okay so as promised in the comments of my last post, here's a take on political hypocrisy nobody asked for inspired by me having to unfollow someone because they said something icky
not a callout post, not trying to start beef with some random internet stranger, if you somehow trace back the post I'm so very vaguely talking about as a stepping stone to a point from just what I'm about to say then, uh, shit, you weren't meant to, oopsie
the post in question: a preface, along the lines of "not to gatekeep or anything, but" followed immediately by the take that you shouldn't be allowed to call yourself a lesbian unless you specifically have a vaginal genital preference, and that anyone who considers themselves a lesbian and isn't in it for the vagina should be forced to find another term
the individual responsible for the post: a transmasculine guy who self-assigns as a straight lesbian, with a blog that's otherwise seemingly built around the philosophy that queer people should be allowed to have complicated "contradictory" identities without judgement, because a label is meant to be what works for the user (the very reason I followed in the first place)
essentially, the reason this take rubbed me the wrong way is because A. it's biological essentialist bullshit, it's essentially denying trans women womanhood on the basis of their partners' gential preferences, B. well, fuck ace lesbians I guess, and C. (this one's the key point of this post) the level of fucking hypocrisy required to gatekeep women out of lesbianism when your claim to the label is already much more controversial than that of the people you intend to exclude is bewildering, fucking astounding
to be very clear, I've got no problem with this guy using the lesbian label, but by his own logic, he fucking should, no?
which brings me to the actual reason I made this post, because all of that was merely something that reminded me of something I was already pissed off about, immigrants (wait, I know it looks bad, hear me out)
I live in a very immigrant dense country, on an even more immigrant dense island, mostly quite progressive, tax haven, very beautiful, big industries, one of the safest places to live on earth, EU/Schengen/Eurozone member state, paces away from northern Africa, southeastern Europe and the middle east, lot of diasporas around the world that are looking to come back, it makes sense, immigrants of every walk have a lot of reasons to come here, and I welcome each and every one with open arms because I'm of the opinion that if you make a conscious and active decision to move out of your homeland to here, you've put more effort into proving you're one of us than most of us, but unfortunately that's definitely not the majority opinion, we're a deeply racist country, and it's hard to fight, because what the fuck of substance am I going to say to another native Gozitan to correct their racism beyond "hey, could you be a little less racist?"
but then what baffles me, and I mean truly fucking baffles me, I cannot even begin to wrap my head around it, is that very concerningly often, I come across an individual who happens to have immigrated here, who in any other circumstance I would consider an equal in every regard with just as much leeway to say dumb shit as any native, and then these individuals manage to muster up the fucking audacity to start going off about how they don't like immigrants, and then argue with me about it when I disagree
motherfucker, if I shared your opinion, if I had the opinion you are arguing with me to try to convince me to have, I would tell you to get the fuck out of my country running, and go back home, you as an immigrant do not get to say that shit
and I'll tell you a little secret, it's only the western white ones that pull that shit, they're talking about immigrants, what they mean is African and south Asian immigrants, sometimes eastern European immigrants too, but they're just saying the word immigrants, as if it's assumed that being from Australia or England or America makes them not that, as if they're in a separate, more respectable category, nono, they're simply expatriates, but I know what you are, I know what you fucking are and I'm okay with it, I am, truly, but evidently you're fucking not, and I'm not okay with that, you fucking hypocrite
and the great irony in all of that is that on the surface it may look like those pasty fucking hypocrites command more respect from the natives than the immigrants they don't want to be associated with, but that's not how it works here, racism as the world knows it is an American invention, discrimination has regional variants, the races here aren't white, black, and asian, the races here Maltese, Gozitan, and everyone else, you don't cozy up to the fringe groups of racists because they don't like you either, which brings me to my final overarching conclusion that wraps this whole post up with a neat little bow, hear my gospel loud and let it echo within your head until you've heard it sevenfold:
political hypocrisy as displayed by the examples above serves only to achieve one outcome, and that is bringing the movement down on oneself, it is an act of self-harm that one undergoes by forcing their siblings to be harmed with them, so if you're planning on taking a dive off a cliff, be a dear and have the decency to not pull anyone down with you
