#I've never been mormon so I can't speak on this subject and am just repeating what I remember as best I can

[yeetntve]

One time my Mum drove over a kerb and got her car stuck at a hardware store, and three different men just came over to help unprompted. The only thing they said about it was directly related to solving the problem, and in the end all three of them just seamlessly worked together to physically lift the front of the car so my Mum could reverse out. They succeeded, saving us tow truck fees and ensuring the nice afternoon we had planned was able to go on. They asked for nothing and we never saw them again. All it took was my Mum calling them her heroes, and those men were walking on air all the way into the hardware store.

I just think that maybe, just maybe, blaming the pain and suffering caused by our patriarchal system on men's individual nature is uhhhh, some bullshit.

I see the radfems out there saying that every man who's ever been born is a psychopath who's constantly looking for an opportunity to commit a felony and then I remember this one time I was really struggling to get a shopping cart out of another shopping cart and a dude came over to help me, but he couldn't do it, and then another dude came over to help him, and then another came over because it was a challenge he wanted in on, and then I had 3 guys all tearing at a stuck shopping cart, and literally none of them even needed a cart.

And when they got it out, they fist pumped and I said thanks so much and one of them said "easy." And then they left.

And it's like.

I don't think radfems go outside.

[cerastes]

Do you feel there are people whom you would agree with politically, whom you consider allies, but they have a really tiresome philosophy?

A worldview where the world is cleanly divided into "oppressed" and "oppressors", where someone is born into one category and can never leave it no matter what they do, and that is it morally superior to be "oppressed" even if that means vilifying any attempt to succeed at life. And they spend less energy on improving the world than on policing speech, and dividing humanity into smaller and smaller collections of combined traits to find new levels of virtue and sinfulness.

What if that defeatist, joyless paradigm is what "other people" call Wokeness?

Mm see, the thing is, yes, I do feel this way with some people, but I also try to temper my feelings on the subject matter based on lived experience, or lack thereof.

What I mean by that is that, in terms of privilege, I have it pretty good: I'm straight, male, cis, without any major disabilities, and I've never faced the possibility of going seriously hungry -- understanding "seriously hungry" as a complete and absolute impossibility of affording a meal no matter how squalid it is -- or homeless at any point of my life.

I've had hardships, for sure, but they have been of a distinctly different nature than the ones we are talking about, with distinctly different consequences. I've never been threatened to be ostracized or killed by my community based on my identity.

On one hand, yeah, I have no interest in people who spouse so intimately these topics to the point it permeates everything they do and say and think. They are, as you said, tiresome. I in fact have stopped talking to some friends who are like that altogether, because I have my own concerns, my own hardships, and most importantly, when I am on my free time, I don't want to listen to the 60th complaint about westerners this and cis people that in any particular day. It doesn't delegitimize whatever valid complaints they have, but, and here's the important part, I don't have to be there for it. I already know these things. Do they bear repeating for the 60th time? See, if they do for anyone in particular, that's fine, but they gotta find the other people that are there for that for the 60th time, that isn't me. Or in other words, I also have a responsibility to not be there for that, and find people that aren't going to do that.

I think actions speak louder than words, so, I try to live my life according to my beliefs, and I respect people that do this as well. Conversely, yapping on and on about something, no matter how important it is, is hollow to me if you aren't backing it up with concrete actions. You can say incredible things in social media or even privately in chat, but also, are you doing something for your community -- in an offline space or an online space -- besides this? Using Tumblr specifically as an example, I have a lot of LGBTQ+ and/or leftist friends IRL that actively participate for the benefit of their respective communities, with tangible actions, and they don't really respect Tumblr because a lot of talk is just talk to them. Conversation isn't unnecessary, mind you, but it can't all remain in Saying The Correct Things So I Can Be On The Moral High Ground. The moral high ground by itself is so useless, lmao, ok buddy you are up there, now what else are you going to do besides reminding us you walked up the stairs? Show me something concrete. Concrete can also be engaging in actual productive conversation rather than repeating the same points over and over to your online audience that already agrees with you.

You know how Mormons and stuff go door by door not as a means to actually convert but instead to build even more dependency on the group by showing them how hostile the rest of the world is? It's kinda like that. Echo chambers are not to my liking.

But.

But.

Here's where we circle back up there. I've not lived a life of oppression. So I think to myself, "man, I've not gone through that, maybe I'd be like that too if I did?" and, putting aside the entire point of Doing Stuff Instead Of Just Saying Stuff, sometimes we do need to Say Stuff. It relieves the weight on our shoulders, decompresses us, it's an important part of it, and maybe some people need to perpetually do that to decompress.

So, I try to see it from another angle: I just don't gotta be there. I know where I stand, and I act according to what I believe is right. Anyone that can vouch for me will do so, I believe, not because of what I preach, but from how I've behaved. And that's what I'll keep doing, Doing Stuff instead of endlessly saying stuff. If there's people that want to endlessly say stuff, it's not really my problem, and instead of I'll simply look for people that Do and Say simultaneously.

TL;DR -> Yes but I don't care too much because it's people I make a point not to be around in the first place, and at the same time, my experience and reality is vastly different so I can only be respectful of those with less ingrained privilege than me in how they go about their tribulations. Does that make sense to you?