#also ~progressive~ queer folks who happen to be white and/or 'us'ian also fuckin' seem to tend to turn out to be tiresome in other aspects

[lapeaudelamemoire]

Some frustrations and thoughts:

1. I genuinely think a lot of white liberals and leftists and so on who are from and live in imperial centres and settler-colonies like the 'US', as well as those in Europe, despite calling themselves and thinking of themselves as progressive, don't actually often consider things intersectionally enough because their positionality (i.e., white privilege, of which one of the main features is that you don't notice what it confers) is a blind spot. I get that this is a feature and not a bug, but I am tired of white folks' voices everywhere.

2. On the multiple axes of intersectionality, being 'US'-ian is the second most annoying thing or on par with whiteness for me. POC 'US'-ians have that 'US'-centrism that is just a whole flavour of imperialism and I am also tired of them taking centre-stage and centering themselves so much of the time like they're special (on account of the 'US' exceptionalism shit). I frequently, at times like this, think back to when a Black US person basically harassed me for months on Instagram to join and subscribe to their educational community thing by attempting to guilt-trip me with the rhetoric of 'owing the Black community reparations' and that I should learn about their history. Like. I'm not from the 'US' and have never been there and in my bio I specifically wrote that I live on unceded Wurundjeri land. They also said they "didn't know my name" when I had a name on the IG bio, but it was written in Chinese characters. Or the time when I was invited to a meet-up of 'Asian-American' people and they spent the entire time talking amongst themselves about being talked over and marginalised and not heard etc. while completely ignoring me, the single non-US Asian person in the room.

I feel like a lot of people who live in settler-colonies or historical seats of colonial empire - i.e., the 'US', 'Australia', 'Canada', Europe, 'NZ', and also South Africa - don't seem to understand their nationality and perhaps more specifically their citizenships as a lens and privilege and also a bias, nor where that positions them in relation to others.

Like criticisms that have already been noted, a lot of queer white folks will use their LGBTQIA+ identity as a shield or exemption or whatever, like an in-built token marginalised identity 'get-out-of-jail-free' card. (This is the third-most fucking annoying thing for me in terms of positionalities.)

Before, I would get really excited to see POC and follow them thinking I would get more different perspectives, but inevitably it turned out, as I now reflect on it, that mostly what I was getting were North American perspectives and mostly from other 'Global North' countries as, again, mentioned above. And I would wager that it's not just the case for POC, but also LGBTQIA+ spaces.