LaVar Hosting Jeopardy July 26-30 Stan Account 👁

I am quicker to give the benefit of the doubt to bougie white people who claim feminism and antiracism cause those are my people to some extent. They were a hell of a lot better to me than the conservative bougie white people I grew up with.

and idk you can call that stockholm or something but like... it Got Better. If I'd stayed around the conservatives I grew up with? I'd still be "straight" and wasting a great deal of my time and energy trying to not "act gay."

I'd still be shuffling and smiling my way through white interactions, afraid to bring up my experiences and perspectives that differ from my white friends. My bougie liberal white folks made space for that.

It was incomplete, but it was a hell of a lot more space for my queerness or my blackness than I'd had anywhere else in life (esp the intersection of the two?? Cmon.)

And a lot of it had to do with the fact that all of these people were outside of the mainstream in one way or another: queer, Jewish, POC, female (and like... aware of the way gendered expectations chafed them in a way the WW I grew up around were not)

The FEW not-Jewish cishet white men I was close to in college/from college all have close family who are queer or disabled or POC or SOMETHING

But I know not everybody has had that experience. I get why that group---and their/our mothers and fathers who are your Hillary Clintons/wannabes and your Barack Obamas/wannabes---doesn't provoke that "my people" reaction.

And it's not that I don't have a SERIOUS critique of that culture (as I do of every space I've ever been in lol), it's just that I'm inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt when they take a step in the right direction.

I don't have the reaction of "oh really??? You took a step for THEM for THAT bullshit and not for me and my Very Important Thing???" 'Cause like... it feels like these people took steps to be more welcoming to me.

So then when you're mad at them... are you mad at them for taking a step to help me? Is this thing that made my life suck so much less "bullshit" to you?

And that's an offputting enough thought, but the real kicker is: is this thing that made my life suck so much less actually bullshit? Are all the little ways life is easier as a bisexual assimilated Negro among these white people vs those white people (and a lot of those blk ppl)

are all of those things really bullshit relative to the Real Issues of material deprivation? Are we really focusing on everything but the main thing? Those questions are only more painful because they might actually be true.

I dunno if there are people who are shitty just because they wanna be shitty. <aybe there are. But I know for me, generally where there's a gap between what I think is right and what I actually believe, it's because there's a real psychological difficult there.

like, it's difficult---for anyone---to believe that something important to them personally is unimportant in the Grand Scheme of Things, should even be dismissed or forgotten in favor of more important things.

To put it another way: it's a harrowing thought to realize that not just your surplus, but what you needed, was obtained through/by/from/within/because of privilege. But then I always claim that's as true of poor straight white folks as of rich black queer me, so.

Anyway that's the claim I feel is being made on me, and why I am resistant to a lot of far radical things. I made my peace with it when it came to far radical black folks because I was recalled to how the suffering of the hood is mine, despite being a half-step removed.

I guess sooner or later I will make my peace with it as regards the socialists or especially the Real Commies. Although at present I'm not sure how. And it might be easier to just become a Real Christian than a Real Commie (there's no way that's true, look at Jesus.)

oh but also I'm doing a lot of stamping my feet and saying if we have room for the so-called white working class, we sure as hell have room for my bougie black folks and white women with decent feminism.