Mastodawn

🅰🅻🅸🅲🅴 (🌈🦄)Feb 26

I'm not a car person, so I never really paid attention to car makes or models before. Sure, I knew that there were Hondas and Hyundais, but unless someone was actively pointing them out, I couldn't tell you which was which.

Then I became the owner of a little red Ford Focus, and I started driving it around.

Next thing I knew, I was spotting them *everywhere*. I'd come out of the grocer and there'd be identical ones parked on both sides of me! Hell, I eventually got a window decal so I could more easily tell which was mine 😋

A couple years ago I discovered I was lactose intolerant, and—bear with me, these stories are connected—I started keeping lactaid with me wherever I went (just to be safe). I started paying attention to just how much dairy was in things, and wow, spoiler: it's in like *everything* 😅

Over the past couple years, I've gotten pretty used to being lactose intolerant. I keep lactase handy, and I watch out for things with "too much dairy". It's just become background noise—like noticing other Ford Focuses (Foci?). It's just part of my life now.

A couple months ago I got propositioned by a creep in my hotel's lobby.

A couple weeks ago I had slurs yelled at me as I walked down the street with my mom.

A couple days ago someone told me to kill myself in a DM.

Every day, someone says "really? I don't see stuff like that here".

🅰🅻🅸🅲🅴 (🌈🦄)

Just to be explicit, that post was about how all the institutionalized/everyday/inherent sexism, racism, homophobia, bigotry, etc. is invisible to most folx until it directly impacts them.

Just like I don't see 99% of the racism that #BlackMastodon does until someone points an example out to me, and just like I would've told you that I don't know anyone who drives a red Ford Focus until I started driving one myself.

It's fucking everywhere...

And to those it affects, it's just the background noise of existing while black/queer/femme/disabled/neurodivergent, and so on.

DJGummikuh Feb 27

@alice the point about that for me is that I truely don't understand what motivates those people, and in this I have some form of symapthy for peoples ignorance. It simply doesn't fit these people's (mine included) perception of society - not even closely - so it feels like you are talking about some other species. This makes it all the more important to ensure that everybody affected by this human garbage has a chance to be heard. Especially by people with the power to do something about it

DJGummikuh Feb 27

@alice I am not trying to justify this behavior in any way. I just kind of understand why many people have a hard time to believe these story since they are SO FAR outside the envelope they assume possible

@alice You have probably heard this, and I can't recall the source, but what you describe has been called the opposite of empathy ...

It's mepathy

I can't empathise until it happens to me.

@rhempel thanks, I hate it! It's an excellent term for the problem, but I hate that we NEED a word for that.

Hugs4friends ♾🇺🇦 🇵🇸😷Feb 27

@alice I did actually understand your later point, and I am sorry if I seemed obtuse. However, I do tend to see patterns of racism, sexism, bigotry, and so-called phobias (which are actually arseholery in a trite package). I am #ActuallyAutistic, also. I don't need to be smacked in the face to see prejudice.

Aria.DNE [grim]Feb 27

@alice Last year we discovered my partner was allergic to (among many other things) a very specific ingredient found in a lot of soap products (shampoo, conditioner, dish soap, laundry detergent, moisturizer, etc.) Sometimes it's not even on the ingredients list! Even products specifically meant to be hypoallergenic and for sensitive skin.

Also queer, disabled, food sensitivities and limitations...

Yeah. This shit is real.

Sydney / Prophet 🏳️‍⚧️🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿Mar 1

@grim_elsewhere @alice Maybe this is why my skin decides to turn into Dragon scales whenever I use a product I haven't before, What specific ingredient is it? I'd like to maybe bring it up to my doctor to see if it's maybe the same thing which I'm allergic to, well I'm allergic to everything but still, might help.

Also I'm allergic to Simple Soap, the "sensitive skin" soap, I'm just allergic to everything honestly

Aria.DNE [grim]Mar 1

@ProphetsCross In our case, it's decyl glucoside:

https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/Decyl-glucoside

Decyl Glucoside

Decyl Glucoside | C16H32O6 | CID 62142 - structure, chemical names, physical and chemical properties, classification, patents, literature, biological activities, safety/hazards/toxicity information, supplier lists, and more.

The Great Llama

@alice
This is exactly why I follow the fediblock hashtag. People have valid criticisms of that as a system to deal with bad actors, but I use it to understand the background level of harassment that happens around here. It's not a perfect system, but at least it keeps me somewhat aware of shit that never touches me personally.

disorderlyf Feb 27

@alice While I truly don't see it on this site, I'm fully aware there's easily thousands, tends of thousands even, of accounts and instances the admins of the instance I use have successfully whacked the banhammer at are largely why that's the case. I also deliberately don't hang out in large spaces on the internet because even the best intentioned and most respected mods in sufficiently large spaces will have people slip through the cracks.

