![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
qwertybard: thngrn20: heatheralicewatson: findingfeather: So I talked about one of the reasons...
via https://ift.tt/2QvoP8s
qwertybard:
thngrn20:
heatheralicewatson:
findingfeather:
So I talked about one of the reasons (one of the big reasons) that exclusionist radfem bullshit is so prevalent on tumblr being that they bring it here on purpose, because it’s how they can get young wlw in particular to believe them without question and be their enforcers, because the young wlw who end up here are often those who are isolated in their physical face-to-face spaces.
But there’s a flipside to that coin, which is that this is also where they can get young mspec (bisexual, pansexual, etc), asexual and trans kids (usually women and trans men) to swallow it.
You walk up onto Grindr and start telling mostly-cis gay men they can’t use “butch” and “femme” in their descriptions anymore, you’re not gonna get very far. To put it mildly. The one who don’t give a shit about anything but their own comfort and perspective are just going to laugh at you, and for the most part the ones who do care (often a lot) are also well aware that these talking points are bullshit.
You walk up to BUTCH Voices saying OMG ONLY LESBIANS CAN USE BUTCH and you’re probably gonna get a less friendly Talking-To than gets handed out sometimes on THIS site.
Because when you tell a 30, 40, 50, 60 year old person with a community and a history with their sexual and gender identity “you can’t use this word you’ve been using for literal decades to describe yourself” the friendliest reaction you’re going to get is a good-faith attempt to explain, the least aggressive you’re going to get is laughter, and probably (given that just about all of us here in “hey we’re not straight and don’t conform to majority-expected gender expression and relationship composition”-land have also been spending those decades under anywhere from low-to-high-level-siege-and-attack for same) you’re going get someone telling you to Shut The Everloving Fuck Up, I Don’t Have To Take That Shit From You.
But.
Say those same things to the nervous, newly-self-aware person (at any age, but especially in their teens or twenties?) Who just found this general place (tumblr) where The Not-Straight People Are? who are probably in the process of figuring out what the hell they even feel and are Learning What Things Mean?
When you tell THEM “you’re not allowed to use that word hdu!” they probably say “omg I’m sorry” and take the alternates you fling at them. Especially if you back it up with harassment (as a great many of these people do). Especially if you manage to generally cloak your bullshit in the language and patterns that social justice work uses ( “you’re appropriating! you’re talking over us! you should listen when we tell you about our words!”) to frame this as a privilege-disprivilege axis, rather than acts of active lateral violence from one group (monosexually attracted wlw) against another (mspec people).
Their bullshit works better here. A lot better. And that’s another dynamic that’s important to keep in mind.
They are radicalizing isolated and needy young people. The ideologies change, but the tactics remain the same, because those tactics work.
And I can’t help but notice many of these same people are actively pushing this gross lie that “every adult you speak to online is a pedophile you have to be afraid of.” How convenient that this rhetoric creates *more* isolated and lonely young people who live in terror of engaging with elders in the community who could give them access to real support and advice that isn’t about an ideological agenda.
I’m so beyond angry with these people. They’re preying on vulnerable children and stuffing their heads full of entitlement and division. They’re harming the community and they’re *harming our children,* and it’s fucking unconscionable.
This sounds creepily similar to the way neo-nazis managed to recruit vulnerable white male gamers: enter a space where they feel accepted when they are ostracised IRL, feed them your propoganda and make them fear rejection and attack in their safe space if they dare to disagree, and then they will target who they were trained to target.
Another key part of this recruitment tactic is that there are multiple points of entry that all eventually lead to the overarching ideology.
With the alt-right, a kid could be recruited via incel circles, or pick up artists, or Jordan Peterson, or people who are Big Mad about diversity in movies & games, or or or or. Eventually, though, the racism and sexism and nationalism all overlap and come together into one big, nasty ball that is alt-right ideology. The thing of it is, because it’s disconnected, there’s plausible deniability built in, and it can make the victims themselves deny they’re being recruited into fascism.
It’s the same here - entry points include the biphobia and q-slur stuff mentioned above, but also transmedicalism, kink-critical discourse, SWERF & anti-porn stuff, ace exclusionism, and ofc the age-old tactic of gradually escalating transmisogyny disguised in posts about how inherently predatory men are and how inherently virtuous women are. And every step along the way, branching out to those different parts of the overarching radfem ideology, people will get defensive if someone points it out as “radfem rhetoric” because they don’t perceive it as directly relating TERF stuff.
