I probably have some controversial beliefs, but they all stem from the idea in someway they have women’s best interests in mind. Motivations are key to consider, had ppl been more willing to take motivations into account as the TRA uprising happened, we might be somewhere better

With that being said, it doesn’t help anyone to intentionally misrepresent motivations, and it’s never a good idea to see someone you consider to be intelligent say something you disagree with and immediately attribute their motivation to malice.

If you’ve thought of them to be a reasonable, perceptive person up until one specific idea, it just reeks of the unhealthy debate cancel culture that has gotten us into a situation where we cannot talk about what a woman is. So think about if your goal is really for the better of

women or to feel morally righteous, because losing the overall message in order to be reactionary over perceived evil seems kind of the latter. Especially when u aren’t willing to hear the motivation prior to condemning them.

Sometimes motivation is very clear. Ex: a man punches a crying woman across the face in a sexually themed video, it is easy to see that is a sexual motivation and has no basis for justification. But when you see someone you think to be intelligent and they have a belief on a

more complex topic you disagree, again, that isn’t a clear transgression the way punching a woman is. So while ur condemning women u don’t agree with & refusing to engage w them bc they’ve sinned in ur eyes, maybe at least make sure they’re actually pandering to males

Finally, ask yourself how many women can be afforded to be told they aren’t radical enough in a movement that only recently went from being considered a hate group, to being a group with legitimate concerns. Its not just the change in law bc this stuff has been building for years

A huge part of it is numbers, and the reality is you can either have numbers or you can have purity, you can’t have both. It is the puritism on the TRA’s parts that are losing support, they’re unwillingness to bend or compromise. And that’ll bite us in the ass just as badly

if we also want to be uncompromising. It has happened time and time again throughout history. It’s happening in front of us right now as people are “peaking”, so to pretend it won’t happen to this group is intellectually dishonest

And to elaborate- we gained numbers for a variety of reasons that can be unrelated to your own, but these numbers are important & we can make legislative change with them, which is more productive than saying how something could be hypothetically if the world worked just that way

But these numbers have given us agency, they have taken us from a being considered fringe group to an actual cause in a way puritism that only works in hypotheticals can’t. And if we lose those numbers, we’ll go back to being a hateful fringe group regardless of how bad the law

And I will end this by saying, this thread isn’t meant to imply all issues warrant some level of compromise. It’s more to quote something that REALLY applies here and I’m sure most everyone has heard: “Choose your battles wisely.”
And the basis of all activism should at least