@Terra Flooding my timeline with a torrent of replies is not cool.

@Terra I can’t read your replies. They’re disjointed and disconnected.

@Terra @gme *Walks in, surprised and confused. Has no idea what's going on. Does some digging to read the original comments which brought all this on.*

My word, this toot is getting a lot of play over the last few days.

They're only *ever* allies until something pokes them in a tender bit of their internalized white cisheterosupremacy.

Terra, @ValerieMars, I'm sorry you had to deal with this clown.

@gme Since you found the replies in their original form "disjointed and disconnected," and since I have the privilege of being on an instance with a hilariously high character count, I've taken the liberty of collating the responses @Terra was kind enough to give you into a single toot. I have done so solely as an aid to legibility and comprehension, and have made no edits other than to strip out the intervening characters separating posts.

Replies start below:
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Trans people, Black people, and even white women are marginalized populations with lower access to economic sustenance level income. That results in these populations turning to other avenues for income. One of those avenues is sex work, which is often denounced by the same people who seek such services. The work is thus criminalized and it's perceived societal value denounced– and with this the value of the workers themselves is denounced. This is well documented, & also a power dynamic

Where things get complicated is in the sex workers use of services, whether public or private, and the intersection of those services with the criminalization of that worker's existence. As an example, we can use the laws from long ago that criminalized railway use by sex workers. One could say that, at the time, railways were not utilities, and thus not a privilege. However, also at the time, it was one of the safest–in some cases, only–ways for such women to travel and find work.

The laws passed were originally not government, but private, with private enforcement. We could easily argue that the marginalized people who were beaten and many cases killed, were disobeying those rules and thus subject to those enforcements. Railways were not a right. So the outcome of working girls was their due.

Another way to frame this is a situation was artificially created which intentionally placed certain demographics at a distinct disadvantage. That was, in fact, the case

Water fountains were not a right, either, yet my father was beaten bloody for drinking from one. It was not to protect the water, at was not for any reason other than perpetuating a systemic disadvantage to a given population.

Now, the reality is that some systemic disadvantages that marginalize people are not, in fact, intentional… or, rather, some argue their intentionality is willfully ignored by those in power. These are the more insidious ones, because it is so easy to ignore them.

These involve rules, especially private, that are applied "equally" to all demographics, but have an outsized effect on some demographics. We see this in "class-based" policies that are replacing "race-based" policies. They have an outsized positive effect for those demographics who already have more historical access to advancement in the society. Abortion is another, because the huge negative outsized affect is on already marginalized women without adequate childcare.

Again, all of this is well documented. As is the absolutely huge negative outsized affect of forcing sex workers, most of whom are LGBTQIA+, BIPOC, or other demographics to which you claim allyship.

Defending a policy, however private, by saying these people don't have a right ignores the reality that the same society has also created itself around that service being the railway, it is the only effective outlet for some to gain subsistence level income.

That view, in fact, aligns with many of the philosophy and policies coming out of the very right-wing centers of government that are openly trying to erase the existence of Trans and BIPOC people.

The over-arching view of the Right is that there are laws, and those laws must be obeyed. The morality or equity of those laws is not brought into consideration except insofar as they are used specifically to remove the rights and safety of certain populations.

Thus, however aggressive the response of @ValerieMars was, the outcome of tone policing, while placing you at a higher perceived moral register, misses the point that your response was, in the context of systemic oppression, effectively equivalent to saying "Those people shouldn't exist."

I believe that @ValerieMars acted hastily, and in anger.

But I also believe that she acted in the righteous anger of a demographic who is, at this very moment, being systemically eradicated by "rules" and "laws" put in place with full support of the legal and moral framework of this country. This action by Facebook very directly puts people in actual physical danger, people who, because of Facebook's own monopolization, have no other outlet to turn. It erases their existence.

Would I have used that term? No… but the fact remains that the view which you espoused, whether intentional or not, is fully in line with many of the 400+ laws in states nationwide that are currently being written for the express purpose of eradicating a specific population, and the universal application of a "real name" law across all demographics has an outsized affect on very specific and targeted demographics that those same people are targeting.

I think she was just reading the room.

Well, that was a Friday evening doozy.

As someone who consumed it from the outside completely after the fact…

I choose to be on a 500 character limit server, it helps me make every character count… but sometimes a little “flood” is worth it.

@Terra YOU TELL HIM! DAMN STRAIGHT GIRL!

@tamsinsays thanks for collecting these posts into one — it does make it more readable, but you shouldn’t have HAD to do it. Actual Allies, would have read it in its original form. And engaged their grey matter.

@HolyMachina I can sympathize with someone who, for whatever reason, has difficulty reading threaded posts and following the through-line. Folks are cognitively different, and I can see it being useful to take a thread and turn it into a single document... which is why I did it.

But I also think that someone who understands what the problem is would also have the wherewithal to think of what is, after all, a pretty simple solution.

@Terra

@tamsinsays @Terra

Exactly!

You can have feelings of empathy on both sides of a “disagreement”

Sometimes, threading is hard to follow…. @gme is not wrong about that.

But if you want to put in the work… and be an ally… you’ll find a way to, because part of being an ally is doing the work to *fully listen*

To ignore someone’s entire argument because they choose to be on a limit 500 character server, which they may be on for a different reason… that’s just… a lack of empathy.

@HolyMachina Yup. Sometimes, "putting in the work" of Being An Ally looks like copying a chunk of text, pasting it into the good ol' text editor, deleting out the extraneous junk, and reading a letter written by someone who very much wants you to Get It.

Just saying. 🤷‍♀️

@Terra @gme

@Terra @tamsinsays

And that’s a mic drop if I’ve ever read one.

Terra, you and @ValerieMars have mad props in my eyes.

@Terra Yup. I don't get to decide I'm an ally. I get to do the work, because the work damn well needs to be done. If someone sees the work and calls me an ally, I'll know I've done well, but—and this is key—I DON'T GET TO DECIDE I DID WELL.

(And besides, I'd rather be an "accomplice," anyway. It's just a sexier word. 😉)

@HolyMachina

@tamsinsays @Terra @HolyMachina I'm all for minions, but yeah, same.