Wow! Thank you so much for sharing! That’s really brave of you! As a Catholic, I am so sad that the Church made you feel this way and I completely understand why you’d need to distance yourself from that kinda trauma. I definitely relate to you with the whole “pointing people out” narrative. In my house, things were a lot more implicit (apart from Muslims. My family was kinda just always horrible to Muslims), but I do get the whole pointing to other people and saying not to mix with people like that. It caused a lot of internalised issues for me, because they did it to black people and I’m… half black
Thank you so much for making me feel like I’m not alone in regretting past opinions and actions by the way Share as much or as little as you’re comfortable with!
I totally get the whole being influenced by your parents thing! We all break out of the “what my parents say must be true” thing at different times. For me, I’m still realising just how wrong and ignorant my family can be on certain things to this day!
Do you live up North el? I can’t remember. I do remember being really surprised that your dad was conservative though!
yeep, it was just too much for me - i got brainwashed and then kinda beat myself up over it, so I just needed out lol
yeaa
i got told not to walk a certain way cus it was ‘how black people walk’. The real reason was because I looked like an idiot and would probably hurt my back, but It was a) unfair of my parents to make that generalisation, and b) horrible of my parents to allow those kind of ideas to seep into a 6yr old’s mind
yee, no worries lol!
A lot of mine were kinda ironic considering how I turned out lmao
Tbh I hate the narrative of “homophobes are just self-hating closet gays”, but I do feel like a lot of minorities go through a phase of being kinda bigoted to our own minority group while we try to process our feelings
I used to suffer from the “Not like other girls” plague and was trained by vapid teenage movies that being ugly made me entitled to love, popularity and eventually being seen as beautiful, and all I had to do was wait around for other people to wake up and realize they need to treat me that way.
While I was in that toxic mindset, I also wasn’t afraid to unabashedly slut-shame any female I saw who, well, did anything I was afraid to. Girls who wore crop tops, short shorts, or showed a lot of skin were sluts, obviously. It wasn’t like dressing like that made them feel powerful or confident or anything, they were just bimbos. Any girl who had a boyfriend and especially any girl who showed her affection for her boyfriend in public was a slut. That included kissing, hugging, sometimes even walking together. Any girl danced or played sports or was more fit than me was usually a slut because those were usually the girls who were proud enough of their body to show it off. This is the most toxic thing I’ve ever done, and I’m not proud of it. When I got older and started declaring myself to be a feminist, I realized that anyone who’s truly fighting for all woman should love and refuse to judge all women (Unless a particular woman is a bad person). I also realized that I had both of these toxic mindsets not because of other people, but because of me. It was all in my head, and I needed to work hard to improve myself, not wait around for the change to magically happen.
To all you minorities who thought that you had a free pass to be racist to white people because “mInOrItIeS cAnT bE rAcIsT”, that includes you, too. You can still be a garbage person to other human beings, even if you don’t have institutions on your side
oh yea no I don’t agree with giving people excuses to be homophobic/transphobic ect.
It’s more just a funny thing to look back on as I get older and more mature.
yee. I did, my friend did, i think it’s more a ‘I don’t wanna be this way so I’ll try reject it as much as possible’ vibe rather than ‘oh yea i’m secretly gay and don’t want anyone to find out so I’ll just be homophobic’
Calling every homophobic person secretly gay is just inconsistent and washes out the real issues homophobia can cause
yeaa, I did the same thing for a while. Sometimes it was out of jealousy, other times I just wanted to be ‘not like those other kids’ because I felt that if I wasn’t confident enough to do what they did, the only way I could get friends was to be the opposite
yesss this!
gay people can be racist
Trans people can be ableist
fat people can be transphobic
poc can be homophobic
Your minority does not cancel out your bigotry
We all have to be better, instead of fighting with each other about who ‘has it worse’
I used to believe everything my parents said when I was younger (including some racist stuff), but because I got exposed to the internet really early, I never really internalised their views. My biggest issue was probably the whole “I’m not like other girls” phase which led to me silently judging most girls (mostly because they also judged me. It’s not nice to hear your friends gossip about you behind your back just because you dress differently and never had a relationship)
I also used to believe that mental health wasn’t a huge deal and that most people who claim to have mental health issues are just lazy attention seekers who don’t want to deal with their problems…
okay i’ve read the rules 4 times and i think this doesn’t go against the rules? so i’ll say it:
let me preface this by saying that no one owes anyone forgiveness, yes, we’re all sharing our dark pasts because we’ve changed, but that doesn’t mean the people / groups we’ve discriminated against should immediately forgive us
and if they’re uncomfortable around us upon learning about this? they’re on their right to be
even if we have changed and learnt, people can be uncomfortable with our past actions and they can’t be pressured to like us now
now that that’s out of the way, here’s my part (i won’t be explaining the why, as that’d make me feel like i’m trying to justify sh*tty things i’ve done (this applies only to myself tho, if y’all feel better explaining the why, you’re welcome to do so) ):
i believed myself to be better than people who believed in any deity and shamed people for their beliefs behind their backs
i had a HUGE superiority complex, genuinely believing myself to be better than like 99% of my peers
i picked fights with people because it made me feel like i was right and gave me even more of a superiority feeling
i was aggressive and used my words (and sometimes physical actions) with the aim of making people feel bad about themselves
this was all back when i was an edgy teen ~16
being in uni made me see things in a different way and i’ve grown out of all these, but it took some time
and some people here may have been subjected to me sh*tty behaviour back in the old EF, i apologise for that
i’m doing far better now, if i do say so myself, these are issues of the past
but like i said at the beginning, if anyone here was subjected to my past behaviour feels uncomfortable around me, i completely understand that, and i’d have nothing against them putting up some space between us
Okay, so this is the one thing in my life that I have always regretted and I was being so stupid and I was smart enough to know that this was very very wrong.
So, a few years ago I had this online friend who was black. At the time, I didn’t really know him that well. I got on a voice call with him and he kept pressuring me, over and over again to say a very racist slur. Like, spamming level. I knew it would be wrong to say the slur, but I didn’t realize how wrong it would be. So I said it. Only to him, like, I’ve never ever said a slur except for that moment in my life.
I hate that I did that. I mean after that I learned why it was wrong to say slurs and now why I will never ever say any sort of slur…
I mean, idk if I was being racist- I certainly wasn’t trying to, but I was definitely being very very extremely stupid.
oki hi just wanted to throw my opinion in here
As bad as slurs are, the severity of them fluctuates slightly depending on context and audience. Yes, you should not have said it or allowed him to pressure you. However you did not a) use it in the context of calling names, describing someone, ect. b) use it as anything other than a word rlly that he wanted you to say, c) Know the severity of the slur, d) say it in front of anyone who had not literally asked for you to say it, and even then only a friend
I’d say if that was your one slip up, and you didn’t repeat it, and you regret it, then you don’t need to continuously beat yourself up about it. It happened. It was stupid, and wrong, but there are worse things that people do on the daily. You’ve moved on, learned from it and becoime a better person because of it.
Obviously, I can’tspeak on behalf of whichever racial minority the slur applied to, this is just my stance on the issue. I get called slurs regularly, so maybe I’m desensitised, idk - again, this is just my opinion
Share as much or as little as you’re comfortable with!
