A lot of mean girl/edgelord behavior is just a form of respectability politics for a particular online audience. Proving that you’re one of the Good Ones who can Take A Joke (laugh meekly when someone degrades your humanity) and Tell It Like It Is (insult people like yourself)

the people doing it try to spin it as Brave Truth Telling but they get a ton of social reward from their online audience and the only victims are more vulnerable members of their own marginalized groups

There is always, always a market for the marginalized person that endorses and regurgitates bigotry against their own kind.

I’m thinking about trans women on here in particular and how so many of us seem to have an intense desire to tear down other trans women for not passing, for being cringe, for being ugly, for being embarrassing, for being vulnerable. But it goes for any group really

A lot of trans women are so desperate to be accepted by the mainstream that they will gladly twist the knife in their own sisters’ backs for a crumb of validation from the Cool Kids