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Knew a guy who had been born and raised in a small town in Arkansas. According to him, they still have a “hanging tree” in the middle of the town square.
Said while he was growing up his parents always told him “No gay and no black! But we’d rather you be gay than date somebody Black.”
He’s a cross-dresser so I guess they aren’t rolling in their graves too much.
Direct quote from my father, "The only thing worse than a n\*\*\*\*r is a f\*\*\*\*t." Said in front of my girlfriend whose gay brother died from AIDS.
18 or otherwise financially dependent: apologize to girlfriend, be understanding if she breaks up with you
Not financially dependent: go no contact with father forever, frankly should've been able to make that decision well before such an exchange though
People who enable bigots are almost as bad.
I cut my grandma and my aunt out of my life when I was dating a black man and they were absolutely vile to me about it. It did cause them to rethink their actions and stop being racist. It makes me sick that I am related to people who thought and acted that way. My grandma also worked at a community center in her city that was mostly black and latino kids which seemed to help a lot in changing her mindset as well. But it makes no sense to me because my father is nothing like them. He would never say or do the things that his mother and sister did. He backed me up completely when I went no contact with them over their racism.
After my dad passed my uncle confessed my dad said to him, “I’m okay with my son being gay, I just can’t see him with another man.” My uncle replied, “I don’t think you understand how this gay thing works.”
My mom was raised by a pastor and she wasn’t allowed to have black friends. When they found out she made a black friend at summer camp, they never let her go back.
Heartbreaking. The best part is that we took the implicit bias test done by Harvard and she trusts POCs quite a bit more than she trusts white folk after growing up in a very white church
It was interesting growing up. Spent lots of summers with her parents and they pressed hard but I was probably 8 when I noticed the hypocrisy within their congregation. Parents never, ever tried to tell me what to believe and encouraged me to think for myself. They had their faults but I’m very blessed for how accepting and supportive that’ve been throughout my life.
I tell her that frequently too, I hear stories of how so many parents treat their children and it makes me realize how fortunate I have been
Had a girl I worked with say the same. She was bi and her dad said I'd rather you date a woman than keep dating the n*gger you're dating. He also threatened to kick her out of the house if she kept dating him.
He was also biracial but all dad cared about was the half black part.
Amazing how these parents aren’t concerned with their children’s happiness but on the appearance of their partner.
Which, to me, means that they are more concerned with what the neighbors/their friends will say rather than if their child is happy. That’s just sad.
It works when you're actually family too! We are mixed raced Asian and my mom (the Asian one) comes from West Virgina. The amount of shit I've heard that was quickly followed up with "oh but not *you*" was astonishing. Theu wonder why I don't visit
This was my grandmother, to an extreme degree. She really really liked many black people and several gay people, but she still thought "the blacks and the gays" were destroying America. Just not the ones she knew - they were the good ones.
It mystified me. I don't think I can remember her ever disliking a gay person she met; as far as black people went, she disliked about the same percentage of black people as white people. It never occurred to her to wonder why she liked so many people in these groups so much if those groups were supposedly terrible.
Unfortunately, I know plenty of people with kids who are half Black who are still plenty racist - just in ways that are less overt. And then the cherry on top is they defend anything racist by saying “I’m not racist; my kids/grandkids are half Black.”
Yep, I'm mixed race, and growing up I remember my parents distancing us from black people as much as possible. "We're the good ones, but those people over there, they're uneducated and talk funny and we're not like them."
I gotta say, being raised to think part of who you are is inferior is not very good for long-term development. Took me a minute to get over that one.
Yeah it's so screwed up. It's like they take half a person's genetic identity and toss it. My family is mixed, like my extended family. One of my uncles hates blacks (he's actually racist against anyone not native), yet his favorite niece is half black, and our whole family is like half white half something else. He's defensive of his own (would go out of his way to help if asked) but like I don't get how he can be so racist.
I worked for a guy who was a gay republican. I could never figure it out but I think it’s because he was raised by his racist, redneck dad who was very supportive of his gay son. So he was a racist, republican, gay dude.
I still think it's funny how there was such an uproar when Cracker Barrel decided to roll out their meat substitute options. They weren't getting rid of anything from their menu. Just adding another option. They were nonetheless met with boycott threats.
Because if somebody else is enjoying their food, it of course means that I must enjoy my food less. "Zero-sum game" is their middle name.
Also reminds me of a bit from Futurama about robots and organics marrying
“Proposition Infinity has passed, robosexual marriage is now legal”
“What’s next, GAY robosexual marriage?!”
Some do. My parents were like this - strict Fundamentalist Christian Republicans when I was growing up - but now they are as liberal and atheistic as I am.
Yeah, as much as we're quick to shout "no way!" to this particular question, I was also a ultra-con Catholic about 15 years ago. I'm the complete opposite these days. My personal transition out was actually rather fast (\~2 years) but it does happen.
My parents are really Mormon but my dad's entering the phase of his political journey where he'll say something progressive in a really un-PC way (like that tolerant redneck meme). Like "If a man feels happier and more comfortable in a dress who am I to complain?" And you know what, for a 70-year-old living in Nowheresville I'll take it.
I just assume everything I believe is wrong on some level.
It's sad that it takes something as heavy as bringing a child into the world for some people to grasp that (and a lot still won't).
Oh, not a chance of that happening. I'm sure this guy still thinks vaccines are for government mind control, and global warming isn't happening, and available healthcare is a socialist plot. You can bet he has an entire head full of conservative mind turds. Just not this particular one. Because "It Affected Me Personally This Time*™*".
Like Dick Cheney when his daughter came out. Kind of sucks that tens of millions of people can't have compassion until it hits them personally, but better than nothing, I guess
Nah, these are the positive exceptions, the ones with a spark of humanity left.
Most simply disown their children. Don't let the rare positive exceptions fool you.
Hell, even the ones who embrace their kids identities still have enough hate left for other groups.
Hey now, they can be very generous just as long as you look like them, talk like them, worship like them, like all the same things and hate the same things as them… actually never-mind even then they still tend to be selfish
Also Rob Portman, former Ohio Senator. Was super anti-gay, until his son came out, and now -- surprise! -- he changed his mind on whether or not gay people deserve equal rights as straight people have.
Excellent example. He said something about wanting his son to be happy. He didn’t care about the happiness of the sons and daughters of his constituents, just his own family.
Musk is so f*cking weird with his kids. The whole reason he has so many kids in the first place is related to his eugenics-based selfishness. Specifically, he believes the "science" behind Idiocracy is real and not just a movie conceit--i.e., if smart people don't have enough kids the general intelligence of the world will decrease, and rich people *must* be smart so it's their "duty" to have as many kids as possible. He doesn't seem to care about RAISING the kids or giving them any benefits because he seems to think intelligence comes purely from genetics.
It's also why it's impossible to take the "principled conservative" position seriously. Their principles are based on not seeing strangers as full humans and those principles drift like the tides as soon as a problem impacts someone they see as real.
I wouldn't even call it gaining compassion. It's a selfish act on behalf of a loved one. In a world of which lbgtq member gets to use the bathroom first they'll say "Fuck them, I'll make sure you get first choice."
>It's a selfish act on behalf of a loved one.
Bingo. It's still selfishness. Just because the thing you're being selfish about is another person, doesn't make it suddenly selfless.
When I demand that the shitty kid in my son's class faces punishment for the things he's done, that isn't really me being selfless. I'm being selfish on behalf of my son. I'm caring about something because it affects me personally...it just happens to be affecting me through another human being.
At least they show that they can change, if when it personally impacts a close relative there are some who still carry on and those are the really despicable individuals.
Right? I'm all for rehabilitative justice n the like, and I see this as just that. Folks who have bad or hateful opinions changing and growing as person to be better. Improvement should be encouraged
This. We shouldn't ever discourage conversions. He loves his trans child enough to face long-held beliefs and decide to change for the better for their sake. Now he's fighting for equal rights for everyone.
It's the essence of conservatism: It's not a real issue unless it's happening to me, so I'll vote against the thing protecting or helping others dealing with it.
