Ignorance =/= willful ignorance
First and foremost, protect yourself and if that means not reading a comment and blocking someone out of hand, then that's what it means.
It is wrong to automatically assume that someone has been exposed to the information, that they've had an opportunity to learn and have simply refused. Ironically, more so now than five years ago. Christian nationalism only exists because children are indoctrinated against their will, meaning they do not have the means to educate themselves about many topics. Never underestimate cult mentality.
Why is this important? Because too many people treat ignorance as if it were a personal failing. People who should understand better than most that ignorance is just a lack of knowledge, that it isn't your fault, say that it is a personal failing and that you are a bad person for not knowing something.
What I mean is that as a child I did not know that what was done to me was wrong, or rather I didn't know that I could say anything. I thought everyone went through it, and that they didn't seem affected by it just meant that I was the weird one for struggling. I was ignorant of the depths of harm that was being done to me. I was ignorant of what I could do to make it stop. I blamed myself, and was ignorant of the fact that the blame never rested with me. I didn't āknow betterā - was ignorant - and now people tell me that it's my fault for not knowing. When you say ignorance is a personal failing, you're saying that victims of abuse should in fact have āknown betterā that it is in fact our fault for not doing something about it because we didn't know something. If you think ignorance is a personal failing, then you believe some victim blaming is acceptable and correct.
When I was very young I said I wanted to grow up to be a man. I was shut down. I didn't understand, so I pretended it didn't happen. I honestly wasn't able to recall that memory until it became impossible to silence his voice. I was 28 when I learned that transgender people could be men. I was ignorant of the existence of trans men for most of my life (it's been less than a decade since I learned this). I was ignorant of the possibilities beyond homosexuality and trans feminine. I was ignorant of my own gender. When you say that ignorance is a personal failing, you're saying that it was my fault for not expressing my gender sooner. That it is my fault losing part of my life, and for missing the opportunity to get my birth certificate corrected. When you say that ignorance is a personal failing, you're saying that every kid who is not cis/het who was raised in a non-affirming house is at fault for not knowing themselves, for not knowing the possibilities, for spending their childhood in fear and confusion, for not having community.
I was not raised in a community. I grew up in the level of deep poverty that is seen on indigenous reservations all over the US, we didn't have running water until my parents connected a spring to the house themselves - and even then it dried up in the summer and froze in the winter. Electricity wasn't even available for the first several years because the city had not run the lines that far yet. We only got electricity because there were two other families within a mile of us, making it financially viable for the county over the long run. The nearby community was so poor that it could not support a food bank. It wasn't until I was in my teens that we could all sleep in our bedrooms on the coldest nights, because we had no means with which to heat the whole house
We relied on a wood stove - with an actual stove top - for heat and cooking, then later on small and medium sized propane tanks refilled at the grocery store for cooking. The local community did not accept us because we didn't go to the correct churches, and because we did not vote the way they did - despite our beliefs being aligned, we didn't use the ācorrectā words. The nearest extended family members lived thousands of miles away. I have no idea what āliving in communityā actually looks like. I have absolutely no frame of reference for existing within a community. I am ignorant of how to live in a community, let alone of how to build one. When you say that ignorance is a personal failing, you are blaming me for the way the people of that town treated my family when I was child. When you say ignorance is a personal failing you are saying that it is my fault for being lost and alone now.
Not everyone has the necessary background information needed to form the questions so as to begin learning about a new topic. You literally need a certain amount of knowledge about a given topic so as to ask the questions necessary to learn about it. If you have never even heard of binturongs then you cannot even Google āwhat is a binturongā which means you cannot learn about the conservation of that species or why it's even important to the ecosystem - so is it really your fault if you don't know how to protect binturongs, what efforts are already being done, or why it's important? Obviously not. That bare minimum of grace should be given to people freely. That you know something that others do not should be seen as an opportunity to help others, not as bragging rights with which to put others down. If you do not have the capacity or means with which to educate someone, then simply move on with your life instead snidely quipping that they can just Google it. Not the least because Google's results are controlled by money and algorithms that are designed to keep people isolated from one another and to keep people in their own information bubbles specially tailored to keep them online. And again, not everyone even knows what questions to ask to begin learning. Someone can perfectly describe the core beliefs of something like queer theory, but if they've never actually heard of queer theory they cannot join the fight.
gracieabrams
