Thursday, April 28, 2016

Unfortunately this isn't a rarity anymore

This is incredibly sad:
Anyway, time went on and the rhetoric continued to escalate, and certain ideas came to the fore that my gut and my rational brain told me were no good. But I resisted questioning them. I told myself that the reason I didn’t like them was unconscious sexism/racism etc., and to resist those questions was the right thing for a man to do in order to fight the “patriarchy.” The right thing for me to do was feel guilty for the color of my skin and the fact that I’m a guy; the right thing to do was shut up and fall in line. Needless to say, these feelings were nothing but fodder for my depression. By the end of 2014 I was genuinely convinced that my ceasing to exist would be beneficial to the world in some way. I was never directly harassed on tumblr, but the environment had proven itself toxic regardless. December 2014 was my nadir; trudging home from the metro in a daze, I wandered through several busy intersections with no concerns for my own safety. On some level I was hoping to get hit. Then something interesting happened. I heard a voice in my head; my voice, telling me that this was not the end, that I am stronger than this, that I would not be beaten. That moment, the façade of the SJW ideology began to crack, and I began to claw my way out of that dark place with some newfound clarity. 
If you're prone to self-doubt, the social justice internet is a minefield. I'm old and have a pretty good bullshit detector, and I'm certainly not immune to it. Theories of structural privilege lose their effectiveness when applied to individuals and  personalities, even those -- sometimes especially those -- with the most "privilege."