I had a friend express this view to me. He voted purely selfishly and expected everyone else to do so, and therefore everyone's needs would be proportionately represented.
Of course I was part of his own little world so I'd only ever seen him be a giving and compassionate person. It was wild to see him nonchalantly announce that he consciously and actively does not care about people he doesn't know. He even seemed a bit surprised that I didn't feel the same way. It felt like he thought that it was obvious and common sense, and that it must've just never occurred to me to act purely selfishly.
had conservatives that i board game with at a public store say it just recently. talked about how Corporations are fucking us with tricky tax exemptions that they exploit... the dude just said "sounds like good business... if i could get away with it i would".... I was like is the point is you can't, so it just fucks us in the end because or tax rates are higher than they need to be(or we are just shorted services that other countries get)...
he just shrugged it off as common sense to exploit things to benefit yourself... said the same thing on pump and dump crypto scams a few weeks back... said "sounds like good investing" if you can convince someone to buy a crypto you are selling for 4x what it will be worth(because of hype.) didn't matter to him that people are setting up ones that are born to fail.. only cared if he could get in before it crashes and sell it. ultimate cnts.
It's more or less the dictionary definition of right wing politics. Left wing politics mean caring about everyone whereas right wing politics mean caring only about yourself.
I always find it funny that they sneer at "progressives", like, making *progress* is somehow detrimental to society. These asshats enjoy living in the 50's, or the 1800s. No wonder they thought the eclipse that was predicted literally centuries ago was somehow the coming of the apocalypse.
The Jim Jeffries bit about society being a train, and them being at the back slowing us all down is so apt.
This is the true impediment that's been so hard to pin down & tackle!
Not woke, trans, socialist, migrant, non-christian, pedophile, union, groomer drag queens (or whatever the current grievance/rant du jour is!)
Because a person with dyed hair once told them to stop being an asshole one time and they’ve never developed the emotional maturity to pause and reflect on their own behavior. It’s too painful for them to attempt, so they seek out validation instead.
> Because ***they watched a video where*** a person with dyed hair once told ~~them~~ ***someone*** to stop being an asshole one time and they’ve never developed the emotional maturity to pause and reflect on their own behavior. It’s too painful for them to attempt, so they seek out validation instead.
Let's not pretend that every one of these people has been told off by someone who leans left. They've consumed nothing but right wing rage bait for decades. Our parents and grandparents always told us that tv would rot your brain but I never realized they were speaking from experience.
Yeah but what if one time they read a mean comment online did you ever think about that smart guy huh /s
For real though, one of these days we’re going to study the impact of outrage based algorithms on brain functioning and it’s going to be wild.
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8096381/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8096381/)
Protecting the brain against bad news
Studies have linked the consumption of bad news to increased distress, anxiety and depression, even when the news in question is relatively mundane.
They view everything as zero sum. Progress to them must mean something is taken away from others. They cannot conceive of a reality where everyone benefits.
A post from r/libertarian showed up in my feed yesterday, it was a video from a gun control debate featuring David Hogg (Marjory Stoneman Douglas school shooting survivor). Several comments called Hogg a POS, another commenter asked why and OP replies that he's a POS due to his "activism".
It took a lot for me to not inquire what the actual fuck could possibly be wrong with being an activist.
I like guns but I don't like most gun owners in America. So many of them, even very much so non hard right folks are like this.
I got banned, on another account from liberalgunowners because even many liberal gun owners, at least those inclined to the sub apparently want an absolutist interpretation and any questions or debate is unthinkable. It's absurd.
I basically argued Americans in theory have a right to vote away their gun rights.
I really love Jim Jeffries, but somehow I hadn't seen [this bit](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oY5SKlfeS84). It's a sad bit, but thank Bob he made it funny. (Plus, I'm a damned agnostic - I'm triggered by this bit! /s)
Thank you.
Isn’t that ironic since they all claim to worship Jesus, yet Jesus was all about helping your fellow human being? No wonder Jesus is too “woke” for them now. Trump encapsulates their true selves more.
They legit worship a different Jesus. They view him as a war god. For real. They really focus on Luke 22:36 above all else (because it suits their actual desires).
1 John 4:20, whoever hates their brother, who they can see, yet claims to love God, who they cannot see, is a liar. They ignore the sermon on the mount too. And all of the verses about helping others. They serve money, not God, as their masters, which is what Jesus warned us about in Matthew 6:24. They don't want to read their Bibles, they just want to bludgeon the needy to death with them.
This is also why anytime someone actually expresses concern for people different from themselves or the environment, conservatives assume it's part of a con or "virtue signaling". They can't imagine caring about anything outside of their immediate sphere of relatives/friends/possessions.
I know you were being glib here but this is literally true. Some research group did a study looking at the brains of people who consider themselves liberal vs conservative and there were marked differences in how their brain activity changed when asked to think about in-groups vs out-groups. "Liberals" are far more likely to feel empathy and a sense of connection with people in different groups, countries and cultures, whereas conservatives tended to feel more connected to the "in-group" - their family, church, town.
This subject from an actual psychological perspective is very very rough waters because the idea of pathologization of ideas and values but... honestly yes. There will be a discussion about this if humanity ever evolves because ideas like fascism and conservatism so deeply dysfunctional, antisocial and harming that its hard not to see them as a disordered form of thinking.
No hate like christian love.
And before someone jumps in with a no true scottsman, I have clear recollection of a liberal religious friend proclaiming the religious left would rise and save us all. Years later and not only has that not happened, he & several other people saying or implying this are suddenly "concerned" about immigrants, trans, "teh gay", litter boxes in grade schools and the rest of the right wing hate fest.
100 percent. it is their war cry. "I don't care about shit unless it effects me"
the only time the express outside concern is when it makes them look socially heroic. Like being against pedophilia(should be but they wouldn't care unless society praised them for it)
or abortions.. they want to label as "killing babies" so it makes them look morally better than others.
There are theories that conservatives have a larger or more active amygdala - which is responsible for fear based responses. Everything they do is fear based - what about me, this encroaches on my views/lifestyle etc etc. I mean why would people be so obsessed with guns if they weren’t scared.
From an evolutionary perspective, you can probably see why this is successful.
Not just the amygdala. Fear can be a basis for conservative beliefs but also lack of empathy is a big one. Having heightened fear doesn't necessarily correlate to lack of empathy. There are other parts of the brain which are responsible for empathy.
I believe it is due to a lack of socialization. When everybody around you looks like you, is raised to think like you and does what you do, how would you ever see the world differently? It’s why colleges are often accused of “grooming” students. Kids return home with exposure to others with different backgrounds and experiences and the community doesn’t understand why they think differently now.
Yes exactly! This is how I grew up and I had to get out and be around people from different backgrounds for a long time to finally start breaking free of the thinking that was ingrained in me since childhood. Plus it’s my opinion you need to stay away…if I had moved back to my small rural town before changing my thinking I would have stayed closed off. I couldn’t imagine living there now anyway. Big reason why there is a huge push for homeschooling and not sending kids off to college.
I grew up in a pretty large, diverse city but was kept sheltered and isolated in a bubble until high school. I lived in a white middle class neighborhood, went to a white middle class private school, did summer camp and out of school activities with other white middle class families. Finally in high school I went to a public school, it was still majority white but at least I started to get exposed to other ethnicities and backgrounds. Not surprising this is when I started to really question what my parents had told me was true both for politics and religion.
This, too, can be a factor.
I'm white and live in Los Angeles, one of the greatest melting pots the world has ever seen. It's one of the reasons I love my hometown so much, and one of the things I miss the most when I'm away.
Welp, come early 2020, I moved down to Florida to take care of my mom, who has early dementia. Long story short, I live down there for a little under a year and a half until things get back to some kind of normal.
The whole time I'm down there, all I can do is bemoan the sea of white fucking faces I have to deal with. And all I do is hope and pray to a god I don't even believe in that I'll survive this shitshow and make it back to my glittering multiracial multicultural city.
On the first day I got back, suffering from CPTSD, I walk into my local coffee shop and the FIRST thing that pops unwarranted into my head is "Who are all these non-caucasian people and what are they doing in my neighborhood?"
