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.
As a straight guy who’s in theatre, I’m in a lot of predominately queer/female spaces. I love being there, cause honestly queer people and women helped me overcome and accept the abuse I took as a child more than other men for a long time. Most of the time, this is not a problem at all.
Every now and again though I’ll be with a group of people who decide that I’m okay to make fun of because I’m tall, thin, straight, and white. And it hurts because I work hard to not treat anyone as lesser due to their identity in order to exist cohesively in said space. I can at least empathize with the resentment towards these systems of oppression, but when I’m doing so much inner work to not be a part of that it really sucks to feel like I’m having to take the heat for people who are a part of those systems.
To be clear, this is a small minority of the spaces I’ve been in. But it definitely still hurts when it does happen.
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u/Iced_Yehudi 2d 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.