A thought which I've been formulating for a while, but prompted just now by the discovery that a known bad actor is quietly retracting his apologies and brushing over his past: part of being an ally is the awareness that you can never really be trusted.

One of the weirdest discoveries on this hellsite has been that allies - white BLM supporters, straight LGBT allies, male feminists - sometimes just sort of... flip. They fuckup in some minor way, get gently called out, then switch to the hate brigade like they'd been planning it.

And then there are the feminist men who turn out to be predators or sexual harassers, who get caught out for their bad behaviour, mumble some apologies about "the drink" or "I was young" and then go straight back to expecting cookies for their allyship.

So I'm left here, acutely aware that the people whose lives and dignity I support can never fully trust me. There isn't a test I can pass or a sign-off I can get - and there never should be, since getting it's absolutely the first thing a bad actor's going to do.

I don't feel sorry for myself (if anything I feel sorry for the people who have to take a leap of faith to trust me), and I'm not looking for validation or reassurance that I'm One Of The Good Ones (as I say, that's exactly what the assholes would do).

I guess it's just a sad realisation that this is the world I live in. I can try and be part of a culture that's trying to fix it, but I can't wave a magic wand and make it better.