this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2023
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Got into the Atheist youtubers, then they moved onto anti-SJW and I stuck around. Thought I was being an enlightened logical centrist, "both sides are bad" and all that. So I figured modern feminists were overreacting.
Then the MAGA movement ramped up, now abortion rights are gone. Also since then I discovered I'm trans and now LGBT rights are at stake.
Wow, something very similar happened to me! Instead of realising I was trans, I got a lot of queer friends and felt actual love and suddenly I was 100 times more empathetic which horrified me when I thought of how nasty I’d thought of people before.
HRT helped me actually feel again, and empathy made me realize that thinking "logic is superior" is really stupid and even thinking there's a seperation between emotion and logic in politics is really stupid. Oftentimes logic is just justification and obfuscation of an emotional opinion.
The final nail in the coffin for me was when I stumbled on this Martin Luther King quote about how the moderate is the true obstacle for civil rights, those "who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom".
It made me realize how stupid it is to negotiate with fascists and bureaucracy. That we should get angry, we should get emotional, we should get active and maybe violent, when we see human beings stop being treated as such.
What a ride! Honestly glad you are better, even if the world is not.
Really makes me look back on the days of us making fun of women with dyed hair shrieking over Trump winning. They were right, they were reacting appropriately and I was a fool to not see it. (Just want to emphasize that I'm not a Trump supporter, I just didn't think things would get this bad)