JFC. This woman need a course correction, but I’m not giving her one in the comments. Here’s the skinnified version of what she said:
My being offended is a choice; take a few breaths before responding; consider the source; discern if it was intentional; interrogate the sense of being offended, is it you or the circumstances; locate the part of you that feels victimized; send yourself loving energy rather than going off; listen to the opposing perspective; release yourself of the duty to police other people’s views; wait 24 hours to respond; and I’m quoting #11 in full because it’s SUCH BULLSHIT I WANT YOU TO SAVOUR er EXPERIENCE ITS EXCESSIVELY SHITTY QUALITY: “11. Remind yourself that we are a collective, and that the person that “wronged” you is from the same Source as you. We all have the same “cosmic DNA”. So hating them is hating you”; see the lesson from the offence as a gift; don’t stay offended.
I’ll be simple, I’ll be brief. Imagine giving this advice to a Black person who’s reading about how Black people are terrible workers; to a trans woman who’s experiencing harassment from cis-magats on the internet; to a woman reading something about feminism and allyship from the man who raped her; to an Indigenous person being mocked for eating country food when they could be vegan and ‘save the planet’; or a Jew sent the long-nosed Pepe meme; or a disabled queer person encouraged to just die already and quit ‘draining the public purse’.
THE ADVICE LOOKS DIFFERENT NOW DOESN’T IT. Don’t tell me who I can’t hate, you peccary-approximate clickbaiter. Listen to the opposing perspective when THEY WANT TO KILL ME and or MY FRIENDS. GET FUCKED! NO, SERIOUSLY! AFTER YOU!
Kelly Albano wrote the above noted clickbait. I’d like to annoy her until she drops the pretence that she’s calm, but I have other shit to do today than tell another white woman that she’s totally fucking clueless about how this feel-good advice appears during climate crisis, fascism on the march, destroyed norms of media balance and public behaviour, kids incarcerated and separated from their parents for being brown and poor, and the future of our young people destroyed by crony capitalism. Fuck you, Kelly Albano. Stay in your bubble and quit posting crap.
Yes yes, Kelly, this is advice for something that ‘offends you’ — not for something that’s an existential threat. BUT YOU KNOW WHAT, you oft-scratched scab, white women have this tremendous tendency to send shit like this to marginalized people. Yup, I see it ALL THE FUCKING TIME on twitter; they will repurpose this feelgoodery to douchewaddery in four seconds flat and some poor schlub who’s legit angry is going to get told to wind it in by a thirty-five year old white woman who’s never been stopped by the cops for anything and who thinks this shit’s a blessing on a troubled world, when it’s just going to get used to hurt people who aren’t ‘evolved enough’ – Jesus wept – not to get angry when someone’s trying to KILL THEM.
And I’m not talking on twitter about this. The idea that someone I know might forward this shite to a marginalized person who’s suffering is fuckin’ more than I can handle.
When I provided the list of imaginary marginalized people, please be aware that I have viewed abuse on twitter that was exactly as described in this post. I changed two of them to make them less identifiable, but all that shit is REAL and it happened, and shure as shit Sunshine Sally the relentlessly upbeat white woman will drag something like this up to crosspost it and use it like a fuckin’ nightstick made of empathy failure.
and another thing – I know that if she ever reads this she’s going to think that I’m deranged. BUT ALL SHE HAD TO DO WAS SAY AT THE OUTSET THAT HER ADVICE DOESN’T APPLY IN ANYTHING BUT NON-LIFE-THREATENING SITUATIONS OR TO MARGINALIZED PEOPLE WHO ARE FREQUENTLY BULLIED AND EXCLUDED FROM DISCOURSE.
The fact that she didn’t is how I knew she’s white, AND cis AND able-bodied. Because if there’s one goddamned thing white women are trained not to think about, it’s their privilege. “I don’t need to apologize for the natural order, after all.”
“To take the attitude of putting your head in the sand and raise it to the level of federal policy is just the purest of tyranny, as tyranny was diagnosed by Plato. The tyrant doesn’t want to hear the bad news.” — Tim Snyder,
@gaslitnation on twitter and elsewhere, speaking of Trump
me refashioning the statement for this post:
to take the attitude that you should just calm yourself when confronted with offensive material (which in the case of white people is just *numb* yourself, because we’re allowed to with fewer consequences) and make it a matter of personal policy is just the purest of foolishness, as folly is defined by yours truly. The fool finds ways not to hear the bad news *inherent* in the offensive material (you know, world’s dyin’, kid, shit’s gettin’ real, but I’m going to drag your kid on twitter for being six and not able to sit still) hears it anyway, and keeps pretending both that she didn’t hear and that she needs to ‘rise above it’ by numbing herself to its implications, thus trapping herself in a network of cognitive springes.
Imagine publishing something about being offended during a pandemic and NOT expecting me to come mounted on my genetically modified capybarabus. (tagline, “I’m calm, but if I step on you, you’re dead.)
We’re all more irritable. Please help me direct my energy into something better, not a fifteen minute self numbing exercise, the world’s on fire you fucking fraud. Well Jeff if you’ve read this far can I get a gold star for the rant.