@izmarvelous said: “Tumblr would likely be part of the group’s who would say her apology is fake and Mark her as bad forever” - One of the big points of her talk was not assigning bad motives to people. If this is your first response, it might be a good idea to watch her talk again.
You misunderstand me. She mentions that there were/are people who didn’t believe her apology and who still think she’s bad because of her past. I’m talking about when I see that on here where we have a very real problem in SJ circles on this site where one fuckup dooms someone forever and no apology is ever accepted as real because if they are forgiven we cannot be mad at them anymore, and being mad is the only way you can show you care about a thing. Repeatedly on this site I see people say something that is either misunderstood or twisted purposefully in order to sound problematic, and then even when they explain what they actually meant over and over again, or explain that they are actually part of x group and so their opinion isn’t coming from a perspective of oppressor and hateful ignorance (like disabled people constantly accused of being neurotypical for talking about their own experiences, or queer people being accused of being -phobic, etc), they’re dogpiled on and harassed as if they had never tried to explain anything at all, because what they really meant doesn’t matter, that they are real people doesn’t matter, it’s the image of them in that thread that becomes set in stone so that people can be mad at that concept but pretend they’re fighting the bigger evil by directing it at a real person. They become a symbol instead of people.
Whether or not someone was misunderstood, or really did say/believe/do something actually awful, I don’t often see them given space to explain and learn and apologize because they’re seen as bad forever, and that doesn’t allow us to make positive change at all and it’s why I try to have patience when someone on the internet pisses me off. I try to remember that they are people and that it’s very possible that they believe that they are the only right, that they’re doing the right thing even if they believe it justifies their own cruelty and rudeness, and that’s how I try to teach, learn, and plant seeds in every interaction.
