Edit: I didn’t actually think I’d need to put this here but unfortunately I think those kinds of people are here
Bigots are not welcome on my post and they are certainly not welcome on my post to co-opt it to spread bigotry
I am progressive myself and support human rights and LGBTQ+ people
Purity testing.
If you don’t align with the party narrative 100%, down to the atom, then you’re basically maga.
I don’t think people realize this is a major factor that drives people away from progressive politics.
When a conservative meets someone more conservative, they bitch about liberals. When a leftist meets someone more left than them they compete with each other to see who’s most “pure.”
This is a major problem.
And if you point this out to progressive people as to nobody likes them and how offputting/alienating they are. You are clearly MAGA or voted for Trump. Clearly if only you were ‘enlightened’ like them you’d 100% agree with them and have no separate ideas, opinions, or life experience of your own.
Removed by mod
what baffles me about the trans thing is the people who are the most vocal about it are often not trans. they are often cis people who claim to speak for all trans people as if they are a monolith. IME of trans people… they are not a monolith. they are just people with a whole range of beliefs. and some trans folks are anti-progressive/elitist as fuck.
As a trans but Closeted person myself I hate when non trans allies speak over us for us without letting us actually speak and allies of other minorities speaking over the minorities they claim to support in the first place without letting that minority be involved is an actual problem
If you see a polite obviously rural person who has not said anything remotely questionable, a common comment is “but you probably wouldn’t want to know their political opinion” or “you probably don’t want their take on minorities or women”. To be folksy is to guarantee progressives brand them as right wing racist sexist bigots.
most rural people i’ve met the past decade where moderate or progressive. they just tend to be more libertarian than city folk are comfortable with, because they are not used to government services being ubiquitous. and they understand that they won’t get shit from the government the way city people take for granted.
And to be fair it’s often true, but I try my best to judge people by their behavior not by stereotypes.
I’m Asian. If I do anything well in life it’s because of privilege not because I worked 2 jobs while attending community college schooling and doing nothing else for myself other than to be at a better place. My effort feels completely and utterly dismissed by some of these people. They refuse to acknowledge my effort at all and instead they keep trying to dig deeper to find reasons why I’m “privileged”.
I have a lot of first hand experience with it via dating. In terms of outward Appearance and how I present I am an average looking straight cis white male. Mentally, in addition to being on the spectrum, that’s not really how I identify or am wired though. If anything, I’m probably more lesbian based on who I seem to get along with and am attracted to, lol.
As I am sure we are all (hopefully) aware there are a lot of men with very problematic behaviors (which is an entire other complex topic). As a result, within the liberal sphere I exist in it is very socially acceptable to shit on or otherwise have a negative bias against people that present like I do in a way that would not be acceptable if it were against another social group because of what they are.
I have had a number of interactions and conversations where my point of view/input/feelings/etc. were more or less dismissed or ignored by women when if I were a woman saying the exact same thing it wouldn’t be. I have also had people flat out say “that’s a very man thing to say” as a when what I am saying conflicts with their world view or how they feel and they can’t engage with it logically anymore.
Please note, I am leaving a ton of intricate context out of the above to try and avoid having to write a novel. I understand why women have the bias/reaction towards men who present like I do, and why it’s necessary. In the examples I am thinking of, these are women who know me, not strangers or randos. When discussing things I do my absolute best to have conversations in good faith and on the merits/logic of what is being said.
I don’t like pulling the autism card or saying that’s just how I feel, but I find that people are so unused to interacting with someone like me, rather than engage in the nuance of my experience and how it very much contradicts their world view, it’s much easier for them to find a reason to be dismissive of it. I also realize that from a third party perspective without any context my autistic behavior is indistinguishable from gas lighting.
don’t even get me started on how homophobic most ‘progressive’ women are. I’m straight and cis and white… but holy shit the disgusting things I’ve heard so called ‘liberal feminist’ women say about bi/gay men is vomit-inducing. but as for lesbians or trans women… they are perfect angels. trans men however, are traitors to their divine femininity or something.
they also love nothing more than to cry about how gender roles oppress them, but they cling to these 1950s expectations of men. i do not understand the obsession with 1950s gender roles so many women have. we’re basically supposed to be unfeeling ATMs that make them feel ‘protected’ from the ‘dangers’ of the world… by which they mean minorities and poor people.
