#And then note that tunglr lets you curate your experience like nowhere else

[wetwareproblem]

It’s me again, from your last ask. I saw your response.

The definition of empathy is the capacity to understand OR feel someone else’s perspective. You don’t have to feel something to understand it, but it’s still empathy. That’s why I can have empathy for trans or nonbinary people despite the fact that I will never be able to feel their experience. Everyone is capable of empathy, whether they feel it or not, and it’s important to hold people to that standard so that we do not excuse behaviour that isn’t ok. I stand by what I said that empathy is important to practise, even when it’s hard.

Admittedly, I am disappointed that you are getting hung up on meaningless semantics to virtue signal instead of seeing the bigger picture. That’s exactly what I thought you were against in your comment, people flaming others for the sake of it. This is how we ended up in a world full of anger, and it will never stop until we all do. I take back what I said before. :/

Nonny, I'm going to try to say this very very gently, because it's very clear you mean well.

What we were speaking out against in that post was lateral aggression - lashing out at people who are not harming you and who do not hold positions of power over you.

We did not "flame you for no reason." Quite the contrary, we took the time to appreciate your message and support, but pointed out that it included ableist language that is used to directly harm some of us.

We did not insult, attack, or denigrate you in any way, shape, or form. We went out of our way to make it clear that we did not think you were a bad person, just that you had inadvertently done something ableist.

If your 'support' is so conditional that it can't survive contact with a marginalized person going "that hurts," then it isn't support, it's silencing.

It might be "meaningless virtue signaling" to you, but that's because you've never had people scream at you that you're a soulless demon who exists only to bask in the suffering of others because one of your clinical symptoms is literally "low or no affective empathy." You haven't had people tell you countless times that you're literally incapable of love - or any emotion at all - because empathy. You haven't had people try to get your kids taken away over it. You haven't seen dozens of people trading tips and tricks on how to best exploit your PTSD and trauma because those no-empathy fuckers deserve it.

When people say "empathy," without qualifier, they almost always mean affective empathy, not cognitive. Cognitive empathy either doesn't count, or (frequently) is framed as a tool of abuse and proof of our evil, when discussing people like me.

What's more, even cognitive empathy is not necessary to sympathy, compassion, or kindness. There are people I care about that my cognitive empathy fails completely on - I don't understand at all why they feel the way they do, let alone feel it. But I don't have to understand to trust them when they tell me how they feel, to care about their pains and joys, and to do my part to help.

You don't need to hold everyone to a standard of empathy to avoid excusing behavior that is not OK. You can just... Hold everyone to a standard of behavior. I don't need to understand or feel the plight of people to fight their exploitation; I can just recognize that exploiting people isn't okay.

You say you can have empathy for trans people, so let me try an analogy for you here: Would you walk up to me, a trans woman, and talk about how manly she was and how important manliness is to morality? If I objected, would you tell her that everyone is capable of being masc, and if we don't hold people to standards of masculinity, we'll excuse behavior thst isn't okay?

Please try showing that understanding you hold so dear to mad people too.