I'd try & convince people of how feminism is good actually (parts of it are), of how privilege was meaningful (in certain ways, it is), how implicit bias affects us all (this is what rationalism is about), I'd write off the excesses of the movement as an asshole minority (it is)

I wasn't exactly blind to the inherent contradictions in what some on the same side would say, but I'd more or less cherrypick the parts I agreed with, and ignore the rest as not representative

but over time, this got harder, as the movement radicalized, and the fault lines grew

suddenly (in my view) I was expected to not ask certain questions, to accept certain dogma as truth, pushed to turn a blind eye to logical contradictions & incompatibilities w/ reality

I still wanted to "be a good guy", but it became increasingly hard

ofc, this wasnt at all new

the more polarized the atmosphere got, the harder the dogma was pushed, and the less I could ignore the obvious flaws, the tensions between what I was told to believe and the principles i cared about, those of meritocracy, objectivity, individual autonomy, of valuing Truth first

I was, admittedly, rather naive & didn't know how to play the metagame in these discussions; I'd earnestly tackle the contradictions and try to work them out, trying to walk the line between practicality and idealism. this made my very well-meaning counterparties rather mad at me

the discursive atmosphere had intensified where anything that wasn't an obvious signal of alignment was interpreted as a defection; you're questioning the practicality of a pro-equity policy? what are you, racist?

this made me rather frustrated, as I was interested in the truth

in many ways I was lucky to have a strong preexisting philosophical foundation and set of convictions; as such, I was only ever on the periphery of the movement ideologically, never fully bought in. I'd use the ideas and push for the goals, but never adopted it as a personality

many of my close friends were not so lucky; they dove headfirst into it, were pulled in by their v political girlfriends, walked into it cluelessly, only looking at the stated goals, and not the methods

it was disheartening, to say the least, to watch my v smart friends go crazy

I say crazy on purpose, not to insult them, but to impart just how divorced from reality many of these views can get; when you're expected to simultaneously believe mutually incompatible things, and not even so much as hint at their contradictions... it has a psychic toll on you

I'd love to point to one moment as the breaking point, but there wasn't one, really. more of a slow disillusionment w/ the movement and its methods, it's ideological excesses, how totalizing it was, demanding complete ideological capture

but the process was self-reinforcing

the moment you'd start questioning any dogma, you'd get massive pushback and vitriol, further alienating you and giving you mental and emotional distance, which in turn would give you even more perspective on its ideological flaws

at a certain point, you have to choose sanity

you're quickly faced with the choice of continuing to ask uncomfortable questions and face social discomfort, or clamming up and no longer discussing certain topics

at some point, I chose the latter; I'd just avoid getting into many topics with certain people, typically women

this can be difficult, isolating, lonely; you can dodge questions or change the subject only so many times before people start to think you're being weird, and with that suspicion comes further distance

the pandemic brought this all to a head for me and pushed me over the line

no longer seeing people in person and hence not having to make polite noises made it easier to dissent in Facebook debates (yeah ik)

spending more time w/ my thoughts, reading online, helped clarify my positions

seeing their arguments from a distance made the flaws obvious

a month or so in, I was getting into massive arguments with them, as I no longer felt like holding back or lying, w/o that immediate social pressure

this sucked, obv, as it helped neither of us
& it led me to search for a scene w/ more tolerable norms

---
RT @pee_zombie
this feeling, in the beginning of the pandemic, is what drove me online initially, in search of voices sympathetic to the desire for measured discussion, without the …
https://twitter.com/pee_zombie/status/1386431495879892992

my ideological evolution is nowhere near finished; I've learned much over the last year from you v smart people & have had to reconsider many of my beliefs. I'm still figuring out my positions on many qs; who knows how long it will take

but this place is a safe space for thought