before that happened. She also suggested dating someone anyway to “fix” the “issue” and expressed concern that my emotions (romantic feelings) weren’t present because “I’m suspicious and untrusting of everyone and don’t want to try hard enough.”

Having your orientation medicalized and invalidated is bad enough, but its fucking dangerous to have your meds taken away because you’re not performing relationships the way some doctor thinks you’re required to.

Aaaand this is why we need the bi/pan/ace/aro alliance.

this is why we need to recognize more queer experiences and identities than gay and lesbian, through increased awareness, information and representation.

note-a-bear:

master-bruce-wayne:

peteseeger:

bizarrolord:

kreuz-unlimited:

peteseeger:

Me trying to explain to Northern and coastal liberals that bigotry is not a regional phenomenon:

notes on this post are a fucking mess

“ I hate the South! Everyone is a bigot! I’m going to move to New York where EVERYONE is progressive like me!”

Having come from Upstate NY myself…No. No they’re not. People in rural NYS are just as bigoted as rural Southerners. The really annoying part is they’re four times as rude about it.

People in NYC can be just as racist as rural Southerners too

NYC white liberals fought against desegregation. The Harlem 9 emerged because of it. Bedstuy’s taxation without Sanitation happened right here in Brooklyn. I’ve seen more racist housing practices here in NYC than I ever did in Atlanta. Systematic racism isn’t regional. It’s white.

NYC is chronically listed as one of the most segregated cities in the country.

New Jersey is a hotbed of white nationalists

The rest of the Northeast is pocked with racist libertarians (hi New Hampshire), may-as-well-be sundown states (how’s it hanging Maine), and colorblind racism (what’s good VT?). Rhode Island habitually votes against removing the term “plantation” from the official state name, Connecticut is…it’s basically NYS, but whiter.

Should I branch out to PA and the mid Atlantic or nah?

vaspider:

rhodanum:

funereal-disease:

So one thing I’m not seeing mentioned much but that I think is really important to acknowledge is: not every member of a hate group is equally radicalized.

See, a lot of our rhetoric re: dealing with them assumes that every member is a hardened lifetimer. But there are always many, many lackeys to every kingpin. Not every terrorist sympathizer is Osama bin Laden. Cultlike movements are largely composed of people who are isolated or gullible or otherwise vulnerable. Their leaders know this. They capitalize on an underlying dysfunction and turn it into something monstrous. In any such movement, there will be people who have doubts but fear being crushed for their dissent. And those are the people it’s critically important to reach out to.

I think a lot of people assume that compassionate outreach is about, like, nicely asking hardened leaders to stop. It’s not! I frankly resent seeing pacifism strawmanned so badly. It’s about undermining those leaders’ bases. It’s about getting through to people who aren’t yet in too deep. When we write them off as exactly as bad as the people recruiting and manipulating them, we’re implicitly yielding ground. We’re ceding a huge number of potential allies to hateful causes, and I am not willing to do that. I want as many people on the side of good as possible. To do that, we have to be willing to get in and help deradicalize.

It’s laughable to expect that someone like S p e n c e r will just wake up one day and realize he’s wrong. It’s not impossible, but it’s not worth banking on. But what about an eighteen-year-old flirting with dangerous ideologies? Isn’t giving up on him implicitly ceding him to S p e n c e r ‘ s side? Do not conflate the psychological profile of someone who’s just beginning to become radicalized with that of someone who’s been entrenched for decades. That difference matters.

This is… my own position as well, honestly. I’m seeing an absolutely terrifying lack of nuance on here and more than a few times I’ve felt the blood run cold in my veins. Radicalization and edging toward extreme views and measures aren’t something that solely the people who dwell to the right of the center had and have a monopoly on. I’ve got half a murdered family for political reasons as testament enough to that!  

Deradicalization is as much of a key-word as resistance and direct action and at this point, I feel that none of these can properly work without the other two in play. I worked for years as a journalist and an adviser for one of the MPs in my country and one of the side-projects I dedicated my time to was compiling data and resources on burgeoning anti-radicalization and deradicalization programs here in Europe, aimed at at-risk youth, particularly those who had joined Daesh, then returned to their homes, for whatever reason. I also wrote news-stories on these programs, in order to help spread knowledge and awareness of them. Programs such as the one spearheaded by the Danish authorities in 2015, aimed at working with former Daesh fighters, some of whom could have done unspeakable things while in Syria or Irak. 

This ties in to the rise of various populist and far-right groups both here and in the US and the way in which an entire generation of youths is being radicalized by members of these groups, through the Internet. I’d always known there was a connection, but it became clear in my mind when a researcher studying the phenomenon wrote that when we speak about radicalization through the World-Wide-Web, we mustn’t speak only of actions taken by groups such as Daesh. We need to also look at the users of forums like Stormfront, who disseminated their ideas like viruses through subreddits and gaming forums, drawing in a dangerously high number of youths, preying on their uncertainties, their biases, lying to them and stoking their fears and their bigotries, encouraging ‘us versus them’ polarized thinking and creating what this researcher outright called ‘a radicalized generation, taught to lie to their own families about their extremist sympathies.’ 

