Mastodawn

🅰🅻🅸🅲🅴 (🌈🦄)

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".

🅰🅻🅸🅲🅴 (🌈🦄)Feb 27

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

Hugs4friends ♾🇺🇦 🇵🇸😷Feb 26

@alice Amazing, isn't it? The brain's response to finding one's tribe.

I don't see a lot of the bad stuff, not because I skip over it, but because I have blocked with abandon.

I'm not saying this to tell others to block like me (I did it to excess actually), but to explain to those who do not see the bad posts that there might be a reason they don't see them. Not everyone here has the same experience. Also, different instances might block whole other instances.

So, when someone says they are being harassed, believe them the first time they say it.

There are a lot of people who don't see it in the physical world either. Women often don't talk about these things in public. I'm not victim blaming. There's lots of reasons for that, not least of which is a credible fear of retaliation. Probably other reasons that I'm not aware of, too.

Men, of course, rarely see gendered abuse and so can ignore or deny it if they choose. Even abusers, incredibly, do this.

Nicole Parsons Feb 27

@bruce @bjb @alice

Efforts to discuss examples of bigotry or harassment will often get you redirected to HR or suggestions for therapy, that's how bad the deliberate blindness of privilege works

The physical health problems that arise from social ecosystems of unacknowledged white supremacy.

People with high blood sugars & pre-diabetes despite good dietary & exercise habits.

Young POC with heart attacks.

Cortisol overload from the stress of being in an environment of unwarranted hate

@Npars01 @bruce @[email protected] @alice and on an ableism front, people rarely notice the way they use "blindness" to mean ignorance 😋

Hugs4friends ♾🇺🇦 🇵🇸😷Feb 27

@inherentlee True. Casual ableism is using blind and deaf in the wrong context. Worse still, is the failure to acknowledge how much more ableism is in common phrases and words used unthinkingly. How few Women's Associations include BIPOC in their groups, or Disabled.☹😳 @Npars01 @bruce @alice

@Npars01 @bruce @bjb @alice With HR of course being there to cover the company's ass and absolutely not being one's friend.

Reportedly they will even frequently side with the abusers.

suggestions for therapy,

Cauterizing or stitching a stab wound doesn't fix the fact there's someone going around stabbing people for shit & giggles. It's horrendous and ridiculous for that to happen.

Anything rather than addressing the problem.

Juniper 🏳️‍⚧️🌲Feb 27

@alice and even if you don't see it, it doesn't take that much awareness to understand that (a) you don't see everything here, and (b) "I don't see stuff like that" is a really unhelpful comment.

@alice Oh my Godlessnes, this is horrible ☹️ I've only been recently introduced to the notion of "minority stress" so I'm everything but an expert in this, but this seems to be part of it.
So, I just want to throw in a few encouraging words. I've been following you here for a while, and not only do I think that you are valid in every aspect of you that you are showing or telling about here... I also love your posts, be they about your interests, or NSFW content, or about politics.
Plus, you're among the people online who help me get a glimpse of that better part of the USA population that hasn't gone Trumpist, and frankly this is so good for my mental health and my trust in humanity.
So I'm sending love and support and I wish you the best!

Flipper 🐬🏳️‍🌈Feb 27

@alice A coworker punched me lightly on the arm. When I snapped at them, they got all offended. It was just a little punch, it couldn't have hurt. Now I was the bad guy, complaining about something so inconsequential. Problem was, every else in the office had done the same earlier and my arm was already sore. So now I had a sore arm and was the office asshole.

This is a story about microaggression.

GreatLakeTrout Feb 27

We stand with you. You are not the office asshole. I don physically touch anyone at the office and I think that is a respectful decision

Flipper 🐬🏳️‍🌈Feb 27

@greatlaketrout i just want to make it clear: this is not a real story, it's metaphorical.

I don't suffer from microaggressions. I just see people who do. It's possible that I am the office asshole, but not for the reasons in the story.

