The way I see it, we need everyone at the frontlines. We cannot have 4 more years of Trump. Everyone will be so god damn screwed if he gets another SCOTUS nom.
After that sure lets work out what we really need.
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Alyssa Milano backlash: "I'm trans. I'm a POC. I'm an immigrant. I'm a lesbian. I'm a gay man. I'm the disabled. I'm everything."
- Thread starter MinusTydus
- Start date
The way I see it, we need everyone at the frontlines. We cannot have 4 more years of Trump. Everyone will be so god damn screwed if he gets another SCOTUS nom.
After that sure lets work out what we really need.
Yeah I didn't want to get into it because lest I start a derail, but yep
If that's the case then she sure as hell doesn't get any claim to any sort of "ally" status. Just status as a PR-seeking liability.
No it shouldn't. I also have faith that she is a really good person. Its just wild to me that anyone would turn face after such a benign criticism. Not saying she has but like I mentioned earlier she has already shifted from a "we" attitude to a "they" attitude in her language. If when push comes to shove someone tucks tail, especially over something like a Twitter beef, I wouldn't put too much faith in her.
Hopefully it blows over and she continues to do good things. I believe she will. But there are too many people in this world that when times get tough, will take the path of least resistance.
I'm not convinced that criticizing Milano here has anything to do with the election of Trump. Can you elaborate?
I imagine her teetering on the edge of a canyon with a ton of hands trying to pull her back or push her over while the people she was talking about are just falling into it.
Stop holding Trump above the heads of minorities like a cane.
If anyone is going to vote for Trump because they made a statement of solidarity that didn't go over well with minorities, then that's on them, not the minorities that critiqued their language.
I'll say it again: if minorities aren't allowed to critique the words and actions of privileged white folks simply because they're progressive, then the ideology is a wash and you're no better than conservatives denying racism in the basis of inability to prove malicious intent.
The way to have resolved this would've been "I'm not transgender, but I stand with them and do the best I can to help."
That's it.
Now here we are with so-called allies getting mad people like me aren't groveling at her 30 years experience. It's frustrating.
Has she done that? Her tweet literally says 'we' and talks about the left eating their own, which implies that we're all on the left. The only tweet where she has a "they" attitude is where she's addressing people who have responded negatively to her. It would make no sense for that to be a "we" style tweet since she's not against her own words.
If we aren't nice to racists they'll become even more racist and it'll be all our fault.
You answered your own question. "They" were only the people who disagreed with her. "They" happen to be minorities. I know all minorities are not a monolith and those people did not speak for all minorities but she showed horrible listening skills. "I'm for everyone who agrees with me" isn't the best stance to take when challenged about something as simple as a use of language.
A case of her response to criticsm being worse than what she was being criticized over. Obviously she wasn't being literal, but expressed the idea of solidarity in a poor enough fashion to leave a lot of people confused or offended.
You're completely ignoring the context of her tweets when viewed this way. She definitely did not say that she's longer longer for people that disagree with her, but she can't refer to them with "we" language because that would make no sense. In that particular context she's not in said group (group of people that are offended by what she said) She returned to using "we" language when it was appropriate.
What's also missing here is the social responsibility that you have to get words right when you have such a big following/platform.
If you were genuinely detached from your ego and committed to being better, you could apologize and move on. Instead Milano said she is an OG, we should pay deference, and how dare people criticize her for her bad use of words on her enormously large platform that reaches millions of people.
If you were genuinely detached from your ego and committed to being better, you could apologize and move on. Instead Milano said she is an OG, we should pay deference, and how dare people criticize her for her bad use of words on her enormously large platform that reaches millions of people.
She sounds pretty hurt tbh, from her perspective I get it. She just seems to have a hard time accepting other people's perspective of her.
How can you do progressive work for over 30 years and be in your feelings that much over this?
"Well I was gonna vote Democrat but after being so tuned in to know that Alyssa Milano was criticized on the wording of a tweet she made I've decided to vote for Trump because somehow I also know nothing about policy" said the mythical voter who doesnt exist
It was the juxtaposition of her initial post to her non apology I found interesting.
Answering the question "are you transgender?" With "I'm trans. I'm a person of color. I'm an immigrant. I'm a lesbian. I'm a gay man. I'm the disabled. I'm everything. And so are you, Kirk. Don't be afraid of what you don't know or understand. No one wants to hurt you. We are all just looking for our happily ever after." Very "we are all in this together" in tone.
