Begging you to not even joke about transphobes being in the closet simply for using pen names. Begging you to recognize "haha you're the thing you hate" isn't a good joke and hurts people actually in the group and in this case just reinforces the terf idea that trans men are just women trying to escape the bad parts of being a woman because she's literally just using a male pen name because she thinks it'll make people take her more seriously.

Hi friend. I’m a trans man making an off-handed comment about my opinions on my 12 follower blog. Bold of you to assume it’s a joke; I was expressing a long held frustration about the way it really feels like she’s displacing and ruining countless lives over it. I think she needs to ask herself some questions about why she returns to masc names. To suggest as such does not imply that all trans men are just trying to escape the bad parts of being a woman, it’s calling into question whether that’s the real reason she’s doing it. Yeah yeah, you shouldn’t assume peoples gender. A Crass statement on my part or not, it’s disrespectful to assume you know exactly what I meant from 12 words on a tumblr post and come onto my tumblr.hell blog and hush and lecture me about it.

I went through a period where I used male pen names and initials only because “u won’t get the recognition under a woman’s name” was the excuse I came up with because I wasn’t ready to confront my internalized transphobia. I don’t have to wonder why I really felt I wouldn’t get the recognition I wanted going by a woman’s name anymore. But someone saying that seems like a logical explanation when you’re young and in pain you don’t have the language for.

Block me if you don’t like it; If you don’t like someone’s opinions that’s fine but stop acting like you have the right to silencing and policing them. You can mind your own business. I have the right to talk about my experiences

there are trans men that fall into TERF rabbit holes and get gaslit out of accepting themselves or blocked altogether because it happened early. I want those men/man-adjacent people who have struggled with that (this even pushes into transfemme nonbinary territory too: anyone that identifies with masculinity can internalize an aversion to it bc terf propaganda and feel the dysphoria of being unable to connect with an aspect of your gender) to have a reference for that sensation. I want them to know that you are not alone in that struggle and to see people who have overcome that struggle. To know there may be another explanation for why they feel that way. I want them to know I am immeasurably happier now than I was back then.

A lot of you have little to no compassion for other LGBT people with actual trauma stemming from oppression and it’s really, really obvious to me.

You sling around the word “queer” and call LGBT people traumatized by the word radfems and cowards and liars.

You mock LGBT people who go to LGBT spaces and go quiet when faced with cisgender straight people taking over meetings. Who anxiously wait for political organizing to happen, who wait to hear solutions for their homelessness or what doctors are safe to ask about PrEP, but instead get lectures about being inclusive of cishet aces and to not rub PDA in anyone’s face.

You laugh at anyone who ever thought the A is for ally and Q is for questioning even though those letters were only ever added in to make it safer for vulnerable LGBT people who haven’t come to terms with their identity yet or need a plausible way out if a relative/friend seems them in an LGBT space. You hatefully tease them for not defaulting to thinking their oppressor belongs in their spaces made to address their oppression.

You understand why cishets wouldn’t be welcome in Lesbian, Gay, Bi, or Trans spaces but act like we’re fucking insane for not thinking cishets belong in LGBT spaces.

You minimize the harm of transmisogyny by comparing LGBT people to TERFs for not wanting cisgender straight people in their spaces.

You laugh and go “What resources?” when we say we don’t want to give LGBT-specific resources to people who can safely get them elsewhere, making it clear you’ve NEVER given why the LGBT community actually exists as a COMMUNITY any thought.

You treat LGBT spaces like clubs you’d join in college rather than vital safe spaces keeping some people safe from abuse or emotional isolation.

You misuse the word gatekeeping and ignore its historical value in talking about how trans women have been denied medical care from actual establishments.

And you act like this is all kindness. That your cruelty is inclusive even though it harms the most vulnerable members of the community. People who flinch when called one of those queers. People who have been betrayed and abused and violated by the cishets in their life and just want a space to air out their grievances and maybe be offered a way out. People who have nowhere else to go, who can’t even go to homeless shelters without lying about who they are.

And you won’t ever get it because LGBT trauma and oppression is largely just a hypothetical to you. It’s historical. Because it doesn’t happen to you, it doesn’t happen anymore. Because the worst you ever got was some teasing in grade school, it must not be that bad and the people who have trauma with cishets and slurs must just be exaggerating because they’re just hateful gatekeepers.

The privilege and disregard of it all stinks. It’s rancid. It’s hateful.

And it excludes the most vulnerable people in the community to include those who don’t need LGBT specific resources or support.

