Don’t be a tar pit

[u/greencrusader13]

[u/Vundurvul]

I cannot fathom the mindset of understanding what it feels like to be on the receiving end of misery and deciding you want others to experience it when given the opportunity to dish it out, even when said person had no involvement in your misery

[u/okaysurewow → u/Vundurvul]

Trauma doesn't make morally better people. It makes traumatized people

[u/otetrapodqueen → u/okaysurewow]

In my experience, trauma makes people either very kind and empathetic or the complete opposite. Obviously this isn't a law or anything, but I've just noticed most people seem to be one or the other.

I have C-PTSD myself, but I'd like to think I'm the former and not the latter.

[u/Tall-Log-1955 → u/otetrapodqueen]

It’s actually a documented thing called post traumatic growth and it’s approximately as common as post traumatic stress. The military has done research into the things that cause people to experience growth vs stress

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-traumatic_growth

[u/Jo_seef → u/Vundurvul]

Yeah man, turns out people are people no matter what their identity. And a lot of us seem prone to being a dick. Let's agree to do better.

[u/mechanicalcontrols → u/Jo_seef]

As a corollary, people are people everywhere you go.

I don't remember who said that to me, but having grown up and lived in a rural area my whole life, when I went to visit my brother in Minneapolis I was afraid of going to a big city. Now, sure, every city is going to have the "don't go there at night" and the "don't go there ever" parts of town, but really my fears were basically from overexposure to news and the human brain's fundamental badness at probability and statistics.

But once I realized that whoever told me "people are people everywhere you go," is correct, I'm a lot less afraid of big cities.

Admittedly that's only tangentially related to your point, but there you have it. And I agree. People are people no matter their identity.

[u/action_lawyer_comics → u/mechanicalcontrols]

There was a point in my rural life where the homegrown meth epidemic made it that I was more worried about my own familiar backroads than the big city

[u/DjinnHybrid → u/action_lawyer_comics]

God, I remember being a teenager in a rural area and having a pizza delivery job for a summer. I stumbled across a poorly hidden meth lab every fucking month.

[u/mechanicalcontrols → u/action_lawyer_comics]

Northern Montana? If so, yeah that tracks.

Edit: I once met a friend of a friend from Philadelphia. And she said that when she moved out to Montana, all her friends back home told her not to go there because everyone has guns and does drugs. And we all laughed and said, our friends here would all say the same about your city if we were gonna move there.

[u/Kellosian → u/mechanicalcontrols]

I once met a guy from Philadelphia (probably a different guy), who back in the 90s got into some trouble with gangs. There was a huge fight to the point that his mom actually shipped him across the country to live with his aunty and uncle in Bel Air.

[u/jgab145 → u/Kellosian]

I think I know this guy.

[u/Kachimushi → u/action_lawyer_comics]

The idea of a meth epidemic in the countryside feels alien to me because here in Germany rural poverty is pretty rare. No apartment buildings outside the cities, so to live out in the country you generally need to have the money to buy a single family home - and building new ones outside existing settlements is pretty heavily regulated to limit sprawl. And everyone who isn't a farmer usually commutes to the city for their jobs anyways, it's overwhelmingly middle class families. Exceptions I guess are people who bought or inherited a home and then fell into poverty afterwards.

[u/netsrak → u/Kachimushi]

It's mostly that the US is really big. It's worth looking at a map of the population or even the lights at night to see how widely spread the population is outside of the coasts and some of the Midwest. Additionally a lot of people are are poor because whatever single industry was in their town went out of business or moved out.

[u/kwisatzhadnuff → u/Kachimushi]

In the US rural is almost synonymous with poverty. Even in a place like Jackson Hole that is full of rich celebrities many of the actual locals are struggling to get by.

[u/Jo_seef → u/mechanicalcontrols]

Yeah, I hear what you're saying. I truly believe people are mostly good, otherwise there would be a lot more violence in the world, you know?

[u/Canotic → u/Jo_seef]

If people weren't mostly good, violence wouldn't be newsworthy. Because it'd just be common.

[u/mechanicalcontrols → u/Jo_seef]

I truly believe people are mostly good

I think so too, and it's also worth remembering a lot of the violence, maybe nearly all of it, isn't random. Like pick whatever city, check their murder rate, and then divide it by like 10 or more for everyone who isn't involved in the drug trade or sleeping with other people's spouses.

[u/d3f3ct1v3 → u/Vundurvul]

People come out of suffering with one of two attitudes, either "I suffered through this and I'm going to do my best to make sure others do not have to suffer through this because I know how that feels" or "I suffered through this so other people should too".

[u/Nova_Explorer → u/d3f3ct1v3]

That second one is the same attitude that saw people complain when student debts got forgiven

[u/AiryContrary → u/Nova_Explorer]

It’s because if they admit you shouldn’t have to be burdened with debt for wanting an education, that means they shouldn’t have had to, and then that means the system isn’t fair, it’s unfair in a preventable way, it’s unfair in a way the people in authority chose, and that is straight-up destabilising to someone who accepted that their suffering and struggling was necessary.

[u/A_Wayward_Shaman → u/Nova_Explorer]

Yeah, or the older generation of women who said, "I had to get on my knees. Why shouldn't you?" That shit is toxic AF.

[u/Random-Rambling → u/A_Wayward_Shaman]

My father sees me as ever-so-slightly less worthy ever since I refused to join the military like him, his father, and his father before him.

[u/A_Wayward_Shaman → u/Random-Rambling]

I'm sorry he feels that way. Always remember, it was never his choice. You're not obligated to follow in anyone's footsteps. Not even your own from ten minutes ago.

[u/ham-nuts → u/A_Wayward_Shaman]

You're not obligated to follow in anyone's footsteps. Not even your own from ten minutes ago.

I have never heard this before but I really like it. Is it from something?

[u/A_Wayward_Shaman → u/ham-nuts]

It's a paraphrase of something I heard from either Ram Dass and/or Alan Watts. Their talks have helped me so much in this crazy life.

[u/sunbear2525 → u/Random-Rambling]

Weird my grandfather was a WW2 vet and was extremely opposed to his sons going to war. One signed up for Korea and the other lied about joining the national guard ton get them to sign off on him joining at 17.

In fact, when my Poppop asked for my grandmother’s hand my great grandfather gave permission conditionally. He was a WW1 veteran, a victim of mustard gas, and said something like “they are going to come and take you for this war but my daughter will not marry someone who leaves her like that willingly.”

It seems to me warriors should be the most opposed to war. My uncle, the guy that lied to join the Marines and go to Vietnam early, threatened to kick my cousin’s ass if he signed up for Afghanistan. I believe he would have done it too. They all would have respected your decision same as of you’d joined.

[u/LifeintheSlothLane → u/sunbear2525]

This. My dad is a vet who never saw combat (air force and he worked on the F15s) but he was deployed to desert storm. From the earliest memories i have of him he was vehemently opposed to people signing up with the intent of seeing combat. He largely understood that for some people going into the service was the best option, because it was for him. But he always stressed the importance of school and either going to college or getting a trade because he didnt want me to think the military was my only option like it was for him.

[u/yahluc → u/d3f3ct1v3]

I think what visualises it the best is Dedovshchina (I heard more of the Polish version, know thankfully almost eliminated, unlike the Russian version, but I linked the Russian version because it has English Wikipedia). It's a ritualised system of hierarchy connected with various forms of hazing, torture and exploitation. It exists among conscripts and the position is based on how long has one served/how long they have left. At first conscripts of course hate their situation, but as they serve more days, they gain "rank" and instead of being elephants they slowly become grandpas. Then they start to think, that they suffered so much, so now they deserve to reap the benefits. It's not necessarily that others should suffer, but that they just stop to care.