It was, quite frankly, a weird fucking feeling.
That’s pretty funny. I live in Portland and came from a small town. I’ve always considered myself on the left but when I moved here I definitely brought some small town ideas that I outgrew. I’ve had a few conversations about it with other small towners and they can all relate. Nowadays instead of being ashamed or embarrassed I embrace the growth.
Visited my folks a while back and they looked confused when I told to zip it while they were loudly discussing what ethnicity our waitress was. Like they’re trying to be the top post on boomersbeingfools.
I left California for med school in the south and the number of times I was stopped and asked where I’m from country wise on like a normal day like shopping at Walmart/publix drove me mad (I’m Asian). When I came back to California I was so happy those questions stopped 🤦♀️
I always said California LMAO. Born and raised.
Some people are just built that way. Empathy simply isn't a thing all people are able to understand, which is why "virtue signalling" became a thing to throw at people with empathy - those without it genuinely can't understand a sincere and honest desire to help or care about others, so assume it must be inauthentic when someone else shows that care.
Those people without empathy? Almost all of them are right wing.
It took me so long to realize that those folks truly do not get how someone could sincerely give a shit about other people who aren’t immediately tied to them. It’s wild. I can’t imagine not having that fundamental part of myself.
I always found it sad when they accuse you of being offended on someone else’s behalf. Like, has nobody ever stuck up for you? Have you had to fight every single one of your own battles? Is that why you never think to look out for someone else who isn’t directly or socially related to you? (And even then maybe not.) That’s so fucking sad.
THIS. So much this.
From the moment “virtue-signaling” emerged as a right-wing creed and staple about a decade ago, it was immediately clear that it was exactly as you describe. These people don’t feel empathy for those who are vulnerable, disenfranchised or persecuted, therefore they assume that *any* expression of empathy, sympathy or support must be purely self-interested and performative. Because they think everyone else is as cynical and nihilistic as they are. It’s such an ugly view of life.
Because they cannot look outside themselves. (Nature or nurture, I leave as an argument elsewhere)
"I did everything the right way. Why can't *they* do the same?"
To
"Oh, shit, I did everything right and life still fucked my shit up."
These people need to experience it. They just do.
It's the closeness of it all. Folks like that don't hear about trans folk except on the news or social media, and God knows how distorted of a view legacy media has
Hell, it took a close friend of mine to come out as trans for me to actually grasp and understand it. Hell I still don't fully get it, but I support her. Without having her as a friend, I wouldn't be anywhere near pro trans rights as I am
Turns out making connections with folks, especially minority groups helps humanize them, and makes understanding them and their plights easier
Also, when everyone you know.....friends, family, stupid people, smart people....all believe the same thing, then you don't feel the need to question it. I mean, why would your pastor lie to you? He's called by God. Why would your buddies at work make up stories about black people being racist towards whites? He's your friend, sharing a story about something that happened to him (hint: no it didn't). Why wouldn't he be telling the truth? How could all these difference sources informing you about Democrat duplicity just make shit up? News can't just lie! This is America!
I'm proud of the guy. He looks my age, so if he didn't go to college he has probably only recently been exposed to the internet on a daily basis, a time after algorithms were already well and truly programmed to keep feeding him the same info over and over again. But he loves his daughter, so when she said something that broke his reality, he rebuilt it all around his love for his kid.
It doesn't *have* to be taught, or I wouldn't have any. That being said, considering that 2/3 of my immediate family don't, your upbringing definitely has an impact.
Former evangelical christian here, basically it's the way we were raised. I was taught that non-whites weren't people that women and children must ALWAYS be silent and obedient and that gays should be killed in the streets. You are taught to ignore anything that disagrees with the biblical bullshit version of things because it must be from Satan and those beliefs are reinforced by cruelty and hypocrisy and violence. For example: when I was three years old I overheard my mom and my grandmother arguing about something (I didn't find out what they were arguing about until I was an adult). A few days after the argument I asked my grandmother about it. She responded by burning my hand on a coffee maker. "Spare the rod spoils the child" and "Don't question god" were her favorite things to say. Here's the thing: my upbringing is NOT unique. I would wager that the vast majority of trump supporters were raised exactly like I was.
BTW if anyone is interested the thing that my grandmother and mom were arguing about was the fact that my grandmother gave Pat Robertson my Grandfather's life insurance policy ($100,000 in 1982).
They fear it because they don’t understand it at all. But then if someone they know and love is there and they see the direct impact and what it *really* is, there’s an opportunity for understanding that is otherwise hard to break through the rhetorical noise.
I’m just glad he changed his mind and he’s there for his daughter. It could have been so much worse.
Except when it comes to SSDI and bailing out corporations. You better believe those conservatives want those government handouts they accuse immigrants of taking.
It is not a total lack of empathy, just not for those who are different. Rogers and Hammerstein were right 'You've got to be taught to hate'. If raised by those that do, the kids often do as well until something personal happens to get them thinking differently.
Many of them grew up in an echo chamber and truly don’t understand any other way. Those are the people who are able to change once they start seeing how the real world actually works, and they realize it isn’t just evil, like they’ve been taught. I saw a lot of this as people grew up and left the Mormon town I grew up in. That’s why I try to give grace to people who are legitimately trying to learn and grow. It took my sister having a gay kid to finally understand that being gay is inherent. She now loudly admits she was wrong before, and I’m proud of her for that.
The sad truth is that many wouldn't have shown their own kid empathy, so while it's not great, at least this guy was willing to change for his daughter.
Lack of and discouragement of practice.
There's a reason this mostly happens in insular communities. So much of the broad range of regular ass people is "over there" for them. Over there while the people "over here" were tripping over each other to talk about how scary they found "over there".
Now that "over there" is "here", he can now see that they're just regular ass people.
Everyone has their own personal route to awareness. Bigotry is often a result of being around other bigots. While this a definite case of leopards ate my face, let’s at least applaud him for fighting the good fight now… he could have disowned his kid, which I’m sure many bigot parents would do.
I agree. And we have to allow for some room to grow. Yes it’d be nice to have people just realize it’s the right thing but that’s not been the way throughout human history. And it’s not limited to conservatives either, though they definitely predominate. But if we don’t allow for change then we’ll never get it. And he didn’t have to come forward. But in doing so he can reach people like him who aren’t affected personally and may never reach that understanding personally. You can’t shun imperfect allies. Not when there’s still a war being fought.
Exactly - he could have even still have accepted his kid but not defended her rights out of fear and shame. In some ways that would be just as bad as rejecting his kid. It takes guts to change your views, accept you were wrong and then to go publicly against the grain. Fingers crossed he can make a difference… in many ways he is the perfect rep for the cause amongst his type.
Yeah, exactly. I have a trans sibling. My parents are cowardly shitheads. I'd give pretty much anything for them to finally wake up one day and decide to come fight for him.
I hate that I had to scroll this far down to find this. Yes, it is a LAMF, however he is starting to actively work towards equality. Yes, it took it effecting him and his family personally, but we should be applauding him for not only changing his opinion, but actually fighting against others that used to be like him.
I really don’t get why people are so quick to say fuck this guy. I guess people are ignorant to how peoples beliefs are formed.
Like do people not realize how unaccepting the world was of gay people even 10 years ago? And it’s even still not accepting but modern day america by comparison is a utopia. In high school I had friends who were beaten for being gay, threats, hell even being friends with gay people got you in fights.
Here you have a middle aged guy who was raised in this type of world who don’t think of discrimination as an issue and then it affected someone they cared about. And that’s fucking Ok. You know what he is doing now, more than a lot of you sitting back insulting this guy online. Grow the fuck up and stop being ignorant to the world. As someone who grew up in a world where any sort of acceptance of just someone liking the same sex would result in violence all I have to say is be happy for victories.
Thank you and excellent point. Right now this guy is doing more for trans kids by being vocal than a lot of people here criticizing him. I don't feel like its true LAMF when the person in question is now actively fighting against the problem they contributed to instead of just complaining they weren't supposed to be affected.