It’s kinder on the surface and so its rotten core can be ignored and flattered and bragged about at the expense of everyone else getting sick from it.

I’m so fucking tired.

“Why support mspec lesbians if you’re not one? Why support NB people who use weird pronouns if you don’t use them? Why support X group if you’re not part of it?”

First and foremost- because that’s what I firmly believe the queer community is about. Supporting people, even if they aren’t like me. But secondly-

When I first came out, I came out as bi. And I was met with gatekeepers. Met with people who told me I couldn’t be bi if I’d never had sex with a woman, who told me that I was just trying to get attention, who told me I was really just a lesbian in denial. People who told me I was hurting the community.

The next time I came out, I came out as pan. And I was met with gatekeepers. People who told me pan was just “spicy bisexual”. People who told me I wasn’t special for “liking trans and NB people”. People who told me I was just seeking attention and taking representation away from bisexual people, away from “real” LGBT+/Queer people. People who told me I was hurting the community.

Later, I decided that both bisexual and pansexual worked for me as labels. I liked them both. They both fit. I felt comfortable with them both. And I was met with gatekeepers. People who told me I was biphobic for being pan and panphobic for being bi. People who told me I was a transphobe for using both labels at once. People who told me “You can’t be BOTH, just pick one!” People who told me I was hurting the community.

Recently, I came out as non-binary. And I’ve been met with gatekeepers. People who’ve told me that no dysphoria means I’m just cis and seeking attention. People who’ve told me that my gender can’t have changed, and if I was a woman once then I’ll always be because I wasn’t “born” non-binary. People who’ve told me that I’m just “trying to escape womanhood”. People who’ve told me I’m hurting the community.

I most recently (around the same time as coming out as NB) came out as polyamorous. And, you guessed it, I’ve been met with gatekeepers. People who’ve said that I give all LGBT+ people a bad name. People who have lectured me about how it’s okay to only have a wife, and I don’t need to feel “pressured” to have a man in my life, as if I’m not choosing it for myself. People who’ve told me that I’m hurting the community.

Something I’ve realized is that there will always be people who look at actual problems that us LGBT+/Queer folk have. And they will turn around and point the finger at their fellows and declare “YOU! YOU are hurting the community! It’s YOU! YOU give us a bad name!” Forgive me if, after... Almost a decade of knowing that I’m queer and about 8 years of being actually out, I don’t buy that one single bit. Because I’ve heard it every single time that I’ve come out. Every single time I’ve learned something new about myself, something that made me happy, something that was about me and didn’t hurt anyone, people have popped up and told me that I am somehow harming other LGBT+/Queer folks by being myself and doing what makes me happy in my own life.

And it’s ALWAYS the same people. Always the same group. Always coming from the radfem/TERF corner of the community, always coming from people who seem to get their kicks by micromanaging and policing who can and cannot do this or that, who is or is not allowed in what spaces, who is good and who is bad. It was happening long before I came out as bi when I was in undergrad, and it has continued and will continue to happen.

And I don’t buy it. I never have. And I never will. And you shouldn’t either. I’m not sure who said this originally, but I have seen this floating around- “The greatest trick ever pulled was convincing queer people that other queer people are the enemy.”

It’s not the fault of the bi lesbian that lesbians get treated like shit by straight, cis men. It’s not the fault of non-binary people who use neopronouns that trans people have to fight to be able to take a piss in peace. It’s not the fault of polyamorous people that LGBT+/Queer people are seen as sexual deviants. It is not the fault of other LGBT+/Queer people that LGBT+/Queer people have struggles.

So yes. I support people with labels I don’t quite understand or use. I support people with “weird” pronouns. I support people with contradictory identities, who present themselves in a way that seems odd or out of place, I support people who come to my community looking for support, because I know first hand what it is like to go looking for support in the place I was supposed to be able to find it, and instead be met with “You don’t belong here, this isn’t for queers like YOU.”

And I refuse to be the person who turns away someone who needs a helping hand a place to just be themselves.

How did you become a trans terf? This is really interesting!

Thank you for this question because I can now delay watching my lectures for like 30 min. 

I got tumblr my freshman year, started my deep dive into the realm of tumblr’s lgbtqianpd+++ stuff. I did a bunch of ace discourse as an “inclusionist” then as an “exclusionist”, started iding as nonbinary demiboy, ace/aro, he/they, got a binder i think during the winter of my sophomore year and came out to a couple friends as nb. Went more towards ftm. Started dating my current boyfriend winter of my junior year, told him I was id’ing as ftm (he’s bisexual, didn’t matter) and the rest of my friends, changed my name and pronouns socially. Start of my senior year I told my family and had them change pronouns and name as well. My bday is in October, so turned 18 and was going to start testosterone. 

