Since I'm the only one really saying anything all that critical you can just feel free to quote me directly next time if its important enough you feel the need to speak on it.
CantChainTheSpirit wrote: Tue Jun 23, 2026 8:20 am
I wouldn't be too down on that social media group. I won't be joining it, I'm not on social media, but I think change does require going to where people are and speaking out.
So join that group if you like, I won't be, but I won't condem it either. I may rejoin social media some day to again start to speak out gently where I can.
To start with, I find it rather insane that you not only start your post by emphasizing you'll do nothing to help the position/project/cause you are advocating for. Apparently, the fact you will DO NOTHING merited not just two mentions but the post needed to start with that mention and end with it too, because the opening statement and the closing statement are the sentences that a casual reader is most likely to remember you made sure to underscore the fact THAT YOU WILL DO NOTHING -- just in case the reader were to forget. What's important is
somebody do something, just not
you, you made sure that was crystal clear for anyone to read. I guess you tried to take out an insurance policy on your post in case its bluff was called by using a tentative
maybe. If a pregnant girlfriend were to ask her boyfriend if he'd be around once the child was born only to be get hit with a "maybe" she'd hardly find it reassuring. I also don't take much stock in maybes, (and many people in this scene can't even pretend enough to give a maybe) but, yeah, a lot of
maybes out there and not so many hard tangible commitments.
Not hard sellingnot confrontation, not begging or threatening people to like maps.
Here's the thing, its not even hard selling, MAPs
aren't selling anything at all. And I don't mean this in the bullshit corporate advertiser/PR firm sense of "selling a vision" -- I mean we literally aren't bargaining at all and you're advocating that we not even try, that MAPs hand over their precious free time, effort, and resources for free. Just not,
you, of course. Isn't it kind of funny that I almost never hear the bullshit about how you just gotta go in and work with (aka provide free labor) communities and causes that aren't your own to "move the overton window"/"change hearts and minds" when it comes to the far right? Suddenly, you don't need to go in and participate, you don't have to provide your free labor and people in the MAP community get angry at you for suggesting people should and may even (laughably) attempt to cancel you for even associating with the far right purely to advocate for MAPs.
And what is the reasoning for that? I could make at least as good of an argument (if not better) that certain sections of the far right are open to our message and share the same interests.
This stuff is always carried on under the mask of either pragmatism, "being flexible" or simply "having principles" but its neither because in the end the failure of the speaker to extend their logic to other inconvenient spheres naturally discredits the idea that its about our cause.
You would have us become literal slaves to the liberal establishment (which is already functionally a corpse in 2026) because if MAPs won't even withhold their labor what will they do? You already swore off the struggle, the process of identifying potential friends and enemies, of persuading the former, and attacking the latter. The process of beginning any revolution starts with the question "who are our enemies? and who are our friends?" to threaten or confront enemies is bad for some reason but to "beg" even potential friends/allies of convenience for anything, aka to bargain or to appeal to their sense of shame/guilt/conscious is also sworn off.
Again, if MAPs won't even withhold their labor then what will they do? At the end of the day, a lowly toilet scrubber gets a wage, prisoners also often get (small) wages for their labor, and even a slave typically gets a wage in the sense that the master must provide food, shelter, housing, and medical care (however inadequate) in order for the slave to survive and keep providing labor.
And what will MAPs get for this? Not even the lowly victuals of the slave, because we activists must provide for our daily bread through some other means. For most of us, this means we work a job to provide for our daily needs while doing activist labor for free in our so-called "free time" (much of which is spent recovering from and preparing for work the next day) and even for those of us who have neetbux in the form of disability, indulgent well-off parents, inheritance etc. the question at play becomes "why?" If we aren't playing for our own team and taking our own side what is the point even for the person who has all their waking hours free and their needs covered? They could just smoke weed and play video games, read a book or paint, go on hinge to see if they can find a partner that looks past their lackadaisical lifestyle or spam minors' DMs on various social media platforms, wyz, and roblox.
After the experience of 1994 when the gay lobby betrayed MAPs we
should be sensitive to offering talent and effort in exchange for nothing.Because we will always be taken advantage of in politics if that remains the case. Much in the same way that a woman who sets no standards for herself will be continually taken advantage of by partners and probably end up the community toilet (not to say this is bad inherently!) without it matching her own volition or getting any type of commitments in exchange.
They literally need us more than we need them, especially given how many of them are functionally jailbirds under state supervision, and yet none of these RSO orgs ever say anything directly in our favor and I'm fucking sick of it. It doesn't even help their own cause to be anti-MAP but that's how deep the respectability politics goes. Imagine if you were an anti-lynching activist who was arguing like some fucking pedantic nerd "ermmm... lets not turn this into a race issue. The issue is a constitutional violation. Everyone deserves a fair trial!
" The thing is you wouldn't even be entirely wrong, a not inconsiderable amount of non-blacks were lynched, certainly a very large minority, some even claim a near majority, and yet that doesn't really matter does it? A massive portion of RSOs are in prison or on the registry for MAP related crimes and fear and hatred of MAPs is a massive reason why the literally unconstitutional SO registry exists.
If you're against using leverage with one of the few groups we have leverage -- who should really be openly on our side if they have any guts, if they aren't simply liberal cowards, because taking our side actually
is taking their own side to a large extent, then you're just against it general. And if MAPs find the idea of using leverage distasteful then we should probably just quit politics altogether and focus on small personalist hobbies like growing a garden, exercise, or doomsday prepping.
As I explained before, the pro-RSO movement is extremely fringe and unpopular. Anti-C would probably be more popular if the normies the denizens of this forum worship as Gods were informed of the two causes. So helping them without setting any terms and conditions is no benefit but then also they can discard us when they are done. Should we help out of solidarity alone? There were some gays that stood with MAPs as the marginalization was ongoing but most plugged their ears and looked away or agreed with our marginalization and repression. Your hope that being a good helper (slave) without offering terms and conditions is literally much less credible than it was in the 80s when the culture was more broadly receptive to the idea of MAPs and had some vague awareness of the 1st wave orgs. You want us to repeat the mistakes of History on the grounds of your fucking anecdote.
Just gently challenging ideas where possible, that's where change comes.
Except most of History proves the opposite. Ideas often have force when literal force can exercise the coercion necessary to restrain opponents, enforce conformity to the new norm of those not particularly passionate either way, and to dispense rewards to supporters. This often comes through the state apparatus, literally a body that rules through at least the potential threat of armed violence.
Gays were literally disrupting APA conferences and fighting police in the 60s and 70s. When the threat of violence began to surface, and keep in mind that streets clogged with even unarmed angry young men constitute a potentially disruptive insurgent army in waiting. Look up the term "military age male" for insight into why this becoming a street-level phenomenon might hit a lot harder than when gays were just writing magazine articles for academics in the 50s. What a surprise that a lot of people started changing views! Even many liberals who once furrowed their brow in disgust and frowned along with conservatives when the topic of homosexuality was broached! Suddenly things became different and liberals had to at least feign a stance of thoughtful empathy and ambiguity when the topic was broached. Suddenly, kneejerk disgust was uncooth and failed to meet the moment! But when gays started crying about how Anita Bryant was just a mean harpie bitch telling lies about how gays are pedophiles who "recruit" in the 80s what a surprise that it took until 2003 until sodomy was struck down nationally and 2015 until gay marriage became law.
Interesting, that the rapid progress of the movement during the 70s tracks with the willingness to use radical methods and violence and the slow progress between the 80s to the 2010s (which is now even being rolled back) followed the use of protest methods approved by the police state, liberal cowards, and petite-bourgeois elements chasing responsibility!
