I agree with the social currency form that allows people to do this, but I think it's not a total inversion of power dynamics. The people I've seen doing this stuff the most are often from rich backgrounds, and they're some of the most difficult people to be around cos they usually have some genuine familial and/or social trauma but have retained all the entitlement of a rich person, so they just throw their bullshit around and don't think to care about others' wellbeing. Plus I think it's done by people who are good at leveraging the lingo but are still often actually in power positions, like these people are minoritised in a couple ways but still tend to have majority status in another e.g. being white, transmasc over transfem etc. Still possible for very minoritised and poor-background people to do it though for sure.
When it comes to maskers (of which I am one) I think a lot of the loudest online are people who really can't get out a lot and are letting the internet/social media McMansion, as you put it the other week, shape how they talk to and think of other people. The internet-poisoning is really strong there.
I think people like the ones you're talking about hear about "the collective" and are like "sweet, a scene where everyone else will look after me and I won't have to take any personal responsibility!" God save me from a trust fund queer
I think some of this happens because of a focus on "organizing" mostly unproductive actions rather than a widening of class consciousness. These groups are overly focused on getting existing members to become more deeply reliant on the group rather than spreading the enlightenment to wider audiences. "Community" isn't a real political goal--it's a social one for people who struggle to make friends otherwise.
Maybe it’s because people in the US value trauma stories so much and because of it, love to trauma dump others? Trauma is like its own currency. I don’t think this is a worldwide phenomenon.
Thank you. This caused me to feel strong emotions.
It's almost a comic tragedy that so many of us, who claim abolitionist values, replicate Puritan punishments.
This reminded me of Jo Freeman's The Tyranny of Structureless
I agree with the social currency form that allows people to do this, but I think it's not a total inversion of power dynamics. The people I've seen doing this stuff the most are often from rich backgrounds, and they're some of the most difficult people to be around cos they usually have some genuine familial and/or social trauma but have retained all the entitlement of a rich person, so they just throw their bullshit around and don't think to care about others' wellbeing. Plus I think it's done by people who are good at leveraging the lingo but are still often actually in power positions, like these people are minoritised in a couple ways but still tend to have majority status in another e.g. being white, transmasc over transfem etc. Still possible for very minoritised and poor-background people to do it though for sure.
When it comes to maskers (of which I am one) I think a lot of the loudest online are people who really can't get out a lot and are letting the internet/social media McMansion, as you put it the other week, shape how they talk to and think of other people. The internet-poisoning is really strong there.
I think people like the ones you're talking about hear about "the collective" and are like "sweet, a scene where everyone else will look after me and I won't have to take any personal responsibility!" God save me from a trust fund queer
I think some of this happens because of a focus on "organizing" mostly unproductive actions rather than a widening of class consciousness. These groups are overly focused on getting existing members to become more deeply reliant on the group rather than spreading the enlightenment to wider audiences. "Community" isn't a real political goal--it's a social one for people who struggle to make friends otherwise.
Maybe it’s because people in the US value trauma stories so much and because of it, love to trauma dump others? Trauma is like its own currency. I don’t think this is a worldwide phenomenon.