Unfortunately I don’t know of good ways to like, fight this. But being informed about how the general tactics work is probably a good start.
qwertybard:
thngrn20:
heatheralicewatson:
findingfeather:
So I talked about one of the reasons (one of the big reasons) that exclusionist radfem bullshit is so prevalent on tumblr being that they bring it here on purpose, because it’s how they can get young wlw in particular to believe them without question and be their enforcers, because the young wlw who end up here are often those who are isolated in their physical face-to-face spaces.
But there’s a flipside to that coin, which is that this is also where they can get young mspec (bisexual, pansexual, etc), asexual and trans kids (usually women and trans men) to swallow it.
You walk up onto Grindr and start telling mostly-cis gay men they can’t use “butch” and “femme” in their descriptions anymore, you’re not gonna get very far. To put it mildly. The one who don’t give a shit about anything but their own comfort and perspective are just going to laugh at you, and for the most part the ones who do care (often a lot) are also well aware that these talking points are bullshit.
You walk up to BUTCH Voices saying OMG ONLY LESBIANS CAN USE BUTCH and you’re probably gonna get a less friendly Talking-To than gets handed out sometimes on THIS site.
Because when you tell a 30, 40, 50, 60 year old person with a community and a history with their sexual and gender identity “you can’t use this word you’ve been using for literal decades to describe yourself” the friendliest reaction you’re going to get is a good-faith attempt to explain, the least aggressive you’re going to get is laughter, and probably (given that just about all of us here in “hey we’re not straight and don’t conform to majority-expected gender expression and relationship composition”-land have also been spending those decades under anywhere from low-to-high-level-siege-and-attack for same) you’re going get someone telling you to Shut The Everloving Fuck Up, I Don’t Have To Take That Shit From You.
But.
Say those same things to the nervous, newly-self-aware person (at any age, but especially in their teens or twenties?) Who just found this general place (tumblr) where The Not-Straight People Are? who are probably in the process of figuring out what the hell they even feel and are Learning What Things Mean?
When you tell THEM “you’re not allowed to use that word hdu!” they probably say “omg I’m sorry” and take the alternates you fling at them. Especially if you back it up with harassment (as a great many of these people do). Especially if you manage to generally cloak your bullshit in the language and patterns that social justice work uses ( “you’re appropriating! you’re talking over us! you should listen when we tell you about our words!”) to frame this as a privilege-disprivilege axis, rather than acts of active lateral violence from one group (monosexually attracted wlw) against another (mspec people).
Their bullshit works better here. A lot better. And that’s another dynamic that’s important to keep in mind.
They are radicalizing isolated and needy young people. The ideologies change, but the tactics remain the same, because those tactics work.
And I can’t help but notice many of these same people are actively pushing this gross lie that “every adult you speak to online is a pedophile you have to be afraid of.” How convenient that this rhetoric creates *more* isolated and lonely young people who live in terror of engaging with elders in the community who could give them access to real support and advice that isn’t about an ideological agenda.
I’m so beyond angry with these people. They’re preying on vulnerable children and stuffing their heads full of entitlement and division. They’re harming the community and they’re *harming our children,* and it’s fucking unconscionable.
This sounds creepily similar to the way neo-nazis managed to recruit vulnerable white male gamers: enter a space where they feel accepted when they are ostracised IRL, feed them your propoganda and make them fear rejection and attack in their safe space if they dare to disagree, and then they will target who they were trained to target.
Another key part of this recruitment tactic is that there are multiple points of entry that all eventually lead to the overarching ideology.
With the alt-right, a kid could be recruited via incel circles, or pick up artists, or Jordan Peterson, or people who are Big Mad about diversity in movies & games, or or or or. Eventually, though, the racism and sexism and nationalism all overlap and come together into one big, nasty ball that is alt-right ideology. The thing of it is, because it’s disconnected, there’s plausible deniability built in, and it can make the victims themselves deny they’re being recruited into fascism.
It’s the same here - entry points include the biphobia and q-slur stuff mentioned above, but also transmedicalism, kink-critical discourse, SWERF & anti-porn stuff, ace exclusionism, and ofc the age-old tactic of gradually escalating transmisogyny disguised in posts about how inherently predatory men are and how inherently virtuous women are. And every step along the way, branching out to those different parts of the overarching radfem ideology, people will get defensive if someone points it out as “radfem rhetoric” because they don’t perceive it as directly relating TERF stuff.
Unfortunately I don’t know of good ways to like, fight this. But being informed about how the general tactics work is probably a good start.