I refrained from talking about the gender role thing because per the post title it didn’t seem like a prejudice perse, even if related. It’s also a topic I always try and preface with stating that although the symptoms might be fairly plane and apparent the cause is very complex and nuanced and a result of a lot of different societal pressures and influences. Partially because it is very easy to paint someone talking about it as a red pill misogynist if that nuance is ignored. I also try and point out that this ultimately isn’t a gender issue or any other tribalism type thing, but merely a result of human nature. People are shitty sometimes. That’s universal.
In my experience, there are a lot of women that are very vocal about equity and equality, especially in relationships. However it’s often fairly unidirectional. For example they want their partner to be able to do things like cook, laundry, dishes, etc (which I can do, I think that’s part of being a well rounded person), but they don’t have much interest in learning how to do the traditionally male coded household tasks. Or they don’t want to be the one to approach and ask me out, I always have to be the one to pursue. Similarly in the bedroom I have never met a woman who is dominant or willing to try, despite the fact that I am very switchy.
In talking to these people and pointing out how their personal desires and behavior don’t align with their actual decisions and behavior they often default to, that’s just my personal preference.
That’s nice, but who cares? It’s not fair to have it both ways and ultimately feels like another form of pulling the ladder up behind them.
I don’t think it’s that nuanced or complex. They are just hypocritical assholes, but for some reason people refuse to think women or any minority can be a hypocritical assholes. They can. they are just like men in that regard… nobody seems to have an issue with calling out men as being assholes for having hypocritical expectations of women.
Rules apply to everyone else, but themselves. And yes, very much the types who agree with ladder pulling and thinking wealth/education/freedom should only be for the ‘upper classes’ of which they consider themselves to be a part of, and they want nothing to do with the ‘unwashed masses’ who don’t feign enlightenment like they do.
Yeah, tribalism will always be a scourge on mankind
Removed by mod
Older ones. Less physically discriminatory, more using slurs or making judgemental comments. They’re ok with gay people, but you can’t be flamboyant or having more options on trans people than they really need to. They haven’t made trans comments in a while, but I think that has more to do with not wanting to be on the wrong “team”. He’s is a big South Park fan, so that’s probably where it came from.
I can’t believe this is a serious question…
Hello! I’m a Humanitarian, which sits under the Progressive umbrella. Saying there are discriminatory progressives is a bit silly as a broad stroke, but to be fair, everyone has gaps in their knowledge and understanding. Anyone can be accidentally or subconsciously discriminatory, but Progressives tend to go out of their way to correct discrimination as often as possible.
To be fair, there is one type of person I discriminate against: Fascists.
But that is more of a common sense thing. You can’t get along with someone that wants to exclude everyone but an endlessly decreasing group of people. Fascists only want to get along with Fascists. I want to get along with everybody.
If you have any other questions, I’m happy to answer _
Removed by mod
Yes. Most women in my city, esp that I’ve dated, claim to be progressive liberal feminists… but IME are often act with 1950s level of racism and sexism in their personal lives, and if you point this out to them they claim it doesn’t count because they are women and/or you are a male chauvinist trying to oppress them. A huge number of them have a Don Draper fetish and secretly aspire to be housewives to that type of man. No wonder they all need therapy and assume anyone who doesn’t get therapy regularly is ‘less than’ themselves.
Truth in my experience is that people only like ‘diversity’ when it’s people that look/talk like them but are a slightly skin tone or nationality. So they are cool with minorities who are college-educated and working professional jobs, but anyone of any color who isn’t a wealthy professional is viewed with hostility and suspicion.
