I asked a question before but I realized I should rephrase it.
I always feel this gut reaction of guilt or anger when someone says men did something or white men did something, even though I know I’m not guilty of anything. A part of me feels like I’m being blamed even though I know it’s not me they’re talking about.
Does anybody else get that, and if so, how do you handle it?
35 comments
just gotta ignore it, dont be apart of the rat race that gets upset bc they’re being blamed for things they had no hand in.
You feel like you are being blamed when they state “men do X” because you are, at least semantically.
Lumping all members of a gender, race, or whatever, together is always unacceptable.
I understand that the people who use identity politics are complete morons and asshats and automatically disregard anything they have to say.
I ignore it. 🖕🏿💩
News stations always use the racial card to spicy up the news. For example, in my country if the perpetrator is a foreigner the crime is always highlighted, whereas when they are not, the crime is just mentioned like nothing happened. If you feel that your racial profile, gender, occupation etc is being associated in the news with something bad, just ignore it. Why would you ever feel guilty for something that you are not involved?
By acknowledging the fact that they’re idiots and identity politics only serves one purpose and that is to divide us.
Just ignore them.
As a trans person, I often read about all the cringey shit trans people are doing. Trans people this, trans people that. It used to bother me, because I thought these trans people were “making us look bad.”
Then I stopped caring. I am not these cringey trans people and they are not me. If people want to dislike me for others’ actions, then so be it. I’m not going to break my back trying to change others’ opinions. I know just who I am and I know just who I’m not.
Having a solid understanding of your own identity and values is a pretty great way to avoid getting your feathers ruffled when someone else is expressing theirs. It will also help you understand why their identity matters so much to them.
I know I’m a good person so I don’t really care about generalizations
I don’t live in a country where this is an issue, so I don’t have much real life experience with this. I do see it online. Here on Reddit I subbed to some women’s subs just to see how the other half live. Some are mostly supportive of each other with a bit of craziness thrown in for good measure. The more radical subs…..it’s like watching a person having a mental meltdown. I would guess lots of self hate, maybe they’ve been deeply hurt in their past, and there’s def points for playing the opressed.
To me it’s more like driving past a car accident, the people are fucked but I still want to see. Then I drive away and get on with my life.
Realize that it is a shaming tactic and you don’t have to even acknowledge it or respond when confronted with it…
I get that a lot with « all Arabs are terrorists » or « All foreigners are thieves and criminals », this being a very common feeling here in France. Best thing to do is to just disregard any comment of the sort. Arguing with the won’t bring you anything good.
I don’t feel bad/attacked, I feel angry at other men (only the ones who are actually guilty) for creating such a shitty situation. Like fuck you guys for making it bad for everyone else.
I simply remind myself politics is not an ‘either or’ thing. You support those who you feel have the best ideas that would help our nation more at any given time. When they devolve and dont state what it is they are going to ‘do’ for the nation—-they are trying to change it to an ‘either or’ scenario because they dont plan to do anything or even have a ‘plan’
White men are not guilty for slavery or colonialism. We weren’t born then. Simple
I live in a red state where such opinions aren’t popular, so I really don’t run into it too much.
Do not argue with them, that’s the exact same thing as arguing with a Nazi. You cannot talk with those people, they are insane *and* evil. Do not give them power over your feelings, that’s what they want – getting angry weakens you and gives them power over you.
Start thinking about policy goals, policy choices, and practical tradeoffs between choices as they relate to both their stated goals as well as their side-effects/unintended consequences.
In other words, stop making politics about your *identity*. Learn stuff. Study economics. Study political science. Study history. Study a policy area like energy or food security, and reserve your strongest opinions for the arenas you actually know something about and need not rely on cues like *identity* to tell you how to feel and what to believe.
Just don’t look at the world through the lens of the internet or the media. “Identity politics” is just one of many pieces of jargon used to try and simplify complex phenomena, which is of course not possible. Like “cancel culture” or being “woke” or whatever the latest stupid talking point is, none of which correspond to reality as we experience it day to day. You’re not an identity, you’re a free and unique human being. Everything else is bollocks. So, I have no emotional connection to “identity politics” because it doesn’t matter. It isn’t real.
I avoid those discussions.
Mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.
I don’t understand all this guilt. I feel guilt when I have wronged someone undeservedly. And I atone with that person. The person I have wronged. See if I can somehow make it up to them. Sometimes I can’t. Sometimes the answer is “Go away and never speak to me again!” Sometimes an apology or kind act is enough. You never know, but I do try
But to feel guilt because someone I share a genetic anomaly with was a prick? I don’t get that. Why is it a white thing or a black thing…why not people with blonde hair? “You hear about that blonde haired woman that killed 200 people?” “Oh no, I have blonde hair, I feel so guilty!” I don’t get it.