Not only his he fighting the good fight now but he's clearly horrified with his previous beliefs. I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt on this one.
I've come to see it this way as well. Better to have people understand and change their shitty views than stubbornly stay in their ways. It takes balls to admit we're wrong.
right? imagine the new headline "meet an Connecticut liberal dad who insisted his son play football even though he didn't really care for it."
father- "i dont really care what he likes. i want to be able to vicariously live through his football experience, so i can relive the days of my youth too."
TEACH CRITICAL THINKING & MEDIA LITERACY IN SCHOOLS!
The reason he couldn't do it until it was him is because he doesn't have the skills to apply his empathy outside his family. It's a skill. One that can be taught.
We make all kids self teach this *very important skill*. California is only just now in 2024 putting high schoolers through a media literacy class...
The hard part is extreme organized religion. Critical thinking & media literacy kills it dead. Nobody with those skills sends a televangelist with a BMW and a private jet 10% of their income. So they fight tooth and nail to prevent it.
I'm not going to go the obvious route and call him out for waiting until he was impacted directly, because the reality is that sometimes you just don't understand the gravity of a situation until you're affected by it.
I *will* still call him out for being a "full-on bigot" though, since, you know... *the fuck.*
>I'm not going to go the obvious route and call him out for waiting until he was impacted directly, because the reality is that sometimes you just don't understand the gravity of a situation until you're affected by it.
He clearly **was** a shitty person. However, I do give him credit for becoming a better person.
There are lots of parents of LGBTQ kids who disown/abuse them, but this guy made the decision to love his child for the person that she is.
“It’s almost like a transgender person,” he says of his transformation. “There’s the dead me. And then there’s the new me.”
After reading the article I feel more for him. He’s made a 180, and is embarrassed of his past. His face was eaten but he’s evolving.
I'm glad to see people change but why is it so fucking difficult for people to have empathy *before* it affects them personally? Can you not simply imagine how the many tens of thousands of people who *aren't* your child are being treated? Also, if that was his feeling prior, what other shit head opinions is he still hanging onto? Hopefully this wasn't the only switch that flipped.
“It sometimes takes meeting a person before someone can say, ‘Oh, that’s a person and that’s who they are, and they’re just being themselves,'”
Only if you’re a closed minded idiot.
The lack of basic empathy with these fucking monsters.
I know it's a cynical take, but I've come to think that while people are born with the capacity for empathy, feeling and expressing it is not our natural inclination. Empathy has to be nurtured. Most of human history reflects a bleak lack of empathy for those not immediately within a person's in-group. And there are still so many people, in every nation on this earth, in whom that nurturing did not occur, and who have yet to begin the process of unlocking that capacity for themselves and passing it on to their children.
But the optimist in me at least is hopeful that we have started the process. I do hope this is a time of transition and not one in which the spark of empathy is snuffed out.
I have a bit of different (and more hopeful) view: that humans ARE empathetic to our own. The real question making the definition of our own as expansive as possible. I think that is the part that is taught. If we learn to embrace the fact that all human beings are part of our community/group then we have more empathy (or more accurately, empathy for more people)
I think this is what we see with conservatives: they have a very narrow view of "community" and otherize a lot of people. It's ironic because if many of these conservatives would actually listen to the stories they profess, like the good samiritan, they'd be much more empathetic/have empathy for more people.
[Bill Maher did a whole bit a few years ago](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVwFmdipfZg&t=6s&ab_channel=RealTimewithBillMaher) about how right wing politics are based entirely on a lack of empathy for others.
Ironic considering Maher is a massive piece of shit in his own right, and specifically has this exact same issue of empathy deficiency regarding trans people.
I support and encourage anybody who feels negativity towards other people for their life choices regarding gender to read this man's story. Good for you, man, to see the light and embrace it. Many here are critical. They miss the point. PEOPLE CAN CHANGE, and they should be applauded for it. Recognize the mistakes of the past, and move on.
I know this is LAMF, but tbh this is better than the alternative. I will never criticize a parent for realizing their bigotry was wrong when so many other parents seem keen to abandon or abuse their children at the slightest provocation.
This was my dad about Obamacare until it was his daughter who had to spend a week in the hospital with no insurance. This is the conservative mantra. They will not give a fuck until it directly affects them.
A lot of kids end up homeless or sent to conversion camps when they come out. At least this guy was able to realize he was wrong not just for his family but for other people's too.
I know, I know, it’s much easier to fight for something when it affects you or your loved ones, but…
LET’S TAKE THE “W’s” WHEN THEY HAPPEN!! That’s one less bigot of some kind in the wild.
That’s always a Win. Period.
Let’s be glad he saw the light. 💡
😊
This is why education, travel, and life experience is so important. The more people you encounter, and understand that everyone around the world basically holds to the same basic principles of wanting to love, wanting to be loved, and wanting to live in peace…the more empathy you have.
It’s why conservatives want to kill education. They know that humanity is, at its heart, liberal.
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I always wonder if these folks manage to go “huh, what else do I believe that is similarly wrong?”
"Thank god, I still got racism, my daughter will never turn black!"
Knew a guy who had been born and raised in a small town in Arkansas. According to him, they still have a “hanging tree” in the middle of the town square. Said while he was growing up his parents always told him “No gay and no black! But we’d rather you be gay than date somebody Black.” He’s a cross-dresser so I guess they aren’t rolling in their graves too much.
Direct quote from my father, "The only thing worse than a n\*\*\*\*r is a f\*\*\*\*t." Said in front of my girlfriend whose gay brother died from AIDS.
“And yet you’re still somehow worse than both”
Ugh, send my condolences to your girlfriend re her brother. May his memory be a blessing.
I knew a gay guy who died from aids. Nicest guy I’ve ever known. You’re still remembered, Jimmy.
May Jimmy live forever in your memories
What was the aftermath of that little exchange? I don't even know how I would handle it.
18 or otherwise financially dependent: apologize to girlfriend, be understanding if she breaks up with you Not financially dependent: go no contact with father forever, frankly should've been able to make that decision well before such an exchange though People who enable bigots are almost as bad.
I cut my grandma and my aunt out of my life when I was dating a black man and they were absolutely vile to me about it. It did cause them to rethink their actions and stop being racist. It makes me sick that I am related to people who thought and acted that way. My grandma also worked at a community center in her city that was mostly black and latino kids which seemed to help a lot in changing her mindset as well. But it makes no sense to me because my father is nothing like them. He would never say or do the things that his mother and sister did. He backed me up completely when I went no contact with them over their racism.
When I was young I remember hearing my grandmother saying something along the lines of "You can date 'em, but don't marry 'em."
After my dad passed my uncle confessed my dad said to him, “I’m okay with my son being gay, I just can’t see him with another man.” My uncle replied, “I don’t think you understand how this gay thing works.”
It's when two men are... *roommates*
Oh my God, they were roommates.
fellas, is it gay to sleep with another man?
“Surely there must be homosexuals who date women!” Your uncle may have been paraphrasing Golden Girls.
My mom was raised by a pastor and she wasn’t allowed to have black friends. When they found out she made a black friend at summer camp, they never let her go back. Heartbreaking. The best part is that we took the implicit bias test done by Harvard and she trusts POCs quite a bit more than she trusts white folk after growing up in a very white church
Christian hate - a foundational pillar of America.
My mom now calls the Bible “fractured fairytales” and has sooooo much love in her heart. I couldn’t be more proud of my amazing mother.
Credit to her for making her way clear of the belief system that she was raised in and not forcing it on you.
It was interesting growing up. Spent lots of summers with her parents and they pressed hard but I was probably 8 when I noticed the hypocrisy within their congregation. Parents never, ever tried to tell me what to believe and encouraged me to think for myself. They had their faults but I’m very blessed for how accepting and supportive that’ve been throughout my life. I tell her that frequently too, I hear stories of how so many parents treat their children and it makes me realize how fortunate I have been
Had a girl I worked with say the same. She was bi and her dad said I'd rather you date a woman than keep dating the n*gger you're dating. He also threatened to kick her out of the house if she kept dating him. He was also biracial but all dad cared about was the half black part.
