it literally just boils down to
do you want things to be better or do you want to lash out at people you perceive as your oppressor.it fucking sucks but sometimes in order to move toward liberation you have to do things that aren’t fair. you have to treat some asshole with respect and sit down and talk to him because as annoying and exhausting as that conversation may be for you in the moment, having more allies on our side is extremely important in the long run. we cannot dismantle the patriarchy without cishet men on board. let go of this interneti don’t owe my oppressor educationmindset and actually engage with people. you don’t have to put yourself in harm’s way to do so. you’re not stupid. you can deduce for yourself when it’s safe to engage and when it’s not. but we need to stop hiding behind these weird internet mantras likei don’t owe my oppressors anythingandi shouldn’t have to educate youbecause that gets us nowhere. we have to do things that aren’t fair if we want things to change.
this post is near the end of a larger discussion chain that i find very interesting; i only cut this part out specifically because i wanted to talk about this one post and am very tired, so i don't really have the energy to render the full post chain when this one post is the one i want to focus on. (the whole chain is very good and about how young men are pushed out of and denied mental health services; please click the link to the original post for the full context if you're interested.)
but yeah. i feel like i realized this independently at some point years ago, so it's both interesting to see people continuing to talk about it and also just completely exhausting with regard to so many things in my life, both recent and long past.
it's an unfortunate truth, and i've had people throw this in my face before, that how will they learn if they aren't educated, how will they know to do better. and it's like i do want people who don't know why things are harmful to have them explained, i do want people to understand. but i am also just one person and so very tired, and i don't have even the slightest bit of energy left to spare on people i don't think will actually consider what i'm saying at all. as much as i'd like every person to be asking things in good faith or even just pure curiosity rather than a malicious attempt to get me to expose weakness, i can't do that and it's frankly unsafe to do so. i imagine the vast majority of marginalized people are in a similar place to that.
the world as i'm aware of it is becoming more fascist and hostile to people like me, not less. it's incredibly ignorant to think humanity simply passively moves towards more understanding and acceptance as if every scrap of innovation and acceptance of the Other wasn't fought for tooth and nail and often times set back many decades by hatred and violence. and i would love to help move people towards understanding at least the small amount of things i do understand in the world so we can keep moving forward, but i'm already doing all i can in that regard.
and i don't think people who've never had their humanity really laid out bare as something you have to talk gently to someone about how you do actually have worth as a person lest they heft the full weight of their power over you against you at once. realize how completely fucking exhausting it is to do and how quickly it drains your will to live. that the necessity of having to do this at least sometimes because not everyone is a willingly and deliberately hateful bigot, but the necessity doesn't change how tiring it is either.
it's usually thankless, too, and you have to be alright with that as well.
(and to be clear, i am in full agreement with the tumblr post being quoted in my post here, it just also makes me contemplate and then lament the tiring effort of doing the things spacelazarwolf talks about. i have done them before and will again, i just wish it wasn't necessary as well.)
i didn't really intend for this to be so long, but i guess i'm just still so tired of people and life and how cruel everything in the world often is. enjoying pride month has been pretty difficult for me, and i did want to enjoy it but often life has other plans and you don't get to really choose whether you deal with something or not, it's just going to happen anyway. i don't have any hope for this year being good, i just want to make it through everything.