As time goes on, I feel more and more compelled to say, "**** 'em all" to the NT-run social media sites and whatnot.
I've got a Medium account that I've had for a long time, and thanks to their oh-so-helpful algorithms, I end up with a lot of political and social justice stuff on my feed, which inevitably results in me responding to some of them, which in turn results in a shower of responses.
Many times, it's okay, but I frequently read about transgender stuff, because I have several trans friends and want to understand things better to better support them. Sometimes, my desire to ask a question overcomes my knowledge that doing so is the mental/emotional equivalent of skipping through a minefield (due to the high chance of saying something that pisses someone off).
This last time, it was about -- of all things -- safe spaces. The post was someone wanting cis-only safe spaces. Now, while I fully believe groups should not be exclusive of various demographics arbitrarily (ie -- this site shouldn't disallow people on the basis of skin color), I do support targeted groups which may have explicit or implicit exclusions relevant to the nature and purpose of the group and shared experience of the members (ie -- a male rape survivor group is right to disallow women). However, the responses were largely along the lines of "cis-only spaces are inherently and always transphobic."
To which I made the grave error of asking why.
I attempted to explain my position and provide relevant examples of cases where a given group would be excluded on the basis of lack of shared experience with the group. Apparently that was a bad idea, too.
It was quiet for a while, and then for some reason, it got noticed by a bunch of people. There are now about half a dozen direct responses (with more in nested responses in some cases), and only one of the direct ones were so much as diplomatic. The rest decided to interpret my response as malicious and respond in kind (up to and including calling me "demented" and engaging in gaslighting).
I'm thankful for that one civil response, where the person engaged for a while, and while we didn't see eye to eye, the conversation was productive and informational. And it's a big reason I don't want to delete the comment.
But then there are the rest of them, and the fact that I can't turn off responses or even notifications for it.
So my options are to leave it up and endure the vitriol, gaslighting, and pain; delete it and lose the productive and useful bits; or abandon the account (and probably the site, because my reading habits tend to curate the same type of content, as my other account illustrated before I dropped it in favor of my established one), allowing it to live on but never accessing anything else there with it again.
All I really want is a place where I can ask questions (ones I know that, at least in the NT world, are taboo to ask, but would help me understand such stuff better) without such hostility and...well...********.
But, according to them, because I'm cis, and/or white, the whole world is my safe space, so I don't need a designated environment for such things.
Apparently, intersectionality only exists in the minorities. You can't possibly be a member of a non-minority group and be anything else that makes the world unsafe.
I wish there were more groups run by Autistics in general, but also about learning this type of stuff. Where we could ask the questions NTs think are offensive or stupid or whatever about these kinds of issues, without dealing with their **** and without hurting people who aren't in the right headspace for those kinds of questions.
I've got a Medium account that I've had for a long time, and thanks to their oh-so-helpful algorithms, I end up with a lot of political and social justice stuff on my feed, which inevitably results in me responding to some of them, which in turn results in a shower of responses.
Many times, it's okay, but I frequently read about transgender stuff, because I have several trans friends and want to understand things better to better support them. Sometimes, my desire to ask a question overcomes my knowledge that doing so is the mental/emotional equivalent of skipping through a minefield (due to the high chance of saying something that pisses someone off).
This last time, it was about -- of all things -- safe spaces. The post was someone wanting cis-only safe spaces. Now, while I fully believe groups should not be exclusive of various demographics arbitrarily (ie -- this site shouldn't disallow people on the basis of skin color), I do support targeted groups which may have explicit or implicit exclusions relevant to the nature and purpose of the group and shared experience of the members (ie -- a male rape survivor group is right to disallow women). However, the responses were largely along the lines of "cis-only spaces are inherently and always transphobic."
To which I made the grave error of asking why.
I attempted to explain my position and provide relevant examples of cases where a given group would be excluded on the basis of lack of shared experience with the group. Apparently that was a bad idea, too.
It was quiet for a while, and then for some reason, it got noticed by a bunch of people. There are now about half a dozen direct responses (with more in nested responses in some cases), and only one of the direct ones were so much as diplomatic. The rest decided to interpret my response as malicious and respond in kind (up to and including calling me "demented" and engaging in gaslighting).
I'm thankful for that one civil response, where the person engaged for a while, and while we didn't see eye to eye, the conversation was productive and informational. And it's a big reason I don't want to delete the comment.
But then there are the rest of them, and the fact that I can't turn off responses or even notifications for it.
So my options are to leave it up and endure the vitriol, gaslighting, and pain; delete it and lose the productive and useful bits; or abandon the account (and probably the site, because my reading habits tend to curate the same type of content, as my other account illustrated before I dropped it in favor of my established one), allowing it to live on but never accessing anything else there with it again.
All I really want is a place where I can ask questions (ones I know that, at least in the NT world, are taboo to ask, but would help me understand such stuff better) without such hostility and...well...********.
But, according to them, because I'm cis, and/or white, the whole world is my safe space, so I don't need a designated environment for such things.
Apparently, intersectionality only exists in the minorities. You can't possibly be a member of a non-minority group and be anything else that makes the world unsafe.
I wish there were more groups run by Autistics in general, but also about learning this type of stuff. Where we could ask the questions NTs think are offensive or stupid or whatever about these kinds of issues, without dealing with their **** and without hurting people who aren't in the right headspace for those kinds of questions.
