Before some Tumblrina feminazi jumps on my ass, just know that my mother and I were abused by my father. I know the signs, and the warnings, and the fear, and I see so much of it in modern liberal - leftist - culture and media in the United states. Also, I used to be liberal. They are abusive and it's about time someone called them out on it. Mildly delves into cultish mindsets as well.
*denotes a source is at the end of the page.
~ denotes a note at the end of the page.
1. Goes along with everything to avoid anger. - When my mom and I were with my dad, we always did what he wanted to do.
The young idealistic liberal feminist (let's call her Becky) sits at her computer. She has just read a very interesting article that she completely agrees with about Bernie Sanders and is deciding whether or not to share it to her Tumblr, www.cismendie.tumblr.com. Suddenly, she realizes she is on a conservative website. "Down with cis!" she yells triumphantly (despite she herself being cis - more on that later), sharing the article with the caption, "lol look at these assholes. and then conservatives wonder why we hate them so much."
Do you see what's wrong with that? Instead of voicing her opinions, Becky chose to follow the crowd out of fear of her being ostracized by her people.
2. No True Scotsman Fallacy - Related to the above. The No True Scotsman Fallacy (NTS) is a way of shifting the goalposts so that the definition is less inclusive, changing people's behavior if they want to be a true Scotsman.* Let's say for the sake of the argument that Becky had instead chosen to share the article with her honest opinions attached:
It's been an hour since Becky posted the Bernie Sanders article with her true feelings attached. She has received no support from other liberals who she had once considered her friends. They are sending her mean, bordering on violent, messages. She can't avoid them. They make her feel as though she has failed in her leftism. "You're not really one of us!" and "How dare you say that about our socialist lord and savior!" they say. Her blog following begins to drop tremendously. Eventually, she posts again, saying that she didn't really mean what she said, and she was just curious to see how everyone would react.
Are you starting to feel sorry for Becky yet? No? You just think she a conformist pushover? Same, man. Same.
3. Belittling or waving off what they do to their victim because the victim somehow deserves it (especially if it's something out of the victim's control) - I particularly encountered this a lot with my dad. When he would abuse us, afterwards he would always say something along the lines of, "Well, you shouldn't have bugged me during my video game." Or, "You shouldn't have asked me to take out the trash/do dishes/change the cat litter." It's otherwise known as "victim blaming".
Becky is scrolling through her Tumblr feed a few days after the Bernie Sanders Incident. A very good "stargenderflux" friend of hers shares an article entitled, Here's why all cis people should die. Becky reads it and the comments and finds that it makes her very uncomfortable. "Is this how I make people feel when I say things like down with cis?" she thinks. She messages her friend, asking why they would post something so hateful. Her friend replies, "well you're cis and privileged so you don't know the oppression i've faced. you don't have the right to complain. seeing mean stuff is sort of what you get for being cis. :/" Becky immediately unfollows this person, as she can now see how toxic they are.
Look, Becky is starting to grow a pair! Becky's friend is essentially saying that Becky deserves to read things from liberal media that make her uncomfortable because she is cis, which Becky obviously can't control.
4. Isolates the victim - As Anita Sarkeesian, bitchy feminist extraordinaire, once said, "...everything is sexist, everything is racist, everything is homophobic, and you have to point it all out to everyone all the time."** However, by doing this, the newly-minted liberal is often separating themselves from their friends and family who may have more rational or at least different points of view. Thus, they enter an echochamber of sorts, where everything they hear fits the liberal narrative.~ Interactions with moderates or conservatives, or even liberals who are simply less liberal than them often ends in arguments and a deeper embitterment for the other side. Nothing gets done, no one learns anything. It's unproductive.
Becky made a new friend at school. Let's call this girl Amanda. Becky likes Amanda, however their social ideas are always clashing. One day while on Tumblr again, Becky sees a discourse post, a series of users sharing a post and having a debate. Despite calling herself a liberal, Becky finds herself agreeing more with the conservative side of the argument. She asks Amanda what she thinks of the post, and they come into agreement with the conservatives. Slowly but surely, Becky becomes more moderate, following both liberal and conservative media. She soon realizes that the hard liberals whose word she always took as gospel were not infallible - in fact, they were rather wrong about many things. And she was sick of it.
Now. I'm going to let you in on a little secret. I'm Becky. Well, not really, we have different names, and I was never quite as radical as she was (I've never uttered the phrase "down with cis", thank God), but our paths are similar, except for the fact that mine was also accompanied by a transition into an anarchist too.
The moral of the story is this: My generation fucked everything up. We're the problem, and if something doesn't change, if radical liberals don't change, we're not going to get to be part of the solution. This generation of socialist idiots is the future, whether you like it or not. I've seen the inside of it, it's a dark, dark future indeed. I'm just urging you to never be how Becky was - how I was.
Never stop debating. Never stop learning. And never stop changing minds.
My name is Katy. You can follow my anarchist/political/anti-liberal blog at www.queen-of-ancapistan.tumblr.com. Yes, my URL is supposed to be ironic.
*https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/no-true-scotsman Great website for learning about fallacies. Would definitely recommend buying a poster.
**
Speech from Anita Sarkeesian and then ensuing discussion. The quote is at approximately 6:43.
~ It should be noted that oftentimes conservatives and moderates will do the same thing or similar, however, I have found that conservatives and moderates are less aggressive due to liberals inherent holier-than-thou complex. Many moderates especially simply follow some conservative ideas, and some liberal ones, thus making them more able to see both sides as they are often tuned in to media of both wings.
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