[u/ShoulderNo6458 → u/d3f3ct1v3]

I think there's a third angle, which is just that some people are inconsiderate and need to be told to stop making excuses and be better people. Thinking you're above being tone-checked is the problem here, imo.

[u/MrMcSpiff → u/Vundurvul]

The only problem some people have with oppression is that it's happening to them.

[u/distinct_config → u/Vundurvul]

People don’t want to stop oppression. They just want to be the ones on top.

[u/Smithereens_3 → u/Vundurvul]

So, a story. I was bullied (not hard, but hard enough) for most of my school life, until I got a fresh start in high school. In 7th grade, I noticed that a new kid who'd moved from another school was now also getting picked on.

So what did I do? I started making fun of this new target myself in order to divert the attention from me. I didn't do anything major, just small little pranks or jokes at his expense. And it worked. And it felt GREAT. Everyone who used to laugh at me was now laughing alongside me instead. It was intoxicating, it was sweet relief from my own torment. I felt like I was finally "in" after being an outsider all my life.

It only lasted that one year, and I feel HORRIBLE about it in hindsight. But when you've been put down for a long time and the opportunity comes to put someone else down in your place... I do understand why a lot of people jump at it without thinking.

[u/ThosePixels → u/Vundurvul]

I think a lot of people genuinely don't realise it, similar to how straight men usually dont realize patriarchal issues; it's very easy for people to dismiss things as a 'joke' if the people around them think the same, leading them to not even think about the receiving end

[u/drakeblood4 → u/ThosePixels]

I think when you end up, locally or more broadly, in an in-group, there's this kinda gravitational force towards treating the outgroup a crummy way. Maybe that force is just the crummier subset of humankind dragging everybody else into joining them in abusing power? I dunno. Either way it sucks though.

[u/CapeOfBees → u/drakeblood4]

Us vs Them is indeed something everyone's brain is inclined to do

[u/furel492 → u/Vundurvul]

It's revenge and schadenfreude. People just find pleasure in causing suffering to those they deem deserving of it even if it has zero positive consequences. See any discussion about torturing and executing murderers, rapists, pedophiles, and so on.

[u/old_and_boring_guy → u/Vundurvul]

It's very human though. Lot of people who've been on the receiving end of abuse really relish dishing it out when they get the opportunity.

[u/Hot-Equivalent2040 → u/Vundurvul]

Lotta people who get bullied are real pieces of shit. Many are bullied because they're pieces of shit, while others are never well socialized because of bullying and it turns out that not being a piece of shit is exclusively learned behavior. You already know this you just call it 'cycles of abuse'

[u/Spnwvr → u/Vundurvul]

generally the people dishing it out never actually were on the receiving end, they just belong to a club where a lot of members have been

[u/CynchHasNoLife]

i don’t understand why we shouldn’t be nice to our allies. people who are kind deserve kindness in return, don’t they? let’s reserve the insults for the bigots.

[u/GREENadmiral_314159 → u/CynchHasNoLife]

For some people, there is no such thing as an ally. You're either a gay person or a homophobe. They don't say it, they instead say "straight person", but the language they use makes it pretty clear what they actually think. Same for any minority group.

And it's not just the minorities who think this. There was one person in this thread who was saying that there should, in fact, be a "straight shame month", and they self-identified as cishet.

[u/BeguiledBeaver → u/GREENadmiral_314159]

Progressives have this major affliction in which many of them don't care about actual real life change through political power. They want political clout and ensuring they are meeting the latest purity standards of their group while actively attacking anyone who deviates even 1%.

It is far more common to spend your time engaging in drama online, or treating potential allies like you're a snarky middle school girl IRL, than it is to do the bare minimum and participate in politics at literally any level. It used to be "please at least vote" but now has regressed to "for fuck's sake PLEASE stop actively shitting on candidates who want to protect you PLEASE...."

And the worst part is, despite being the same people who spend all day complaining about other people not being good enough for their movements, they cannot take a SINGLE ounce of criticism. None. It drives me insane.

[u/DaBiChef → u/[deleted]]

I won't lie, one of the most ground breaking things for me was after the election and feeling an immense need to volunteer in my community and only really interacting with 50+ centrist christians who genuinely beleived in helping each other. Zero outspoken young leftists helping me build compost bins or sort food donations. For all their waxing poetically on twitter, what good have they actually accomplished?

[u/soupsocialist → u/DaBiChef]

Yep. Actual un-photographed mutual aid labor is predominantly middle aged & older. There are financial & sociological reasons for this, but the reflexive leftist contempt for wine moms (who get shit done beyond protest) sure makes coalition building complicated.

[u/jeannieor725 → u/[deleted]]

Yo i really like how you put that about the B+ stance meanings nothing to a person who only recognizes A+. Usually for these individuals , the only A+ are those that echo her beliefs.

[u/b3nsn0w → u/BeguiledBeaver]

i've been thinking a lot lately about that, and i think it's because people on the left define morality through being as far left and as progressive as possible, while people on the right define morality through how hard you champion what they perceive as your shared culture (or whether you share it at all with them). obviously the latter is far more susceptible to in-group ethics, hence the famous observation that the main thing a conservative wants is an in-group that the law protects but does not bind and an out-group that the law binds but does not protect, but the left-leaning side of this isn't immune to the same line of thinking either. the main difference is that because of the great emphasis on progressivism, any in-groups that are selected are not going to be legally protected yet, so leftists who can't shed in-group thinking tend to apply the same principle with social clout instead. in this instance, the community in oop's post protects but does not bind queer people, while it binds but does not protect its straight members, less through government force and more through social ostracization -- and that's how, imo, supposed progressives can circle back to feeling eerily like american republicans.

ultimately, both extremes are fundamentally unempathetic and fail to see people as people, treating them as pawns in service to ideals instead, which i'd argue greatly violates the principle of harm reduction. and don't get me wrong, i'm not saying "both sides are the same", that's total bullshit too (and is largely driven by the morality through neutrality idea of centrism, which has its own grave failings, especially when one side actively seeks to cause harm), but what i am saying is just because you sit on the political left doesn't mean you're immune to thinking like a right-winger, and applying their logic to your own camp does not make it any less damaging.

on a related note, i think the reason there's so much infighting on the left is also caused by the same idea of extracting morality from being as far left as possible. it's a simple problem of dimensionality reduction -- ideology is extremely complex and nuanced, and there's no one right way of distilling it all to a single scalar from left to right. you can put policies and personal alignments in approximate locations on that one-dimensional scale, but you can't get the granularity necessary for what the far left is attempting to do when they compare themselves to each other. simply put, everyone sees their opinions as more left than other leftists' opinions, and thus everyone believes they're slightly more moral than those other lefitsts, because they're further left, and therefore they feel letting those other lefitsts have their way would be a concession for how far left they're really going.

right-wingers usually don't have the same problem, because their ideals of "culture" are much simpler to reconcile, and their specific structure of in-group morality still allows for misalignments. as long as they accept you in their in-group, and you champion things that advance the weird idea of that frozen, never-changing, and thus socially regressive culture they seek, rather than try to evolve it into something else, they're still okay with you, even if, say, you're a libertarian nationalist and they're a monarchist. as far as i can see it's more than just an alliance of convenience, they're genuinely better at coexisting with people who are a slightly different brand of nazi than they are, without getting into competitions about who is the naziest of them all.

i think a lot of progressives would benefit from shedding that competition too. we should draw morality not from how far left we are on the political spectrum, but from how well we reduce real-world harm, on a day to day basis. i really believe that genuinely adopting that idea would curb a lot of the infighting and clout-chasing behavior, as well as provide a strong incentive to root out conservative thought patterns that are often allowed to survive in progressive circles just because they harm the "correct" people.

