@aud @SallyStrange @aral @eatyourglory @greenWhale did I ever suggest that they are worth less? Quite the opposite. I’m saying that, even if you perfectly insultate them from all the assholes on the Internet, they’ll still meet assholes in real life. On the street. On the bus. At the mall. In their office.
Insulating them from the rest of the world to protect them actually harms them. It makes them incapable of handling conflict. It makes them even more vulnerable.
We should encourage them to get out of their shell, not to dig their own grave inside of it.
They should know that they shouldn’t be scared of the sex-deprived incel who lives in his granma’s basements and posts pictures of his guns. They should know that they are better human beings than him. And that escaping in a safe bubble isolated from the world is the best undeserved gift that they could give to such losers.
I’ve gone through more shit in life than equality posers like you can even imagine. Raised in a poor neighbourhood riddled with criminality. Raised in a fundamentalist cult that isolated me from the world for all of my childhood. Bullied in school for my identity when I was a teenager. I’ve migrated several times, and I’ve been subject to racial and social prejudice countless times. I’ve heard “go back to your home” more times than any human being deserves. Just because I don’t show the oppressed minority badge at every chance or I don’t write it in my bio, you have no fucking right of calling me a privileged white dude. Do we agree on this and will you shut the fuck up about your fucking assumptions about my background and alleged privilege from now on?
Yet I’ve walked more distance in life than all the odds that played against me. And that’s NOT because I decided to take shelter in the isolation of my cult. Nor surround myself only with people like me. Nor go and beg for pity for my situation. I got far in life because at some point I understood that the only way to overcome trauma is to deal with it face to face, learn that being afraid of our oppressors is the best gift that we could hand to them, surround yourself with people who would support you, and move on.
I hope that you don’t have kids, because the same line of reasoning applied to parenting would be a guarantee for child development failure. Telling marginalized people “don’t go on mainstream social media and don’t interact with anyone who’s there, because you may be bullied by jerks” is the same as telling your teenage kid “don’t go to the parties of your school friends and don’t play with other kids at the park, because you may be bullied by jerks”. Do you feel like kids raised like this will be more or less prepared to go through all the shit that this world holds for them once they grow up?
Self-confidence and self-awareness only emerges when people confront their offenders and learn that they have nothing to fear from them. Be part of the world, not live in a parallel world.
Your line of reasoning damages vulnerable people because it keeps them prisoners of cages that others built for them. Yours is not anything that resembles activism, because activism happens out there in the real world, openly standing on the side of the oppressed on the open square, barking in the face of the real fascists, humiliating them and showing everyone how insignificant they are as human beings, and how fragile their ideas actually are. Not shooting friendly fire on those who want to solve the same problems as you but propose a different approach, while staying in the cozy comfort of your isolated bubble, and fighting anything that may disturb that false sense of safety.
You are not an activist, nor you are doing any good to the world. You don’t even know what it means to get your own life threatened by real thugs for defending someone you barely know from injustice. You are just a prisoner who is advocating for everybody to be locked in the same prison. A pathetic poser who is more aggressive and narrow minded than the worst fascist out there, and doesn’t even realize it.