idk if it’s the mental illness but sharing literally any information feels like oversharing. i’ll be like “i skipped breakfast this morning” and immediately im like “i might as well have told them where i buried the money”
i really do hate how white people praise people of color for making “funny” and “witty” comebacks to hatred they get. like, for one it really ignores whats actually happening and ignores the seriousness of the situation. second it messes with you so much.
like, example, yáll know me, I’m a gay brown trans disabled muslim, I recieve so much hatred online and irl and I always have. and online when I defend myself, the only time people would seem to care about that harassment is when I make some clever or funny comeback to hatred. people will step in to back me up but only after I make some nice comeback. then im having to deal with the internalized and exhausting issue of feeling like i have to always be clever and funny instead of being angry, because if you get angry nobody’s on your side. it makes you have to fucking think about the marketability of your response to getting death threats or vile bigotry. people will care about you if you have a clever comeback to harrassment, because then they can stay in the comfort zone of treating it like a fun meme instead of facing actual issues. not only that but, like, clever comebacks to harassment are only like .1% of shit you deal with. most harrassment isn’t something you post and people see, but its something you see. people will see a clever comeback I make, but won’t see the countless anons I delete, or the countless notifications of people saying shit like “your people are our servants” and “you should be stoned to death” and countless other shit.
do people realize how exhausting it is, how demoralizing and hurtful it is to get harassed relentlessly, even if you can come up with some fun comeback.
I think if I put aside like, the poltical and hateful aspect of it, part of the reason people react so strongly and are so frightened of me when I’m in public is because of horror. Like. Their immediete association with a faceless human shaped figure draped in all black is more like
like straight up im pretty sure if you asked people on campus they would have a “ghost story” of their experience seeing a terrifying ghost but in reality it was just me like, getting some mail or working at night. its interesting how peoples brains in my experience jump to “holy fuck a ghost” and start screaming as being the most logical interpretation of seeing me instead of “hey maybe its a muslim woman”.
Anyways this is all to say if I saw a shadow demon or grim reaper i would probably be psyched and say “Assalam alaikum” and then go about my day.