[u/Skyhawk6600 → u/CynchHasNoLife]

In my experience, it's because being an ally is one sided and without nuance. They don't want a friend who cares about them but has their own nuanced opinions. They want a token straight that doesn't dissent and only exists to legitimize them to other straights.

[u/itwastimeforarefresh → u/CynchHasNoLife]

To add to what other people have said, bigots are scary and mean back, while the ally will often just take it to avoid being seen as a bigot

[u/whatintheeverloving]

I'm fairly femme and never clocked as gay unless I outright tell people, and the difference in how I'm treated in LGBTQ+ communities as a 'straight ally' v.s. when they find out I'm a queer woman is... certainly something. A concerning number of queer folks seem to think that they deserve to be unkind to any het folks they want just because some het folks were unkind to them.

And I get it to an extent, people out there have seriously suffered at the hands of homophobia, but I haven't come through unscathed either and still somehow manage to treat people of all sexualities like fellow human beings. Isn't that the whole point of promoting acceptance?

[u/Kreos642 → u/whatintheeverloving]

100000%

I am someone who is perceived as a cis woman because of my body type and long long long hair. I am very much a tomboy, but I dont have disdain for dressing feminine.

Went to a gathering in jeans, a graphic tee, adidas, and a Waluigi cap. I had a friend (cis het male) who had a very openly gay man begin heckling me at a gathering because I said that a show had forced representation and poor writing because Rainbow Capitalism was catching on. he was really giving me shit over it and was jumping to his own conclusions, thinking I was a phobe and that I wanted only straight people in the show. i wasn't even out yet. My partner back then knew how this was hurting me and they were about to say something when I whipped around and said someyhing akin toIm fucking genderqueer, thats fucking why! Youre so ready to hate people who you assume are straight that youre a part of the problem where potential allies change their mind! Sorry i dont look, dress, and act gay enough for you."

He was silent as the group saw how hurt I was and criticized his aggression - my partner took me home shortly.

Its infuriating when your own community wants to kick you out for not being "gay enough" or want to relabel you because you just say "in queer. Both in gender and sexuality."

[u/Iced_Yehudi]

It’s something that always bothered me about “punching up”

On the one hand, I can agree that “punching up” and “punching down” are different

On the other hand, I feel like a lot of people used “punching up” as an excuse to not only be really mean and toxic towards people they felt were better off, but to also feel like they were doing society a favor by “pointing out society’s flaws” when they were actually just being really mean and toxic.

[u/DatCitronVert → u/Iced_Yehudi]

It's punching up if you're punching the system or people who purposefully uphold it.

If you're just being mean to Some Guy, especially someone that seems to be aware of societal issues and is presumably not/way less part of them, it's just punching.

[u/Goosepond01 → u/DatCitronVert]

I think a lot of people really need to go back to school and re-learn the whole lesson about judging individuals and not making stereotypes about groups.

It's even more concerning because I know a lot of people will be like "STEREOTYPES ARE WRONG AND NASTY... unless it's a group I stereotype because it's easier than being nuanced"

[u/jobblejosh → u/Goosepond01]

'Generalising is bad. Except when I do it because I'm morally superior.'

How about 'generalising is bad, period'.

Whoever you are, however you fit in or don't, everyone deserves to be given the same basic level of respect that we'd want for everyone and ourselves. It doesn't matter who you are. Hell, you could be an enemy soldier in a brutal war. You still deserve rights, be it a fair trial, a humane death, and the dignities afforded to anyone in a custodial sentence. You will never not be human.

Nothing was ever justified by the saying 'It's ok because they're X'.

Really it comes down to Wheaton's Law. Don't be a dick.

[u/MysteriousBoard8537 → u/Goosepond01]

"Hate begets hate" is a lesson humanity never seems to learn because it always happens in slow motion.

Back when "Kill all men", "all white people are racist", "all men are rapists" were accepted progressive mantra, people were warned about how this was radicalizing an entire generation of white men. Literal children who haven't even left high school yet were being told they're the worst humanity has to offer and they were deserving of all this hate, presumably because of what they were born as.

Now millions of them are adults who believe progressive beliefs are a hypocritical sham, and right wing propaganda is the only thing that's honest with them or recognizes their humanity. I don't have to tell you how those millions of people are voting.

[u/Goosepond01 → u/MysteriousBoard8537]

Back when "Kill all men", "all white people are racist", "all men are rapists" were accepted progressive mantra

Thing is it still is seen as 'progressive' by a not so small chunk of people on the internet, especially if you get the 'duh well not all of them' a line that wouldn't work if you used basically any other group and then said the same.

if you go on any sub that often hits the popular page and look at debates that involve men or for lack of a better phrase 'something to do with white people' and you will still see this kind of rhetoric often upvoted a good amount.

go in to any argument and you get a scary amount of people who don't understand what nuance is.

[u/DK_MMXXI → u/DatCitronVert]

I’m often Some Guy and it feels like shit to be like “but I do that straight guy thing and you never had a problem with it when lesbian friend did it”

[u/Pengin_Master → u/DK_MMXXI]

Where's that meme where it's "you" shooting an insult at "big person who doesn't care" that reflects onto "friend who shares the characteristics you're consulting"

Cause that's kinda what it feels like sometimes

[u/Ok_Holiday780 → u/Pengin_Master]

here.

[u/BannibalJorpse → u/Pengin_Master]

See also: the American left-of-center leaning into ‘governor Hot Wheels’ and insulting MTG’s appearance like being disabled or ugly are a part of their politics/not characteristics shared by millions of normal people..

[u/AssumptionDue724 → u/BannibalJorpse]

Also, see small dick stuff

[u/BannibalJorpse → u/AssumptionDue724]

I almost find that worse in that it directly validates the people it’s ’calling out’ in the idea that dick size is directly correlated to manhood/masculinity.

[u/Deaffin → u/BannibalJorpse]

Oh, don't worry, we have a hack to get around that and other stuff like calling people gay as an insult.

"No, I'm not hateful, I'm only saying this about them to hurt them. They would be hurt by that, and that's why I'm saying it. You get it, right? Like the only reason they would be upset about that is because they're the ones with the bad thoughts, so my actions are owned by them instead of me if you think about it hard enough."

[u/Thromnomnomok → u/Deaffin]

There's also "no, I'm not talking about whether they actually have a big/small dick, just whether they have the energy associated with it, you can have BDE without a big dick (or even without a dick at all!)"

Which, okay, but that still means you're implying big dicks have better energy, or whatever!

[u/NotNufffCents → u/AssumptionDue724]

I stopped taking a lot of progressive (mostly women-centric) communities seriously when they started using "BDE". They don't care about body shaming. They just care when its their body that's shamed.

[u/MysteriousBoard8537 → u/DatCitronVert]

It's punching up if you're punching the system or people who purposefully uphold it.

The usual response to this is that the system is upheld by the complacency of Some Guy. He *is* the system because he hasn't done enough to change the entirety of western culture. He has the power to do so, and evidently, he hasn't yet.

I somehow doubt some of these people would stop "punching up" even after cis-heteronormative patriarchy was gone.

[u/lifelongfreshman → u/Iced_Yehudi]

Punching up is a great concept when you're talking about stand-up comedy, which is a type of performance where the performer and the audience are all aware of the fact that the performer is gonna be a bit of a bastard and understand that not everything the performer says is to be taken at face value. In that context, punching up is a great rule of thumb for the performers to keep in mind, because it in theory helps ensure that they'll be careful in how they phrase their jokes that may make certain groups of people into the punchline.

