It is very dumb to shut down actually progressive conversation in a thread where most folks are just void posting about Kanye West or Jesse Lacey or insert X band that no one is surprised did a problematic thing again There are also most certainly more sensitive ways to communicate how even our loved ones contribute to systems of oppression without insisting to obviously well meaning users that their family members are bad people
nah if your family member is a cop or in the military its ACAB including your Uncle and anti imperialism including your brother on a warship. voting for marco rubio is similar
The thing that really aggravated me about last night is... alright, of course no one here knows my brother or what he's like so they have no choice but to ask questions, but it's the instant assumption that by conservative I mean something abhorrent and not something related to economics or about foreign policy. My brother is anti-war, he's socially conscious, and he believes people should be left alone if they're happy and not hurting others. And while there are things I disagree with him on, we're both equally dissatisfied with the state of the world and want it to change. I could go on, but my point isn't to write a dissertation on my brother, it's to stress how frustrating it is that the worst immediately and vehemently gets assumed. I even slightly expected this which is why I chose the word "conservative" instead of "Republican".
I’m not trying to pile on you but you are making something about you that isn’t. No one knew anything about your brother or was making him the boogeyman here. Because no one knew anything about your brother. You brought him up as seemingly a gotcha to say Not All Conservatives and are now acting like he was being unnecessarily attacked out of nowhere. Come on.
Bringing up a counter-example isn't a "gotcha" and it's ridiculous to simplify it like that, plus calling it a "gotcha" feels like you're indicating malicious intent on my part, which is equally annoying. Also, are you serious? I'm the one people are having the conversation with, their posts are directed toward me, and they start out by trying to tell me why my brother might be a bad person and in a very direct, aggressive way. How the fuck should I take that, phaynes? How am I supposed to parse that? Get real.
I find it really fucking offensive that the takeaway here is "don't bring up your family members if you don't want people to insult them" instead of "don't immediately be insulting about people's family members". Yeah, yeah, yeah, open forum, freedom of speech, yadda yadda yadda. If we can't be kinder to each other in the fucking Accountability thread, we're in a lot of trouble.
Not worth going back and forth about this so I won’t respond after this but you should probably listen to the people affected by anti-trans rhetoric, especially when they’re on this site telling you directly what it’s like, instead of blocking them and being a stubborn weirdo about it because someone made a broad statement like MAGA people Bad and you decided to take it to specifically mean a family member of yours
Thanks. I actually was going to reply again to phaynes, but doing it wouldn't be constructive, because it wouldn't change anything. I am trying to be done with this topic. Just still really disappointed right now and trying to get back to not being that.
I sort of think this could turn more into "Well, if the brother identifies as conservative but disagrees with 99% of conservative rhetoric then maybe they could be educated to be more left leaning in this day and age where being conservative is a lot more actively hostile than pre-Trump" Because being conservative in this day and age means either being ok with this administration and what's going on, or being ok with being bullied into line by this administration even if you don't fully agree with them. And both are actively harming so many people. So no, your brother might not be a "bad" person but he is choosing to identify and put his line in the sand WITH bad people, actually awful people. So when someone, and I also try say this with respect , comes in and says "Yea I have a close relative who's conservative BUT he's one of the good ones don't worry", yea it's gonna rub some people the wrong way. Hope I'm not coming off too hostile, I'm really not trying to be. But back to music, I think this started with Creed and Shinedown comment. And yea, I meant more that with the type of fans they usually draw and such it didn't surprise me as much seeing them on that poster as opposed to Ludacris.
Sorry Tim, I gotta respond to this. Thank you, I appreciate the tone and content of your post, and yes, I get what "Republican" and by extension "conversative" have become over the years and why people immediately have assumptions about what that means. If I'm being honest, I'm only saying "conservative" because I have no other word to define it, because for example, the way he thinks about the economy is conversative. And the only reason I brought him up is because the tone of the conversation was that "conservatives are all horrible, full stop". I guess I just don't believe in blanket statementing an entire group of people, especially since the words "Republican" and "conservative" didn't always mean what it does now. I think ultimately we're all just people with a variety of opinions and labels don't always do that justice in any case.
But this was legit the entire point of the original post. That even before Trump and his goons, conservative policies of Bush, H.W. Bush, Reagan whatever, were also extremely harmful to targeted groups, as well as the greater population at large. Conservatism didn’t magically become homophobic, racist and fiscally destructive overnight. It’s been this way for my entire lifetime. So yeah, anyone who says they’re a conservative even if they’re the coolest big brother you could have gets an immediate side eye from me.
Two things. My point is that, unless someone wants to make a connection I'm not aware of, conservative feelings regarding economics and being anti-discrimination aren't mutually exclusive points of view, and it's a leap in my mind to take one and then conflate it with the other. That's why I'm saying labels are ultimately meaningless, we're all different people with different feelings about different things. The other, and I want to make this very clear, the reason I blocked anyone last night is because I don't care who it is or what they're saying, if you come at me aggressively about a member of my family, I am going to react negatively and I don't have to deal with that. And I don't think it's abnormal to expect that either, it's weird to think that's something I just have to take.
