I pretty much agree with everything that you have to say here, I also think that there’s a certain unfairness in expecting people to be fully fledged allies or even aware members of a minority right from the moment they become aware of the minorities existence. I also don’t think that its too much to ask that peopled don’t be arseholes. Being oppressed isn’t a free pass to go about being a total fuckstick to everyone else on the planet unless they agree with you on *everything*.

I am completely mortified when I say shit that should never be said, and most of its pretty harmless cos I’m generally a respectful person. However, there’s things like pronouns. I don’t expect other people to get using correctly gendered pronouns unless its been explained to them… I am trans myself and it was about 3 months before I cottoned on to the pronoun thing.
I wasn’t given a handbook that said ‘This is how to be trans without offending other trans people’.

if feminists/poc/minority x/etc weren’t so ANGRY all the time, then maybe we’d win more allies

I get frustrated with this too. This post isn’t really trying to say that at all. However, I do think that there are some people in the gender community that are just angry bullies that ignore facts in order to throw their weight around in the only space where they have a little power. I think that is fucked up, and they need to get over themselves.

I generally take the view that not everyone’s going to be all nice and understanding when I say something stupid, and it’s my responsibility to remember that. Because even if I say the stupid thing because I’m feeling marginalised/frustrated/etc, so, so many of those stupid things I can say are marginalising, and *hurtful*. Many of them serve to take away the dignity and humanity of the people they are aimed at, so how can I really expect them to always react with care and understanding, or to have the presence of mind to walk away? I can see what you’re saying about teaching, though I have seen a lot more allies stepping up in that regard, and I think that’s a good thing (though it does need to be tempered somewhat to avoid silencing the voices of the very people they’re trying to be allies with).

And I’m really not comfortable with the idea that folks being mean to me is a justification for not trying to deal with and minimise the impact of my privilege. It’s just not something that’s sat well with me for some time, because if I say something stupid in a moment of privileged asshattery, and someone calls me on it, my usual reaction these days is to be completely mortified that I said something hurtful. But it’s also because I know I have very little time for the kinds of men/whitefolk/straightfolk, who decide that if only feminists/poc/queers hadn’t been so mean to them they’d totally support feminist/anti-racist/queer causes. Because if that’s enough to sway someone, then I know their support is conditional, and I can’t trust someone who’s support for my dignity is conditional.

I don’t know. I’ve seen a lot of the particular concern-troll in other places lately that generally argues along the lines that if feminists/poc/minority x/etc weren’t so ANGRY all the time, then maybe we’d win more allies, so maybe this is a bit of a hairpoint trigger for me at the moment.

LULZ! You made me lol!

So the blogosphere really is a series of tubes? Learn something new every day.

@Alan
I think that it would take me far too long to post updates to all those posts, there’s a hundred of them. Also, I’ve forgotten that I’ve even written some of them.
I don’t like to delete or edit them, because like I’ve said before, my blog is for me, and I enjoy reading through and going ‘CHRIST, I said THAT? OMG! I can’t believe I was so IGNORANT/NAIVE/MISINFORMED!’ and marvel at how much I’ve learned since then.
I’ve only deleted one post from this blog, and that wasn’t because I disagreed with its content, but because it was truly awful poetry that I decided the world didn’t need.

Also, I change so FAST. I mean, my blog would just be five posts getting endlessly longer as I post more and more edits to them.

If you’re horrified by things you’ve written in the past, it’s your prerogative to either edit what you wrote, or place an ‘update’ at the bottom of the post to mention what you’ve learnt since then. Or even delete posts completely.