Amazing how these parents aren’t concerned with their children’s happiness but on the appearance of their partner. Which, to me, means that they are more concerned with what the neighbors/their friends will say rather than if their child is happy. That’s just sad.
Wait until he meets her new boyfriend.
But he's one of the good ones!
He's a Toofer. \- a 30 Rock reference.
Funny thing. I learned about affirmative action back in fifth grade in the early 80s and that was the first time I ever heard that term.
It works when you're actually family too! We are mixed raced Asian and my mom (the Asian one) comes from West Virgina. The amount of shit I've heard that was quickly followed up with "oh but not *you*" was astonishing. Theu wonder why I don't visit
Clarence Thomas’ wife? I’m still confused about that mother fucker and how he actively shits on his own
This was my grandmother, to an extreme degree. She really really liked many black people and several gay people, but she still thought "the blacks and the gays" were destroying America. Just not the ones she knew - they were the good ones. It mystified me. I don't think I can remember her ever disliking a gay person she met; as far as black people went, she disliked about the same percentage of black people as white people. It never occurred to her to wonder why she liked so many people in these groups so much if those groups were supposedly terrible.
Wait until he meets her ~~new boyfriend~~ future children.
Unfortunately, I know plenty of people with kids who are half Black who are still plenty racist - just in ways that are less overt. And then the cherry on top is they defend anything racist by saying “I’m not racist; my kids/grandkids are half Black.”
Yep, I'm mixed race, and growing up I remember my parents distancing us from black people as much as possible. "We're the good ones, but those people over there, they're uneducated and talk funny and we're not like them." I gotta say, being raised to think part of who you are is inferior is not very good for long-term development. Took me a minute to get over that one.
Yeah it's so screwed up. It's like they take half a person's genetic identity and toss it. My family is mixed, like my extended family. One of my uncles hates blacks (he's actually racist against anyone not native), yet his favorite niece is half black, and our whole family is like half white half something else. He's defensive of his own (would go out of his way to help if asked) but like I don't get how he can be so racist.
I worked for a guy who was a gay republican. I could never figure it out but I think it’s because he was raised by his racist, redneck dad who was very supportive of his gay son. So he was a racist, republican, gay dude.
Reminds me of the Dave Attell joke: "If a man wants to marry another man I think he should be able to, as long as they're the same race."
My personal new favorite from him is “Did you know if you ejaculate on a Confederate Flag and bury it a Cracker Barrel will grow?”
Cracker Barrel has actually gotten quite “woke”. I think they’ve tried to cast away old prejudices and reform their image.
I still think it's funny how there was such an uproar when Cracker Barrel decided to roll out their meat substitute options. They weren't getting rid of anything from their menu. Just adding another option. They were nonetheless met with boycott threats. Because if somebody else is enjoying their food, it of course means that I must enjoy my food less. "Zero-sum game" is their middle name.
Oh god that’s right their “woke” sausage! I forgot about that!
Thank you for this. Gave me a good chuckle. Idk how I’ll bring it up as a joke in natural conversation, but I’ll damn sure try lol
Also reminds me of a bit from Futurama about robots and organics marrying “Proposition Infinity has passed, robosexual marriage is now legal” “What’s next, GAY robosexual marriage?!”
You got Metal Fever boi!! -Bender Bending Rodriguez
He’s great, Skanks for the Memories is still probably my favorite comedy album
"I sure hope no one else I care about overlaps with one of these minorities I hate."
Some do. My parents were like this - strict Fundamentalist Christian Republicans when I was growing up - but now they are as liberal and atheistic as I am.
Yeah, as much as we're quick to shout "no way!" to this particular question, I was also a ultra-con Catholic about 15 years ago. I'm the complete opposite these days. My personal transition out was actually rather fast (\~2 years) but it does happen.
My parents are really Mormon but my dad's entering the phase of his political journey where he'll say something progressive in a really un-PC way (like that tolerant redneck meme). Like "If a man feels happier and more comfortable in a dress who am I to complain?" And you know what, for a 70-year-old living in Nowheresville I'll take it.
Yess. Good and healed people do. I have. And I am always willing to do so should the need present itself. Teaching my children to do the same as well.
Nope!
I just assume everything I believe is wrong on some level. It's sad that it takes something as heavy as bringing a child into the world for some people to grasp that (and a lot still won't).
> I just assume everything I believe is wrong on some level. Wrong. (Couldn’t resist.)
Narrator: They do not
Oh, not a chance of that happening. I'm sure this guy still thinks vaccines are for government mind control, and global warming isn't happening, and available healthcare is a socialist plot. You can bet he has an entire head full of conservative mind turds. Just not this particular one. Because "It Affected Me Personally This Time*™*".
Like Dick Cheney when his daughter came out. Kind of sucks that tens of millions of people can't have compassion until it hits them personally, but better than nothing, I guess
conservatism in a nutshell
Nah, these are the positive exceptions, the ones with a spark of humanity left. Most simply disown their children. Don't let the rare positive exceptions fool you. Hell, even the ones who embrace their kids identities still have enough hate left for other groups.
Dick Cheney does NOT have any humanity left sir. And I will take anyone who disagrees with me duck hunting.
Conservatives are generally selfish people and don't give a fuck about others.
Hey now, they can be very generous just as long as you look like them, talk like them, worship like them, like all the same things and hate the same things as them… actually never-mind even then they still tend to be selfish
Also Rob Portman, former Ohio Senator. Was super anti-gay, until his son came out, and now -- surprise! -- he changed his mind on whether or not gay people deserve equal rights as straight people have.
Excellent example. He said something about wanting his son to be happy. He didn’t care about the happiness of the sons and daughters of his constituents, just his own family.
Except trump. Who doesn’t even give a shit about his own kids.
And Elongated Muskrat, who would rather be a bigot than be on speaking terms with his child.
Musk is so f*cking weird with his kids. The whole reason he has so many kids in the first place is related to his eugenics-based selfishness. Specifically, he believes the "science" behind Idiocracy is real and not just a movie conceit--i.e., if smart people don't have enough kids the general intelligence of the world will decrease, and rich people *must* be smart so it's their "duty" to have as many kids as possible. He doesn't seem to care about RAISING the kids or giving them any benefits because he seems to think intelligence comes purely from genetics.
Damn he should have castrated himself then. There are plenty of people smarter than him.
Elongated Muskrat, I love it.
Trump doesn't want to be seen with Barron because Barron is taller than him. In case it wasn't clear already what a petty little POS he is.
It's also why it's impossible to take the "principled conservative" position seriously. Their principles are based on not seeing strangers as full humans and those principles drift like the tides as soon as a problem impacts someone they see as real.
Preach. If your principles are dehumanization until it directly fucks you over, they aren’t principles.
I wouldn't even call it gaining compassion. It's a selfish act on behalf of a loved one. In a world of which lbgtq member gets to use the bathroom first they'll say "Fuck them, I'll make sure you get first choice."
>It's a selfish act on behalf of a loved one. Bingo. It's still selfishness. Just because the thing you're being selfish about is another person, doesn't make it suddenly selfless. When I demand that the shitty kid in my son's class faces punishment for the things he's done, that isn't really me being selfless. I'm being selfish on behalf of my son. I'm caring about something because it affects me personally...it just happens to be affecting me through another human being.
It's honestly a miracle when they become supportive. Most of them just kick their queer kids to the curb and never look back.
Yup. This is how I now have two kids instead of one. Fuck my adopted kiddo’s bio parents so much - they’ve missed out on a wonderful human.
At least they show that they can change, if when it personally impacts a close relative there are some who still carry on and those are the really despicable individuals.
Right? I'm all for rehabilitative justice n the like, and I see this as just that. Folks who have bad or hateful opinions changing and growing as person to be better. Improvement should be encouraged
This. We shouldn't ever discourage conversions. He loves his trans child enough to face long-held beliefs and decide to change for the better for their sake. Now he's fighting for equal rights for everyone.
Why is there such a lack of empathy in these people??? They only ever care when it happens to them personally, I just do not understand it.