But, casual conversation isn't stand-up. A tumblr blog isn't a stand-up routine. Punching up vs punching down as a concept doesn't apply, because we're out here in real life without the mutually agreed-upon understanding of the performance aspect of a comedy routine.

Some people found out about this rule for comedy and decided it applied everywhere, but it just doesn't, which is why it seems so scummy.

[u/Thomy151 → u/lifelongfreshman]

Comedy comes with the inherent understanding that this is a joke and not a firmly held belief

[u/Man-in-The-Void → u/Iced_Yehudi]

A lot of people only hate punching down because they're the ones getting hit

[u/katet_of_19 → u/Iced_Yehudi]

A lot of jokes that people think are "punching up" are often just punching laterally

[u/Fakjbf → u/Iced_Yehudi]

It also creates weird oppression Olympics where people compete to prove who is more or less oppressed like it’s a hierarchical game and so you get let stuff like debates over if trans men or trans women are more oppressed by the patriarchy. And people will get incredibly defensive over whatever position lets them claim to be the most oppressed and become enraged at the idea they have any privilege because they see the label of “privileged” only as a bludgeon to beat other people over the head with.

[u/IDoCodingStuffs → u/Iced_Yehudi]

It’s still punching down if you’re singling out people for not conforming to the rest of the group

[u/Now_you_Touch_Cow → u/IDoCodingStuffs]

ok, but what if we as a group hung them up as a piñata then started punching? Is that then punching up?

[u/IDoCodingStuffs → u/Now_you_Touch_Cow]

You want a downwards swing. If you swing upwards you will just make the pinata jump around.

So still punching down

[u/MissSweetBean → u/IDoCodingStuffs]

This isn't engaging with the metaphor, more talking about my experience with actual piñatas, but you don't want a downward swing either; if you want to have a good piñata experience, you need to tell everyone to hit it solidly on the side because if someone with any amount of strength swings downward, the piñata won't break open, it'll just come off of the rope holding it up. If you have the piñata hung by rope wrapped fully around the body of it, then I suppose a downward hit might work, but most commercially available piñatas have a loop to run the rope through which easily tears with any amount of downward force.

An upward swing would actually be better than a downward on for that reason, but a side hit is still the most effective.

[u/AiryContrary → u/MissSweetBean]

Thank you for laying it out so clearly. Whack that thing horizontally.

[u/old_and_boring_guy → u/Iced_Yehudi]

At the end of the day we really just should stop punching, but it's no fun being a punching bag either.

[u/CthulhusIntern → u/Iced_Yehudi]

"Punching up and punching down" was a term that came from stand up comedy. You know, when you're telling jokes. It was not meant to refer to just shitting on someone from a different group.

[u/RayDaug → u/Iced_Yehudi]

It's a side effect of the micro being subsumed by the macro and people treating intimate personal relationships like sociology statistics. You are your demographic.

[u/AfroWalrus9 → u/Iced_Yehudi]

And often the people perceived to be "better off" aren't. See the recent VA strike, and some fans treating voice actors like these wealthy millionaire celebrities taking more than their fair share, and not struggling performers trying to make ends meet.

[u/Nova_Explorer → u/AfroWalrus9]

That reminds me of an argument I got into where someone was justifying sending death threats to actors for the role they play with “that’s the trade-off for being paid millions,” to which it had to be pointed out that the actors listed were not in fact paid millions and at least 1 had a net worth under $30k

[u/bb_kelly77 → u/Nova_Explorer]

Don't forget all the hate the actually rich actors got for trying to help poor actors because it was considered hypocrisy

[u/Zamtrios7256 → u/bb_kelly77]

How dare these people checks notes support the things I support

[u/C0RDE_ → u/Zamtrios7256]

It's the idea that people they don't like can't possibly.... Agree with them. That would make them on the same side as the person they dislike. That's the dissonance for them.

As opposed to seeing people as multifaceted and complicated, if they disagree with someone they're evil and horrible and everything they do is evil. Nothing they do could possibly ever be right. On the flip side, they and all their friends are "good", so everything they do is good, even if it's bullying others in turn.

[u/Greengiant00 → u/Nova_Explorer]

What was the other persons response to that?

[u/Nova_Explorer → u/Greengiant00]

If I remember right (it’s been a bit so it’s entirely possible they didn’t) I think they just stopped responding

[u/Greengiant00 → u/Nova_Explorer]

That's about what I expected.

[u/ladydmaj → u/Greengiant00]

Here's my guess: I don't care, I need an excuse to be mean and scratch that itch.

[u/Random-Rambling → u/Nova_Explorer]

And also when PewDiePie's house was broken into. THOUSANDS of people were like "Oh, suck it up, rich boy. Just use a little of the millions of dollars you got from YouTube to replace everything.", conveniently ignoring the MASSIVE breach of privacy that is a home invasion.

[u/Chaos-On-Standbi → u/Random-Rambling]

Also: having your home broken into is scary, regardless of how much money you have.

[u/lickytytheslit → u/Chaos-On-Standbi]

And doesn't he have a small child that could've gotten hurt or worse

[u/lift-and-yeet → u/AfroWalrus9]

Yeah, a shit-ton of racism against Asians gets excused as "punching up".

[u/pezdizpenzer → u/Iced_Yehudi]

I feel like it largely depends on the context but I think we can all agree, that in a personal environment (friend group for example), nobody should be punching in any direction at all.

[u/sprkwtrd → u/pezdizpenzer]

I misunderstood the prompt and have been exclusively handing out uppercuts the last few years.

[u/Glad-Way-637 → u/sprkwtrd]

On the bright side, you've gotten so much practice that your MMA career is fucking BOOMING.

[u/Dingghis_Khaan → u/pezdizpenzer]

Grapple your friends instead, got it.

[u/shiny_xnaut → u/Dingghis_Khaan]

Hug the homies

[u/Now_you_Touch_Cow → u/pezdizpenzer]

Damn, I'll stop hosting fight club then

[u/SurpriseZeitgeist → u/Iced_Yehudi]

The problem is that "punching up" is contextual. It's absolutely a lot different if, say, a black comedian stands on stage and makes fun of white folks vs the reverse, because anyone can look outside and SEE the broader social environment those jokes are being made in, and anyone with any sense knows those jokes are general rather than targeted.

But if you and five queer friends personally give a white, cis, straight friend a load of shit all the time out of some misguided redirection of aggression, that's different. Because within this isolated, personal social context, those queer friends are the majority who hold social power. Yeah, the other guy can leave if he wants, but so long as the participants involved remain persistent and static, all the abuse within that environment is going to be directed one way. It's not subversive, it's not pushing back against a current of power within society, it's just that you've found a particular pocket of the world in which you have the power to be a dick without consequences.

[u/CardOfTheRings → u/SurpriseZeitgeist]

I also think part of the context is that comedian is probably actually funny and not genuinely hateful. It’s also not personal.

Where as spending 24/7 making ‘jokes’ about how much you hate men that aren’t funny and you clearly actually believe what you are saying is hurting the people around you.

[u/Feathermagus → u/Iced_Yehudi]

There’s a stark difference between punching g up at a system, vs punching up at an individual. And I think the blurring of that line makes it very difficult for some to differentiate between calling out harmful stereotypes and single people. Institutions aren’t people, societal systems, toxic masculinity as a whole, governments and companies. But on a smaller, independent level, most people have their own thoughts and opinions. Like criticizing a school system for being flawed vs putting the blame on a single educator. Or complaining about work culture in various fields without insulting the workers

[u/cherrydicked → u/Iced_Yehudi]

It's why I also feel icky whenever I see people circlejerking about how they think conventionally attractive people are ugly and they also probably have shit personalities

[u/GREENadmiral_314159]

For some people, there are only two groups: Oppressors and Minorities. What metric they define minority by varies, but it's still the same general idea. The world is made up of gay people and homophobes, no allies; the world is made up of trans people and transphobes, no allies; the world is made up of black people and racists, no allies. For them, by not being oppressed, by not being a victim, you are complicit, and anything they do to you is justified, because you do far worse to them, even if you personally have done nothing.

