The thing with like aphobia and transandrophobia and stuff is like
sometimes. you are going to see people complaining about oppression. and it's going to make you feel bad and uncomfortable. because you yourself are oppressed and in these circles you are used to being The Oppressed One and seeing these other complains about People Including You reminds you of actual bigotry in broader spaces, or makes you doubt your own oppression, or just makes it feel like you're being told you 'have it easy'.
but. that's not what's happening. what's happening is just that other people also have systematic problems and deserve to talk about it.
that is not an attack on you.
oppression is not a zero-sum game. Aspecs, or trans men, being better acknowledge as suffering from oppression, does not mean that you have it any less bad than you have known yourself to do.
it doesn't even mean that they have it 'worse'. It means exactly what I said: that they also have issues that they need help with and are worth discussing.
If that upsets the basis of your own understand of your oppression... yeah. maybe that means your understanding was wrong. sorry.
but it's only the THEORETICAL UNDERSTANDING that has been upset. your oppression is still not in any kind of question.
is that easy to understand or carry forth? no.
but it's necessary.
and it has happened, over and over again. When gay people and trans people were at head to head, both presenting the other as predatory sexual deviants and themselves as 'normal'. When gay men diminished lesbians' suffering because they were less likely to get on the news for being murdered than gay men. when bisexuals (within Tumblr's own history!!!!!!) were widely panned as possessing 'straight-passing privilege' and therefore never in the same 'category' of oppression as gay men and lesbians.
it happens over and over and over again. and it's always hard. but it always needs to happen, morally.
even if the people expressing their oppression are 'too aggressive'. even if their arguments make you feel uncomfortable and scared. even if the place you belonged no longer feels like home anymore.
it'd be nice if every time something happened that made you feel bad, it was because of somebody Bad who needs to be Stopped and/or Punished. but that just isn't the case.
an oppressed group (and we can judge this by statistics; it's really not that difficult) talking about their oppression is not causing actual harm to you. and even if they were, they still deserve to be able to do it.








