I realize that it’s 2020 and no one gives a shit about SA anymore. This isn’t meant to be a shocking expose or a call to action. It’s just something I’ve needed to find the words for and a place I felt like I could share it, and now I finally think I have both.

I was active on SA around 5-10 years ago. It was the first place where I really learned about social justice, feminism, antiracism, and the like. It was the place that made me sympathetic to trans issues. It took a hardline stance against most common forms of bigotry and economic conservatism, and it was a crucial step in my journey to the left.

It was also, in a lot of ways, pretty shitty. “Autism” was a pretty frequent insult, the accepted wisdom on asexual people was “They’re hideous unlovable incels in denial,” and a common refrain was “If you were bullied as a kid, you deserved it for not putting in the effort to be normal.” The one everyone knows about, of course, is their notion that furries are pedophiles who sexually abuse animals (and this is ingrained into the site’s culture to the point that furries are banned on sight).

While all of those sentiments are sadly quite common on the internet (and were even moreso during the time I frequented the site), hearing left-wing stuff in the same space as that cruel and ignorant behavior - often from the very same people - caused me to conflate the latter with the former. After all, these people seemed to hate asexuals/autists/furries/“cringey people” just as much as they hated racists, sexists, and transphobes, and they would often defend their behavior by explaining why it was okay to harass and abuse “cringey” people because they weren’t actual marginalized groups.

Given that I’m someone who hasn’t spent a lot of time seeking out sex, likes furry stuff, suspects I may be autistic (a lot of the signs are there, but I never got a formal diagnosis), and embarrassed himself and got bullied a lot in middle school and high school this left me with a pretty fucked up view of myself. If these good people - these people who clearly cared about justice for the marginalized - thought I was some kind of disgusting monster, who was I to disagree? If they had as much vitriol for people like me as they did for outspoken bigots, surely that must have been because I was as bad as the bigots? And what about the handful of times one or another of my high school bullies actually sexually assaulted me? It was made clear to me on SA that sexual assault is always wrong, but it was also made clear to me on SA that I deserved that for “not trying hard enough to be normal.” I wrestled with this in my mind, but rather than coming to the conclusion that “these people are assholes sometimes,” I unfortunately decided that the “you deserve bullying” took precedence over “sexual assault is always wrong.”

I ended up carrying around a lot of subconscious guilt. It became impossible to relax around other people. I felt like an infiltrator, a disgusting monster intruding into a place where I didn’t belong. It became difficult to form any real connection to people (even moreso than usual for me). I didn’t feel like I had a right to any decent treatment by them, and I didn’t see the point - I became absolutely convinced that everybody I knew would become disgusted by me and toss me aside if they caught the slightest hint of who I really was.

Worse is that I assimilated the idea, to some degree, that taking up these positions was part and parcel of being a good leftist. If I stood up for autistic people, I also stood up for vile tech libertarians. If I stood up for bullying victims, I also stood up for incels 4chan Nazis. If I stood up for furries, I also stood up for pedophiles. I’m ashamed to admit it, but this actually led me to attack such people on several occasions - in my distorted thinking, this had twisted into striking some kind of blow against bigots and right-wing scum.

It was only very recently that I came to realize how toxic and wrongheaded this thinking was. Being exposed to healthier leftist spaces helped, as did talking candidly with therapists about who I was and why it bothered me, along with seeing dipshit internet Nazis and alt-right channers parroting many of the anti-furry/autism/“cringe” lines that people on SA did. The day I rejected their thinking - truly rejected it, not just intellectually but emotionally as well - it was like the first ray of sunlight after an impact winter. I don’t feel shame over the things they think I should be ashamed about anymore. The only shame I feel is that I let them hoodwink me into hating myself for so long.