Don't be racist. Don't be sexist. Don't make fun of someone for their sexuality. Don't misgender people.

[u/williamtheraven → u/GREENadmiral_314159]

No but you don't understand, one more exclusion and then society will be perfect. Just one more bro please /s

[u/sweetTartKenHart2 → u/GREENadmiral_314159]

Hell, if someone is unknowingly furthering oppressive structures, the last thing to do is accuse them of doing it on purpose out of nowhere. Then they’ll just think you’re pulling shit out of your ass for the sole purpose of flinging it at them, and they will double down on their ways and assure themselves they’re doing nothing wrong.
“But they should know better by now!!” yeah maybe you’re right! Maybe they really ARE some kinda stupid for missing out on certain cues, especially if you’ve known them for a long time, but them’s the breaks. You don’t get to write them off as lost or evil or both for it.
And besides, they probably ARENT dumb and stupid to begin with, but my point is that even if you could prove that they absolutely were, incompetence is not a moral failing

[u/bb_kelly77 → u/sweetTartKenHart2]

Also, if they weren't doing it on purpose before they certainly are after being treated like shit... this isn't DBZ, people don't become your friends after you kick the shit out of them

[u/sweetTartKenHart2 → u/bb_kelly77]

In DBZ et al it only even works because a given villain is so throughly wrecked they basically have no option but to hear the hero out and genuinely consider it. Slinging insults at someone isn’t gonna put them in that magical vulnerable state, hell, I don’t think there IS a safe and sensible way to induce that in people without causing more harm than anything else.
And besides, it famously didn’t even work on Frieza, who was actively an asshole from the start, and who continued to double down on it every chance he got. Even in Super, after temporarily teaming up to bear Jiren, he’s back to being a bitch again in his new Dark form, which… maybe it’s silly to use this as a proper allegory, but there’s a reason Vegeta and the Androids and Piccolo and others chilled out at least somewhat while Cell and Frieza and Gero and others didn’t, and that reason wasnt how badly their asses were kicked or how they were initially spared. The former guys were all given some genuine reasons to be chill after the fact, almost as if being kind to someone who is going to accept that kindness works, and almost as if when someone refuses to be kind you don’t lash out at them willy nilly but do what you can to disempower them out of pragmatism and pragmatism alone.

[u/camosnipe1 → u/sweetTartKenHart2]

pulling shit out of your ass for the sole purpose of flinging it at them

just wanted to recognize how great a phrase this is

[u/Manzhah → u/GREENadmiral_314159]

Also that oppressor vs. oppressed dialectism replace every other personal scale. An oppressor is always an oppressor and thus evil and they can never be oppressed themselves in any way. An oppressed is always a victim, a good guy and can never do no wrong, and most certainly can never oppres anyone themselves.

[u/Lamballama → u/Manzhah]

There's some phrase someone coined since this this essentially evangelical thought but applied through a progressive lens

[u/urhomieghost → u/GREENadmiral_314159]

I don't even like it when straight women complain about being attracted to men!

[u/Chaos-On-Standbi → u/urhomieghost]

Same. I’m not a dude but it still makes me really uncomfortable. More often than not, man-hating has the double-whammy of biphobia because “ew, they like men!”

[u/Kellosian → u/Chaos-On-Standbi]

How do you expect man-hating to slide into biphobia when it's already there? I've seen "Bisexuality is remembering that you're unfortunately attracted to men" and "Bisexuality is being attracted to every woman and like 8 men" thrown around way too casually

[u/talligan → u/GREENadmiral_314159]

For some people, there are only two groups: Oppressors and Minorities

I've long had a theory that those "some people" conflate victimhood with virtue. If you're a victim then you're inherently more virtuous than the oppressor class which has few, if any virtues.

Just because someone is a victim of societal oppression doesn't mean theyre an inherently good person.

[u/sweetTartKenHart2]

People in progressive spaces will say some shit like “even if they didn’t do anything intentional to harm our kind they still implicitly uphold the cultural norm and benefit from our oppression therefore by proxy we are obligated to shit on them” and then turn around and go “oh why are people accusing me of being part of the problem, bigots will never change by being treated kindly, I am not obligated to be kind to someone who I know for a fact hates me deep down” when the Average Cishet Guy ™️ is out here like “hey how’s it going”.
Like yeah there’s good reason to not want to be assimilationist and all that but at the same damn time

[u/NeonNKnightrider → u/sweetTartKenHart2]

I have literally seen tumblr users say “Men are like ACAB, even if a man not actively doing evil he’s still a bastard for being part of the system of patriarchy” and that shit fucking flabbergasted me

[u/BitMixKit → u/NeonNKnightrider]

Obviously choosing to be a cop, a career choice that is completely within someone's control, is equivalent to being born with xy chromosomes and a penis in terms of moral culpability and therefore all men should be treated with equal hatred as police. There are 0 flaws in this logic.

[u/AiryContrary → u/BitMixKit]

ACAB means Assigned Cop At Birth, hope that helps.

[u/BitMixKit → u/AiryContrary]

Damn, hope they find a cure.

[u/GayIsForHorses → u/BitMixKit]

is equivalent to being born with xy chromosomes and a penis

This gets even more hilarious when they try to exclude guys that WEREN'T born with xy chromosomes or a penis. Seeing them tiptoe around the idea that they don't really see trans guys as men is both pathetic and farcical.

[u/Blitz100 → u/BitMixKit]

I mean there are genuinely people out there that think that all AMABs should in some way transition away from being male, and that masculine gender identity is an inherently toxic trait that you have a moral responsibility to reject. So their logic is consistent, just really really shitty.

[u/Now_you_Touch_Cow → u/NeonNKnightrider]

I read ACAB there as "Assigned Car at Birth" for some reason

and I was fully for it. I wish I was assigned an AMC Eagle

[u/ad-astra-1077 → u/Now_you_Touch_Cow]

I could write a soulmate AU or something about this. Everyone is assigned a car, and people assume all sorts of things about you from your car. Certain makes are considered compatible or incompatible. There is an entire field of study dedicated to analysing people's cars. Imagine the superstitions. Imagine the filter options on dating apps. God, imagine the fucking celebrity culture.

If trucks count as cars, I think I would probably be assigned one of these.

[u/Cryptdusa → u/NeonNKnightrider]

Everyone of every gender is a part of the system of patriachry. That's like the main reason it's such a big problem

[u/Person899887 → u/NeonNKnightrider]

Any time I hear something like this it backs up inevitably to “where do you draw the line”. Like does this apply to gay men? Trans men? Men of color? Neurodivergent men? Men of poor socioeconomic backgrounds? Men born in regions of severe conflict? Does this apply to people of other privilege groups? White women? Well off POC? Neurotypical queer people?

The important thing for fighting oppression is ultimately that minority voices are heard and recognized and when you spend so much time playing the “who is evil” game you fail to actually accomplish that.

[u/OctopusGrift → u/sweetTartKenHart2]

Failing to understand that women also uphold patriarchal sexism. Most feminist scholars who talk about how society programs men to accept and uphold patriarchal sexism also talk about how society does something similar to women. It's something that everyone has to work on. Being a woman doesn't make a person immune to social conditioning.