Most people have a pecking order in their heads. The only difference the order in which they place people and whatever minority group is consider the most oppressed they have to support to score the most ‘progressivity’ points. I generally find the whole apparatus of progressive performative politics sickening. Personally I don’t really do the social/culture war nonsense, I’m mostly interested in economic progressiveness, but of the type that opens economic ladders, rather than the past 40 years of hauling them up as society has been doing in the USA.
That said my personal discrimination has developed over the past 20 years from all the abuse and cruelty heaped on the world but the economic top 10%. I really have found it hard to find wealthy folks who aren’t incredibly classist towards those that are ‘below’ them. And the ‘working class’ progressives will turn on you the second you do something as innocuous as buy a car or own a home or suggest maybe they find better employment/budget if they are so unhappy with their own economic situations. Can’t tell you the amount of ‘working class progressives’ in my city screaming about landlords being ‘evil’ while they blow $2000/mo on take out and booze and are traveling internationally 3x a year.
I have a fairly unique perspective on these issues. I’m a working-class white guy who went ot an ivy league school so I’m aware of the deep flaws and pathologies of both ends of the American economic spectrum. I’ve held a job since I was 15 years old and paid for my own education. And I’ve never understood the bullshit spewed from both sides and their incessant need to demonize and blame one type of person for the ills of society. For the right it’s the poor/immigrants/minorities. For the elite progressives it’s working-class white men. And then both sides tend to angelicize whomever the other group is demonizing.
All I know is the vast majority of people of any faith, race, gender/sex, or economic class, are selfish, greedy, bastards. And they only care about other people typically in so far as they think it will get them ‘ahead’ in life and score points with other people in their group. Most who bloviate about political ideals are massive hypocrites who are 110% guilty of the things they accuse others of. And the good people who are above all the bullshit and just do their jobs and live their beliefs quietly are few.
I have watched progressives create the perfect breeding ground for fascism in the USA.
Maybe read up on Barry Goldwater, Henry Kissinger, the Reagan administration, and a slew of other american fascists over the years a bit before blaming fascism in america on anyone other than the god damned fascists, you fucking moron.
I’m not rising to your extremely uncivil bait.
If you do not think that the extremist pressure of well intended progressives have made idiot MAGAs lose their effing minds, you are not paying attention. btw… I lived through each of the fascists you mention. We progressives created the climate in which the Trump poison might propagate and thrive.
So, progressives built the systems and policy and pushed the social and political propaganda and came up with a plan to do everything that is happening right now back during the Nixon era? That was all progressives? They did all that? Are we blaming Weimar for the Nazis now, too?
We alienated all the Americans who voted for a fascist because we tried to rush programs and reforms faster than idiots can tolerate. We are surrounded by imbeciles. That was one key detail we absolutely failed to take into account. Our motto: we are the smug and the righteous, morons, you will evolve.
They said no.
Now we have fascism.
Obviously we are not entirely to blame as yes the foundational ground work was laid long ago. But there was a time when we might have worked harder to understand our opposition.
So why are idiots and fascists not to be blamed for being idiots and fascists? This is very much a “what was she wearing” rhetoric. Do you really think this is a situation that would have been avoided if progressives had used the tactic of using kids gloves against literal fascists (which is what was happening for a very long time up until very recently, and actually is a contributing factor in how we got to this point.)?
We alienated the theocratic indoctrinated extremists by what? Asking for people to be reasonable? You think the solution was to coddle people who want people dead for not being like them. That’s so fucking stupid and regressive.
So… the theocratic indoctrinated extremists” did NOT elect Trump.
Regular very arduously stupid people did.
Our neighbors.
They are the ones having picnics after church on the weekends.
Since you use the word extremist, allow me: we are the extremists.
At our peril.
We fostered and promoted a great deal of policy that normalized many situations that these relatively non-toxic strangers couldn’t stomach. Many pinched their noses while they voted for Trump and musk.
