EDIT: I WILL NO LONGER ENTERTAIN COMMENTS WHICH HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH THE CONTENT OF THE JOURNAL.
ADDITIONAL EDIT: Commenting is now locked. Take any further arguments into personal messaging, please.
Preface: This is a mental outpouring of an answer I sought about my own past and I believe I have found. Not a comedic nor sexy journal, so only read on if the human condition interests you as it does me.
As I am currently, I've been far more openly leftist than ever before. Unashamedly in the sense that I not only came out with being transgender after years of closeting, but now also harbor the nerve to defend that identity. Likewise, my goal is to eventually be in a place where I no longer have to admit to being trans, and can comfortably just say woman.
Sadly with things the way they are right now that still not entirely viable, socially, for a myriad of nuanced reasons.
I'm also a general socialist in my economic beliefs, entirely sex-positive, not at all religious, anti car-culture, and very ecologically conscious. NONE of that is new. These have been elements of Skoon since I was a teenager. So much so that I was ostracized often in the right-wing, rural, Christian environment I was raised in. Occasionally to moderate violence.
Despite all of this, to the day on occasion an internet denizen who has known of me throughout the 2010's will still mistake me for having been or possibly still being right-wing.
That baffled/baffles me. I needed to answer the call of my own curiosity and do some digging into my own past and really figure out why so many people thought so.
I immediately listed obvious tells. Things I know off-hand, things I have openly spoken about over the years and have made no secret of my opinion changing.
I used to be entirely pro-gun. As I learned more about what gun control actually meant and as violence continued to sky rocket I shifted away from that.
I did the same thing millions of other burned Bernie Sanders supporters did in 2016, and revenge voted for Trump. Believe me, I've written entire stories on what a severe regret that turned out to be (and no, I never liked him even then, none of us did, but common orange-man context in 2016 was cautiously negative rather than "oh he is actually, unironically Hitler"). If that concerns you about me in any way, btw, pls feel free to ask how I feel about the Christo-fascist piece of shit currently and how much time it took for me to utterly despise him after he won that election (spoiler: less than a month).
Those things couldn't be it though. They don't exist in a vacuum, and I have been highly transparent on my regret and reasoning against both since. I needed to go deeper and really remember. I think I found it, and it opened up an interesting look into the evolution of my own coping with my own past, and how you can't win allies with bullying.
It was the era of pop-feminism. 2014-2016 in particular. Or as I like to refer to it, Buzzfeed-feminism.
It's important that I stress how genuine feminist ideals, TERF feminism, and pop-feminism, are three distinctly different schools of thought. TERFs are fascists, for example. The first category are the real-deal, and I have no beef with them at all (generally I find myself aligned with the real thing). Pop-feminism was a farcical parody of feminism that only served to ultimately do a lot more harm than good.
Pop feminism was built far more on keyboard activism, misandry, bullying, PROFITEERING, rage-baiting, and, frankly, middle to upper class white women almost exclusively, than it was any actual progress.
TERFs grew during this time, and that's no coincidence.
Here's the issue- it not only did nearly irreparable damage to both feminism and general progressivism, it also did a ton of damage to the actual internet by way of assisting on the now entrenched corporate takeover of all public spaces.
Likewise, at the time, a ton of us were not well educated on any of this. Total mental blindness. Bear in mind how obvious this may all seem looking back, or if you are young enough you may not even be able to conceive of a world where true feminism wasn't well known, but hindsight is 20/20. A lot of us weren't anywhere near as filled-in as we are now, and I was no exception.
What did I want to do back then? Draw. That was it, really. I was also still unmedicated and had not yet begun seeing a therapist, etc.
Let me bring this back to the original point- how this changed people's perception of me to something I wasn't. Through, admittedly, my own public behavior.
My only encounters with pop-feminism, which in that time and moment was only being sold as straight up genuine feminism, was via bullying. Because I was still male-identifying (unhappily) and my largest fanbase was anchored on Tumblr AND this was the time when Tumblr began to rot, socially- I became the target of some of the most ridiculous and radical bullying.
When I say bullying I don't mean just a few nasty comments here and there, it was a daily onslaught. See, I always drew porn. I also, as I do now, draw subjects which make people uncomfortable. Even more openly back then.
I had also come from a deeply abusive home life. My childhood was horrible and I had essentially only ever been taught to devalue myself through abusive thought patterns and self-destructive behavior. Again, I had not yet seen to any of that baggage back then.
So to suddenly have a barrage of accusations of privilege and inherent villainy based on my genitals (when also struggling with my gender identity), I grew quickly to openly and loudly LOATHE "feminism". Which I of course now understand to have just been a mere shadow of the real thing, full of awful people.
Regardless, I became defensive out of pain and fear and lashed out harder and harder. I had no positive example of this movement in my life at the time, and with the trauma I was personally carrying there certainly wasn't anybody trying hard enough to change my mind. I was a perfect example of how you not only don't win allies with bullying, you can turn allies into enemies.
I realize now, looking back, that's why. Must be.
That time, those unhinged people who caused me to also act unhinged.
That's why some people still think I am right wing or ever was to begin with.
It all seems an entire lifetime ago to me today. Especially with all the knowledge and growth I have gathered and gone through since.
I must say I am grateful that I was able to come back from that. I know there must have been so many who were forever radicalized rightward by the same sort of experience, then. Fortunately, I was, in truth, always on the left. So I had a buffer zone out of that.
I maintain to this day that Buzzfeed owes Feminism reparations.
