Tag: positivity

nonbinarypastels:

It’s so strange how many young people on this website there are who would probably consider themselves to be progressive/liberal but who are constantly touting very conservative, reactionary, and reductive rhetoric, who balk when they’re called out on it and react violently when anyone disagrees with it.

There are so many young people who are pro-censorship to a frightening degree, happy to shame people for not meeting their impossible and subjective standards of morality, who seem to be almost incapable of thinking critically rather than in black and white, emotionally rather than factually based terms, who consider thought-crimes worse than actual actions that people take against others, and who—quite frankly—seem like they’d be absolutely thrilled to live in an Orwellian dystopia because they’re under the ironic belief that if everyone around them is corralled and controlled and forced to live lives based on what they think is pure and wholesome and good then the world will be a perfect place.

There’s such a lack of critical thinking, unwillingness to see nuance in any argument, and just a lack of the basic human understanding that people are different from one another and that one individual experience is not the end all/be all of all experiences on this site that it’s just honestly disturbing and, in many cases, basically cult-like.

And I get that this is a positivity blog and this post might not ‘fit’ here but positivity isn’t just “uwu you’re valid” text set against a pastel pink background, it’s also encouraging people to think and to act and to live in a way that is understanding of other people, to be an open-minded observer to the world and to think critically and be willing to listen and to learn, and there are many, many people on tumblr who not only do not want to do that but who happily embrace their ignorance, their hate, and their refusal to even consider that they could ever be wrong about anything even when the facts are shoved directly under their nose and…that is seriously not a good way to live as an individual and it’s an absolutely harmful impediment to any kind of community or society that people may try to build.

If you want to do something positive in your life and the lives of others and you take any piece of advice from this blog then take this: listen more and talk less, think before you react, try to understand other people and where they’re coming from even in cases where you feel like you’d rather bash your head against the wall than put yourself in their shoes, and try your absolute hardest to unlearn your black and white/all good or all evil thinking (or at least learn how to recognize it and think past it) because I promise you that it’s going to be complete poison to every single aspect of your life if you don’t.

And more than anything don’t be so utterly obsessed with yourself and your opinions and your own certainty that you’re right that you’re unable to ever listen to anyone else or even consider that you might be wrong. Everyone is wrong about something, is ignorant about someone, is an asshole at some time of the day, and you’ve absolutely fucked up the second you think you’re an exception to that.

inkskinned:

i hate like Starting Discourse but like … as somebody who has seen kind of a lot of messed up posts this pride, i want to point out that inter-community violence and exclusionism is … frankly inherently anti-pride. just… listen for a bit and if you don’t agree, that’s fine. but listen.

there’s a reason people say “no homo.” even though we hear all the time about how we’re *special snowflakes who get special attention*, people know that this isn’t a safe community to be in. i mean belonging to it – identifying openly – is a scary thing, one that paints a target on your back. so when someone voluntarily says “this is where i belong”, what the heck am i saying when i say, “no, you don’t.” they don’t get special buttons, they don’t get hugs and kisses. people who come out get kicked out of houses, abused by parents. we know that, but we lose sight of it for some reason. i was kicked out of my school’s lgbt+ group by some of the students because i was “not gay enough”. i believed it. i couldn’t say “i’m bi” for another four years after it. i said i was straight but like, playing. i said i was straight and i went home to catholic parents and i said i was straight and i went to prom alone because the girl i loved was out of state and i said i was straight until i was nineteen and drunk and whispering “i like her” to myself in a completely dark room. i still sometimes wonder – do i belong at pride? because of how much people seem to think we don’t.

and i might be alone in this but it makes me sad when people say “oh such and such an identity is taking up our space!!” there’s not a limited amount of space. that idea is something that the straight world wants us to believe, that we can only fit into this tiny little corner and that’s it. but the more of us there are, the more space we take up, the more force we have. so of course the outside community wants us to silence those who “aren’t gay enough,” because if you have only those who qualify shouting, you’re not going to have nearly enough voices. but if all of us – and i mean every person you call “fake bi”, every person who “just went through a phase” – whatever – if all of us are shouting, how much louder would that voice be? if we didn’t kick out every teenager who said “i’m just experimenting,” if we included every mom who “had a fling in college,” if we…. were together…..

those who oppose us want us to fight. divided, we are a mess, as every revolution is. they want our pride to be spent biting at each other instead of turning around and fighting. stonewall wasn’t where we fought each other. stonewall was when it finally stopped mattering, we were all angry, and hurt, and willing. and that fight? that’s what started us on the path to being free. an entire tide of people, all “enough”, no matter where they fell in lgbt.

i know this: people cannot steal my identity. just in the way that stars cannot steal each other’s beauty. let them in. if you won’t love them, send them to me. but a nation of gates and locks and tests is not a community.

landofsomethingsomething:

the cool thing about reading and analyzing a body of text is that there are multiple ways to interpret it and not everyone has to agree. entire diverging philosophies and schools of thought can be applied to every text under the sun and you’ll get a different result. esp if you believe in death of the author. I find it useful and enlightening when reading fandom meta to pay close attention to whether the person discoursing seems like they are more interested in explaining why they feel the way they do about something, or in tearing down people who disagree with them. When you start paying attention to who is saying “I find this interesting and for whatever reason it inspires me to create content” vs those who are saying “the people espousing opinions that differ from mine are bad and wrong and bad” it can be a p interesting exercise.

I personally prefer my experience within fandom to be a positive one that encourages content creators b/c it’s actually very easy and simple to curate my experience to include things I like and exclude things that upset me without feeling the need to attack ppl who identify with things differently than I do, interpret things differently, or have opposing interests. idk. food for thought