Thank you for this incredible piece of writing, Jennifer, and thank you for leaving it up once it accidentally went viral and responding to comments in such a thoughtful and gracious manner.

I struggle with a lot of the same feelings that you struggle with regarding feminist discourse spaces, for some similar reasons and some more general reasons. I’ve recently started coming out as non-cis to close friends (although I’m still figuring out the specifics of exactly where I fall on the genderqueer/agender spectrum), but I fear that a more public coming out would be a detriment to my past social activism. I’ve done a lot of work advocating for abuse victims whose stories don’t fit the conventional narrative of male familial/sexual abuser on female victim — a narrative my own experiences with abuse don’t fit — and I greatly fear that publicly identifying as anything other than a cis woman will cause the radical feminist mindset you speak of here to dismiss my experiences and my work as nothing more than my own supposed internalized misogyny. (Which is ironic, given that my advocacy has always foregrounded the idea that abuse by female perpetrators is not taken seriously because of the internalized misogyny that perpetuates the idea that women’s actions cannot have enough impact to do any lasting harm — but you’d be surprised how much blowback I’ve fought from feminist spaces even as it is.)

There is nothing wrong with baseline wariness or distrust of a majority group whose members have hurt you or of whom you have been taught to fear for good reason. There is nothing wrong with carrying over that wariness into initial interaction with members of that majority group. There is nothing wrong with complaining about microaggressions and blowing off steam about those oppressive groups and societal structures in safe spaces with trusted friends. The problem arises when activism becomes too clouded by emotion and loses sight of its goal — education.

As activists, it is our job to raise awareness on social issues for the purposes of bringing about change, and that includes those who posit themselves as online activists through high-profile journalism, blogging, or high-traffic conversation. I can’t imagine the fallout I would endure from my superiors if I started screaming at and berating a patron at an event I was tabling for a social activism nonprofit — to not think of any time I engage in activism, even online or in casual social settings, with the same mindset is unfathomable to me.

The attitudes that you describe in this piece dishearten me and invoke the same emotions as anytime I hear people decry that there is no space for allies in social movements — an automatic heartbreak for all those who cannot safely come out, those who can only participate in their own social movements under the guise of allyship, those being told that they are unwanted by their own communities or that their help is unnecessary. These kinds of attitudes are also so dangerous for those publicly identifying with the movements themselves as well — activism burnout is enough of an issue already, especially with regard to minority communities that suffer high rates of violent crime. We experience enough hate from the outside — we can’t afford to alienate and trigger our supporters with our own rhetoric, too.