If you want to hear your opinion coming out of my mouth, do NOT ask me what I think.
It’s not my job to validate everyone’s half-assed takes.
I don’t understand why people have to try to provoke me into giving them opinions they know they won’t like. It makes no sense to me unless they’re narcissists trying to push my buttons for fun or looking for vulnerabilities.
I have ADHD and I rant sometimes. I’d say it gets me into trouble if I wasn’t clear out of fucks, but I’ve had many people come on strong into my life over the last couplefew years, promising they were interested in me as a person and that they could agree to disagree with my strong, nuanced opinions, only for them to ghost, whisper and smear.
And what bothers me most is that I’m not some mamby-pamby moderate primarily focused on ending conflict to the detriment of the parties. I’m a pragmatic libertarian socialist (look it up before you attack me). I want to help people, but I also believe in limits because I’ve been burned so many times.
I definitely do see SOME ideologies as inherently detestable (Nazis, white supremacy, and sexism are bad — duh), and I understand that some things require urgent attention.
I’ve never shied away from fighting for my principles even for people I don’t like or who take me for granted, and maybe that’s part of my problem.
At my core, I’m a free thinker, and my intent is always to do what FAIRNESS requires, not politics. I will never automatically side with or against an identity group, even one of which I’m a member, without critical thought. And honestly, I resent the implication that anybody ever should.
I’m a Gen X’er (Xennial, but that’s a whole other writing) and a survivor of horrific childhood abuse both at home and at school. I learned young to never blindly trust institutions, even family. And since then, not one has earned my confidence.
I have been involved with many communities, but I feel most ostracized by a trans community that is quick to eject its own for ‘disloyalty’ and ‘internalized transphobia’ when they fail to walk in lockstep with their ‘brothers and sisters’.
Please. I thought the war was over. I did my service for the community before this recent wave of backlash began, and I was happy with the results. Most of our accomplishments apply to those who came after us, including access to medical care and legal documents.
Then Trump happened. Then COVID caused an explosion of out trans people with few people truly qustioning why. Then the umbrella trans community earned a bunch of bad press. And now these rights for transsexuals are under attack.
As to the appeal to family, hard pass. Family is the very first social group in our lives to take advantage of us through interdependency and codependency.
All over the internet, people are complaining about employers using the idea of a ‘work family’ as a manipulative tactic, and should have started decades ago. Their perspective is debatable, but undeniable. I’m tired of being in an abusive relationship, myself.
