There's A Reason Why I Read Radfem Literature To Understand It And Am Sympathetic Towards Radfems On

There's a reason why I read Radfem literature to understand it and am sympathetic towards Radfems on an emotional level despite viscerally hating just about everything regarding the details of their beliefs and their political end goals. Their motivations make sense, even though I actively disagree with the manifestation of them.

You live in a world that is not made to support an important aspect of your identity. You live in a world that has traumatized you over and over again. That eats at you. You get angry. You get resentful. You find other people that not only feel the same way but also encourage your anger and resentment. This all radicalizes you. You fall into an echo chamber. You find scapegoats. You center yourself and your trauma above anyone else because you are hurt and scared and are surrounded by people encouraging you to weaponize that pain and fear.

The SCUM Manifesto is objective proof of this in many ways. I think Valarie Solanas was a deeply vile person, but she was also so deeply hurt and traumatized she couldn't imagine any other way of navigating the world than to externalize it all.

Violence begets violence, unresolved anger and trauma encourages extremism.

I think scared, hurt people lash out and hurt others. You personally do not have to engage with people like that. You can think they are vile and horrible. You can protect your own peace and mental well-being. But that doesn't make the scared, hurt people any less human or any less capable of change. Fear and anger and pain live in all of us and it is dangerous when that gets externalized, but it's worth combatting with compassion over more harm in my opinion.

There's a reason why I am so drawn to bell hooks, and my girlfriend placed it really well awhile back when she listened in to me watching a bell hooks talk. It's because bell hooks' ideology sounds like therapy. It's full of self healing and searching for understanding. It acknowledges the pain of the world and says "you can combat this suffering and heal from it without inflicting it onto others - especially not onto others who are also hurting from other directions"

I think there's a lot of meaning to be found there.