cloeh  ✨

to clarify: I don't mean just ban for a year the ones who fuck up. nope. only trans runners that year. I assure you the cis runners won't fuck up after the first time it is enforced

ban all cis runners from a cycle of GDQ each time one of them deadnames someone or uses pronouns that go against their wishes, to be honest. it happens every year and they don't seem able to learn any other way

Be precise and convey exactly what they say, don't censor or clean up their "broken" language. If they swear and the sound isn't censored, DO NOT CENSOR THE CAPTIONS. I'm so over hearing privilege and whitewashing.

If someone is speaking AAVE, DO IT WORD FOR WORD. Don't "clean it up," that's insulting. If someone isn't speaking "perfect" English, don't fucking change it. If they umm, uhh, stammer, I WANT THAT TOO. I. Want. Word. For. Word.

Okay, @netflix. I want to know why you don't caption every single word. I can see what people are saying not matching up with the captions. Also, pardon me, but DO NOT FUCKING CENSOR PEOPLE. I want to know what is said word. for. word. That's the whole fucking point of captions.

And that's honestly the only way anyone is going to respect you. Cultivate empathy, fine, okay, do it. But do it for the people who have less power than you do. And stop telling us that we should empathize more. That's a fairytale for children. And that ain't us.

Stop pretending that if you could only empathize enough, the fascists would stop convincing you to let them kill us while you wear a safety pin and wring your hands. It's not going to be easy. But you're going to sleep a lot better at night.

Believe children. Believe victims. Stop believing the police. Stop believing men over women, whites over everyone, straight people over queer people, abled people above all. Start tearing down injustice, and do that by tearing down the injustices inside you. Your assumptions.

So please, don't try to "cultivate empathy" for fascists, racists, and other intersectionally and by-policy bigoted people. That's playing into their hands. Because oh, here's the other thing--long as you assume you are smarter than they are, you're underestimating them a LOT.

And the longer you refuse to take a position against them, the more of their platforms they can advance. Which will be so normalized to you, that you won't push against it. Because that wouldn't be classy.

You'll keep telling yourself that you're on the good side of history, all while seeking approval and respect from people who know that as long as they withhold it, you will continue to be off-balance and refuse to take a position against them.

This is a great tool for them, because your guilt. Your desire to be respected. To be seen as classy and "reasonable". This will drive you to push yourSELF right into their arms. You're going to do all the work, and all they have to do is be there to stoke your insecurity.

But fascists are not going to budge. So the more you cultivate empathy for "the people we don't agree with" (which, when white liberals use it, is a dogwhistle for (a) fascists or (b) pre-fascist racists), the closer they draw you to them.

And you cannot -- I can't believe we are still going over this -- you cannot convert a fascist to a nonfascist by appealing to their empathy. No atrocity ever was stopped by a victim standing up and saying "please, understand, I'm just a human like you"

I'm with you--the idea of revolution terrifies me, although for slightly different reasons. My point is, though, if you can empathize your way into understanding fascists? That makes you a fascist.

In short, as long as you think that there's a vanishing possibility that "the system" might fix the problems it has built itself to create, you're going to go along with almost whatever atrocity happens. Because you're scared of what a revolution would mean.

Which is how you think that men who stand to lose considerable power have no more reason to lie, than women whose careers and lives those men have already ruined--and then manage somehow to not question why those men would've tried to ruin those women in the first place.