people are saying such shitty things about me. ill probably delete this, but can some of my comrades just give me a pep talk if your up to in. I know logically I love this place and this is a bad day, but I cant stop crying, i do so much work going out, doing mutual aid, supporting union drives, working with the dsa and psl ect and it doesn’t fucking matter because as soon as I vent about the class of people who are giving me a hard time IM somehow stopping racial solidarity from happening. it hurts so bad and makes everything feel so pointless. i feel so disposable. im not gonna debate anyone i just want to chat with nice comrades who care. im actually crying hard over internet shit maybe its my sign to leave.
edit: THANK YOU for the out pouring of love comrade, here, in my dms, and on cytube. I LOVE YOU GUYS SO MUCH. I will be staying. I will be taking a break after this sundays fanon post (its the last one and BEST chapter hope i can see you there) but I shall return even more powerful than before. you guys are amazing thank you again to everyone committed to making this a safe space for BIPOC people to express themselves.
It is a reality of this site being hugely white by proportion as @AssortedBiscuits@hexbear.net mentions, and being confronted about the reality of POC’s life experiences doesn’t always go over well, even here. I understand how it wears one down and can’t blame you at all for feeling this way, but you’ve been a great voice here I think. I hope Hexbear can work on purging this shit because this is the same hostility and dismissal that’s too common outside of spaces that claim to be safe and understanding. And to find the same here…?
Your posts are always insightful imo. It feels like there aren’t a lot of voices speaking about black experiences and struggles here and I’m glad you’re doing so. It’s not easy to dismiss when you receive it but please don’t let those shitters get you down.
Who was mean to you I will end them
To Othello: You are super cool and I really appreciate reading what you have to say. I really appreciate your perspective and all you give to this community. I hope the rest of us can make this a good enough place for you to stay. You deserve a good place where your comrades have your back. [/gen, angry on your behalf, hoping you stay]
To the white fragile people who were being assholes to Othello,: Raise your fucking standards for yourself. Read. Learn. Don’t take out your fragility and big feelings about race on black people. Do you feel upset when a black person expresses feelings about race? Do some reading about the history of racism. Do some emotional work. Don’t turn your ignorance and your feelings into a burden for black people. Don’t take out your insecurities, your anger, your fragility, your fear on black people. Deal with it yourself. If you don’t have the tools, find them. Research. Learn. And if you don’t have the energy for that, then shut the fuck up.
To my fellow white people on this site: We have to do better about defending our black, indigenous, and people of color comrades on this site. Yes, it takes work to learn, it takes time and energy and discomfort and going outside of our comfort zones. But we have to do that work, and we have to do a better job. We have to collectively create a site where our black, indigenous, and people of color comrades feel safe, where they know we’ll be there for them and have their backs. It’s fun to shitpost, and shitposting is an important part of the culture here too. But we also have to do ongoing work to make it so that when we see racism, we notice it, and call it out. It might take the mods a while to get to delete and ban racism, but we should be there to back our comrades up and make racists feel unwelcome. An important part of leftism is making sure that we have spaces that feel good for our comrades to be in. We need to be able to create and maintain spaces that are supportive. With the federations having happened, there’s been somewhat of a focus on bringing leftism to other communities, educating outsiders etc, but we also have to remember that gaining numbers by bringing in outsiders is not the only factor affecting numbers. If we bring in assholes, and then they drive out people from minority groups, then we haven’t actually gained anything good. We need to create spaces where our black, indigenous, and people of color comrades can stay. And from my digging to try to figure out what this was all about, it sounds like some (or all? not sure) of the users harassing Othello were from inside hexbear. So we need to do better. We need to go out of our way to do the emotional work, educate ourselves, and actively look for racism on the site so we can stamp it out.
The second bit made me remember one of the things I saw in that thread that made me the most angry. Using that one Sankara quote against poc users saying "actually you have to educate me, Sankara said so " is so goddamn toxic. A white person weaponizing a famous dead black man’s words against a living black person today is never a good look.
to every :LIB: upset at you discussing whiteness:
also I hope you reported all those crackers so the mods nuke their asses
One poster in particular in that thread can go fuck themselves, but honestly I feel a huge Fuucck all you to the upvoters and other posters whining about “but you’re alienating your white allies” bullshit.
Don’t let these assholes drive you out, or define your relationship with yourself, much less this site. Don’t internalize your anger, externalize it and know that the problem is them.
By all means take a break, cool off, or retract from Hexbear a bit and block c/dunk_tank if you must to filter the pornography of outrage.
Fuck tempest in particular though.