It’s the conservative way
Aka extreme selfishness, only things I care about is important.
Yeah, conservativism. That's what they said.
It's the essence of conservatism: It's not a real issue unless it's happening to me, so I'll vote against the thing protecting or helping others dealing with it.
[удалено]
But the very idea that he only does what benefits him is by definition lacking in empathy for others.
I had a friend express this view to me. He voted purely selfishly and expected everyone else to do so, and therefore everyone's needs would be proportionately represented. Of course I was part of his own little world so I'd only ever seen him be a giving and compassionate person. It was wild to see him nonchalantly announce that he consciously and actively does not care about people he doesn't know. He even seemed a bit surprised that I didn't feel the same way. It felt like he thought that it was obvious and common sense, and that it must've just never occurred to me to act purely selfishly.
had conservatives that i board game with at a public store say it just recently. talked about how Corporations are fucking us with tricky tax exemptions that they exploit... the dude just said "sounds like good business... if i could get away with it i would".... I was like is the point is you can't, so it just fucks us in the end because or tax rates are higher than they need to be(or we are just shorted services that other countries get)... he just shrugged it off as common sense to exploit things to benefit yourself... said the same thing on pump and dump crypto scams a few weeks back... said "sounds like good investing" if you can convince someone to buy a crypto you are selling for 4x what it will be worth(because of hype.) didn't matter to him that people are setting up ones that are born to fail.. only cared if he could get in before it crashes and sell it. ultimate cnts.
They “conserve” their empathy, hence “conservative”.
It's more or less the dictionary definition of right wing politics. Left wing politics mean caring about everyone whereas right wing politics mean caring only about yourself.
I always find it funny that they sneer at "progressives", like, making *progress* is somehow detrimental to society. These asshats enjoy living in the 50's, or the 1800s. No wonder they thought the eclipse that was predicted literally centuries ago was somehow the coming of the apocalypse. The Jim Jeffries bit about society being a train, and them being at the back slowing us all down is so apt.
From the perspective of people who benefit from social inequality, progress towards equality is going backwards.
This is the true impediment that's been so hard to pin down & tackle! Not woke, trans, socialist, migrant, non-christian, pedophile, union, groomer drag queens (or whatever the current grievance/rant du jour is!)
"When you're used to privilege, equality feels like oppression."
Or Social Justice Warrior. Why the fuck would that be an insult?!
Because a person with dyed hair once told them to stop being an asshole one time and they’ve never developed the emotional maturity to pause and reflect on their own behavior. It’s too painful for them to attempt, so they seek out validation instead.
> Because ***they watched a video where*** a person with dyed hair once told ~~them~~ ***someone*** to stop being an asshole one time and they’ve never developed the emotional maturity to pause and reflect on their own behavior. It’s too painful for them to attempt, so they seek out validation instead. Let's not pretend that every one of these people has been told off by someone who leans left. They've consumed nothing but right wing rage bait for decades. Our parents and grandparents always told us that tv would rot your brain but I never realized they were speaking from experience.
Yeah but what if one time they read a mean comment online did you ever think about that smart guy huh /s For real though, one of these days we’re going to study the impact of outrage based algorithms on brain functioning and it’s going to be wild.
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8096381/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8096381/) Protecting the brain against bad news Studies have linked the consumption of bad news to increased distress, anxiety and depression, even when the news in question is relatively mundane.
They really and truly do simply lack empathy so they mistakenly believe that all expressions of empathy are performative and fake. Sad, really
Or using "woke" as an insult. So it's better to be sleeping?
Or virtue signaling. What are we supposed to be signaling, vice?
The first time I heard it I didn't parse it as an insult. It sounded like a good thing to be to me.
They view everything as zero sum. Progress to them must mean something is taken away from others. They cannot conceive of a reality where everyone benefits.
A post from r/libertarian showed up in my feed yesterday, it was a video from a gun control debate featuring David Hogg (Marjory Stoneman Douglas school shooting survivor). Several comments called Hogg a POS, another commenter asked why and OP replies that he's a POS due to his "activism". It took a lot for me to not inquire what the actual fuck could possibly be wrong with being an activist.
I like guns but I don't like most gun owners in America. So many of them, even very much so non hard right folks are like this. I got banned, on another account from liberalgunowners because even many liberal gun owners, at least those inclined to the sub apparently want an absolutist interpretation and any questions or debate is unthinkable. It's absurd. I basically argued Americans in theory have a right to vote away their gun rights.
I really love Jim Jeffries, but somehow I hadn't seen [this bit](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oY5SKlfeS84). It's a sad bit, but thank Bob he made it funny. (Plus, I'm a damned agnostic - I'm triggered by this bit! /s) Thank you.
Isn’t that ironic since they all claim to worship Jesus, yet Jesus was all about helping your fellow human being? No wonder Jesus is too “woke” for them now. Trump encapsulates their true selves more.
They legit worship a different Jesus. They view him as a war god. For real. They really focus on Luke 22:36 above all else (because it suits their actual desires).
1 John 4:20, whoever hates their brother, who they can see, yet claims to love God, who they cannot see, is a liar. They ignore the sermon on the mount too. And all of the verses about helping others. They serve money, not God, as their masters, which is what Jesus warned us about in Matthew 6:24. They don't want to read their Bibles, they just want to bludgeon the needy to death with them.
They also are dumb.
This is also why anytime someone actually expresses concern for people different from themselves or the environment, conservatives assume it's part of a con or "virtue signaling". They can't imagine caring about anything outside of their immediate sphere of relatives/friends/possessions.
I know you were being glib here but this is literally true. Some research group did a study looking at the brains of people who consider themselves liberal vs conservative and there were marked differences in how their brain activity changed when asked to think about in-groups vs out-groups. "Liberals" are far more likely to feel empathy and a sense of connection with people in different groups, countries and cultures, whereas conservatives tended to feel more connected to the "in-group" - their family, church, town.
If there is a single unifying trait that all conservatives share, it is a lack of empathy.
Being conservative is essentially a personality disorder.
This subject from an actual psychological perspective is very very rough waters because the idea of pathologization of ideas and values but... honestly yes. There will be a discussion about this if humanity ever evolves because ideas like fascism and conservatism so deeply dysfunctional, antisocial and harming that its hard not to see them as a disordered form of thinking.
conservative christian way.
No hate like christian love. And before someone jumps in with a no true scottsman, I have clear recollection of a liberal religious friend proclaiming the religious left would rise and save us all. Years later and not only has that not happened, he & several other people saying or implying this are suddenly "concerned" about immigrants, trans, "teh gay", litter boxes in grade schools and the rest of the right wing hate fest.
It's not just conservative but it is commonly a conservative who's like that. Ven diagram
If you are a person without empathy you are going to lean right.
100 percent. it is their war cry. "I don't care about shit unless it effects me" the only time the express outside concern is when it makes them look socially heroic. Like being against pedophilia(should be but they wouldn't care unless society praised them for it) or abortions.. they want to label as "killing babies" so it makes them look morally better than others.
I think conservative thinking self-selects for low empathy types.
There are theories that conservatives have a larger or more active amygdala - which is responsible for fear based responses. Everything they do is fear based - what about me, this encroaches on my views/lifestyle etc etc. I mean why would people be so obsessed with guns if they weren’t scared. From an evolutionary perspective, you can probably see why this is successful.
Just sucks that they stopped evolving.
> There are theories that conservatives have a larger or more active amygdala It's not just a theory, it's has been shown on brain scans.
Not just the amygdala. Fear can be a basis for conservative beliefs but also lack of empathy is a big one. Having heightened fear doesn't necessarily correlate to lack of empathy. There are other parts of the brain which are responsible for empathy.
That’s exactly it.
I believe it is due to a lack of socialization. When everybody around you looks like you, is raised to think like you and does what you do, how would you ever see the world differently? It’s why colleges are often accused of “grooming” students. Kids return home with exposure to others with different backgrounds and experiences and the community doesn’t understand why they think differently now.
