Me personally? I’ve become much less tolerant of sexist humor. Back in the day, cracking a joke at women’s expense was pretty common when I was a teen. As I’ve matured and become aware to the horrific extent of toxicity and bigotry pervading all tiers of our individualistic society, I’ve come to see how exclusionarly and objectifying that sort of ‘humor’ really is, and I regret it deeply.
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- 3 years
Oh god I’ve got so many.
My latest one is remembering that you can’t really fight fire with fire, unless you’re being extraordinarily strategic about it. Attacking bigotry for instance, simply makes it stronger, as it feeds off strife and fear themselves. Remembering why Michelle Obama said when they go low, we go high. Not out of any great preference, but out of a lack of viable alternatives in her situation.
You can’t actually “fight” it. You can exclude it. You can corral it. You can trick it into running itself off a cliff. But you can’t actually destroy it by combating it directly, because it feeds off the combat, just like Trump does. You have to outmaneuver it.
- 3 years
I was totally headed down the alt right pipeline. Throughout highschool I was depressed and lonely. I lost my faith which sent me to the online atheist community which ran out of content, so they started attacking feminists/sjws. I also just distrusted women because I got molested as a child by one and no one took it seriously. This had primed me to just eat up all the content from the MRA/antifeminist crowd. The youtube algorithm, which at the time was absolutely unhinged, pushed me to racist content which I just parroted because I didn’t know any better. I didn’t understand why things were the way things were, but I was taught who to blame.
What saved me was getting friends. These friends shattered my preconceptions, which sent me to the library, which got me talking to more people, which got me reading more. By the time I finished high school I just became utterly incompatible with the person I used to be. I couldn’t take back the things I said to people, but I could join their protests and speak up for them when I heard some heinous shit being said.
- 3 years
I watched a few Jordan Peterson videos out of curiosity, and I will also watch some Joe Rogan clips as well for the same reason. For a while, I was bombarded by alt right YouTube videos. It’s so crazy to think just a few clicks can lead you down that path. I was older when I watched so it, so I could obviously discern their real message, but if I was a younger man it would be harder. The algorithm almost seemed to slowly introduce more and more extreme views.
- 3 years
Watch the Pangburn videos of Jordan Peterson debating Sam Harris. It’s easy to see what a word-salad regurgitating sophist blowhard Peterson is.
- 3 years
Gay people. When I was much much younger I remember telling a friend that while I didn’t have a problem with people doing their own thing, I still didn’t like gay people. My friend said I hope when you have kids they’re gay. Guess what happened and how I feel about it now. I was such a dumb ass. When my kid came out to me I wept for joy at their bravery. I don’t take hard stances on my opinions now and try to remember that my perspective isn’t ultimate or necessarily right. There’s always a chance that I’m wrong.
- 3 years
There weren’t many gay people when I was growing up. At least not openly. I was first introduced to some gays at a gay bar. They basically made me feel like a juicy steak in a meat market (not in a good way). Several comments about my dick within 10 seconds of meeting them.
Today I have many gay friends that I enjoy their company but that was a huge setback for me.
- 3 years
Did you tell them your name? Because I think that might have led them to make some assumptions.
It took one of those meat market experiences to make me self-reflect about how I treated women as a straight man.
Thankfully I was relatively young when it happened, but I’ll always regret how I treated women before then.
- 3 years
I was raised in a fundamental christian extremest environment and stuck with it for 30 years. I’m now a card carrying atheist.
- 3 years
As a millennial, we grew up with the phrases “that’s gay” and “that’s retarded” (which meant the same thing) and obviously we had to learn to phase those out.
While I never once meant “that’s disabled” or “that’s homosexual”… We obviously don’t say that stuff anymore.
- 3 years
I witnessed something at work a few weeks ago, that caught me off guard. One of the managers was asking for a favour off one of the lads in work, it’s a blue collar job so it’s never been PC, “Carl, need a favour, can you do such and such” “Can’t sorry Steve” “Go on lad don’t be gay” “Steve, I’ve been taking cock for the last 25 years and you asking me to stop for an extra hours work won’t stop me”
Everyone around just creased up laughing.
I learned these real quick in the workplace as a young adult, around a coworker with a mentally disabled child, and with a coworker who was gay. The abstraction is what made using such crude language easy. As soon as I knew someone affected by the words, I snapped out of it.
Abstraction, come to think of it, is what permits a lot of bad behavior.
