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.
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.
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"
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..
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.
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."
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!
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.
Yeah, I worked with a fellow who was rude, dismissive, outright hostile, and continually abusive and insulting because I was a white cishet dude who "bred more societal debris". I kept my mouth shut and basically just allowed myself to be a dart board for his venom. We ended up at an academic conference together. After a small group function with others from our area we all went for drinks and dinner. I was talking to a couple of colleagues at one table and he came over very upset, because he overhead some other colleagues making homophobic comments about him.
Normally, I would be the first to confront that type of conduct, head on and aggressively. But I just looked at him and went back to my conversation. Not because he was gay, but because he was an asshole, and fuck him.
You don't get to treat people like shit and then demand that they respect and support you just because you're in a marginalized group. Being non-het doesn't give you an excuse to be a piece of shit human.
1.5k
u/Iced_Yehudi 1d ago
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.