Thread by @seananmcguire

You can be ableist without malice.
You can be misogynistic while female.
You can be racist without meaning to.
You can be fat-phobic while fat.

We live in the world. We pick up the attitudes of the world. They're environmental damage.

I am a fat queer disabled neuroatypical woman. All of these things have been true for a long time. I came out at fifteen. I still couldn't imagine queer romances for a long time. I live in the world. I internalized homophobia despite being queer myself.

I regained a lot of weight after I lost the ability to walk due to my damaged foot. I think my fat girlfriend is the most beautiful woman in the world. I still stopped letting people take my picture because I hated looking at myself. I internalized fatphobia despite being fat.

I am, non-ironically, non-pejoratively, crazy in the medical sense. I have OCD, PTSD, and depression. I still flung around ableist slurs like they were candy until someone pointed it out. I've only realized in the last year that I need to be more careful about sensory terms.

We are not perfect people who can't hate the things we are. If anything, self-loathing comes way too easily to most of us. So if someone says "That thing you just said about (group you belong to) was shitty," try not to be defensive, and listen. They're probably right.

Also. If you say, do, or think something that falls into one of these categories, that doesn't make you an automatic bad person forever. I think part of why we get so resistant to examining our own biases is the alarm in the back of our heads going...

...THAT THOUGHT WAS A FATPHOBIC THOUGHT! THAT IDEA WAS A HOMOPHOBIC IDEA! IF YOU ADMIT THOSE THINGS, YOU'RE A BAD PERSON! A BAD PERSON FOREVER! GO TO YOUR CAVE OF SHAME! And that's not so.

Patterns of behavior. Intentional persistence. Malice. Those all matter. Everyone is thoughtlessly harmful at some point in our lives. Apologize, admit, and try to do better. You are not BAD FOREVER because you fucked up once.