Sadly, I get that response from people on antisocial media quite a lot when it comes to matters of bigotry in various forms vis-à-vis those who perpetuate it and my summation of their deflection/minimisation: homophobia, racism, sexism, transphobia, etc. Take your pick.
For example:
Me, paraphrasing some dudebro's comment on being told to pull his finger out and do the requisite labour: Oh, you mean I have to actually do a whole lot more reading than the one small essay I anticipated? Not only that, but I'm required to do some work on myself in addition to absorbing facts from books and articles? Well, no thanks, that seems like too much work for my lazy ass, so imma drop some empty, meaningless vagaries and bounce. I'll stick with being a hate-filled SOB, thanks.
The person who told him to do the emotional labour: I think you're right about that.
Every time I go through an iteration of this (in one form or another), a little part of me (some small hope that I have for the progress and salvation of collective humanity) dies. Yes, I still hold some illusion of a world populated by better people in my mind and the juice of it in my cold, dark, cynic's heart (despite a lot of compelling evidence that it is naïve and futile to do so). I don't want to be right about it, I really don't. (I don't want to be Left about it, either. These things should not be political issues but social issues, in my opinion. Of course, it's not that easy to separate them and attempting such is wasted effort. Kink is political. That's an inescapable fact. Here's another: Race play is racist.)
Please, people of Earth, can we stop blaming, hating and oppressing each other over stupid/superficial/petty differences that have less impact on who we are than we'd like to believe/claim: differences such as our primary/secondary sex characteristics, the colours of or skins and cultural upbringing? Can we achieve that long before our species ceases to exist and the the first three planets closest to the expanding sun are consumed by it? I don't think that's too much to ask or an unobtainable goal.
To be clear: I'm not asking for the oppressed to be "nice" to their oppressors during interactions/adjustment (because that's a stupid thing to do and smacks of white guilt). I am asking for the oppressors to stop being titanic shitgibbons.
Maybe, just maybe, if we can get that problem solved instead of wasting time and energy in/on pointless fighting, we might have time and energy left over to solve our other problems (such as education, housing, unemployment, food and potable water shortages/crises) so that the the five countries that are permanent members of the UN Security council (and, incidentally, the world's biggest gun-runners/enthusiasts) would have no valid reasons not to defund their militaries and space programs because there'd be no need for them; we wouldn't be desperately trying to find a way to leave our planet before we overpopulate it, exhaust its resources and pollute it to the point that it is uninhabitable.
Post thumbnail photo by Duané Viljoen from/on Pexels
