🅰🅻🅸🅲🅴 (🌈🦄)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".

Show thread🅰🅻🅸🅲🅴 (🌈🦄)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.

Show threadJens FinkhäuserFeb 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...

Show threadJens FinkhäuserFeb 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.

Show threadJens Finkhäuser

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.

Feb 27 at 7:01amWeb
Show threadJens FinkhäuserFeb 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.