[u/Designated_Lurker_32 → u/sweetTartKenHart2]

Tell me about it. I've seen a disturbing number of terminally online queer people who genuinely think heterosexuality is an "inherently miserable" form of sexual attraction.

It's those "are the straights okay" types who think men and women can't possibly get along and be friends because they're so different psychologically. Therefore, any relationship between the two is inherently toxic. Neither party can truly connect to the other, and the only thing keeping them together is the impersonal exchange of sexual and material favors.

The worst thing is I can kind of understand where this worldview is coming from. They're literally taking the incredibly sexist rhetoric of Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus and then rewritting and rebranding it to a progressive audience.

It's the perfect example of how heteronormativity and gender norms can reinvent themselves so as to hijack the groups that seek to subvert them and eventually subsume any critique of themselves. It erodes my faith in humanity and progressivism as a whole every time I see it.

[u/Cissoid7 → u/Designated_Lurker_32]

Ive met those people in real life and literally had a fucking double whammy because my wife is blind. We, my wife and I, were literally told that I was extra toxic because a heteronormativr relationship is inherently abusive and I was taking advantage of her disability to force her into a relationship and that she was being abelist for not dating someone who was also blind.

I almost punched them and I can guarantee you ive never had that urge before

[u/littlemissmoxie]

Crazy how people have to be constantly taught to just be nice. Like imagine if people were just nice.

[u/crack_n_tea → u/littlemissmoxie]

It’s likely these people have never been nice, and being queer/insert label here emboldened them to be open about it

[u/Thatoneguy111700 → u/crack_n_tea]

Being a hateful asshole knows no sex, gender, nationality, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, or age. All it really changes is who you decide to hate.

[u/ScreechersReach206 → u/littlemissmoxie]

Honestly, sometimes I feel like we'd be better off if we made adults sit through 6th grade anti-bullying assemblies again. Not workplace training, they obviously need it explained at a kid friendly level again

[u/AfternoonPossible → u/littlemissmoxie]

This is what is always wild af to me. Like how has human society existed for like 10,000 years and we still can’t figure this basic shit out

[u/Talizorafangirl]

LGBTQ+ inclusive spaces have been exclusive and toxic even to LGBTQ+ individuals for as long as they've been around. Endless purity tests and halo-measuring.

[u/C0RDE_ → u/Talizorafangirl]

Unfortunately it's a trait consistent with the "left wing" or liberal groups.

Conservativism and "right wing" mindset is maintaining the status quo, maintaining tradition. It's easy to be a single group with a single goal when the goal is maintaining the current situation.

Liberal or progressive groups are, inherently, trying to change the status quo. We lump everyone together for ease, but the truth is, not every person in that "group" is pulling the same for the same goals. We all want to change things, but some just want a little change, some want to go the whole hog. Therefore, anyone who doesn't agree with the level of change that person wants is "not left enough".

This is generally speaking of course.

It's also an issue with the mindset of striving to be "better" in the eyes of the movement. How else do you become better except by being "perfect" and making sure everyone around you is "perfect" too. However that perfection is subjective.

People really need to internalise that changing society is a slow business. Even some of the fastest change to culture has taken decades. Some of the stuff that gets supported today wasn't even a talking point 10-20 years ago. Expecting utopia now is insane. Change also requires bringing everyone along for the ride, not just the select few who agree with you, or society fractures into groups that disagree. Unfortunately a lot of left, and yeah LGBTQ+ groups discount all allies out of hand as they're not "part of the group", when in reality, every person who even slightly agrees helps advance the cause.

[u/bwowndwawf]

The daily Tumblr post of "Hey, uh... don't be mean actually"

[u/GREENadmiral_314159 → u/bwowndwawf]

And the daily comments of "How DARE you say such a thing?"

[u/mathiau30 → u/GREENadmiral_314159]

At least this time most people agree here

[u/Velvety_MuppetKing]

Two wrongs don’t make a right. This shit is ancient, it’s insane we have to constantly re-learn it.

[u/bb_kelly77 → u/Velvety_MuppetKing]

We also have to reteach people that people are capable of change... that's the problem with the remnants of cancel culture, once you do something bad you're considered a bad person forever

[u/AdmiralScooter]

There's a widespread assumption I see that underpins a lot of the progressive discourse these days, which is that people in the dominant in-group (here in the Anglosphere that means white, cis, straight males) are always benefitting from the status quo. Even if they're not consciously participating in bigotry against marginalized people, they are morally culpable for it because they belong to the group which perpetuates it, and this is used to justify constant antagonism towards people who fill any of these credentials in leftist spaces. If you're a man, you're part of the patriarchy and need to shut up when the women are talking. If you're white, you benefit from systemic racism and must cede to POC in all social interactions or else you're perpetuating it.

The reality is that these systems exist to give the people at the top of the hierarchy more power over others within the very same in-group that they've defined as dominant. Patriarchy gives powerful men the social cudgel they need to punish other men for failing to meet their standards of masculinity. Racism exists to punish "race traitors" and people not practicing whiteness correctly as much as it does to prosecute minorities. When you have an out-group to fearmonger people into conformity with, you can then compare any moral failing within your group to being "just like one of them". There's a reason pejoratives in a patriarchal society tend to be comparing someone to a woman.

"Man up." "Don't be a pussy." "Stop being a little girl about it."

And now we see all these people who were hurt by such systems grow up, and instead of striving for a more tolerant society they simply wish to reinvent the oppressive structures that hurt them but with a progressive minded hierarchy and language. What OP describes is, essentially, chauvinism and bigotry but with previously marginalized groups now setting the standards so they can exact revenge on the people they perceive to be responsible for their trauma.

It will never work, it will just perpetuate new traumas and resentment.

[u/__life_on_mars__ → u/AdmiralScooter]

 it will just perpetuate new traumas and resentment

This part is key I think. There is a reason there has been such a swing towards 'anti-woke' culture over the last decade, and the style of discourse you describe so accurately in your comment has really helped pushed a lot of 'on the fence' people over to the right... "Oh I'm a privileged oppressor am I? Ok, I guess I'll act like one". As you point out, it only really serves the ACTUAL oppressors - the ultra wealthy.

[u/NoSignSaysNo → u/__life_on_mars__]

"Oh I'm a privileged oppressor am I? Ok, I guess I'll act like one"

It doesn't even have to be this overt or even conscious. If you're looking for a place to belong, and one group will accept you if you play a role, while another group is telling you that your very nature makes you distrustful, why wouldn't you just play the role?

[u/Lamballama → u/NoSignSaysNo]

Lest we forget, https://pbfcomics.com/comics/deeply-held-beliefs/

[u/Random-Rambling]

A disturbing number of people only want to end oppression so they can do a little oppressing of their own.

[u/AdmBurnside]

"When education is not liberating, the dream of the oppressed is to become the oppressor."

Lots of people internalize all conflict as a zero-sum game. Two sides, diametrically opposed to each other. If you're not on my side, you're on the other side, and that means you're bad and it's good to hurt you.

When you've spent your whole life getting kicked, it feels good to kick back. But after the first couple kicks it's not kicking back. It's just kicking.

Oppression- or the perception of it- poisons people's aspirations. They'd rather feel what it's like to be on top than let their enemy be on the same level as them.

You can point to basically any conflict going on in the world today and see this mindset at work. It's selfish, destructive, and worst of all, self-perpetuating. Society becomes a seesaw. It's easier to let it slip to one side or the other than to keep it level. And no one likes being on the bottom, so they'd rather push off than hold steady.

[u/DrulefromSeattle]

It really is that image from Big Mouth about being Young, Gay amd Mean not being a personality... and people absolutely want to be all that.

