Are we our own worst enemy?

[Equilibera]

3 hours ago, heavyhorse said:




I'm sorry, no.   Just no.  The 3 or 4 public spectacle train-wrecks are all people remember.  Fausty, Aluzky, Mr Hands, are what immediately pops up in people's mind.   Trying to scream what a stable genius and all-around great guy I am as a zoo on my youtube channel (then getting tagged for pedo posts) is NOT helping.  Visibility of a quiet majority only makes it seem like there are more of us, sending people screaming with torches and pitchforks.  

First off, I totally agree. Visibility has not gone well for us over the past few decades and it's not a good idea to be public about anything at this time. Not only that, human beings latch on to the negative and extraordinary way more than they do to the positive and everyday, which is a shame, but a fact of life. 




I'm sorry that your efforts seemed to crash and burn as much as they did...I am sincerely thankful that you tried, but I know how that must have made you feel at the end of the day. However, I, in general, think you misunderstand a bit. In the end, I'm not advocating that everyone make a YouTube channel (or something similar), put themselves out in public, and broadcast ideas. I'm talking about living your life, and if it just so happens that a natural opportunity comes up to subtly influence someone, to not ignore it as it is so easy to do, but instead to take advantage of it. It's one thing to be a talking head on the internet; it's another to be a trusted friend.




If you're known for being a respectable, reasonable, trustworthy person, and a casual discussion comes up, a tactful dissenting opinion is sometimes all it takes in such an intimate setting to get some rusty mental gears going. It might not be worth much, but there's a nonzero chance that it will lead to someone else at least thinking twice. It's not outing yourself at all, it's not "going public", it's not overexposing anyone. It's just disagreeing respectfully and not being a creepy loser while you do it. In the end, I'd advocate for a nearly invisible majority that's doing as much as they can (that is to say, not much, but in large numbers), bit by bit, staying totally under the radar, playing the waiting and numbers game until some kind of critical mass is achieved way way way down the line.




That's all we have, and it's something to give to folks who are dying to resist their marginalization with action. Self-improvement and tactful disagreement with the mainstream in limited, private settings.

2 hours ago, silverwolf1 said:




Despite the desire to compare, we are not like the "Gay" community. Whats worked, is working, or might work there will not work here. That community is human/ human, we aren't. That simple difference throws those methods out the window until it's proven that partners even have rights to uphold.

There is a comparison I see and a sort of empathy between all severely marginalized groups in that everyone suffers in similar ways. However, otherwise I agree totally here. The simple fact is that human beings have had thousands of years of time to work out how they are supposed to interact with each other, and we're still not even good at that. Comparatively, we have no collective goddamn clue how to treat the other intelligences on this planet. It's like a global schizophrenia, and it's not just zoos who have called mainstream culture out on this, either...AW and AR types have too. Books have been written about it.




The struggle isn't comparable because people can't even comprehend that other species, our partners, have worth and value beyond that which human culture gives them. That's a hill to die on that few other communities could even consider having.