cutting contact will help your mental health
I keep seeing this as self-help advice and it’s completely wrong in my opinion, both for a person in question and for all trans people around them. On societal level, if nobody engages one another things will just slide even worse. And on a personal level, you don’t always get to choose open-minded friends. If you just push everyone away waiting for more compatible people, you’ll be alone. Poptimism really oversells a strong individual standing alone in a world of bigots.
it also might teach your friend that those jokes hurt, and that her new choices have consequences.
A better way is to not cut the person out but explain it to them, over and over. You cut them out, the lesson they’ll probably learn is that they lost a friend to a biblical plague of gayness or something. Engaging is hard, but unless you try, you’re doing nothing.
Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world 3 days ago
I won’t argue with what you’re saying, because it’s not wrong, but not everyone is able to nor should become an ambassador for their “group”.
If you’re a timid person who doesn’t like confrontation, you’re probably not going to speak up every time she says something hateful, and you might find yourself laughing along with hurtful jokes when you don’t want to. Especially when it’s an old friend.
Loud, obnoxious, combative people, may seem up to the task, but are more than likely going to piss people off and create a bad association with “the group” for others.
Educating friends to become better allies is great, but, it’s also not everyone’s responsibility. There have been many people in my life, that caused me more pain than joy, and I always just tried to win them over, which only caused me more pain. Within the last few years, I started staying away from those people and it has improved my life in every way.
zecg@lemmy.world 3 days ago
I’m not talking about moral duty or responsibility, I’m just saying the outcomes are better for the person doing the choosing if they engage with the world around them instead of shut it out.
If it’s an old friend, then you especially need to make some effort, for your own sake if not theirs. People are using “nazi” and “bigot” as thought-terminating cliches, but in many cases you can have a normal conversation the person you’d call a nazi for their online output about things not related to your or their identity or politics. You can learn woodworking from a nazi and go on to make furniture hammer&sickle instead of a swastika. It’s an extreme example, perhaps, but in my view it’s also really extreme to peddle this extreme misanthropy as advice to people on the internet you don’t know about their friends you also don’t know. “Engage with them and try” seems to me like less of an error these days if we’re talking generalizations then “cut them off”.
Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world 3 days ago
To be clear, I mean removing specific people from your life, not becoming a hermit and only associating with people who are just like you.
I assure you, my outcomes were MUCH better when I removed myself from toxicity.
Your advice sounds like what I would have typed twenty years ago, when I thought I could fix people. Maybe I’ve learned better since then, or maybe I’m just old and jaded now. I do appreciate your optimism, and don’t want to change that in you.
Everybody is different. Some friends can be saved, some can’t. By sharing our own experiences, we give options for OP to consider. There is no “always best” method.
Best of luck to all of you, but also be aware that it’s really easy to catch and spread the plague, especially while trying to cure it.