People are way too liberal in their means of defining people they don't agree with as being horrible people

There are a bunch of terms that came into vogue in the last twenty years that fundamentally were meant to address the inappropriate behaviors of certain individuals in society: microaggression, mansplainer, incel and white privilege come to mind. (White privilege, of course, being a correction to a negligent indifference towards the treatment of individuals in society who were traditionally overlooked, although in this case just being about race, which I'll get to in a second.)

And while these terms described those engaging in systemic abuses of power, even just in small ways, people began to use them in bad faith as a means of devaluing perspective and people's felt experience. You guys, we gotta stop doing that. People, especially here on Reddit, are serial devaluers of people's feelings as soon as someone says something you don't agree with.

Let's look at incel for example. So a guy says, "I'm average and dumb and I can't get a date. And that's just how it is. Average dumbasses can't date successfully."*

Well obviously what's happening that this guy doesn't understand is that he is also personality-deficient. If he weren't, women would like him, no matter how ugly or stupid he was. Women like guys they get along with.

But since no one can fix his shitty personality, he gets on Reddit to go, "I'm stupid, I suck, women don't like me and my life is shit."

And then people come along and go "And you're a piece of shit!" Because that's what incel means. In the early 2000's, bullies would call you a virgin if you complained about not finding a girlfriend.

Now, if you complain, all these self-righteous morality crusaders come along and tell you, "Not only are you girflriendless, you're also a bad person!"

Or let's look at microaggression. The suggestion is that you meant whatever your behavior was as an aggression, but there are a lot of different ways of behaving and a lot of different reasons for those behaviors. And people are very capable of using these terms as a means of attacking people they see as different from them.

Another term like this is transphobe. Personally, I dislike reading sentences and not knowing whether "they" is referring to an individual or a group of people. I am not afraid of trans people at all, and think they should get to feel safe and like they can express themselves freely in society. But I get called transphobe just for joking about the whole they/them pronoun, even though if everyone decided we were all "they/them" we'd need some fucking genius to come along and go "yeah I know we're all they/them, but how do we refer to a group of us? They/thems?" and everyone would be like "sick, so dope. I can talk about a group of people now."

My point is, these terms were designed to protect people, but please don't be bullies.

A white guy from Florida who grew up in some meth trailer and has six teeth and feels like the butt of every joke, and is hated by anyone even vaguely cosmopolitan and feels looked down on for being white trash -- and didn't lern gud at skool -- probably isn't going to resonate with the idea of "having white privilege." Maybe he's seen his family members get taken out by the police while trying to rob the liquor store. Maybe he's been to jail.

So I wish people would take a moment to realize that there is a need for empathy in society and understanding before just dogpiling people, censoring them, and judging them. And I hope this helps with that in some way.

Republicans are another one. Granted, Republicans proudly flaunt that their core system of values is that they don't believe in government, the right to freedom of expression for the LGBTQ community, or that we should try to address gun violence in the country, or appreciate the migrant workers who have helped build our nation.

But while their ideals are kinda fucking whack, they aren't by necessity bad people. They just think different, and they think the answer to most problems is for the individual to rely on herself. And if we're really serious -- as progressives and liberals -- about community and caring about one another, we need to learn to include them too.

*edit: to the people in the comments saying I'm describing myself, I'm not. I smash** everyday.

**my anime bodypillow