I'm not saying anyone is at fault for not doing either of those things. I wish I didn't feel the need to do it for my own mental health. I wish I could feel comfortable that I could exist in larger spaces than I do with less aggressive moderation without suddenly facing an onslaught of precisely the abuse you described and more I suspect you didn't but also go through as someone with a significantly larger presence than my own.

[edited to fix a typo]

@disorderlyf @alice oh yeah the structure of the Fediverse compounds systemic blindness significantly. Even for trivial things we have very different views of what happens here. Even more so than on the commercial silos.

disorderlyf Feb 27

@oblomov @alice Honestly, it's been hard for me to use more mainstream social media because everything being centralised means I start to run into shit I never run into here pretty quickly.

Jens Finkhäuser Feb 27

@alice I can confidently claim that I've been that person. No, confidently does not mean proudly.

I have episodes etched in my brain of accidentally being shitty and realizing later from thirty+ years ago. I managed to apologize sometimes with a delay of a decade or more.

The realization that you've been an arsehole hurts. What hurts even more is seeing a pattern and realizing that *even if you try*, you will likely fail again.

But I can promise everyone this: it gets easier.

In fact...

Jens Finkhäuser Feb 27

@alice ... it ends up being easier than constantly fighting off the notion that shitty things you don't see still exist.

I recall with intense clarity the shock (I grew up well protected and love my parents for this) when I was confronted with the facts about the abuse my friends endured. It took me months to process.

Then realizing how I contributed to making things worse for them, even though they fully understood me to be kind and harmless, was the kind of thing your brain begs you to deny.

Jens Finkhäuser Feb 27

There's an expression in German that translates as "an end in terror is better than terror without end", and it kind of applies here.

There is no end, really.

But fighting through this denial, however unpleasant it is, is way, way easier than having to keep pretending on a daily basis that the world other people experience is not real.

I genuinely think that if you read @alice 's post, and your brain does "maybe, but...", that you're better off stopping right there and facing this.
Selfishly.

Jens Finkhäuser Feb 27

@alice Oh, and you'll play a role in helping others.

In the grand scheme of things, that matters more, sure. But not when you're fully immersed in that river in Egypt.

Wouter 🇳🇱🇧🇷🇧🇪Feb 27

@alice Sometimes I feel, Alice, that just about the whole of humanity is corrupt. Racism, homophobia, misogyny, discrimination on any grounds whatsoever. It happens on a massive scale and everywhere. Non-stop.

Regardless of whether we see it or not and have to stand up for those who are affected by it, I struggle with the intrinsic corruption of so many of my fellow human beings.

K_L_Cooper Feb 27

@alice
Yeah, that red Ford Focus is skewing Ur outlook just a tad❗️🙄👀

hot tran*sexual menace Feb 27

@alice
There's also this specific mastodon phenomenon that the OP sees all replies while the rest only see's a fraction. So people can physically not see the harassment exposed e.g. women on this platform(s) here receive. Especially if their instances are blocking the offenders but not the one hosting the affected person.

Thijs_Goverde Feb 27

@alice
I don´t know what's worse, the fact that we, as a society, are in such a horrible place or the fact that we (again: as a society) have such a hard time *seeing* we're actually in that spot.

Ofc, if we really saw it we probably wouldn't be there.

Wayne Werner Feb 27

@alice as a cis white male growing up in USA, I can unequivocally agree.

I think I've always seen bigotry, a little, but the micro aggressions, the constant everyday bias, was less visible.

Until I noticed it in myself.

And realized at twenty something that nothing was gone. Except perhaps some overtly legal protection for bigotry.

But now that I know where to look? Everywhere!

The Chaotic Good🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈Feb 27

@ketmorco @alice the worst bit about this is how everyone who doesn’t see it gaslights those who do.

it’s exhausting.

Wayne Werner Feb 28

@aminorjourney @alice aggressively so. Either they're so invested in their cognitive dissonance that they refuse to accept a different reality, or they see the evil and know it's wrong but happily lie to preserve their own power over others

So. Gross. 😮‍💨

Danger Bird 🪐 ✨Feb 27

@alice Yep. It's even worse when you realize that because of how federation works, you *only* get some of the subtle/microaggressive stuff unless you're on an instance with HELLA relays.

At full blast, that shit's the equivalent of the sound of walking by a gigantic wasp nest.

@alice This in conjunction with the car-related analogy has made me realize... we actually do experience something along similar lines, though not nearly as severe as harassment

we used to drive a saturn vue, which is not a huge car (by american standards) but also not a small one. but then several years ago we got a toyota prius, and ever since then driving at night has been unbearable
-F

@alice this is because many, *many* cars have headlights that shine directly into the rearview mirror of the car in front of them, but only if that car is small enough, a problem we had never encountered before and now can't escape

it makes me wonder, just how much did we contribute to that problem before knowing about it
-F