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amynchan · 2 years

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No matter how much you try to change from your foundations to be a better person, you're gonna run into biases you didn't know you ever had, and you're even gonna run into preconceived notions that you unintentionally got from trying to be a better person.

When this happens, it's ok. You're human, just like the rest of us. Here's what you do:

Recognize that it's a bias or a preconceived notion. The hardest part about this is our longing to be 'good' that forces us into denial and makes the problem worse. So don't do that. Recognize when there's a problem.

Examine it. Why is this bias here? What does it mean for you? What kind of conclusions does this notion help you to reach?

Ask yourself how you can apply little changes to change it. Just little stuff. Trying to turn around big ideas in a matter of a few days is really, really difficult, but trying to ignore it will leave it there forever.

Keep at it. You're gonna fall and stumble a bit, and that's okay. Just keep at it, and you'll do better.

Example under the cut because mine is kinda controversial (and I'm used to that)

So in trying to be a better person, I started resisting what I learned as a kid and leaned into the whole 'people love who they love' bit. Gay rights, trans rights, lesbian rights, you name it. So I spent a very long time trying to deprogram what I'd learned so I could be a better ally. A lot of people have this story.

Where this story starts is when I was reading a gay fanfic (which is honestly now one of my favs and I love it so much. Partially for the reason about to come).

So one of the characters has an ex boyfriend he calls 'spontaneous Kyle.' When I read it, I thought that that was a strange name for a girl, and it took me forever to realize that a gay man had had an unsatisfying relationship with another man. It wasn't even exaggerated abusive (which I'm used to as a narrative device from lots of angles), it was just an uncomfortable relationship that didn't work out. It also wasn't the only one of his previous relationships that didn't work out. There was a dude that was likened to a teddy bear, really sweet, but it just didn't work out because of life stuff.

Here's where my reprograming had gone wrong: I presumed that once gay men broke out of heteronormative trends, the first man they found would be infinitely better because no social restrictions and therefore be True Love. I had a bias, hidden from myself, that gay love is intrinsically better and therefore true and Couldn't Go Wrong barring excessive abuse.

That is where my efforts to become a better ally led me (because romance, though I really want it, isn't something that makes immediate sense to me, so I gotta think it through a lot).

So that was step 1. Recognizing that I had that preconceived notion. It took a whole fanfiction outside of my perspective to see, but now that I could, I was Flabbergasted, and I realized that that had to Change.

So, onto step 2. I had to figure out why I thought gay love was better and what led to that thinking. What I eventually figured out is that in the campaigning for rights, LGBTQ present their case as fiercely as possible, arguing to be natural to themselves against the forced heteronormativity of most society. It's a persuasion tactic, and it's honestly one I don't blame them for using, but as I was passively absorbing the media around it, it went too far in my mind.

So I had to look really hard at it and say 'what do they really want?' And the answer I, a heteroromantic demisexual, finally came to was that they just want the choice of it. They want to meet people, put their hearts on the line, get those hearts broken, and trial and error their way to true love in the same way straight people get to now. Big difference to what I initially thought, which was "get rid of the heteronormativity so we can all find our One True Love immediately," which is what I'd unintendedly absorbed through all of the LGBTQ media and campaigning.

Listen: this is about recognizing and changing biases and preconceived notions. I wouldn't be able to outline this process if I didn't go through it myself.

Step 3 is actually about how to change those biases. Since it'd be really intrusive--not to mention rude af--to ask actual LGBTQ people about their dating history and whether they'd found dissatisfying LGBTQ relationships in the past, I went back to the fanfiction. Whenever I read 'spontaneous Kyle,' I forced him to take shape in my mind. The other boyfriends, too. I forced them to take shape and be paired off with the character so I could force myself to visualize what I'd unintentionally ignored. Same for other fanfictions. If I saw a past partner, I'd force myself to stop and visualize what that had to be like to remind myself that love is love in the way that it is messy, confusing, and not always straightforward.

Step 4 is one I'm still on and will be on until the notion is fully dispelled. The fact that it still sometimes catches me by surprise reminds me that I need to keep working at it until it's just another fact of life.

So I feel like I'm at least aware of and changing that bias, and I know there are others lurking around in my brain just because of how I was raised and how I myself tried to overcome what I saw as shortcomings in my own raising. I'm going to get it wrong, and so are you. However, taking the moment to admit what's going wrong and taking steps to correct it helps you move forward as a person.

Anyways, this is for the people who are like me and usually terrified to admit that they've done wrong in trying to become a better person because they feel like they're about to be horribly punished for trying to do the right thing. Even if you made a mistake, you're allowed to try to do better.

it's safe to try and do better.

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