Thread by @Aella_Girl

Imagine you're raised in a culture where dancing is bad, but you really like dancing. You dance anyway because you love it, and then people are like, "you just love being rebellious. You're looking for any way you can to stick it to the man, to make people mad at you." 1/

And you're like, no, I love dancing.
But in this world, it's very rare for people to *actually* like dancing, so they see you dance and then, with extreme confidence, tell you your attempts at being edgy are pathetic, cause in their mind "actually liking dancing" isn't an option.

Maybe you're frustrated with the fact ppl get mad at your dancing, so sometimes you dance to make a point. Maybe sometimes you're like "fuck it, I'm gonna dance in front of you hard, to show I can, to express, and also maybe to show you it's okay, nothing bad is happening."

And so eventually, it becomes hard to distinguish for you why you're dancing. You started off just enjoying it, but now it's deeply intertwined with other people's reactions to you, and your values, and your anger and your love and your freedom.

And maybe when the entire world confidently tells you you're rebellious, and laughing at you as a liar when you insist no, maybe you eventually start to believe them. After all, don't u sometimes dance to make a point? Doesn't their anger actually cause you to dance harder?

And you keep dancing, but some part of you starts to believe you don't *really* like dancing, you're doing it because you're bad, you're unkind, you're trying to hurt people, you're traumatized, you're an edgelord. Your expression is trivial, dismissible, stupid.

And maybe one day someone comes along and is like "wow, your dancing is amazing, it's wonderful to see that in a world where everyone thinks dancing is so bad,"
and then suddenly you remember actually yes, you do love dancing, actually it's fucked up the world doesn't like it

and you get this new level of fury for the world constantly trying to gaslight you into the worst possible motivations for the thing that you love, because they can't comprehend that you might be genuine and honest in an expression they find foreign or threatening.

And maybe now when people tell you you're a rebellious edgelord, it hurts in some new way, like it's not just a misunderstanding but an attack on your understanding of yourself, and you become defensive about it, on guard.

And maybe the worst of all is when friends, or people close to you, who you thought maybe know you, joke about you dancing in order to piss people off. It's not like, totally wrong, but fuck, you have to be vigilant about knowing your own motivations everywhere, nowhere is safe.

And maybe you just want to scream at everyone, "I just love dancing, and it's okay, and I want to show you it's okay, and just because I have to rebel against you in order to dance doesn't mean my 'real' goal is rebellion. Also, fuck you"

(re: comments, I haven't seen the movie footloose and no this is not about sex)