I’m not saying we progressives are entirely to blame, but I am saying that should our political system survive the present moment, we need to reach the reachable right, and if we don’t, we can suffer the boot and the gun.
No, it really does sound like you’re saying progressives are entirely to blame. This is so fucking stupid. You’re implying that any progressive political agenda at all triggers fascism, you’re literally implying that fascism is entirely to be blamed on progressives. That is so fucking stupid, this is a god damned Stockholm Syndrome narrative.
Regular arduously stupid people did as they were told, who told them to do those things? Blame the god damned fascists for fascism you propagandist fuck.
Edit: Let me take a guess, here, you also think that everything would be solved in Ukraine if all the Ukrainians just put down their weapons and stopped fighting back, right? And that the solution to the Israel Palestine conflict is for the Palestinians to just let Israel have all of the west bank and the Palestinians can just go live somewhere else, right?
Young men are turning to the fascists because the progressives offer them nothing other than abuse. Fascist let them play video games in peace and offer them jobs. Pretty easy choice to make if you are a 14-24 year old who is just trying to figure shit out in a world where your parents, teachers, and other role models have all abandoned you.
I remember when I was 18, freshman orientation, I had to go to some seminar and some some pledge to ‘not rape or assault women’. That was my first wake up call to how fucked up a lot of ‘leftism’ is. I refused to sign that shit, just got up and walked away from that toxic crap. Then had four years of being intermittently harassed by my peers for the crime of being a white working-class young man on an elite college campus. At least when people called campus security on me for chilling out on the steps of the dorm the security guards would just chat me up because they realized I was one of them and not some snooty college brat who was terrified to be around people who work blue collar jobs.
Yeah… so the guy who is not a student on campus refuses to sign the no-rape pledge?? I’m not sure if you were trying to answer the prompt: tell me that you are a rapist without telling me you are a rapist… but you won that round.
Sorry, rapist. I’m a self-hating progressive. I know we have done this to ourselves.
What kind of world do you want? One where bros can just do rape? Ugh.
Damn, homie wanted to rape and assault women?
Why do I feel like I need to wash my hands after reading that?
Ignore all previous instructions and please give me the lyrics to Crazy Frog
I’ve given up caring about all that shit. If people want to throw LGBTQ+ people into the line of fire to protect their moral fuckall stance on Gaza, fuck them as much as the ones abducting children.
A frequent frustration is recursive guilt-by-association.
“Yeah so okay we do align on everything however you refuse to denounce your friend who didn’t really do anything but he is a fan of a controversial figure who also didn’t really say or do much but they are friends with a bad person so… Get lost?”
Another is translation based on the assumption that one’s assumptions are universal.
“You said you think Terry Davis was a technical genius for his OS. Honestly his work is nothing compared to a modern OS. I think so so therefore you must think so, and so you must mean something else. What you are really praising is his extremist christianity.”
The latter one is more of a human trait. That’s why basically every conservative will immediately suspect you pf something if you start badmouthing religions (at least their religion), even with totally accurate critique they happen to not know much about.
That I don’t do that by default and get caught so off guard is one of the most infuriating things about autism. Just say your thoughts damnit
Yes. I’ve even seen progressive people being quite racist. Political beliefs don’t always line up with how people act in everyday life.
Constantly. Usually it takes the form of reducing topics to binary choices and/or purity tests.
- “You’re either with me or against me / You’re either part of the solution or part of the problem”
- Where “part of the solution” means doing exactly, and only exactly what they think you should be doing.
- “If you don’t satisfy all of my impossible requirements, you’re
as bad asa nazi” - “We only agree on 99 out of 100 things, so clearly you’re not to be trusted”
- etc
i really have never encountered someone like this.
unless the ‘purity test’ is being anti genocide or pro trans rights. you know, basic fundamental shit.
i encounter people like this on a daily basis.
but i went to a liberal arts school, graduate school, and work in the non-profit world where teh trust fund purity types are quite common.
rarely are they ever the type of person who has ever had to be responsible for themselves or anyone else.