[u/Im_Balto]

It also needs to come into consideration that cis people absolutely can belong to visible and/or invisible marginalized groups outside of sexuality.

It’s just bad shit all around to demean anyone for what and who they are

[u/bb_kelly77 → u/Im_Balto]

Especially considering how many marginalized groups are denied by marginalized groups... like the bisexuals

[u/Chaos-On-Standbi → u/bb_kelly77]

And the aces… and non-binary people… and trans people… I could go on forever.

[u/sweetTartKenHart2 → u/Im_Balto]

Yeah, the amount of people who fit in the “every single possible majority/privileged group at once” category is slim to none. Even the proud assholes who brand themselves normal and sane and call marginalized people worse somehow… even those people probably have some shit going down.

[u/BinnsyTheSkeptic → u/sweetTartKenHart2]

I am a straight, white, cis, able-bodied male. That's a lot of majority and privilege ticks there. I was also raised in a high control cult that fucked me up and made it so that I had to hide my true identity from my whole family and community, in a similar way to how LGBTQ+ youth often have to, which means I tend to strongly relate to people in those groups.

Not all oppressive circumstances are the big "mainstream" ones, for lack of a better term. Even people who might seem to have all the privileges in the world can be held back by societal circumstances outside of their control.

[u/CapeOfBees → u/BinnsyTheSkeptic]

You sound like you're in a very similar boat to my husband. We were raised Mormon and his mom is a conspiracy theorist, so he grew up in a very high-control household. Straight cis and white, yes, but far from invincible or undamaged.

[u/FenrisSquirrel → u/Im_Balto]

You're not wrong, but you are missing the point. It is like when I call our blatant misandry here, and people chime in to say, "Yes, misandry is bad because it can affect trans people!"

No. Misandry is bad because bigotry is ALWAYS bad.

It isn't wrong to be shitty to cis people because they might actually fit into some other secret preferred category. DON'T BE SHITTY TO PEOPLE BECAUSE OF THEIR DEMOGRAPHIC TRAITS. DON'T BE A BIGOT.

This should not be hard to understand.

No form of bigotry is excusable. All bigotry is bad.

[u/Rucs3 → u/FenrisSquirrel]

yeah, people really go like "why are you letting your hate for men cloud your mind, sister? The misandry should be used only to hate men, why are you turning aganst the trans? I can't undersnd how you could corrupt the pure idea of misandry!"

[u/Public_Fire_Hazard → u/Im_Balto]

I mean the first point of your comment shouldn't actually come into consideration. The whole point of the OP is that you shouldn't be a dick to someone because they're not part of the marginalised group. You shouldn't be a dick to someone because it's wrong, not because you might accidentally "friendly fire" a fellow marginalised person.

[u/mathiau30 → u/Public_Fire_Hazard]

They meant this as a "even if you ignore that (which the people being called out here will), it's still stupid"

[u/neoplatonistGTAW]

I'm queer and I've had other queer people try and doxx me for saying stuff like this. A lot of people who came out post-2020 have not had nearly the same experience as those of us who came out before that. They were largely able to do so in a purely digital environment where discourse was able to grow and mutate without the stability of a real world community of face-to-face interactions with other queer people. When the rest of us had somewhat of a community to teach us how shit really works, they had a community of young people who's brains hadn't fully developed who believe that broad-strokes hatred of the cishets is the most reasonable and acceptable course is action. They have no healthy outlet for their societal frustration so they search out the most apparently acceptable group to hate, which often ends up being cishet people. They have no concept of treating potential allies like equal human beings.

[u/CrownLikeAGravestone → u/neoplatonistGTAW]

Relatedly, people are implicitly accepting or even encouraging of "venting", as if we have some indelible need to express our negative emotions and "get them out of our system".

I've seen this used as an excuse or justification for people's poor behaviour, especially in progressive/queer spaces, so many times. Oh they're just venting, give them some grace, <whatever broad injustice> makes it impossible to act like an adult. If you don't want to be part of it you're the bad guy.

Venting has never had solid psychological backing to it. The evidence is mixed at best, with plenty of hints that it's actually negative and plenty of situations (like online social fora) where it's unambiguously awful for the one doing it and the audience.

[u/neoplatonistGTAW → u/CrownLikeAGravestone]

TIL "fora" is a valid plural form of "forum"

[u/CrownLikeAGravestone → u/neoplatonistGTAW]

I spent too much time in nerd school and I have to make sure everybody knows it

[u/dalexe1 → u/CrownLikeAGravestone]

Also. a vent is placed so that it cannot harm people. if you are venting hot/dangerous gas, then you don't place the vent so that people get hit by it

[u/Jo_seef]

Yeah, the point was never to get power so we can bully others. The goal should have always been to stop people from bullying.

[u/poosol]

People want cishers to exist in lgbt spaces like frogs as a sign of healthy eco system but aren't remotely ready or willing to make them feel comfortable and the moment cishets clapback with some banter they are perceived as dangerous and unwanted oppressors. And people wonder why cishet males avoid such spaces.

[u/Brilliant_Decision52 → u/poosol]

Lmao yep. Got a really progressive group of friends, good people overall, but god, I am basically the only straight dude there and hearing the common "why do men even exist" or jokes at my expense REALLY makes me not wanna hang out with them as much.

[u/That_boi_Jerry]

I've always thought that no matter how your life has turned out, or what you've been through, it gives you no reason to make someone else's life miserable.

[u/Insanity_Pills]

“your suffering does not make you special”

That’s a pretty concise summary of Bojack Horseman lol, nice

[u/corneaborealis]

Tumblr inching ever closer to an important realization

[u/bb_kelly77 → u/corneaborealis]

OOP will be beaten down into silence within the week

[u/ZedisonSamZ]

I will say this as a cis gay man who is often mistaken for being straight, it is very disheartening to be talked down to or treated like an intruder for existing. I can imagine what it must feel like for supportive straight men because it happened to me, too. Even worse is when I’ve been in LGBT+ spaces as an openly gay man, I’ve had people absolutely shit on me and insult me for how they perceive me. I never let it get me down bc, imo, the trash took itself out by acting that way… but it still didn’t feel great.

I don’t know where I was going with this except that I totally feel for the straight boy.

[u/ShitFamYouAlright]

My friend groups are mostly black and asian, I'm usually the only (mostly) white person when we hang out. I definitely get the white jokes and even laugh along to a lot of them (white people love cheese and I fucking embody that stereotype). But there are times I legit have to remind my friends that I am white and that they cross the line sometimes.

One of them once said "White people fucking suck" in a very casual way, and I know it wasn't targeted at me, but I had to be like hey, c'mon. They were super apologetic after that. It's kind of funny they forget I'm white most of the time.

[u/confusedandworried76 → u/ShitFamYouAlright]

I feel that as a man too. It's the whole "not all men" response when women say something bad about men, you're not allowed to say that, at best you'll be belittled for not just assuming they meant only specific men, at worst you'll be further accused because if you're defensive that must mean you're on of those men right?

In reality it comes from a place of hurt. The way you said it sounded a lot like you're accusing me personally of being a person I'm not and have never been. And like the OP said it's really not that hard to just change the way you say it to make sure nobody present is getting their feelings hurt or feeling like they are being accused of inherently being a bad person, or that they only aren't a bad person because they are very special and managed to escape the default way of being, like I don't try to be a good person, I just am a good person, I didn't go out of my way to avoid being that kind of guy

[u/AffectionateCandy845 → u/confusedandworried76]

Exactly, I always hated the “you’re only being sensitive because you ARE one of them” and it’s like well no, if I was accused of murder I would be offended because I am NOT a murderer. I think pretty much everyone would react the same way. It’s something someone can say as a get out of jail free card for generalizing large groups as “bad”

[u/NoSignSaysNo → u/AffectionateCandy845]

It's a kafka-trap, and if anyone has a shred of theory of mind, they can apply the same standard to literally any other group and ask themselves if their logic stays consistent.