By the winter of that year however, I had been hate-reading a lot of “terf” blogs. And what I found was that I could not argue against what they were saying. I was experiencing a lot of cognitive dissonance about it all, repeating the same mantras but knowing they didn’t quite add up. 

Specifically about: If sexuality is based on an internal sense of gender, how can you be attracted to anyone until they tell you what gender they are? If a lesbian sees a woman and she says “i’m ftm” does that mean the lesbian is now a bisexual because they were “attracted to a man” or is a switch supposed to flip and they stop being attracted? If sexism is based on “being perceived as a woman/passing as a woman” then why do butches who pass as men still experience sexism? If being gay is about “being perceived as gay in society” then wouldn’t that make all the homosexual couples historically who passed as hetero for safety suddenly become actual literal heteros? If transmen have male privilege, why are they not represented in politics, are targetted for sexual abuse by straight men, and need access to abortion just like women do? If transwomen don’t have male privilege, why are they the main voices of the movement? They can reap all the benefits of a male life for 50 years, and then suddenly none of that mattered? If me and my boyfriend’s relationship is “gay” now that i id’d as ftm, how come we could legally get married and adopt in any country in the world? I was raised being told I Should like and date men, I never once believed my attraction to men was a sin, and gay men experience the Exact Opposite, so how could we both possibly be gay men? Why do transwomen have male patterns of violence? Why have I only ever heard of stories of transwomen abusing transmen, and not the other way around? Is it possible to only be attracted to the same sex? To say no is to say that it’s possible for all women to like dick, which is obviously fucked up. What is so different about a man and a transwoman that means a lesbian is supposed ot like the latter? Why can’t anybody define women? first woman, then female, then afab, the goalpost kept moving. What is there to being a woman besides being female, isn’t all that extra stuff just stereotypes? When my sister is distressed with her body and denied herself food, or I cut myself, that’s a bad thing because it hurts your body, but hrt and a mastectomy hurt your body, they even risk killing you, but that’s okay? I took a sociology class and it’s clear socialization effects behavior - but somehow magically trans people grow up uneffected by it? If socialization can influence women to wear makeup, dress, and act in specific ways that arent’ innate, and cause higher rates of eating disorders, couldn’t it effect dysphoria as well?

And so much more!!!

And that’s only on the trans side - I also had my eyes opened to the horrors of pornography and prostitution, the rates of domestic violence, and all the other terrible sex-based oppression that women are subjected to globally. There is so much more to being a radfem than the trans issues too. 

So for two years (winter of my senior year to winter of my college’s high school year) I decided not to transition. I engaged with radfem tumblr and talked about all these things with my female friends in person as well, it was like getting a huge weight off my shoulders too. And it really did help lessen my dysphoria to an extent. I came up with a long list of coping mechanisms to employ for dysphoria as well. 

But by this february, I was just so tired of that. I still supported everything I say about radical feminism, about sex based oppression, protecting homosexuals, and the dangers of medical transition. But dysphoria is just this constant painful presence day in and day out, and I pursued medical transition in february. I applaud every woman who chooses not to transition, and ultimately view transitioning as giving in, because I can no longer be a role model to young dysphoric women, who shows them that you don’t need to transition. 

At this point, I love my body more than ever and I can’t imagine regretting these changes really. I will miss connecting with women the way I used to, especially as a woman in science, but the women in my life from before transition will always see me as one of them still, and I appreciate that. 

The way I see it, words don’t hurt me at all, they are immaterial, and as a scientist I value coherent definitions, and I understand the realities of sex. So my goal with transition is to pass as male in society and to alter the parts of my body that bring me distress - I know i’m not literally male. And I think all trans people need to get to the point where they understand that, it really helps mentally. 

And I’ll always think, maybe if i had different friends (half of my friends understand, half think i am or would think i am an evil terf) or was dating a woman instead of a man (i’m bisexual, thought i was hetero in highschool (but called myself a gay man lmao), and dating someone with the same body seems like a big deal in handling dysphoria), if i tried harder with my coping mechanisms, if I saw a therapist who understood all this and didn’t just encourage me to do whatever I wanted, maybe i wouldn’t be transitioning. But I’m happy now, so that’s what I focus on as mattering to me, and that’s what I want to pursue. 

