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   novatorine 🏴🏳️‍⚧️ (anarchopunk_girl@kolektiva.social)'s status on Friday, 15-Sep-2023 04:50:55 JST novatorine 🏴🏳️‍⚧️

   As a conscious temper and counterbalance to the outrage at Ro, I actually think people should maybe read this blog post of his that I saw someone pointing out: https://roiskinda.cool/2022/07/pride-for-a-straight-guy.html

   I think this genuinely shows a good-hearted person who at least seems to understand the concept of solidarity and want to be more open and understanding, someone who is sympathetic to queer people.

   This further strengthens my belief that Are0h isn't an evil person, but someone who has been hurned by real life racism and the severe problem with racism we have here, and who is struggling with the sort of by-default queerphobia and transphobia that most people have (much in the same way that many white people are by-default racist), and because of all that, handled the creation of the bad space wrong, and is having a moment of weakness by giving into the sort of everyday narcissism — which I, personally, *know* I sometimes fall into — where we are just not willing to recognize and admit our mistakes. He is doubling down on accusing everyone of racism and insisting that fucking over a few queer and trans people is simply "the cost of making the fedi safe for black people" (omelette fallacy, major lapse of solitarity) because he's too far out on a limb now and can't stop, I think. And because of the core goal of his project was very very good and it feels like attacks against the project are attacks against the goal. Yes he is co-opting leftist and progressive language to defend himself, but that's not an unforgivable sin, again it's something that can happen naturally: when someone reaches for rationalizations, they can reach for any kind of justifying rhetoric.

   This is not too pity him or infantilize him at all because I think he is still responsible for his words, and those words have been bad, but I feel like this is something important to say so that we can all get a sense of proportion and reality here. I'm hoping this will decrease whatever races to harassment he's experiencing.

   • Embed this notice
     Passenger (passenger@kolektiva.social)'s status on Friday, 15-Sep-2023 09:46:49 JST Passenger

     in reply to

     I'm boosting this piece not because I agree with all of it, and certainly not because I stand behind what the writer has said elsewhere (she and I differ sharply over the whole TBS issue) but because she was a friend before this went down, and has asked me to boost it in the hope of unburning some bridges, and that's something I want to support.

     She is aware that I think her levels of Whiteness on this matter are disappointing.

     If you have an issue with my choice of friends, please feel free to not include yourself in that number.