@alice ehehehe i remember having very fun going to 9/11 museum as brown youngish masc-presenter with a large black backpack

Anarcho-Daddy Feb 27

@alice this is a really excellent vignette.. good writing!

Off topic, but I have a friend who is lactose intolerant.

She grew up on a dairy farm.

Fate is a cruel bastard.

dragonfrog Feb 27

@alice i think part of the issue is the weird privacy settings - i can reply to a public post with a DM or "followers only" post that's visible to *my* followers not those of the person I'm replying to. Presumably if I'm a serial harasser, I'm not going to have a lot of normal decent people among my followers.

And from my victim's POV they made a public post and got threats or abuse in reply and nobody is standing up for them.

dragonfrog Feb 27

@alice in that moment the victim is going to be understandably shocked and triggered, not paying close attention to subtle UI elements telling them that everyone else in the thread probably can't see the abuse they're facing.

I don't have a solution to the problem, but I see it as a problem with the mechanics of the protocol. Changing the protocol wouldn't make abuse go away of course but it might help a bit.

@alice I only hope I last as long as my 1993 Ford Escort did - 545,000 kms! Like me, it's moving parts began to freeze up over time so that only the driver door would open. But it kept moving and stayed active!

Toekneegee Feb 27

@alice
I absolutely agree, having had similar (but very different) experiences with race-based discrimination. Let's just say that I'm "one of the good ones."

Catherine is not complacent Feb 27

@alice how can people not see? What kind of glorified safe space bubble do they drift through life in?
I was literally composing a post about how the bad was getting worse when I read this.
I should probably just go to bed now.

@alice
Okay, when I started reading this, I wanted to reply with the ADHD-joke about Ford Focus...

But then your toot took a dark turn and I don't feel it's appropriate anymore. And yes, I can relate, you start spotting patterns when they start to affect you.

@alice that's an interesting line from the Baader–Meinhof phenomenon to our perception of these things.

Todd Knarr Feb 27

@alice It's a matter of viewpoint. As a white person, I don't attract racism against blacks. I only see it when I happen to cross paths with a black person at just the right time to see it directed at them. That black person, though, sees it EVERY TIME it's directed at them. We're both seeing the same world, but from two radically different viewpoints due to our different skin colors. Too many people don't take that into account.

AlexanderVI Feb 27

You've never had white people say racist things to you in a kind of "we're on the same team, brother" way?

Todd Knarr Feb 27

@AlexanderVI @alice Not very often, and usually not more than once. Worst case, twice.

Sometimes I don't recognize it until someone else calls it out, but you learn new things all the time and I count that call-out as "once".

My own family members say things with racist subtext literally all the time

It's the kind of racism that people ignore because it's the "polite" kind that isn't nazis and the KKK. It bothered me as a kid, and it bothers me now.

The ol' tealeg 🐡Feb 27

@alice yup. I’m an immigrant in Germany, but an affluent, white, CIS, male and a native English speaker. I’ve never been subject to xenophobia. Hell, I’ve even been actively courted by AfD canvassers.

It would be easy for me to believe this evil doesn’t exist in Germany, but I speak to colleagues who hail from Africa or Asia. Their life looks quite different to mine. The same for women, trans folks, people with facial tattoos, …

Privilege is often invisible when you have it.

Adrianna Tan Feb 27

@tealeg @alice people say ni hao to me all the time in Germany.. yes even Berlin. :/

@alice
Yeah, my kids are POC. When I tell some of my fellow humans about the racial struggles my minions have had in a predominantly white neighbourhood.

They honestly thought, they were better than it. Highlighting it in their own backyard has created some enemies and some who wanted significant change.

Keep at it. Keep pushing, keep killing it.

K_L_Cooper Feb 27

@alice
Hmm... it's just possible U may want to upgrade to a Ford Mustang or Dodge Charger -- U'r definitely lacking SPICE-in-Ur-life❗️😃

@alice We've got an EV, and my husband often says, "Look at that EV over there." and I always reply "Where?" because to me it's just another car.