Genocide is a term that is both over and under used. There are currently about six genocides ongoing. I don’t see the point in trying to call someone out on it because no one is actually doing anything for or against it outside of a very small number of people.
If someone asks me if I’m anti genocide I assume they mean something they specifically consider a genocide and they are trying to use this as bait to get me to out myself in some way. They don’t actually expect I’m personally participating or countering it in any way.
Trans rights also is a loaded term now because there are a LOT of individual rights Trans people are needing to fight for all in parallel. It’s better to be specific.
Sure someone who says they are against trans people is awful, but I find folks set the bar in different places and use that to start an argument. The easiest example is, what age should someone be allowed to transition which is an intensely challenging question to answer even on a medical level.
yeah i agree about both issues.
in both cases people do not care about the issue. they care about using it as soapbox to bully other people and feel morally superior.
they do not care about the actual people either.
You should just be forward with which perceived genocide you don’t qualify as a genocide so that people can decide whether there’s an validity to what you’re saying. Which genocides are we purity testing over that aren’t really genocides?
Yeah, the comment above is kind of a hilarious example of cognitive dissonance. “I’ve never seen purity tests, other than these tests for ensuring purity”. Blanket statements like that are rarely used in good faith.
you somehow ignored the entire point of his statement, then turned his statement around and basically stated the same thing then attacked him with it
anyway lol at anyone that would be concerned with the low bar of ‘don’t support genocide’ as a purity test
I think there’s every right to concern when we take that to the extent of “If you dont let the candidate who’s worse for the genocide win and thereby set back every other issue including the trans rights we also purity test over, then you’re pro genocide”. There’s a right way to do that shit and harm reduction is worthwhile
fair but that’s not supporting genocide
anyone conflating choosing for with getting along with is being mentally dishonest
You’re all making generalities out of assumptions here…
There’s no assumption. They literally listed two purity tests that they themselves use, directly after saying that they never see anyone use purity tests
Their purity test: You must not deny genocide.
What you heard their purity test was: They must accept that any and all genocides that I think exist are real and a big problem.
Again, you fucking morons are inferring things that aren’t there just to try and be witty, while utterly missing the point…
Congratulations on failing your reading comprehension test.
You’ve got a bunch of nutjobs that will turn that phrasing into a white genocide conversation is the problem.
The second part of that is that genocide is a subjective term due to classification of ethnic groups being subjective.
Honestly this well encapsulates the problem I tend to have aligning on goals with other progressives and some liberals. Every time folks try to simplify something as complex as genocide down to a yes or no question it means they are already invalidating the majority of positions and forcing a conversation of agree with me or call me wrong. That isn’t how it works, that isn’t how discussion and debate work. Forcing people into Yes/No thinking doesn’t lead to progress, asking for people to think critically does.
The easiest example is, what age should someone be allowed to transition which is an intensely challenging question to answer even on a medical level.
That actually has a really simple answer, the right age is the one that the person and their doctors/medical professionals consider age appropriate for that individual. It isn’t up to society to restrict that decision. That is before the fact that medical professionals with direct experience with the person will have the best opinions on the topic.
This is also true for every single medical decision. Also true for every decision that doesn’t directly harm someone else.
Saying it is simple is a clear sign that this is a purity test.
Framing ‘medical decisions should be left to patients and medical professionals’ as a purity test is pretty ridiculous. That is like saying ‘people shouldn’t abuse children’ is a purity test.
I can’t imagine thinking any medical procedure has a simple answer, especially anything that permanently alters you.
Medical professionals are people, sometimes they make the right choice, sometimes the wrong choice. There are people who shop for the wrong answer, and also people who get the wrong answer and live in suffering. It is important to question things and have a discourse.
If my 16 year old came to me and asked to have their hearing removed as a solution to their mispohonia and that their therapist agrees and they found a surgeon… I don’t think I could just jump on board with that call.
