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Something something “they don’t care if a liberal calls them evil, but if they get called a [slur] it might seem like it’s coming from someone whose opinion they want to cater to. instead of someone whose opinions they dismiss. And because they are bigoted, being called a [slur] or a slut actually feels like a bad thing to them, instead of the hurtful language of people who don’t matter and shouldn’t be listened to. Use what hurts them.”

I always wondered how to feel about this, when I saw people let loose with bigotry-showing insults against really bad people with conservative and bigoted beliefs. I always leaned towards not liking it on the same grounds as you. I doubt the effectiveness of a random Internet commenter getting bigoted, except towards the big powerful bigots instead of a little guy, in demotivating these people to do bad things. Especially on Lemmy instead of Truth Social or Facebook.

I do wonder how many of the commenters saying this are non-progressives who do think being promiscuous is bad, and thus are not being inconsistent in progressive sex-positive beliefs when they slut-shame—we just assumed they are progressive because we oppose the same people. And how many are progressives who need to do some more work in unpacking bigotry—going mask-off when it’s a Bad Person and showing they still believe somewhere that promiscuity is wrong and dirty, they just hold back the mean comments for Good People. (Or maybe they are full progressive and don’t believe it’s wrong and dirty at all. They are just doing it to hurt the big bad woman who has many political supporters and allies who do believe it is wrong and dirty, and she may herself believe it is wrong and dirty. But onlookers may still read the comments and wonder if that must be their real thoughts about them.) Same for the misogyny. This meme, but with misogyny and slut-shaming instead of bodyshaming

Yes, people do sometimes bring up stuff that is totally inoffensive in insults just because they are trying to be hurtful. But I think the amount of people making bad reference to her brunette-ness (something Americans have deemed irrelevant and inoffensive and not something worth mentioning, as far as I know) in insults is way lower than the amount of people making bad reference to her womanhood or sexual activity, which is probably telling.

I think it also creates ammunition for “look at the progressives, they are just hypocrites, they say sex is good and women are equal. But when someone they don’t like does sex and is a woman, they act the same as the rest of us.”

This civil resolution to an online conflict gives me hope 💖

Big fan of https://5calls.org/.

Even if I’m calling about something that is not a listed topic. In that case, I’ll

1. click on the first topic and get the phone numbers off of it for the House rep
2. hit Skip when I’m done instead of Made Contact or Voicemail. This, I think, avoids counting it as a contact on that specific topic, so I don’t mess up their numbers.
3. repeat steps 1 and 2 for both Senators.

In other words, I use their site and/or app (Apple here, Android here) to just spoonfeed me the phone numbers of my representatives. So easy, less friction, and the easy habits get kept.

Another option is to write down the numbers in your contacts once, naming them something like 111111 HouseRepName, 111111 Senator1 , 111111 Senator 2 to ensure they stay together and at the top of your contact list, and then run down the list calling.

(Listing for onlookers, I know you probably know!)

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Hey, thanks for this prompt. It directly led to me calling my representatives about this!