I want to be clear, because sometimes I feel that people on here read posts while wearing Misunderstanding Goggles. I’m not saying ‘poor widdle baby bigots who need butt-patts’. I’m saying that a society where a significant proportion of youth ends up radicalized is a society that is, frankly, FUCKED and that’s something we need to handle and we need to fix, with pragmatism as much as with passion and a commitment to resisting extremist policies and extremist thought at every opportunity. I’ve dedicated years of my life and will dedicate many more to supporting and promoting deradicalization for people who ended up in nightmares like Daesh and who have a chance, however small, of getting out and fighting against extremism. I’d be one hell of a hypocrite if I didn’t do the same in other cases as well.   

Keep in mind always that the son of the guy who runs The D/aily S/tormer left white nationalism because an Orthodox Jewish classmate in college started inviting him to Shabbat dinner.

No, really. This is true. Look it up.

There are a lot of ways to get this job done.

The Cinemax Theory of Racism – Whatever

renniejoy:

So did you vote for racism?

You sure did.

And you say, but I’m not racist, and I would never treat people in a racist fashion, and I don’t like being called out as having done a racist thing.

And others say to you, okay, but you knew that when you signed up for the Make America Great Again plan that active, institutionalized racism was part of the package. Your vote supports racism. By voting, you endorsed a racist plan.

And you say, but I didn’t want that part. I wanted the other parts.

And others say to you, that’s fine, but you knew that to get the other parts, you had to sign on for the racism, too. And evidently you were okay with that.

The Cinemax Theory of Racism – Whatever

meeresbande:

If you want to make the world a better place for mentally ill and neurodivergent people, get into the habit of shutting down people who mock/laugh at/sneer at “odd” or “weird” but harmless behaviour. Just refuse to laugh with them and say “That’s not funny.” or “They’re not doing any harm.” Do this whether or not anyone who’s directly negatively affected hears it. This is both about protecting people from ableist verbal abuse, AND about teaching ableists that their attitudes are not being tolerated and that you’re not going to bond with them over ableism (or, hopefully, any other form of oppression).

aegipan-omnicorn:

robotsandfrippary:

dovsherman:

glyndarling:

sepulchritude:

one thing I don’t think people realize is that in arguments about human rights, it’s not about trying to persuade the other party. it’s not about them at all. they’ve already made up their mind.

it’s about persuading the audience.

if I call out my teacher on being homophobic I’m not trying to change his opinion. I’m trying to convince any closeted kids in the room that they’re not the monsters he’s made them out to be.

if I argue with my aunt about how racist she’s being it’s not because I expect to change her mind. it’s because I’m hoping to god my cousin’s kids hear and learn that maybe skin color doesn’t mean what she says it means.

people will try to hush you and say “they’re not going to change their minds, don’t bother” but it’s not about them. it was never about them.

I never realized why I kept fighting, even knowing that most people won’t allow themselves to understand.  That most bigots would rather be stubborn and blind than proved wrong.  Yet, I just kept coming even when I knew they wouldn’t hear me.

Thank you.  I feel suddenly less frustrated.

And that’s why it’s important to remember that you don’t need to convince the other party to feel like you’ve won. Just making sure that other people heard you is winning for all of us.

It works too.  The first time I heard someone defend some one’s sexual orientation was my aunt yelling at my cousins for being little homophobic assholes.  It was really comforting and I started to be more sure of myself and feel like maybe there wasn’t anything wrong with me.  maybe I wasn’t horrible because I liked girls and boys.  I was 11. 

This is why I reply to bigoted comments on YouTube (especially ableism, which is the one prejudice I face most directly) with statistics and citations…. at least until I start repeating myself in the same argument (because bigots love to sea lion you).

Because for every bigoted troll in the comments, there are maybe 100 people reading silently. And what I have to say will stay part of the public record as part of the comment thread for potentially years to come.

The trolls don’t know it, but they are my straight men – my rhetorical device.

With that one post about medical discrimination that I’m pretty sure I’d reblogged before, I was also reminded of one simple observation from a Gyasi Ross piece I ran across again recently. A good enough summary that it stuck in my mind:

I don’t think it’s possible to see a stranger as a human being and talk to them like that. They didn’t see me as a human. I was something less. I’m not overly sensitive – sometimes people are just rude. No racism, no sexism, no anything other than everyday mundane rude behavior.

This was different.

That came up in a different context, but I think it applies just as well to what the OP there was getting at. (Among so many other situations.)

It’s usually not that hard to tell when you are just not getting treated like a person. I get so tired of the amount of invalidation and gaslighting some people will engage in because that makes them so uncomfortable to even acknowledge.

Though it can give you an unfortunately good idea of how much credit they are also affording you as a human being who is worth something. That denial behavior is disrespectful enough on its own.

And that’s before we even get to the Just Worlding BS that too often gets trotted out to justify treatment that they will even admit was wrong at all, and why that must have been understandable if you were not just imagining there was a problem. I don’t even have the energy to go into that very much.

But, again, that type of victim blaming/respectability politics response is not so compatible with viewing the other person as a Real Person, who deserves respectful treatment as much as anyone else. No matter how they try to turn that around.

That’s a little too good an indication of their priorities, and they are demonstrating that your not getting treated like shit is somewhere way down on that list.

If someone is not inclined to see you as a Real Person, there is no way to make them. That is an impossible expectation, which should never be laid on you to begin with. That is just not something that is within your control, and anyone who suggests otherwise is not acting in your interest. At all.

(All of which of course leads to any number of huge problems on a practical level. I wish I knew how to address basically any of them in useful ways.)