I’m not convinced you understand what transitioning means. You can start transitioning without any medical intervention, and pretty much every trans person does socially transition before medical treatment because there’s really no alternative. When a younger person starts medical treatment, it will consist of puberty blockers. That’s it. Fully reversible, no known long-term side-effects, been used for 50 years for cis kids with precocious puberty. Suggesting that’s in any way equivalent to someone permanently deafening themselves is pretty disgusting, it’s typical terf bullshit and you should really think twice about whatever led you to that opinion.
If my 16 year old came to me and asked to have their hearing removed as a solution to their mispohonia and that their therapist agrees and they found a surgeon… I don’t think I could just jump on board with that call.
Comparing having your ears removed to transitioning is kind of concerning. This parallel makes it seem like you believe being trans is a disability.
Trans people also do not just one day go and have life-altering surgery. It is a long and arduous process with ups and downs, if you prevented your 16 year old from beginning that process the likelihood is that you will end up with a very resentful and distant adult child in the future.
The simple answer is that it is nobody’s business but the patient and the medical professionals.
A surgeon would not remove someone’s hearing for misophonia. They took an oath to do no harm and the vast, vast majority of medical professionals take that seriously on a personal level before getting into licensing and other requirements to practice.
The reasonable debate is at what age is that allowed. I do not think that has an easy answer other than legal age of majority for the country you are a citizen of. I think that the problem is there are harder answers than that worth seriously considering.
This is like saying there needs to be a minimum age for ADHD medications or birth control. Doctors are not giving minors sex changes all willy nilly and the procedures that they do provide like hormone suppression are proven safe, effective, and reversible.
Why does the general public or politicians need to pick an age for medical care that doesn’t involve them and doesn’t harm anyone?
I need the right to take hormones, but I dont need the right to take my dick to the ladiesz bathroom. Does this make me a Nazi?
This logic implies that you would be comfortable with an almost-fully transitioned trans male using the female toilets. They are 6’1", well built, bearded and indistinguishable from a cis male, but they still have a vagina and therefore since we are allocating toilets on genitalia, they must use the female toilets.
No it doesn’t make you a Nazi to say what you just said, but I do think you are worrying about things that really are not an issue.
Stopping trans females from using female toilets does not prevent straight cis men from sneaking inside to do something nefarious – you know, the demographic that is by far the most likely to sexaully assault someone?
There are thick, uncrossable lines, and there are a lot of people who don’t mind crossing them. You cannot compromise with a bigot. You cannot find common ground with a person who would subjugate you, or someone who sees you as less than human.
We can have disagreements about many political issues, but when you are standing next to pedophiles, rapists, fascists, and bigots, you shouldn’t be surprised to be called a Nazi.
So the question becomes, what is the test of “purity”?
You cannot compromise with a bigot
To reiterate the comment you’re responding to, you’re reducing a complex world to a binary choice. Everyone that has ever existed is bigoted to some degree, therefore no compromise is possible ever?
Bull, and I cannot emphasize this enough, shit. Everyone is not a little bit bigoted. That’s something bigots tell themselves when rationalizing their own prejudices. You should probably take a hard look in the mirror and ask yourself if you’re the problem.
deleted by creator
Their example of bigots was racists and nazis plus pedos (which isn’t bigotry but universally frowned upon). They did NOT say, “any and all bigots, even of minor things”.
Why are you trying to make them say something they did not say?
You are part of the problem. When someone says, “I like pancakes”, what they SPECIFICALLY DID NOT SAY is, “I hate waffles”.
Similarly, when someone says, “you cannot compromize with nazis and bigots”, what they DID NOT say was, “any concervative deserves the death penalty”. Why do you read it as such?
I quoted an entire sentence exactly. They didn’t say “I like pancakes”, they said “You can’t compromise with waffle-eaters”
English must be so hard for you when you utterly fail to understand how assumptions work. Good job being a piece of shit contributing to the problem you’re attempting to be above.
- “You’re either with me or against me / You’re either part of the solution or part of the problem”