5:32pm June 19, 2014

“Speaking about one particular axis on which one experiences microagressions and tone-policing doesn’t mean invalidating other forms of oppression which you (or other people!) may face, it simply means that you can’t address every topic in every conversation, and sometimes a particular topic is on your mind.”

—

bramblepatch (via youneedacat)

Reblogging again for emphasis. Holy shit, nobody ever again better give me shit for talking about my own problems without talking about everyone else’s simultaneously. The degree to which this restricts the writing abilities of anyone with even a minor expressive language creation problem, or confidence problem for that matter, is horribly non-trivial. It basically turns tumblr into a place where you have to be able to write a well-rounded academic treatise in order to say anything.

And it’s that exact mentality in other blogging situations that made me come to tumblr in the first place. I come here so I can rattle off a post in five seconds if I want to and not have to have it be a complete description of everything bad that can possibly happen to anybody. Or I can write a long post, but it still doesn’t have to be complete and cover everything that could possibly happen to everybody.

It’s okay to write about problems that affect you, without writing about problems that affect others.

It’s okay not to be able to write about every angle of an issue.

It’s okay to dash something off and send it.

Anyone who tells you otherwise is being an asshole. Even if they feel like they have a good reason. Even if they feel like you’re leaving out people who frequently get left out. That still does not mean that it’s your fault (or your responsibility, even) that you didn’t write about a situation that you didn’t write about.

It’s okay not to be able to write about everything.

It’s okay only to be able to write about some things.

Personally – I have very specific writing abilities. I can write about one topic very well, and a close seemingly related topic not at all. That is how it has always been for me. This communication issue has endangered my life at times, so it’s not just something that becomes annoying on tumblr – it’s made me unable to tell people I was starving, even though I was able to go on at length about other issues. People make this horrible assumption that if you don’t say something, it’s because you meant not to say it, or because you didn’t feel like saying it. When for a lot of people, what we can and can’t say is not even under our control.

I go on tumblr because it’s the place where that matters less than it has mattered anywhere in the world.

I go on tumblr because it’s the easiest place for me to write, ever, anywhere, because of the accessibility of the software and a lot of other things.

I do not go on tumblr to write about something affecting me and be told that my issues don’t matter because I didn’t write about someone else’s issues. Or that my issues don’t matter because they’re not as bad as someone else’s issues. Or that I don’t care about someone else’s issues because I am not able, right then and there, to write about them in detail.

All of that is bullshit, and in the context that it happened to me, all of that was manipulative and ableist.

I just want other people in my position to know it is not your fault if you can’t write about everything at once. And that if anyone tells you it is, that is their problem not yours.

And yes I understand it’s frustrating to hear people write about what seems like a closely related issue, but not write about the issues you face. And I understand that overall as a general trend, that can mean something bad. But you can’t take a general trend and apply it to one specific person and hold them accountable for the general trend, without running the risk of doing pointless damage that fixes nothing – and doing harm to someone’s ability to write about other things that matter. Because not everyone has the backbone to stand up to you and keep writing regardless of whether they meet your standards. (And maybe you think that’s good, but I think that borders on tragic.)

Notes: