Perhaps important to note here is that this is not necessarily something people do consciously. I've seen people say "well I would never do that," assuming that because they would never intentionally hurt someone to make themselves feel powerful, they are immune to it.
This sort of thing tends to happen subconsciously. You don't say to yourself, "I'm feeling powerless and therefore I will lash out at the one thing I can control." You just feel angry and frustrated in ways you can't necessarily describe and then for no apparent reason you see someone do something that can be construed as problematic if you squint at it sideways and have an overwhelming impulse to DO SOMETHING about it. You don't know where that impulse comes from, you just know that giving in to it feels good. It feels righteous. You are doing the right thing and that's why it feels good. Right?
That's why it's so easy to fall into this sort of behavior. It doesn't feel like you're trying to regain a sense of control over your own life. It feels like you are doing something righteous and justified and correct, and anyone who says otherwise is probably a bad person. And the more often this happens, the more times you call someone out over some bullshit, the more righteous it feels! And the more "Bad People" start crawling out of the woodwork to attack you (defending the people you've attacked and trying to explain why you're mistaken), the more targets you have.
In the end it leads to increasing isolation. You wind up being pulled into hateful groups like terfs who see you as an easy target. They reassure you that yes, you are doing the right thing, those people are bad. We understand and support you! Join us!
Eventually, the only way you know to feel good is to attack others, but in your mind, it feels good because you're doing good, you're making the world better, you're protecting someone or something. You're fighting against the Bad Guys.
And all the while you're cutting yourself off from your own community. You're not healing, you're not regaining control over your life, you're not making the world a better place. You're just hurting the people who are on your side.
It's not easy to avoid doing this. You can't just tell yourself "I'm a good person who would never harm my own community." That's not enough. You have to be vigilant. You have to ask yourself, whenever you feel an impulse to lash out at someone, whenever you feel a sense of Justice rising up in you that is directed at another marginalized person or group, whenever you feel yourself thinking that someone isn't being queer the Right Way, whenever you find yourself worrying about who is the Most Oppressed... You have to question it. Every time. It is HARD to do this. It is HARD to admit that you have the capacity to do harm even though you don't intend to. But you have to. For your sake, and for the sake of your whole community.
