The short version of this post is that I read Quinnae's Words, Words, Words: On Toxicity and Abuse in Online Activism and am convinced.
The posts I've remembered writing on this blog in the months since I last posted are the excessively angry ones, the ones I've been naggingly ashamed of. At a distance, why did I have to howl my hurt into the internet, there to be forever connected to my name? Why did I call out other community members specifically to rant about things they wrote, sometimes years prior, that hurt my feelings? Shouldn't that degree of hurt feelings be saved for less petty targets?
These rhetoricals have one very specific answer among many more nebulous psychological reasons: Around the time I started this blog, I had been introduced to the concept of "tone policing"--and the virulent resistance to it--by a blogger whose passion and activism I greatly admired and read about eagerly. Quinnae addresses the tone policing meme and also points to the larger culture of political rage, calling it linkbait.
Another article I read on the subject whose link I've lost discussed the issue of minority communities--especially young LGBT people--being trained in the rhetoric of oppression even when they haven't actually personally experienced any of the oppressive acts that loom so large in their understanding of what it means to be part of their minority community. I definitely think that skewed understanding of queerness has affected me negatively, driving rage, fear, and anxiety, which in its turn causes highly unproductive-to-the-cause behavior like staying in the closet despite likely being in a safe-enough place.
As an example, I've only seen first-hand evidence of non-male bisexuals being excluded from the LGB community by LG people a handful of times in my life, but I've been taught that it happens almost constantly. I have far more examples of inclusion in my own memories, but they fade in contrast to the words of fellow bisexuals and especially their example of angrily decrying it.
Now, I believe monosexism is an urgent problem to be resisted, but is it to be resisted with overwhelming force that has been amassed over several months since the enemy last crossed my path, or is it to be resisted with a few assertive words and the sense that most reasonable people can easily be persuaded to our side or are already on it? Was there any point in building up that artillery rather than rational, empathetic arguments for rational, empathetic people?
I'd rather my queer "tribe" not go to war anytime soon, so no.
I think a larger lesson lies here as well: Time to turn off the sound bites and get my nuanced understanding back in the game.
Sometimes tone policing is a form of oppression used to discredit someone's valid complaints; other times it's meant to protect the targets from verbal/emotional abuse, keep all of us from living in fear of mob reprisal if we try expressing ourselves, and/or protect the reputation of the movement from justified perceptions that we're out to, say, murder everyone else.
There are other viral behavioral norms in social justice communities, especially online, that harm if accepted blindly, too. One that occurs to me is interpreting my hurt feelings as a member of a minority group as a knee-jerk reason to demand change or cast someone else's words/actions as oppressive. That may or may not be appropriate and requires critical thinking to execute.