Then to her non apology referring to those criticising her choice of words as "they" and making herself the victim with the "left eating their own". Then pointing out how much she has done for them like shes owed something. Very "they are against me" in tone.
I mean 40k people like her tweet and about 10k liked his tweet. So maybe when roughly about 25% of the people viewing your tweet agree with the criticism thrown at you, you might want listen instead of getting your back up against the wall.
Anyway, its racking my brain that I've posted this much about an Alyssa Milano tweet but I just found the whole reaction towards it to be more of a white fragility thing then any kind of outrage culture thing. Fascinating stuff.
Because with everything she's done for the cause, to get crucified over a badly worded tweet justifiably makes her pissed off. It's just a tweet and the intent was obvious, I don't really blame her to tell the people who are now calling her a fraud to fuck off.
If people are super sensitive about the wording people use when tweeting support, they should be equally sensitive when being critical of said support.
I mean I guess in the end her response to criticism answers my question of how involved she was with actually marginalized people in her activism vs. how much of it was just cutting a check and maybe going to galas.
Is she being crucified or are a bunch of people just reacting to a dumb tweet?
Even in this thread I've been accused of trying to make her into an enemy even after saying I'm not cancelling her nor even demanding an apology. I also said she's not the real problem. Apparently no one's hearing me because I'm not groveling to her?
So again I ask who's really outraged? Who's really falling for alt-right tactics? People who disagree with dumb tweet, or people characterizing that disagreement as liberal outrage and an attempt to ruin this wholesome woman???
There are people in this very thread saying she was "never really an ally", I can only assume a decent percentage of people on Twitter are saying the same or worse. If I'm an activist for 30 years and someone says that to me over a tweet, I'd be fucking furious. The idea that she's not entitled to be furious because she's white and rich or whatever doesn't make any sense, she's still a person.
Sure, maybe most of the people reacting to the tweet are being rational (though I kind of doubt that), but even if its just 15% of the responses straight up demonizing her, that's enough to make anyone feel alienated. The most vocal ones drown out the rest.
Cricified is probably too harsh of a word, but she's certainly having her intentions questioned based on a well meaning tweet that some people didn't like the wording of. Then you have people who are claiming she's a bad person for not just apologizing and "listening" to people.
It's really frustrating that a cishet white woman used language that's harmful to...well everybody and now the concern is over whether or not people were too mean to her.
And what gets muddied is that for those affected, trans folk and people with disabilities, language is relatively significant for them and now the harm that Milano has caused is obscured because she has victimized herself for fucking up.
Pretty much. People were asking why that trans thread was so empty compared to others? This right here is why.
Because she should apologize and listen to people. Again, this isn't some masked crusade by the alt-right. She's being criticized by the very people she's claiming to be allied with, she SHOULD listen, even if she doesn't agree. Full stop.
Responding by lecturing those people on how they're helping the right, eating their own, or reminding us of all she's done (as though the only reason we could be critical is because we don't know this) was dismissive and incorrect.
Not is this a coordinated attack or smear. Milano is a celebrity with a huge public platform, and she used that platform to say something public and something many people considered dumb.
I honestly wish this much energy was put into getting the entire internet community to, for one example regarding the disabled, stop fucking using the word autism and the r word as pejoratives. I know this forum has outlawed it, but its absolutely rampant everywhere else. I'm close friends with the mother of a severely autistic child and she's constantly annoyed at how everyone just casually accepts that shit but gets so riled up over stuff like this.
And regarding this, yes, she made a mistake, but I think her intent was extremely obvious and there are hundreds of bigger battles to fight regarding language used on the internet.
User Banned (1 Week): Inflammatory generalizations and antagonizing other members over a series of posts
Yeah, shit like this. I'm supposed to advocate for people that will throw me under the bus at the smallest perceived slight? Not worth it.
Do you mean the thread about the trans military ban that the Trump administration is trying to push through despite injunctions in place to stop it? Like, that's a pretty clear cut thread on how wrong it is and even if you're ignorant on all the details of transition related costs as well as the history of the ban, it should still be pretty easy to condemn that easy enough since they're trying to bypass legal protections and the courts.
These kind of comments are always really baffling to me though. You're biggest concern when it comes to that thread on a ban fueled by bigotry is that someone might call you out or correct you in some way, while we have to deal with the realities of an administration that's actively trying to take rights away from minorities at every turn. It just comes off as so petty that you won't voice support for a group that needs it because someone was mean to someone else in a completely unrelated thing.
