Glad it resonated. I try to keep myself grounded in the real world and thinking about practical solutions and consequences. I aim to develop practical rules for myself that are a general starting point but are subject to change if the right circumstances present themselves (which now that I think about it is how the common law system we have in America works). I don’t want to be swindled by charlatans and I don’t want to get caught in the web of reactionaries of any kind either. Activists play an important role in keeping issues in the public consciousness but to implement policies that have to balance the interests of greater society and a number of people with varying amounts of political power, it’s dangerous to just let an activist/ideologue implement their vision whole-cloth. It’s simply not in their nature to be thinking about everyone else’s interests.

I’m also reminded of the “Just So” children’s stories and their like. They give plausible stories and explanations for how things developed and why they are the way they are. But they’re all made up. Just because something sounds right doesn’t make it right or accurate and while it feels good to have simple explanations and solutions for complex and stressful problems. I feel like ideologies are prone to this.

For example, when radfems say that men prefer no body hair because their preferences are pedophilic in nature. Like nah fam, as a lesbian I don’t like body hair on women (or men). I’m just very tactile and sensitive to texture (in both good and bad ways) and it’s not visually appealing on women or men. But pedophilic? Christ.