Not that it would've stopped people from feeling duped about liking people who turn out to be shit (or not real), but we could've avoided a lot of this shit if we'd... [mentions: CSA, rape, abuse]
- stop and question people who are doing CSA apologia while claiming to support youth liberation, especially when they conflate the latter *and* child sexuality with the ability of adults and teens to "consensually" engage in sexual relationships... but we'd have to remember to actually care about kids and teens beyond using them as talking points;
- stop and question people who engage in SWERF talking points, even if they are a sex worker of any sort;
- question our reactions to learning about abuse and rape and why it is that we're willing to let people who "do good work" sit in our spaces even as they hurt people and never do anything to even attempt repairing the situation *they* created;
- interrogate why we often let people say shit about, like, entering sexual relationships in order to "radicalise people" and not engage with what that generally means (also maybe we should think about why it is that there are people who use organising and activist spaces explicitly to get laid).
For the record, this is a non-exhaustive list of things that I definitely noticed in the last round of Surprise! This Person is a Shitbag!
Because there are a lot of warning signs and many of them are grounded in patriarchy and white supremacy. They are your warning signs. Use them.
And this isn't to say people "should have known." But if you get bad vibes, that's a signal to do some digging. Even if that digging is checking in with others you trust.
@whatanerd bad vibes? Interesting how people always feel bad vibes about basically every trans woman or black man to enter a space. Be a little more critica
@destroy Hi, I'm also a trans person, so thanks for writing me out of this.
I'm not saying "bad vibes" as in "Oh, hi, I'm a bigot and don't like this demographic." I am saying "bad vibes" as in "this person makes me uncomfortable, and I can't articulate why."
Which is a legitimate feeling and sometimes people *don't know why* they feel uncomfortable. Which is why I said to check in with someone and not immediately dig their grave. Because you can feel uncomfortable about someone else, and it could be a bigotry, and you might not recognise it. But it could also be that you are feeling red flags that others are also feeling to.
(It's also not like I mentioned that any of these things are "grounded in patriarchy and white supremacy" or something.)
@whatanerd you said they might be grounded in patriarchy and white supremacy and then said to use them anyways. You’re advocating for people to treat the marginalized with increased scrutiny and then if they pass the shit test then you should examine yourself for biases(which you will then assure yourself you are free of)
@destroy Perhaps I'm not explaining myself clearly, but I'm not advocating to increase scrutiny on marginalised people. I am saying that if you feel uncomfortable by someone, check in with *someone else*.
I genuinely don't see a problem in asking people around you to help give you a 'vibe check'.
If there's a better way to say it, frame it, whatever... I actually would appreciate that than continually ignoring that 'bad vibes' isn't inherently racist or transphobic or that I'm not saying we should intentionally use racism and transphobia to scrutinise people.
Because I also meant that a lot of our discomfort comes from patriarchal and white supremacist structures, and a lot of the red flags we notice themselves *are* white supremacist or patriarchal themselves but are harder to notice (e.g., dog whistles).
@whatanerd i think it’s better to try to identify actual warning signs than to tell a bunch of racists and transphobes to trust their guts on bad vibes and then ask the transphobe next to them to assure them they’re right that she’s a creep
@destroy @whatanerd
> Because there are a lot of warning signs and many of them are grounded in patriarchy and white supremacy.
What they're saying here isn't "hey transphobes and white supremacists, go ham on your bullshit bigotry". What they're saying is that, for an example they used, getting into a relationship with somebody "to radicalize them" is treating others as instruments for your purposes, and as epistemic depositories rather than agents. This is epistemic violation core to both patriarchy and white supremacy, treating another person as mutable for your purposes with 0 regard for their internal life.
This behavior, which is rooted in white supremacy and patriarchy, is a red flag. Being aware of those red flags and thinking, "hey this is weird noxious behavior" is not rooted in white supremacy or patriarchy.