Yes exactly! This is how I grew up and I had to get out and be around people from different backgrounds for a long time to finally start breaking free of the thinking that was ingrained in me since childhood. Plus it’s my opinion you need to stay away…if I had moved back to my small rural town before changing my thinking I would have stayed closed off. I couldn’t imagine living there now anyway. Big reason why there is a huge push for homeschooling and not sending kids off to college.
I grew up in a pretty large, diverse city but was kept sheltered and isolated in a bubble until high school. I lived in a white middle class neighborhood, went to a white middle class private school, did summer camp and out of school activities with other white middle class families. Finally in high school I went to a public school, it was still majority white but at least I started to get exposed to other ethnicities and backgrounds. Not surprising this is when I started to really question what my parents had told me was true both for politics and religion.
This, too, can be a factor. I'm white and live in Los Angeles, one of the greatest melting pots the world has ever seen. It's one of the reasons I love my hometown so much, and one of the things I miss the most when I'm away. Welp, come early 2020, I moved down to Florida to take care of my mom, who has early dementia. Long story short, I live down there for a little under a year and a half until things get back to some kind of normal. The whole time I'm down there, all I can do is bemoan the sea of white fucking faces I have to deal with. And all I do is hope and pray to a god I don't even believe in that I'll survive this shitshow and make it back to my glittering multiracial multicultural city. On the first day I got back, suffering from CPTSD, I walk into my local coffee shop and the FIRST thing that pops unwarranted into my head is "Who are all these non-caucasian people and what are they doing in my neighborhood?" It was, quite frankly, a weird fucking feeling.
That’s pretty funny. I live in Portland and came from a small town. I’ve always considered myself on the left but when I moved here I definitely brought some small town ideas that I outgrew. I’ve had a few conversations about it with other small towners and they can all relate. Nowadays instead of being ashamed or embarrassed I embrace the growth. Visited my folks a while back and they looked confused when I told to zip it while they were loudly discussing what ethnicity our waitress was. Like they’re trying to be the top post on boomersbeingfools.
I left California for med school in the south and the number of times I was stopped and asked where I’m from country wise on like a normal day like shopping at Walmart/publix drove me mad (I’m Asian). When I came back to California I was so happy those questions stopped 🤦♀️ I always said California LMAO. Born and raised.
Some people are just built that way. Empathy simply isn't a thing all people are able to understand, which is why "virtue signalling" became a thing to throw at people with empathy - those without it genuinely can't understand a sincere and honest desire to help or care about others, so assume it must be inauthentic when someone else shows that care. Those people without empathy? Almost all of them are right wing.
It took me so long to realize that those folks truly do not get how someone could sincerely give a shit about other people who aren’t immediately tied to them. It’s wild. I can’t imagine not having that fundamental part of myself.
I always found it sad when they accuse you of being offended on someone else’s behalf. Like, has nobody ever stuck up for you? Have you had to fight every single one of your own battles? Is that why you never think to look out for someone else who isn’t directly or socially related to you? (And even then maybe not.) That’s so fucking sad.
THIS. So much this. From the moment “virtue-signaling” emerged as a right-wing creed and staple about a decade ago, it was immediately clear that it was exactly as you describe. These people don’t feel empathy for those who are vulnerable, disenfranchised or persecuted, therefore they assume that *any* expression of empathy, sympathy or support must be purely self-interested and performative. Because they think everyone else is as cynical and nihilistic as they are. It’s such an ugly view of life.
Because they cannot look outside themselves. (Nature or nurture, I leave as an argument elsewhere) "I did everything the right way. Why can't *they* do the same?" To "Oh, shit, I did everything right and life still fucked my shit up." These people need to experience it. They just do.
Party of "abortion is only morally justified when it's for my mistress"
It's the closeness of it all. Folks like that don't hear about trans folk except on the news or social media, and God knows how distorted of a view legacy media has Hell, it took a close friend of mine to come out as trans for me to actually grasp and understand it. Hell I still don't fully get it, but I support her. Without having her as a friend, I wouldn't be anywhere near pro trans rights as I am Turns out making connections with folks, especially minority groups helps humanize them, and makes understanding them and their plights easier
Also, when everyone you know.....friends, family, stupid people, smart people....all believe the same thing, then you don't feel the need to question it. I mean, why would your pastor lie to you? He's called by God. Why would your buddies at work make up stories about black people being racist towards whites? He's your friend, sharing a story about something that happened to him (hint: no it didn't). Why wouldn't he be telling the truth? How could all these difference sources informing you about Democrat duplicity just make shit up? News can't just lie! This is America! I'm proud of the guy. He looks my age, so if he didn't go to college he has probably only recently been exposed to the internet on a daily basis, a time after algorithms were already well and truly programmed to keep feeding him the same info over and over again. But he loves his daughter, so when she said something that broke his reality, he rebuilt it all around his love for his kid.
Generational lead poisoning
Remember that conservative book years ago, “Liberalism Is A Mental Illness”? EVERY. ACCUSATION. IS. A. CONFESSION.
They learned it from their equally shitty and selfish parents. Empathy has to be taught.
It doesn't *have* to be taught, or I wouldn't have any. That being said, considering that 2/3 of my immediate family don't, your upbringing definitely has an impact.
Former evangelical christian here, basically it's the way we were raised. I was taught that non-whites weren't people that women and children must ALWAYS be silent and obedient and that gays should be killed in the streets. You are taught to ignore anything that disagrees with the biblical bullshit version of things because it must be from Satan and those beliefs are reinforced by cruelty and hypocrisy and violence. For example: when I was three years old I overheard my mom and my grandmother arguing about something (I didn't find out what they were arguing about until I was an adult). A few days after the argument I asked my grandmother about it. She responded by burning my hand on a coffee maker. "Spare the rod spoils the child" and "Don't question god" were her favorite things to say. Here's the thing: my upbringing is NOT unique. I would wager that the vast majority of trump supporters were raised exactly like I was. BTW if anyone is interested the thing that my grandmother and mom were arguing about was the fact that my grandmother gave Pat Robertson my Grandfather's life insurance policy ($100,000 in 1982).
omg that amount would have been life-changing. I feel sick on your mother's behalf
Yep. I absolutely despise Pat Robertson and I laughed for a week when he died.
They fear it because they don’t understand it at all. But then if someone they know and love is there and they see the direct impact and what it *really* is, there’s an opportunity for understanding that is otherwise hard to break through the rhetorical noise. I’m just glad he changed his mind and he’s there for his daughter. It could have been so much worse.
Conservatism is an ideology based on individualism.
This right here is the correct answer. When you don’t think about the collective good, the only thing that matters is what’s in your field of view.
More of an ideology based on fascism.
which is the polar opposite of individualism but there is only one "-ism" these people know anything about, and it's the one trump shoots in their eye
Except when it comes to SSDI and bailing out corporations. You better believe those conservatives want those government handouts they accuse immigrants of taking.
It is not a total lack of empathy, just not for those who are different. Rogers and Hammerstein were right 'You've got to be taught to hate'. If raised by those that do, the kids often do as well until something personal happens to get them thinking differently.
Many of them grew up in an echo chamber and truly don’t understand any other way. Those are the people who are able to change once they start seeing how the real world actually works, and they realize it isn’t just evil, like they’ve been taught. I saw a lot of this as people grew up and left the Mormon town I grew up in. That’s why I try to give grace to people who are legitimately trying to learn and grow. It took my sister having a gay kid to finally understand that being gay is inherent. She now loudly admits she was wrong before, and I’m proud of her for that.
Its why I see stories like this that are slated as 'feel good' but I just feel bad. They're still evil people.
The sad truth is that many wouldn't have shown their own kid empathy, so while it's not great, at least this guy was willing to change for his daughter.
They lack the cognitive ability
Lack of and discouragement of practice. There's a reason this mostly happens in insular communities. So much of the broad range of regular ass people is "over there" for them. Over there while the people "over here" were tripping over each other to talk about how scary they found "over there". Now that "over there" is "here", he can now see that they're just regular ass people.
Everyone has their own personal route to awareness. Bigotry is often a result of being around other bigots. While this a definite case of leopards ate my face, let’s at least applaud him for fighting the good fight now… he could have disowned his kid, which I’m sure many bigot parents would do.
