#i think mine had 30-35 followers? and pretty much no notes or traction at all

[bi-sapphics]

hi I’m the same anon and I read your response. I hope I didn’t misinterpret anything you said.

I agree that it’s unhelpful to harass people for past things if they’ve genuinely changed, but I guess there are some disclaimers. like you I also had a small blog with maybe 20 followers at most, and my most popular post (out of. 3?) got 120 notes if I remember correctly. I never talked about my beliefs irl. but I did harass one person online with two gross anon messages who was starting to consider themself non-binary (albeit I swiftly stopped after talking to them when I learned they were psychotic. I didn’t want to make them feel any worse than they probably already were).

needles to say I regret that immensely. but as for the other things I mentioned, they’re still terrible. being in that headspace is really fucking unhealthy because it’s so disconnected from reality. I guess what I’m trying to say is that you have to actively want to change, and most importantly do something about it. change is gradual, even if you know you’ve been wrong. saying you had a rf blog out of “curiosity” makes something terrible seem innocuous. if you’re going around saying you being a rf was out of curiosity I don’t think people are going to believe you really see that era of your life as so bad. my philosophy is that if you’re talking about something harmful you did or believed in, you shouldn’t bring it up out of nowhere and when you do talk about it, talk about it with regret. if you truly believe what you did was bad, the emotion should come forth naturally.

I think people who’ve got their priorities straight will be content that you’ve gotten out of that hateful headspace and (hopefully) are now helping spread awareness and support for trans rights. nonetheless you should be aware of your past actions and try to learn from them.

oh, i agree completely!

and i'm glad you added the part about how even innocent intentions, or just pure curiosity, doesn't absolve you of having gone there ─ because i honestly forgot to do so myself, and i guess subconsciously assumed that was somewhat implied. my point was that it shouldn't be a defining reputation of any sort going forward into the future like like all these obsessive people want it to be. if someone comes upfront to talk about working on themselves and how they learned from their decisions without even being pressured to, then they should at least be given a chance! especially when the outcome of their time was at such a low degree of change, if any at all.

i do think it's worth mentioning that it's always a good thing to learn about what your opponent truly believes or says when not being confronted within their own spaces. even if you're not looking for a debate, it's generally the most sincere thing you can do if you're going to be talking about them, or at least actively advocating for the other side.

of course, that's different from the type of interest that encourages you to treat them as a reliable source. it's something we have to be careful about, because it's easy to fall into those sort of hiveminds when you're not keeping what you're reading in check. we have to walk a line between avoiding that and also avoiding spreading blatantly false information. that's not to say anyone like radfems deserve the upmost respect and care, because they don't, but it is to say that managing not to straight-up slander someone is usually a good look that makes you more credible. it's... what anyone is supposed to do, really.

but besides that, it's all you can do. if people don't see sense in that then all they have to do is block ─ also a miniscule action ─ and beyond that it just comes across as unhelpful harassment to me.

just my extra two cents.