#ppl making up scenarios that never happened to justify being bigoted

[alienscumbag]

How to explain to ppl that jokes are the foundations to a lot of bigotry... Like you let ppl you don't know start laughing at jokes poking fun at groups they aren't in and that's where they start to get comfortable with being bigoted and then using "it was just a joke" as a defense

[inadequate-nefelibata]

Still thinking about lil nas x, a 21 yo, who was also very closeted as a kid, receiving an unrelenting stream of homophobic comments online. And thinking about the reaction there was to that on social media.

I mean, the choice to fend these people off with jokes was his to make, and I get why ppl wanted to celebrate him. I did too. He’s excellent and so were the song and the video. But it was a bit striking to me that it took so long for people to even begin to wonder if he was doing okay, if this was affecting him in any way. It was only after dozens and dozens of posts making memes along with him that users started bringing up one tweet where he mentioned that he was feeling very anxious. Maybe 6 or so people commented on that.

It’s possible that was just my dashboard, or that most people did wonder but they just wanted to follow his lead. I mean, if that’s how he was facing the situation, then let him.

But I just… have been thinking about this for a while now. When it comes to this specific situation, there are some great post discussing this, by people who get his situation much better than me. What I’ve been thinking about is the effect that social media has had on our response to queerphobia and to bigotry in general. And just the responses we have to bigotry nowadays.

 Because of social media, we are more exposed than ever to all those ideas and groups that want to and have managed to hurt is. Lovers and haters of something occupy the same space, so you stumble upon their musings all the time. If you are a public figure, it specifically comes to find you. And Social media turns everyday activities and thoughts into a performance, so of course, vulnerability and sensibility are hard (impossible, I’d say); in a public setting, a disaffected front is easier.

My point is, I think because of this, somewhere along the way we started getting this idea that turning the hate you get into a joke or into a source of “inner strength” is the best-case scenario when it comes to dealing with bigotry.

Let me be clear: I do think that it’s necessary to learn to let go of hateful comments and actions sometimes. And joking around can help. If we were to focus all of our attention and emotions on every single fatphobic/racist/misogynistic/transphobic etc event of our lives, we would probably end up falling apart. Also, like I mentioned before, being vulnerable in social media is. Basically hell. It makes sense to be this way, especially for public figures.

But I do not want to end up creating a social environment where marginalized people are… I don’t know. Sensitive to being sensitive.  Some time ago I read something about “a fixation with reclamation” or something like that, in reference to people who are just… straight up transphobic or homophobic, and justify their behavior by pointing out that they’re part of those groups.

I guess this is something that’s not exclusively related to social media. We’re all living in a world where some forms of social injustice are still common place. We want to change that, but the path to the reality we want is meandering and rocky, and, at some point, you have to develop some short-term skills to deal with the situation you actually experience.

So… yeah, that’s how it is. Learning to make something good out of the bad stuff they throw at you.  I mean, reclaiming slurs is an example of this, and I use “queer” all the time because it feels right to do so. That this is something that we do is not the problem. Neither is being able to joke or downplay bigoted comments occasionally.

The question is: are we separating necessity from… I don’t know, morally affirming hardships?  Does that make sense…? What I mean is, are we interpreting our ability to be unaffected by these behaviors as something that “makes us stronger” somehow? Something that proves our worth? Are we better than other members of the group if we can joke about it, instead of being sensitive to it, or being hurt by it? Is this something we are incorporating to our mentality?

I don’t know. I just wonder about that sometimes. About whether or not this is happening. It’s possible that it isn’t, and this is just what I’m getting from social media at the moment. There are many conversations that aren’t happening here, but I do I have them with my real life friends, for example. Or maybe I’m misreading the situation, and there’s a better explanations for the things I’m talking about. It may be the effect of internalized bigotry: it could be that people are finding “woke” ways of behaving in the way they learned to behave when they were younger. It could be the effect of having different experiences: for example, joking about “going to hell” Is easier if you were never raised to actually believe that. It’s probably all of those things.

I just keep thinking about it.

We can’t really reclaim homophobia/transphobia/racism… etc. At some point, it’s something that is out there and it happens to us. Even when you learn to joke about it, it fucks you up. The aim is that at some point, someone growing up in the world won’t have the faintest idea of what it’s like to experience that. The things that happen in history never go away, but it can be like, I don’t know, reading about people who thought that the sun circled around the earth, if that makes sense.

I’m sure most people know that already, I don’t want to say obvious things. But I do wonder if it’s like a narrative we tell ourselves at this point: we endure bigotry and we win out. Like those experiences have an intrinsic meaning, instead of being a necessary part of existing in this world as a marginalized group.  Also, another thing that doesn’t feel right about this is that all the emphasis on the pain we withstand can make us forget that, in most cases, the reason why we’re still in one piece today is because of our communities. Is because other people offered us kindness, and companionship, and acceptance. Someone somewhere had to figure out their life on their own, I’m sure, but a lot of the time you at least have a sense of belonging to something larger.

All of this may be connected the idea that pain is morally edifying. But this is too long already so I’ll just leave it at:

?????

(Side note: I keep using examples of queer experinces, I guess bc those are the things I know the most. But maybe talking about bigotry in general terms was a bad call here. I don’t know. If someone has a different experience from mine and wants to add something, you’re welcome to do so.)