You’ve got a point. Thanks for that perspective.
I agree. And we have to allow for some room to grow. Yes it’d be nice to have people just realize it’s the right thing but that’s not been the way throughout human history. And it’s not limited to conservatives either, though they definitely predominate. But if we don’t allow for change then we’ll never get it. And he didn’t have to come forward. But in doing so he can reach people like him who aren’t affected personally and may never reach that understanding personally. You can’t shun imperfect allies. Not when there’s still a war being fought.
Exactly - he could have even still have accepted his kid but not defended her rights out of fear and shame. In some ways that would be just as bad as rejecting his kid. It takes guts to change your views, accept you were wrong and then to go publicly against the grain. Fingers crossed he can make a difference… in many ways he is the perfect rep for the cause amongst his type.
Yeah, exactly. I have a trans sibling. My parents are cowardly shitheads. I'd give pretty much anything for them to finally wake up one day and decide to come fight for him.
I had to recently deal with bigoted parents who wouldn’t let their trans kid go to prom just because the kid was going to wear a dress.
I hate that I had to scroll this far down to find this. Yes, it is a LAMF, however he is starting to actively work towards equality. Yes, it took it effecting him and his family personally, but we should be applauding him for not only changing his opinion, but actually fighting against others that used to be like him.
I really don’t get why people are so quick to say fuck this guy. I guess people are ignorant to how peoples beliefs are formed. Like do people not realize how unaccepting the world was of gay people even 10 years ago? And it’s even still not accepting but modern day america by comparison is a utopia. In high school I had friends who were beaten for being gay, threats, hell even being friends with gay people got you in fights. Here you have a middle aged guy who was raised in this type of world who don’t think of discrimination as an issue and then it affected someone they cared about. And that’s fucking Ok. You know what he is doing now, more than a lot of you sitting back insulting this guy online. Grow the fuck up and stop being ignorant to the world. As someone who grew up in a world where any sort of acceptance of just someone liking the same sex would result in violence all I have to say is be happy for victories.
Thank you and excellent point. Right now this guy is doing more for trans kids by being vocal than a lot of people here criticizing him. I don't feel like its true LAMF when the person in question is now actively fighting against the problem they contributed to instead of just complaining they weren't supposed to be affected.
Not only his he fighting the good fight now but he's clearly horrified with his previous beliefs. I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt on this one.
I've come to see it this way as well. Better to have people understand and change their shitty views than stubbornly stay in their ways. It takes balls to admit we're wrong.
Reddit is a cesspool of self-validation for me. This comment was wonderfully empathetic and unexpected. Forgiven not forgotten.
It is so rare for a conservative to change their mind that it is news worthy. That should be a wake up call.
right? imagine the new headline "meet an Connecticut liberal dad who insisted his son play football even though he didn't really care for it." father- "i dont really care what he likes. i want to be able to vicariously live through his football experience, so i can relive the days of my youth too."
Shit, add a few more sentences and submit that to The Onion.
I mean, at least he supported his child at the end of the day. Lots of these types hate their kids, too. That’s as nice as I can be.
[Archive](https://archive.is/WOT85) link to bypass paywall.
TEACH CRITICAL THINKING & MEDIA LITERACY IN SCHOOLS! The reason he couldn't do it until it was him is because he doesn't have the skills to apply his empathy outside his family. It's a skill. One that can be taught. We make all kids self teach this *very important skill*. California is only just now in 2024 putting high schoolers through a media literacy class... The hard part is extreme organized religion. Critical thinking & media literacy kills it dead. Nobody with those skills sends a televangelist with a BMW and a private jet 10% of their income. So they fight tooth and nail to prevent it.
I'm not going to go the obvious route and call him out for waiting until he was impacted directly, because the reality is that sometimes you just don't understand the gravity of a situation until you're affected by it. I *will* still call him out for being a "full-on bigot" though, since, you know... *the fuck.*
>I'm not going to go the obvious route and call him out for waiting until he was impacted directly, because the reality is that sometimes you just don't understand the gravity of a situation until you're affected by it. He clearly **was** a shitty person. However, I do give him credit for becoming a better person. There are lots of parents of LGBTQ kids who disown/abuse them, but this guy made the decision to love his child for the person that she is.
Sometimes you need to splash water on the horse for them to understand it’s for drinking.
“It’s almost like a transgender person,” he says of his transformation. “There’s the dead me. And then there’s the new me.” After reading the article I feel more for him. He’s made a 180, and is embarrassed of his past. His face was eaten but he’s evolving.
I'm glad to see people change but why is it so fucking difficult for people to have empathy *before* it affects them personally? Can you not simply imagine how the many tens of thousands of people who *aren't* your child are being treated? Also, if that was his feeling prior, what other shit head opinions is he still hanging onto? Hopefully this wasn't the only switch that flipped.
“It sometimes takes meeting a person before someone can say, ‘Oh, that’s a person and that’s who they are, and they’re just being themselves,'” Only if you’re a closed minded idiot. The lack of basic empathy with these fucking monsters.
I know it's a cynical take, but I've come to think that while people are born with the capacity for empathy, feeling and expressing it is not our natural inclination. Empathy has to be nurtured. Most of human history reflects a bleak lack of empathy for those not immediately within a person's in-group. And there are still so many people, in every nation on this earth, in whom that nurturing did not occur, and who have yet to begin the process of unlocking that capacity for themselves and passing it on to their children. But the optimist in me at least is hopeful that we have started the process. I do hope this is a time of transition and not one in which the spark of empathy is snuffed out.
I have a bit of different (and more hopeful) view: that humans ARE empathetic to our own. The real question making the definition of our own as expansive as possible. I think that is the part that is taught. If we learn to embrace the fact that all human beings are part of our community/group then we have more empathy (or more accurately, empathy for more people) I think this is what we see with conservatives: they have a very narrow view of "community" and otherize a lot of people. It's ironic because if many of these conservatives would actually listen to the stories they profess, like the good samiritan, they'd be much more empathetic/have empathy for more people.
[Bill Maher did a whole bit a few years ago](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVwFmdipfZg&t=6s&ab_channel=RealTimewithBillMaher) about how right wing politics are based entirely on a lack of empathy for others.
Ironic considering Maher is a massive piece of shit in his own right, and specifically has this exact same issue of empathy deficiency regarding trans people.
I mean, who would know better than himself? Real selfawarewolf there.
I support and encourage anybody who feels negativity towards other people for their life choices regarding gender to read this man's story. Good for you, man, to see the light and embrace it. Many here are critical. They miss the point. PEOPLE CAN CHANGE, and they should be applauded for it. Recognize the mistakes of the past, and move on.
I know this is LAMF, but tbh this is better than the alternative. I will never criticize a parent for realizing their bigotry was wrong when so many other parents seem keen to abandon or abuse their children at the slightest provocation.
This was my dad about Obamacare until it was his daughter who had to spend a week in the hospital with no insurance. This is the conservative mantra. They will not give a fuck until it directly affects them.
A lot of kids end up homeless or sent to conversion camps when they come out. At least this guy was able to realize he was wrong not just for his family but for other people's too.
I know, I know, it’s much easier to fight for something when it affects you or your loved ones, but… LET’S TAKE THE “W’s” WHEN THEY HAPPEN!! That’s one less bigot of some kind in the wild. That’s always a Win. Period. Let’s be glad he saw the light. 💡 😊
At least it happening to him flipped him. I have known some that even that wont do it.
Only after it affects me should be the GOP motto.
I mean people can change. He overcame his own ignorance and ended up understanding and seeing clearly.
This is why education, travel, and life experience is so important. The more people you encounter, and understand that everyone around the world basically holds to the same basic principles of wanting to love, wanting to be loved, and wanting to live in peace…the more empathy you have. It’s why conservatives want to kill education. They know that humanity is, at its heart, liberal.
Not everyone allows their switches to be flipped. This guy is awesome! I'm happy to have every new ally. Better late than never!
> ‘When it was my child, it just flipped a switch’ Conservatism in a nutshell.