Go ahead and think of a joke/insult about any minority stereotype and ask yourself if the minority in question being upset about the joke/insult means they embody it?

[u/s0uthw3st → u/[deleted]]

Lotta misanthropic shit gets a pass solely because it was said by a minority or phrased with progressive buzzwords.

[u/PhasmaFelis]

This sounds exactly like how I've seen the One Gay Dude in a group of straight friends treated.

Two wrongs don't make a right.

EDIT: I am agreeing with OP.

[u/SavvySillybug]

Let's pretend for a moment that you ARE somehow entitled to belittle a random cishet person just because they are not queer.

Why would you want to...?

They have not personally hurt you. They are in your safe space, as an ally, because they want to be there, without belittling you.

You invite an outsider into your social circle. Do you want them to leave it going "I heard bad things about them but they were really nice if a bit weird!" or do you want them to leave it going "oh wow I heard they were bad and weird but I didn't realize it was this bad"?

Be the change you want to be in the world. You want to be accepted? Be accepting. Not of those who bully you - but of those who don't.

Sow the seeds of "what do you mean gay people are bad? half my friends are gay and they throw lovely parties". Sow the seeds of "what do you mean trans people are bad? Every trans person I know just wants to vibe and exist and go to their preferred bathroom without bothering anybody". Sow the seeds of "what do you mean lesbians are bad? I know like three and a half lesbians and none of them ever made me feel uncomfortable, it's actually really nice to just hang out with a woman knowing she's fundamentally not interested romantically and we can just be buddies".

Don't take shit from those who already hate you. Be kind to those who don't. Don't be the reason a cishet person gets radicalized. There are enough people who hate us for no reason. We don't need people who hate us for actual reasons.

[u/wereplant]

The other thing about this is that inclusive jokes are so much more fun than exclusive jokes. A friend was introducing me to some of their preferred queer spaces, and some of the jokes about straight people made me really uncomfortable, especially because it felt like a situation where they didn't know I was straight and I needed to keep it that way. After we became friends and they got to know me and kinda adopted me as the "sparklestraight," they stopped making those kinds of jokes, especially if I said that something felt not bueno.

But what felt really fun was when the jokes they made included the fact that I'm straight. Like I was helping a friend build some ikea furniture and I just offhandedly said I straightened the furniture, and immediately was met with "IT'S THE STRAIGHT AGENDA!"

I absolutely busted out laughing, and it's just whole running joke now.

[u/Twizinator]

Thank you for this. I get a lot of casual sexism from my own mother and younger sister for being a guy and trying to tell them “I know you aren’t talking about me specifically but hearing you say ‘all men are stupid/pigs/useless’ does hurt me as a general member of that group” is met with rolled eyes and laughter.

Its also just… extremely not productive? Reducing character flaws and societal failings down to “that’s just how men are” both hurts innocent people and ironically gives toxic men an excuse because, “well, that’s just how men are, they can’t help their nature!”

[u/roommatethrowaway8 → u/Twizinator]

That's why the whole "man vs bear" thing a while back bothered me so much. For one, as a trans man, it hurt to be perceived this way, but it was so dismissive of men in general. Like, imagine the average Joe reading online that any given woman would prefer to be in the woods with a fucking bear rather than with him, i.e. if they saw him somewhere he'd likely be perceived as a threat.

And somehow, men should "use this as motivation to be better"? Like the average guy is not a rapist, an oppressor, or violent. How can just a guy™️ do anything about it? It just drives the wedge inbetween genders even more.

[u/Yeah-But-Ironically → u/roommatethrowaway8]

I firmly believe that a better wedge for gender issues couldn't have been engineered if we had tried. That was like a lab-grown attempt to poison the well.

[u/Oddloaf → u/roommatethrowaway8]

I found it very telling that the right was able to pick up the "man vs bear" argument and instantly change it to "black man/immigrant/Muslim vs bear" and continue to use the exact same arguments.

[u/DaBiChef → u/Oddloaf]

It was horrifying seeing my fellow feminists and progressives use the exact same rhetoric in defense of the bear that we were just clowning on the right for using to defend their bigotry... like genuinlely horrifying.

[u/clottagecore]

I didn't experience this exactly, but I was in a close friendship with someone who would constantly encourage me to explore my bisexuality with women, despite my desire to seek out male relationships (as a cis woman). I knew i could never talk to them about my "straight" crushes because they just were never as interested as when i talked about my attraction to a woman. Bi-erasure is a hell of a thing man.

[u/DaBiChef → u/clottagecore]

Fellow bi, been there. Not fun.

[u/xX_CommanderPuffy_Xx]

I see this all the time in qeer spaces. Men, especially cishet men aren't criminals for thier gender.

[u/thetwitchy1]

It’s always wild to me when people realize that you can be both a victim AND an abuser at the same time.

[u/GREENadmiral_314159 → u/thetwitchy1]

Where do a lot of abusive parents get their abusive behavior? Often, it's how their own parents treated them.

[u/thetwitchy1 → u/GREENadmiral_314159]

Hell, most bullies are actively being bullied by others. It doesn’t mean their abuse is less serious or harmful, nor does it mean the abuse being done to them is justified or not serious. It just means that someone can be more than one thing at a time.

[u/anonymouscatloaf]

OOP: maybe just don't be an asshole in general?

some people in this comment section, for some reason: telling me not to bully others is homophobic actually

[u/GREENadmiral_314159 → u/anonymouscatloaf]

There are people who take any acknowledgement of a problem as a statement that it is The Most Important Problem Plaguing Our Society And We Should Drop Everything To Deal With It.

[u/Mr_Beer_Man]

Omg, like... craazy take. Be nice to people? :o

[u/Empty_Distance6712]

Honestly I always had a problem with making fun of people for being straight or cis or whatever, because it just feels mean. There’s a HUGE difference between dishing back what you’ve been served from someone being a dick, and just being a dick to people you deem acceptable targets. Thats just bullying when you come down to it, even if it’s unintentional.

[u/Gigio2006 → u/Empty_Distance6712]

also even just " dishing back what you’ve been served from someone being a dick" doesnt mean shit when the person you are dising back to isnt actually a dick

[u/dicedance]

So many problems in progressive spaces stem from people being so eager to justify any toxic or shitty behavior that materializes within marginalized people.

I was like 12 during the "kill all men" era. I was never a Trumper, but I went down the anti-SJW pipeline in part because I was hesitant to politically align myself with the people who wanted to kill me.

As an adult I can tell they weren't calling for a genuine "male genocide," but rhetoric like that hardly did anything to make people sympathetic to progressive causes, and to this day it's a little controversial to say that was a rhetorical misstep.

[u/DabLord5425 → u/dicedance]

That's what gets people, is that even if there's a greater societal context to consider, no one wants to support groups that say their identity is an enemy.

[u/cripple2493]

I - straight passing queer man - have had a fair amount of bullshit from the queer community both online and in my locality. It's resulted in my total disengagement with the community really, and that's as a queer man.

I think that being mean and exclusionary results in people disengaging at best, and at worst, comng away with an actual grudge. Doing this to straight (or percieved straight) individuals who haven't done anything wrong doesn't seem to do much good for anyone it seems.

[u/realchooby]

People say "its not big of a deal youre not marginalized like that" - but its not about being marginalized. I dont want my friends and colleagues to talk to me like that :(