In the last post, I was musing about what my ideal world would look like. Of course, it’s difficult to say because I can’t account for every issue that we would come up against, but I did mention a few of the bigger ones. Racism, sexism, queerphobia, classism, and ableism. Of course, there are more than just those (religious intolerance and ageism spring to mind), which proves my point that you really can’t fix everything. In fact, even if all these issues were to suddenly disappear, others would spring up in their place. Why? Because human beings love to categorize and to belong to a team. In order to be part of a team, you have to have someone(s) who are not on the team.
Here’s the thing. It’s fine and dandy to say that in my diversity town (instead of my ideal world) it would be cishet white dudes who would go through the experience in order to learn. The problem is that assumes that if someone is a minority in one area, then they would be sympathetic to other minorities.
This is most emphatically not true.
You would think I would have known this ages ago, but I foolishly assumed the best of people back when I was in my twenties and thirties. In fact, when I was in college, I had a friend who was adamant that I was an optimist. I was so offended because I was a cynical pessimist, damn it. He listened to me rant for a good five minutes before calmly saying, “You expect people to do the right thing and then are disappointed when they don’t. That makes you an optimist.”
I opened my mouth to argue, but then I closed it again. He was right. I did expect people to do/say the right thing. I was disappointed when that didn’t pan out. In other words, I was an optimist. Damn it. I was cynical because I kept getting my expectations dashed.
Side note: The reason I started thinking about all this is because I was getting frustrated in the RKG Discord when a few people would not acknowledge that Sekiro was not for everyone. Though no one would be so mean as to say ‘git gud’, it pretty much is that sentiment.
It’s fascinating as well as frustrating to see people (let’s face it. Mostly cishet white dudes) not be able to see that they are not the norm. And, to be fair, in this case, the Discord was built around From games (loosely), so many of the people who are in the Discord are From fans. I am, too, but I am not good at them. And I am one of the few people who can recognize that.