I do caution others from doing the same though. 

Also tangent at the end here, I call myself “trans” because I’m medically transitioned. To me, “cis v trans” makes no sense and is sexist. But “dysphoric vs not dysphoric” or “medically transitioned vs not medically transitioned” make more sense to me. 

I don’t know anything about you, idk why you thought I implied that you consumed that content at all, I was just replying to your comment on my ask. I didn’t assume that you’re against tags, I was just speaking generally that some people are gonna be uncomfortable with lolishota content no matter what. I’m not gonna bother reading the rest of your response because I thought the distinction between sexualities and pedophilia were apparent enough to draw the comparison between porn consumption because you can be any sexuality and be a pedophile because they’re not the same thing.

Hm... Yeah, I don’t know where I got that implication /s

Like... Do you not read you own posts or are you trying to be purposefully manipulative? I can’t tell anymore.

This ended up super long so I’m putting it under a read more:

You were the one who brought up that comparison, and you’re mad that I pointed out that it doesn’t even work. That sentence after the highlighted section is what academics like to call the “no offense” argument. Because you’re doing the equivalent of saying “wow, you’re ugly... No offense though :)” Basically it’s bullshit.

“I thought the distinction between sexualities and pedophilia were apparent enough to draw the comparison between porn consumption because you can be any sexuality and be a pedophile because they’re not the same thing”

Uuuugh... Okay, I’m really starting to question if you’re being purposefully manipulative or if you literally just don’t know what words mean... Comparing two things is still comparing two things, even if they are extremely different. For example, if a TERF says “TRAs are basically just fascists for forcing people to go along with their delusions!” they are still comparing trans people to fascists. Even though we all know that there is a huge difference between a trans person just wanting equal rights and a fascist. That’s still a comparison. Also! What I just did was a comparison! To my knowledge you are in no way a TERF and are nothing like a TERF, however I just used a TERF as an example, thus drawing a comparison. And if that comparison bothers you at all, then congrats! Maybe you can somewhat understand why I, a queer CSA survivor, got fucking pissed at your comparison.

You’re basically just amazingly hypocritical. You made a comparison, got mad at me for pointing out that your comparison didn’t work, tried to act offended by your own comparison, got mad that I pointed out your hypocrisy, and now have admitted you didn’t even read my response. And here I was pulling quotes from research papers in case you actually tried to make an argument... Once again I have wasted my time because the bar is just so low...

“I didn’t assume that you’re against tags” okay, I think I understand the problem here. You don’t understand that words change meaning depending on the context.

In this paragraph you use the word “you” both directly and generally. “You don’t have to lecture me” and “You can’t really explain” are both written as if they’re directed at me personally, since you’re directing this ask at me. Because those are in the same paragraph as “Alternatively you can tag your stuff” it makes it seem like a direct accusation that that is something I don’t do.

In the future I would suggest choosing different words that communicate that you’re switching to speaking generally. I would recommend “Alternatively people can tag their stuff” instead.

What was that about not reading the response? Did you actually not read it or could you not think of a good response and wanted to pretend you didn’t see it?

But ah yes, you’re right. I read that as saying that you understand why survivors would have rape fantasies.

I guess I’m just hopelessly naive and thought that you were showing compassion towards people who use dark fiction as a way of processing trauma./s 

Yeah, dark fiction can be triggering. That’s why people encourage tag usage? Like I said before, the problem is that people purposefully go into those tags and harass people for even making that problem. The problem is that people send death threats instead of just asking someone to tag something or black listing the tag.

I don’t even have anything more to say to that. I’m just... SO fucking tired... I have PTSD and I’m so tired of people using triggers as an excuse for harassment. Anything can be a trigger. There is a children’s cartoon that’s a trigger for me because one of my groomers used to send me porn of that cartoon. That doesn’t mean I get to blame the creators of that show, or the artists who made that stuff, or send death threats to anyone who rbs posts with that show. All I can do is blacklist that show and ask people to tag it.

At this point I just hope you don’t understand what you’re talking about at all. Because if you do that would mean you think that finding something disturbing/gross is enough of a reason to suicide bait teenagers. Like, that’s the context here. People aren’t just seeing loli/shota and thinking “Ew gross I’m gonna blacklist that” they’re seeing it and organizing harassment campaigns that ruins people’s lives. People aren’t seeing untagged rape fics and send the author an angry message asking them to tag it, they are going into the dubcon/noncon tags and then harassing the author until they attempt suicide and then celebrating that suicide attempt. Even if the author is a minor.