If you want to be a good ally, then you have to recognize that you're going to make mistakes. You will. And that's okay. It's all about how you act afterwards that matters. Don't be dismissive towards the very real issues that minorities face, and try and understand why people might get frustrated in those threads when we're discussing them. For you, it's just some random topic, but for us, these are our lives and it it's vitally important that you recognize this and just continue to show support how you can. These communities do need it.
This is an example of what not to do. Someone made a single comment to you, and you feel that advocating for them is now a mistake in some way. Even if you don't like someone, you should still want them to have the same rights as you. And that's not just going to happen on it's own.
People were pissed off before her response, it just made them more mad. Her response could have been better, with that I agree.
I'm guessing she's putting up a shield because she's angry at the backlash and is now tweeting in an emotional response, and she's well within her rights to have that opinion. I don't doubt that there are people who are are throwing harsh tweets at her while complaining about her wording.
If anything, I think this is just going to cause her to filter her tweets before she posts them, maybe even let them be checked by a PR person first. Personally I'm more interested in someone's raw thoughts.
Exactly, I've known the struggle since my childhood and I know which battles to pick.
Are you trying to guilt trip me into thinking what she did was wrong and denounce it?
Because I don't, it is just a sentence that would still have the same meaning if the construction of it was changed. I don't believe we should criticise allies over something like this.
You'll be sorely missed. Change will never come because you've decided to opt out. We should really reconsider...*checks notes* asking you to be a bit more considerate in your language.
Well to be honest, if you try to be an ally sometimes you need to take and endure some shit.
If not, if your beliefs system is so fragile then you are a hypocrite ( no speaking about you directly)
Everyone is an ally while everything is honky dory, but if shit gets rough then they throw that shit at your face, some allies they are.
Yes, that thread. Most of us knew why it wasn't reply-heavy, for the reason you stated. And yet, the forum was being admonished for not "caring" enough. That's the kind of attitude that's going to drive people away.
I mean, you do you. Just don't cry when you look around and you have no allies left.
yep, this is why i was honest and never even pretended i was an ally in the first place
There's nothing admirable nor desirable about only having principles when it's convenient for you. Like i said, you will be sorely missed.
This is pointlessly combative and hostile and really serves no one.
Lmao spidermanspointingfingers.gif
You should be banned while while ago , but here we are.
Let's be perfectly clear. Speaking as a black man, if you think you are doing me a favor by declaring yourself an ally and then turning tail when you get challenged, nobody wanted your punk ass in the room anyways. Because what work were you going to do in the first place?
No one is talking about not having principles (thanks for that insult, btw), but what you're proposing is wanting people to go to war when the front line is openly admitting you're probably going to get shot. You're going to find a lot less people are willing to volunteer for that.
I wont agree that she should apologize but yes, she should listen. However listen doesn't mean agree unequivocally with what is being said. Listening to people doesn't mean that they're right about everything.
Keep saying this to everyone and you're gonna be fighting a lonely fight.
But, you just said that it wasn't reply heavy because you were scared of voicing your opinion out of fear that someone would misinterpret what you said and correct you in some way.
And the truth of the matter is, people on this forum largely do not care about trans issues. I've been here since the site was up, and I've been in almost all of them, and people only truly care when they get a chance to say how much they aren't attracted to trans people or talk about how they don't like trans people in some way. We have multiple threads every day about something dumb that Trump says, and they'll go for pages and pages despite it being just as easy to condemn what he's saying.
We even had a topic on this a while back about why people are so apathetic when these threads are up, and the prevailing opinion was "I don't know anyone who is trans" or "This doesn't affect me". There's nothing wrong with those opinions, but we need to stop pretending that there's some militant trans cabal that's secretly watching every thread waiting for you to slip up and tear into you. We're people and we have bad days for sure, but we're just looking for support to outweigh the mountain of shit news out there and the extra shit threads that pop up from time to time.
And if you truly, truly, feel that trans users on this site feeling like people don't care about the serious issues that we face is driving away allies, then I don't know what to tell you. We have the most experience with this, and it's something that quite a few people in the TransERA community have voiced. We just want people to care about the issues we face because it's never going to get better otherwise, and telling us that wanting that is driving you away is disheartening.
It's the truth though. We all make mistakes, and allies aren't any different. You have to be prepared for the fact that you might not know everything that you thought you did, or you might say something harmful. People might get frustrated or lash out, but being a good ally is recognizing where that's coming from and doing your best to improve.