I think we need to shelve the concept of whether or not someone’s nice to people and instead make judgements on how exclusive someone is or isn’t with kindness.
I remember that one post that went around showing an old film of Hitler chatting casually, kindly with a young girl, and the polarized responses tended to be in relation to how footage and narratives of “But look, the monster has a soft side” serve to humanize and normalize really, really bad people. Corrupt and murderous politicians constantly use baby-kissing narratives of their down-home chumminess- often to children- to offset any judgments about them being a bad person, and I’d like to say they should be entirely irrelevant. Not just because that’s a cheap emotional appeal but because I strongly believe we need to understand that niceness is neutral to symptomatic and not at all ‘good’ on its own.
The issue here, while I have other things to say about niceness, is that it shouldn’t matter that the monstrous person is *gasp!* seen doing a nice thing, because the issue should never have been that anyone believed they were 100% evil all the time. The issue is how big or little their sphere of niceness is.
Of course The Bad Person is nice to someone. But whatever warmth they’re showing is simply exemplary of how many people they see as like them. As human.
If the only time the person in question shows kindness is to people superficially just like them then their sphere of humanity is too fucking small. They see more people as ‘other’ than ‘like them’ and THAT is the issue.
Every bearer of poisonous idealogy has someone they like, someone they reward for being like them or suiting their ideals. The issue is how many other people in the world they don’t think are fucking human, or worth recognition and support.
Let me be clear, as much as I want to just respond CRY MORE, BABIES I object to the use of the word ‘doxxing’ in this case.
I have BEEN doxxed. I have been stalked online. I have had people go through my journals and my pictures to try to identify me for malicious purposes. I have had people search me on court websites to try to find the charges I filed against an ex when he stole from me, for the purposes of trying to humiliate me about an online roleplaying game. (No, really.) I’ve had people try to match up pictures of the flowers outside my synagogue and the building in the background with pictures of synagogues in the Philly area to try to fuck with my life.
So I know the kind of gut-clenching, cold down the back of your neck, hands-shaking fear that comes with being doxxed. I do. It’s happened to me more than once. It will probably happen to me again, because I’m a loud fat queer femme Jewish disabled activist, and boy does that piss people off.
But let me be clear: I was existing as a person that someone else didn’t like in those cases. I was existing as queer, I was existing as ‘someone I don’t like on a game.’ I was not showing up in public, carrying a torch, and advocating for the massacre of millions of people. When you show up in public carrying a torch, you are not being doxxed.
You are being IDENTIFIED.
This is such a fantastic distinction, THANK YOU.
When you show up in public carrying a torch, you are not being doxxed.
You are being IDENTIFIED.
This is a very useful distinction from the “so-and-so’s a Nazi, here’s their address” sort of thing that can be so easily thrown at non-Nazis just as easily as Nazis.
I’m an adolescent therapist and I would go to jail a million times over before outing a trans kid to their parents. This isn’t even me trying to win brownie points, I took an oath and signed legal documents. I could have my license pulled. There’s no way this won’t conflict with the ethical guidelines of the NASW and other bodies.
Ohio is currently a Republican trifecta. But guess what statehouse, state legislature, and state judicial body are up for election this November?
Gregorian monks singing “Boulevard of Broken Dreams.”
EVERYONE STOP WHAT YOU’RE DOING AND LISTEN TO THIS RIGHT FUCKING NOW
Why is this a thing that exists?
THIS IS BEAUTIFUL
“on the boooooolovarrrd of brooookennnn dreeeemmsss”
I turned this on and at that moment my roommate opened the curtains, and I immediately had this epic video in my head of us cleaning our apartment, and raising a castle around it with hammers and magic.
I’ve introduced so many people to Gregorian: the best way to do it is to slip it into a normal playlist.
This is the soundtrack of an angel that was thrown out of heaven unjustly and is existing on earth, and being tracked by an adversary, while an angel friend is preparing to come rescue him.