So yeah, either you don’t know what you’re talking about, or you’re an absolutely horrible person who’s using “thinking it’s gross” as a euphemism for “suicide baiting”

Let’s You and Him Fight

The last week has been a real eye-opener for me, regarding the rift currently splitting the people who consider themselves the legitimate opposition to the reactionary government currently running the United States at almost every level, in almost every local. Although the best known, most publicized conflict is between those people generally labeled as being the “Bernie wing” and the “Clinton wing” of the current Democratic Party, there are fractures along lines of race, sex and class which seem to run very, very deep. In an age of ever more selectively available media, it’s easy (perhaps even unavoidable, now) for these various camps to see their differences and quarrels through a lens which distorts them to Wagnerian heights of drama. Meanwhile, the people generally regarded as the ‘bad guys’ (the Steve Bannons and Robert Spencers of the nationalist Right) continue to advance their agenda and gain a stronger grip over the institutions of the United States, through the actions of men like Steve Mnuchin, Jeff Sessions and Scott Pruitt, courtesy of Donald J. Trump.

So why is it so hard for people, who all see themselves as the champions of the opposition, to unify and present an effective, organized front? Largely, it is because they can’t agree on what, exactly, they are actually fighting for. They can’t even agree on what they are fighting against, beyond the most generic platitudes about white nationalist fascism.

My eyes were first opened to the scope of these divisions in the last week. When the Women’s March organization, which is recognized as being largely the product of women of color, announced that they’d secured Bernie Sanders to be one of the key speakers at their coming conference, a great many people, myself among them, were thrilled. Aside from being an indication that Senator Sanders’ agenda of economic justice was continuing to gain further support, it seemed to show that the divisions caused by the 2016 Democratic primary contest were, finally, beginning to heal and fade. Then came the cold water, in the form of a statement from the leadership of the pro-Clinton EMILY’s List. It seemed the group was ‘disappointed’ with the Women’s March for inviting Sanders. They were also ‘reaching out’ to ‘help improve the program’. Across social media a debate broke out, which seemed to split women into two factions: those who wanted Sanders there and those who didn’t.

The camp which wanted Sanders to address the Women’s March felt that the organization was perfectly capable of deciding for itself who to invite. They pointed out that Sanders’ economic agenda includes strong support for issues which women should be universally in favor of: wage reform, expanded child care, universal health care and body autonomy, free of the ‘religious objections’ which are only thinly veiled misogyny. They also argued that an organization primarily oriented around women of color did not need, or want, white women telling them how to go about being feminist. My personal experience in this first twenty-four hours or so, was that the majority of women of color I was exposed to in social media wanted Sanders there. They saw his agenda as reinforcing the agenda of women generally, and found his economic priorities complimentary to their social priorities.

On the other side of this particular skirmish, were those women who said very clearly that no man has a right to address a women’s group. They held that inviting Sanders was either a tragic mistake made by wayward sisters, or outright treachery against the cause of all women. In any event, the message was clear that popular feminism, noticeably lead by pro-Clinton groups, was appalled. They insisted that the Women’s March had failed, by not inviting a prominent woman leader (such as Hillary Clinton!) to speak in the slot occupied by Sanders. It was, they insisted, demeaning to all women to have to sit quietly and be spoken to by a man at their own event. In all, the impression was given that Senator Sanders had somehow manipulated his way into delivering a patronizing lecture about women’s issues to women, as if they needed to be told what their priorities were.

Setting the larger conflict between Sanders people and Clinton people aside, the point here is that these two groups of women are not talking about the same things. Those who supported Sanders speaking were focused on concrete economic policy, and those who opposed it were focused on unity among feminists. Obviously these two strains of thinking do not have any kind of mutual exclusivity, and should be able to coexist. Nonetheless, this became part of the continuing conflict over the soul of the opposition to the current regime.

Now it would be easy to focus on this fight, and no doubt someone should go into the details, but the point here is that this conflict, and a hundred others, aren’t being resolved. Instead they continue to fester and drive wedges, furthering the isolation of people who should be allies against a greater, and very real threat. But instead, people bunker down, raising up walls of selectively chosen media around themselves. And the real problem with echo chambers isn’t that they enable our solipsism, it is that they deny us allies.

