I ticked all the boxes in high school. Ironic-but-not-really fascist, incel, anti-LGBT, anti-abortion, pick a reaction, really. Now I’m happily married, father, Kinsey-1, reading theory, with growing class consciousness and looking to build solidarity with those people that a worse version of myself once dismissed as lesser or ungodly. It took leaving home, developing positive and loving male-male friendships, and being told that I was good enough and worth love irrespective of my accomplishments for me to start to develop the capacity to love others in the same way. Those who have traveled a similar path, what did it take for you?
I’m really glad I somehow dodged gamergate. It would’ve been like crack if I’d been online enough at the time to pick up on it.
Please don’t take this as negative, but what’s it like taking estrogen as a cis male? It’s the first time I’ve come across such a concept.
I was raised a socialist haha. In high school I was a communist turned anarchist, then an anarchist through university, and now I’m… a leftist. Haha I just want to say to you, @PbSO4, and everyone else in here sharing your stories, that you did a real good in the world just by becoming who you are. And that I super appreciate you sharing your experiences, because exploring about how that happens for people is, like, the most important thing on the left rn imo.
Unfortunately, we’re all just glorified reformers of chuds and libs–but, that is the task history gave to us, so we gotta do our best with it :) :red-fist:
I just needed someone to give me permission to turn my “notions” into principles. Notions like no one should starve in a world of abundance. Or that America has no right to invade and dictate to other nations. Or that individuals should not be able to privately own the natural world. I needed to know there were people out there who didn’t just pay lip service to those ideas. Once I realized I’m actually correct and it’s not that I “don’t understand how the world works,” everything changed
I was perpetually miserable and lonely living in a suburb to the point where I had suicidal thoughts in the second grade before I even fully understood what that entailed. Always disliked the status quo or the system although I lacked any way of critiquing it. Got interested in conspiracy theories but managed to somehow avoid getting into any weird right-wing shit thankfully, even though I did get very paranoid at one point. A teacher in highschool showed us the third Zeitgeist movie which finally introduced me to anti-capitalist thought and systemic thinking. After that I was in a weird place where I was anti-capitalist but didn’t want to side with the sjw’s; I would pretty much agree with any argument that was against capitalism but didn’t really understand anything else they brought up to be honest. In 2019 I had what I think was an anxiety attack so I decided to watch some Anita Sarkeesian videos to distract myself before moving onto other things that were more solidly left-leaning.
I guess for me it took the mundane misery of a suburb punctuated with two very bad periods and a teacher showing me the the third movie of a guy who also transitioned from an anti-religion viewpoint, to conspiracy theorist-like thinking, before finally becoming fully anti-capitalist. Fortunately I never really fell into right-wing thought somehow, just managed to stay in the “apolitical” both sides area.
