basically emotional manipulation and guilt tripping as social justice praxis is pointless and not sustainable imo. it doesn’t promote real growth or solidarity if the entire basis of your activism is stemming from guilt or fear
it’s also worth pointing out that it turns “social justice” into something uncomfortably like religion. it establishes patterns of behavior that you’re expected to follow, not necessarily because you understand them or agree with them, but because you are afraid of the consequences if you don’t. it turns communities of “activists” into self-aggrandizing moralistic pissing contests, where the pecking order is defined by who knows more of the rules, and who is more willing to enforce them on others (usually, by any means necessary). it encourages ideological purity and discourages debate, discussion, education, and subsequent individual and community growth.
“So when I found activist culture, with its powerful ideas about privilege and oppression and its simmering, explosive rage, I was intoxicated. I thought that I could purge my self-hatred with that fiery rhetoric and create the family I wanted so much with the bond that comes from shared trauma.
Social justice was a set of rules that could finally put the world into an order that made sense to me. If I could only use all the right language, do enough direct action, be critical enough of the systems around me, then I could finally be a good person.
All around me, it felt like my activist community was doing the same thing – throwing ourselves into “the revolution,” exhausting ourselves and burning out, watching each other for oppressive thoughts and behavior and calling each other on it vociferously.Occasionally – rarely – folks were driven out of community for being “fucked up.” More often, though, attempts to hold people accountable through call-outs and exclusion just exploded into huge online flame wars and IRL drama that left deep rifts in community for years. Only the most vulnerable – folks without large friend groups and social stability – were excluded permanently.
Like my blood family, my activist family was re-enacting the trauma that we had experienced at the hands of an oppressive society. Just as my father once held open the door to our house and demanded that I leave because he didn’t know how to reconcile his love for me with my gender identity, we denounced each other and burned bridges because we didn’t know how reconcile our social ideals with the fact that our loved ones don’t always live up to them.
I believe that sometimes we did this [..] in part so that we could focus on the failings of others and avoid examining the complicity with oppression, the capacity to abuse, that exists within us all. And I believe we did it in part because sometimes it’s impossible to imagine any other way: We live in a disposability culture – a society based on consumption, fear, and destruction – where we’re taught that the only way to respond when people hurt us is to hurt them back or get rid of them.