None of our ancestors were saints….they were all flawed humans. And they are dead! They no longer give a damn. It’s like some biblical thing…”I curse thee for seven generations!” Bullshit!
I can only control what I do. I’m not a god. I cannot change the past. I can only live my life with whatever dignity, honor, and compassion that I am able to muster. To think otherwise is sheer ego.
You should feel attacked, because you *are* being attacked. That is what identity politics *is*, by definition.
You may not be guilty of doing X thing, and in a purely academic sense, I’m sure everyone understands this. But the problem with it is not high-minded academic discussion about philosophy and theoreticals and overlapping group membership gradients, because that has been happening forever, and nobody cared before like 2014. The problem is that it lumps all people sharing Y quality together, for the purpose of galvanizing emotion against them, and if they’re all lumped together, *they’re all guilty by default.*
You *are* being blamed. You can tell this is the case, because the most common defense that you are not, in fact, being blamed, is that maybe you actually deserve being blamed for feeling personally attacked by a generality (“Why would you feel guilty if this obviously didn’t apply to you?”).
(if you want a non-white example, look at “European Muslims,” as in Middle Eastern, Asian, and African migrants/refugees, and see just how much granularity is afforded to all those different cultures when talking about them)
i’m usually happy i’m not the person do angry and caught up in bullshit that doesnt make sense
I am a person of color that had to grow up with bad stereotypes of who everyone thought I was because of what I looked like.
I worked very hard to make sure I wasn’t any of those stereotypical things. I wasn’t going to grow up to be an uneducated thug or go to prison. I just built goals around that shit.
I avoid feeling guilty by holding myself to the highest standard of behavior I possibly can.
As a cishet white guy from the suburbs, yeah, I totally get the emotional reaction of “WTF, not *me,* man!”
It helps me when I recognize that a lot of those kinds of statements are coming from people who are venting about things they’ve had to put up with for a long, long time. And it literally isn’t about me AT ALL. Ngl, it still sometimes takes conscious thought to switch the empathy on, but when I do it completely reframes things and makes it easier not to feel guilty or picked on.
I choose to be defined by my actions and my vocation more than anything else. Also probably helps, much as I hate to say it, that I’m a black living primarily in big coastal cities. (My old boss used to jokingly call it “West Coast privilege.”) Also I just don’t live a very political life or engage with too much of that nonsense in general.
Ultimately, just be a good person and ignore a lot of the bullshit/noise in the world. Also, remember that almost everyone’s got some sort of cultural “privilege” or blindspot, so don’t let them bully you just because they think their shit doesn’t stink.
Just teach everybody proper polite diction and don’t listen to children. It takes most people a long time before they develop the ability to comprehend life outside absolutes. Children who bother you would rather be wrong than hear about nuance.
I dismiss most instances of it as ignorance talking. Ignore it. There is nothing to feel guilty about, and there’s nothing to be angered by unless you’re directly affected.
“MEN ARE THE PROBLEEEEM!!!!!!” or “fucking TRANSPHOBE!”
or during the whole BLM thing… everyone who isn’t black was basically being called “racist *CLAP* and *CLAP* PRVILLEGED *CLAP*”.
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Honestly, if it’s actually bothering you, I would say you gotta take the time to figure out why.
MAYBE, there is some legit guilt in you some where and you gotta deal with it.
If it’s not guilt, then maybe even just a view point ?
And if after all that digging you realize there’s nothing to worry about.. GREAT! you can move on and no longer give a fuck because you’re not the problem.
I never felt bad, but having your “identity” engaged in these debates or thought exercises definitely reinforced my own identity and who I truly am.
It has always bothered me, its pure hypocrisy, the bigotry towards ‘men’ is totally unlimited, in almost any setting any generalization can be made with so social cost and yet, replace ‘men’ with women or any race and suddenly most of these statements are pretty fucking throwback to a dark age, and yet, we just have to take it and stfu. also no one ever mentions that we die younger and how that’s not natural.
> A part of me feels like I’m being blamed even though I know it’s not me they’re talking about.
That’s the terrible part. They are including you in it. The people talking about it to you might not be, but you can certainly bet large swathes of people lump you in.
I don’t get angry, I get disappointed that so many people create these mental hoops that they jump through to justify why painting some groups with a broad brush is acceptable but not for others.
Generalizing people by immutable characteristics is either acceptable or not. It can’t be both.
Life is too short and you can only control yourself, usually just walking away solves the whole thing. The older I get the less I care about the extreme veiws from anyone, or the pet causes.
If someone is trying to play identity politics with another person they are trying to put them on the defensive about something they can’t control. If you can’t ignore/avoid these interactions then shine a light on what the person is attempting to do to expose them for their bad faith interaction.
It’s good to see that you have empathy and compassion. So don’t feel bad about it. And if there’s something you can do to help you help.