By isolating and insulating ourselves from the ideas, convictions and voices of those who do not automatically reinforce our existing opinions, we are cutting ourselves off from even the possibility of collective effort. We like to quote the platitude that there is strength in numbers, and this is a true statement but, in order to access that strength, we must gather the numbers. And that means that a lot of people in this country are going to have to develope something which targeted media and social media have largely robbed us of in the last twenty-some-odd years. The ability to tolerate things that make us uncomfortable.

This doesn’t mean agreeing to support policies that we disagree with; not, in any case, at the street-level of organization, which is where the rifts need to be mended first. No, in this case, tolerance means simply not alienating ourselves from someone who mostly agrees with us. It mean that when someone at the  PTA meeting says they’re more concerned about feeding their family than maximizing relative economic advantages, you don’t assume they’re uneducated technophobic Luddites and avoid them. It means that when a woman who’s family is struggling to keep their home says that wages are more important to her than the gender of a candidate, you don’t call her Suzy Homemaker and put her on mute. It means you don’t vilify the person of color who thinks that universal public college is more beneficial than increasing enrollment quotas and making it easier to take on large amounts of debt.

No doubt some people are offended at the phrasing in the last paragraph, and that is the point. Note the phrasing, the deliberate use of the word ‘you’. Some readers, who already agree with these perspectives, are cackling and feeling empowered and mentally wagging their fingers at the caricature of those who found it accusatory, presumptuous or just insulting.

Now let me put the shoe on the other foot.

Unifying in opposition is going to demand a certain amount of tolerance for people and ideas that are less-than-perfect. It means that you don’t walk away because a candidate has to work with business leaders. It means that when a woman tells you she feels ignored when discussion of the minimum wage doesn’t explicitly mention the pay gap, you don’t call her an economically privileged sell-out. It means that when a woman of color says she doesn’t feel represented by a white male, you don’t lecture her about prioritizing identity over policy.

The point here isn’t that ‘everyone is guilty’, but rather that ‘everyone is needed’. These days, we cannot afford to alienate or ignore potential allies. And that means that everyone, absolutely everyone is going to have deciding whether or not they can work with people aren’t going to either reinforce or leave unchallenged their biases, privileges, or assumptions. The fascists have the advantage here, because they pre-selected for uniformity. Despite the atrocious methods and goals, we can’t deny the fact that they do organization and solidarity very well. Those of us who value personal liberty and expression, by necessity, have to work a lot harder at getting along with one another.

That raises another point. What exactly is it that the opposition is actually opposing? There seems to be more than a little confusion about this. Some people are pushing back against the oligarchy run from Wall Street. Others are focused on fighting for reproductive freedom. Most seem more-or-less on board with supporting transgender Americans, but TERFs nonetheless demonize us and many women are afraid to criticize other women for these hateful behaviors. We have the Black Lives Matter people, but a lot of them don’t see a connection between economic empowerment and the ability to control and regulate the justice system. The list goes on.

It has often been said that nothing unifies people like a common enemy, but how do we identify the common enemy when there is so much factionalism, reinforced by so much selective media consumption? Is it possible to identify a common enemy when we no longer share a common language, a common discourse. Probably not.

On the other hand, perhaps defining ourselves negatively isn’t a very good strategy after all. After all, that’s what American politics has been doing for the last seventy years (at least) and where has it gotten us? Right where are. Still, an opposition has to be against something, but that doesn’t mean it should be defined by that statement in the negative. Instead, let opposition give us a general direction of movement (in this case away from chauvinistic white male nationalist fascism ) and let us be defined by what policy goals we are actually seeking to enact.

What that agenda will look like is going to be determined by speaking with, and listening to, one another. Even and especially people who make us uncomfortable. Nobody can reasonably expect to get everything their own way, and everyone needs to examine themselves to see if they aren’t, at least subconsciously, trying to do exactly that. Everyone needs to listen and observe, and be honest about the unintended consequences of their agenda might be. Globalization, as one example, may have been intended to improve economic conditions for all, but it nonetheless created an entire underclass of alienated, derided and dismissed economic ‘losers’. Each and every individual member of either ‘the revolution’ or ‘the resistance’, needs to start by getting over the idea that they either have all the answers, or that they have a monopoly on all the facts, let alone any universal truth or enlightenment.

The future will be a cooperative endeavor. That is an absolute fact, inasmuch as it will result from the simultaneous interactions of all the operations of all the participants, and all the interactions of second and third order consequences. The only actual question is whether or not we will also be working in opposition to ourselves.