#the weird in between of forming new opinions and attitudes about previously taught to hate things is jarring and uncomfortable

[femmesandhoney]

It's okay if you ignore this or what-not- but I need to get this off my chest.

I feel like the internet has really messed up a lot of peoples perceptions, obviously. I feel like male at birth ppl should not be included in lesbianism, as their sex is male. It makes me feel two faced though, because I don't care if an female at birth is a lesbian, even if they identify as non-binary. I can't even mention this on most online spaces, as people will just jump to calling you a terf, transphobe, try to dox you, etc.

I've even grown a but of resentment towards trans ppl- and not for being trans, but for invading women's safe spaces and demanding changes in communities that dont need it. Ive never seen a post about, "trans inclusive language" regarding men, but there's thousands for women. Women are reduced down to uterus haver, birth giver, etc, while men are just men, not sperm haver, etc.

I guess the whole point of this is, am I a bad person? I feel like shit for the way I've changed my thinking after exploring feminism, radfem, lesbianism, and everything else.

hi anon, thanks for trusting me with this message. as a person who "peaked" only a few months ago, this feeling is still fresh in my head on how i felt when i began looking into radical feminism after feeling resented in liberal spaces for being a lesbian. if you want a psychological understanding of what is happening, you're having attitude changes. "Inconsistency begets attitude change...when important cognitions collide, the attitude destabilizes, and some aspect usually caves". we as humans do not like being inconsistent with our beliefs or attitudes, we like feeling as if we have always known what we have known and have never had major changes. we are always striving to be consistent, we have discomfort if we are not. subsequently we either change our attitude or behavior, and it's easier to change an attitude than a behavior in most cases.

here's the thing though: your attitudes do not predict your behavior. it's honestly a weak link between them. while behavior can influence attitude changes and vice versa, i do not think exploring radical feminism or agreeing with it is turning you into a "bad person". what you're feeling is the discomfort of confusion between attitudes towards radical feminism and liberal feminism for lack of a better separation—because as always things are always more complicated than this surface explanation—so you're feeling dissonance.

but what you're also realizing is you have the facts and always have. you know sex is real, you know sexuality is real, you can see the very obvious harm a lot of trans activism has wrecked on LGB spaces. those aren't invisible, intangible things and you obviously know that. that's why you feel "two faced" when in the liberal spaces, because you recognize some of your attitudes don't align with what the group around you holds.

i cannot tell you which attitude is "right" and how you "should" proceed because there isn't really a step by step way to resolve your dissonance other than attitude/behavior changes. and i cannot change your attitude or behavior for you. you also don't need to break anything down to "radical vs liberal" feminism as I did to showcase what I was talking about. you don't have to be a radical feminist to believe what you have described to me in the ask. i think you're a perfectly normal person searching for information to form an opinion about something so you can rationalize what you see happening around you in liberal spaces.

i will also tell you, that radfems are always open to questions about our beliefs and that there are hundreds upon hundreds of informational posts on blogs and tags that you can go to for guides. again you're not a bad person and i hope my lengthy run down of the psychological factors behind what you're experiencing might help you understand and feel more in control.