Thread by @LeiracalMuse

"Not All" guns are loaded, but someone who thinks safety is important treats EVERY gun as loaded until they confirm otherwise.

If you want to help improve the world, inspect and abandon your need to defend yourself from the actions around you that you accommodate more than this.

https://twitter.com/RockingJamboree/status/1632352474710286336

Allyship so often falters at the point where someone is asked to accept that they're part of a problematic privileged group.

It *specifically* falters when they're asked to see and comprehend:

They accommodate the problematic behavior in their lives more than the marginalized.

When pools were integrated in the 1960s, violent mobs of white people assaulted any person of color for miles around the pool.

"Allies" within city governments paved the pools over instead of arresting the violent mob.

Many of those concrete monuments to cowardice stand today.

We don't become a society of bigotry and bias because too many of us hold terrible views.

We become a society of bigotry and bias because too many of us are willing to accommodate bigotry and bias in a way that we DO NOT accommodate its targets.

Quietly paving over the pools.

If you've never confronted a cishet male ignorant of intimate responsibilities to his partners - an emotional need for him to embrace all forms of intimacy they need with *enthusiasm* - if you can't confront ONE as loud as *this* #NotAllMen cry, then yes, you add to the problem.

Our society does not have most of these issues because "all men" believe in them.

We have them because "most men" - along with most other privileged - prioritize their comfort, and they're more comfortable making it marginalized people's problem that they give privilege space.

I'm a late-bloomer trans woman who prioritized the bigotry of others, who catered to their privileged need not to be challenged by my existence, who bent herself until she broke trying to stop offending their sensibilities.

I fit that anecdote provided for most of my adult life.

I was terrible because **I had hang-ups** about sex, mostly centering around a complete disconnect between internal programming and external tools.

But in living in that space, I recognized - and *contributed* to - most of the male culture things that make this SO pervasive.

It's easy for me to say "yeah, no matter the age, we don't teach men shit in this space, least of all what a woman's needs are and how important to intimacy it is to fulfill those needs *enthusiastically* because they're a partner, and really, none of this is stranger than PiV!"

It was real easy for me to see my part in it, even if I was never in the group, only treated as one.

It was easy because I LISTENED TO WOMEN.

When women started talking about what men fail at, so frequently that gross qualifiers are unnecessary, I prioritized their experience.

#NotAllMen is a farce because it's the cry of retreat from someone who isn't ready to see that, effectively, #YesAllWomen deal with the problem at hand.

Meaning the problem at hand is how we give terrible men space to be terrible.

That's something ALL of us need to do better.//