My fucking lord dude. Even if you’re the biggest POC/LGTBQ+/immigrant advocate in the land, Fiscal Conservatism harms all of those groups! Second off: “I simply can’t handle my family receiving criticism in a conversation that was no way about them until I made it about them” is some truly wild behavior.
I'm asking for details, Dave. I did say this. Shouting it over and over again isn't actually teaching me anything.
Anyone who wants to continue this conversation should DM each other. This has gone too far. I understand being upset and wanting to defend your point of view. This is not the place for this conversation anymore. please lol
This has been heavily derailed and I do think the conversation needs to be refocused on the thread’s intent at this time, although I do think there were voices that needed to be heard as a part of this conversation. While I don’t think it’s necessarily out of place I do think we’ve reached the “no one’s minds will be changed and everyone has said what they need to” place and should stop here. If anyone has any concerns about this please do DM me, I understand there are a lot of strong feelings at play right now and do want to do right by all of yall.
I do wanna emphasize again that I'm not trying to shut it down because the conversation was inappropriate, I actually think it's incredibly important to have those talks and I am grateful @nohandstoholdonto entered the conversation to contribute thoughts because at the end of the day, as was emphasized, this forum is who we can reach on a wide scale and the kind of conversations we can have to adjust our thinking, educate ourselves, and actually begin the process of accountability for literally anyone. I just think we had reached the point of extremely diminishing returns if not no returns, where no one was any longer getting anything from it. I don't want the thread to just become another tweet sharing thread, we have plenty of those. I hope I can articulate that well. Maybe it's unfair for me to even be like "let's shut this down" and then give my thoughts but as a mod I do think it's important to be as clear as possible with something like this.
I have something I want to say and then I swear I'm dropping this completely, but I think it's important to say this. I'm going to unblock the two people I blocked last night. I do understand this topic is very difficult, emotional, and I am not in a position where I am as negatively affected as others might be, so it's easier for me to be more conversational about this than it might someone who is actively affected. And if I came off in any way as unsympathetic to that, I apologize. I also didn't mean for the block to come off as shutting down discussion or hearing their side; it's more that I am trying to limit how much negativity I come in contact with on this forum because it's not good for my mental health. I actually take medication for anxiety and depression. Not saying that this as an excuse, just by way of explaining that I feel like I'm in a point of my life where it's better for me to just avoid negativity than to post through it.
I understand the negativity thing. On basically every other platform, if people are being aggressive and awful, I block them without hesitation because my mental health is fragile. I often take breaks from social media in general because of how it negatively affects me and I encourage others to do the same. This will be my last post addressing any of this in this thread. The world is in a particularly visibly bad place at the moment And it can be difficult to shut those stressors off, and for many of us, it is downright impossible because the state of the world directly affects us, the people we know, and strangers we care about deeply in a human level. As an empathetic bisexual, autistic trans woman, I would like to explain how fiscal conservatism hurts people,though. Fiscal conservatism cuts government programs that the poor rely on, and an overwhelming amount of autistic, queer, trans, and people of color are dealing with a not insignificant amount of financial stress in a time where the world is hard for many financially, which increases those problems for people at the bottom. Fiscal conservatism harms everyone. Again, in the usa, that conservatism has taken peoples access to Healthcare away on the basis of their identities (if someone is trans on government heslthcare, their access to hrt is in the process of being taken away and for many, especially children at the moment, that Healthcare has already been taken away). I don't think the government has a right to tell people what care they should be allowed to access. Fiscal conservatism removes access to government programs that help feed those who are barely scraping by. Access to certain kinds of food is being taken away from those who CAN access those programs. Conservative deregulation favors workplace discrimination against Trans, queer, and poc. It also leads to an increasing number of younger people in the workplace as protections for children are taken away. You know which children are kicked out frequently for their identities? Queer and Trans people, who people are being increasingly allowed to discriminate against, which is 100% the result of fiscal conservatism. Fiscal conservatism leads to less spending on public schooling, which decreases literacy rates and leads to a larger portion of people being ignorant and bigoted. Being poor doesn't make you a bigot. Being uneducated doesn't automatically make you a bigot. But taking away funding to public schools leads to ignorance and ignorance leads to bigotry and bigotry leads to further legal discrimination. Talking generally, the lack of healthcare for all, free at the point of entry, harms everyone, and that lack of free (at point of entry) Healthcare is fiscal conservatism.
Thanks for explaining all of this, and I think I probably am at fault and doing my brother a disservice by not using the right words to talk about him, because I know for a fact he's for better healthcare for everyone and better education and etc., etc. Like mainly I think he just hates government oversight, which I believe is why he got into crypto. He hates pharmaceutical companies, credit card companies, basically anything he sees in a position to capitalize off of people's needs.
I think this thread should be used to discuss relevant music issues. Continuing to talk about a family member who no one will talk to, that no one knows, nor affects this thread whatsoever is not helpful. Just brings out harmful feelings.
som people said they didn’t care if my brother died ha…it’s the internet. just move on, none of it matters.