#(you know actually back in the days of more newly rising antism there was some kind of debunking post to a'we need to talk about it' fishin
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first-only · 2 years ago
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I've also seen the 'taking care of yourself/your own happiness is selfish and bad' in activism/progressive spaces too. Actually, that comic you rb-ed about the guy buying a videogame and donating to charity, and then being 'called out' for not donating all the money, was the thing that made me send the original ask
But yes, you are right in saying that that mentality is also very prevalent in religious morality. (Makes you think doesn't it lol)
ironically, thats exactly how i meant it too. being socially or perceptually 'progressive' does not stop you from absorbing religious (or just generally controlling, chicken and egg on historically which leads to which) morality from context or culture. how many people these days, even those opposing capitalism, know that its literal roots is protestantism? think of all of the discussions about 'conservatism/puritanism with a gay hat'. - "i dont want to see gay sex bc sinful" and "i dont want to see gay sex bc what about queer kids" are the same statement. "white and black people shouldnt date bc of racial purity" and "white and black people shouldnt date bc power dynaimcs" are the same statement.
"woke" or social justice language has seeped so deeply into discourse that people are cloaking their every statement into it, theyre expressing their emotional baggage or inclinations with it. they've found a "progressive" way to state every personal beef they have with the world, and by doing this have made it very emotionally taxing to dispute them in good faith. if its easier to make an analogy with fandom on the fandom blog - antis think of themselves as progressive too, but they're parroting conservative rhetoric that they have absorbed, that makes them feel good, is intuitive, and they dress up their arguments in sj terms because that's what's marketable in their sphere. they probably even believe it's true - the same way some people genuinely believe in "selfishness" - but that doesnt change that the ideology itself is founded on conservationist, traditionalist, controlling beliefs.
i hate to bring up 'cultural [christianity/religion]' because that term has been twisted into nothing by social media, but this is what it actually means. even if youre not religious, the morals and the cultural background (ethics, interpersonal norms, rules for raising children) still seep into your understanding of the world just by Living In Society, by proximity, by your relationships with people who also live in that cultural environment (yes even if they themselves arent religious). opposing the norms, and sifting through them to find what actually is useful and makes sense, and what is "peer pressure by dead people" is a conscious effort. Identity alone cannot do that for you. Coming out, being queer, visiting counter-culture spaces can be a start but it is not automatic. The same way a lot of queer people have to unlearn homophobia (be it internalized or not), rooting out 'intuitive' (ie learned since childhood by socio proximity) beliefs and judgments of others is also a lot of work and involves challenging a lot of what you automatically think when faced with a problem or difference or deviance. (of course this doesnt apply only to religion per se, [some] americans and their 'what would the forefathers think' fall directly into this way of thinking. tho i might argue that's kind of pseudo-religious but thats a whole other discussion)
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