I ticked all the boxes in high school. Ironic-but-not-really fascist, incel, anti-LGBT, anti-abortion, pick a reaction, really. Now I’m happily married, father, Kinsey-1, reading theory, with growing class consciousness and looking to build solidarity with those people that a worse version of myself once dismissed as lesser or ungodly. It took leaving home, developing positive and loving male-male friendships, and being told that I was good enough and worth love irrespective of my accomplishments for me to start to develop the capacity to love others in the same way. Those who have traveled a similar path, what did it take for you?
I'm really glad I somehow dodged gamergate. It would've been like crack if I'd been online enough at the time to pick up on it.
Please don't take this as negative, but what's it like taking estrogen as a cis male? It's the first time I've come across such a concept.
I was raised a socialist haha. In high school I was a communist turned anarchist, then an anarchist through university, and now I'm... a leftist. Haha I just want to say to you, @PbSO4, and everyone else in here sharing your stories, that you did a real good in the world just by becoming who you are. And that I super appreciate you sharing your experiences, because exploring about how that happens for people is, like, the most important thing on the left rn imo.
Unfortunately, we're all just glorified reformers of chuds and libs--but, that is the task history gave to us, so we gotta do our best with it :) :red-fist:
I just needed someone to give me permission to turn my "notions" into principles. Notions like no one should starve in a world of abundance. Or that America has no right to invade and dictate to other nations. Or that individuals should not be able to privately own the natural world. I needed to know there were people out there who didn't just pay lip service to those ideas. Once I realized I'm actually correct and it's not that I "don't understand how the world works," everything changed
I was perpetually miserable and lonely living in a suburb to the point where I had suicidal thoughts in the second grade before I even fully understood what that entailed. Always disliked the status quo or the system although I lacked any way of critiquing it. Got interested in conspiracy theories but managed to somehow avoid getting into any weird right-wing shit thankfully, even though I did get very paranoid at one point. A teacher in highschool showed us the third Zeitgeist movie which finally introduced me to anti-capitalist thought and systemic thinking. After that I was in a weird place where I was anti-capitalist but didn't want to side with the sjw's; I would pretty much agree with any argument that was against capitalism but didn't really understand anything else they brought up to be honest. In 2019 I had what I think was an anxiety attack so I decided to watch some Anita Sarkeesian videos to distract myself before moving onto other things that were more solidly left-leaning.
I guess for me it took the mundane misery of a suburb punctuated with two very bad periods and a teacher showing me the the third movie of a guy who also transitioned from an anti-religion viewpoint, to conspiracy theorist-like thinking, before finally becoming fully anti-capitalist. Fortunately I never really fell into right-wing thought somehow, just managed to stay in the "apolitical" both sides area.
Oh Christ, I had the worst takes on Ferguson. Lived in STL during, and made sure to be a 100% garbage human.
Watching my single mother work full-time as a school teacher, work nights at the local grocery store and weekends at the local video-rental place, only to lose her house during the financial crisis. Who was then forced to move into a shitty apartment that was owned by her high-school bully, and that parasitic scum made my mom's life a living hell (e.g. a/c would break during the summer and go at least a month before being fixed, which in OK was begging for a heat stroke). There were no other apartments in our small town, so she felt stuck. Who then, after she retired, still had to work the two part time jobs because my sister developed a rare illness that the insurance companies refused to cover, and since she was only a college student at the time had no way to pay for it, so my mother took care of her. Even after all of this, what truly radicalized me were my former lib friends and lib/chud family members trying to tell me that was just the way the world worked, and maybe if my mom worked harder, then she would finally be successful and good things would happen. That it wasn't THEIR fault she lost her house to predatory practices, that it wasn't THEIR fault my sister became sick so they shouldn't have to pay for others either, that it wasn't THEIR fault the landlord rights in OK were so fucked up. All of this happened while I was in high school, and the cruelty in their indifference gave me rage and convictions I've carried with me 15 years later.
edit: sorry for the syntax; I'm typing this between classes.
Grew up poor as fuck. Young, single mother working as a waitress. No healthcare. Spent my developmental years raised by television and the internet. Moved around a lot because my mom latched on to different boyfriends hoping they would pull us out of poverty and as a result never had any real friends. Ended up dropping out of school and spent ages 16-18 as an agoraphobic hermit.
Got my first job through a kind of friend who was really just this person I smoked weed with. Mom dated this guy that moved us to another city and spent another year or so as a shut-in. Got another job. Didn't care for it but I liked my co-workers. Saw that they were all way older than me and still making less than $10hr even though most of them had worked there for 10+ years.
Started to get really angry and radicalized by the work conditions, the management, and general anger at the system and society that never allowed these people to advance. Put a lot of effort into electoralism. Saw that it went nowhere. Ended up getting in a really terrible relationship and turned into a mega chud.
Finally worked up the courage to get out of the relationship after hitting rock bottom. The next year was hell. Met someone else and slowly came out of my chud shell and we started to radicalized together, especially after 2016. Lots of other workplace and political/socioeconomic conditions led to further radicalization and here I am today.
I took a turn to the left because I personally love large public infrastructure projects like metros, and those aren't something that can happen in a very capitalistic society. I feel people should also be able to access quality education and healthcare, no matter their circumstances.
9/11 and the War in Iraq made me distrustful of government, power, and imperialism.
The crash of 2008 and bailouts made me critical of capitalism.
The Bernie campaign of 2016 opened my eyes that many others were feeling the same way.
They were a huge help for me as well. I had a weekend of sleep deprivation and alcohol while watching the entirety of Contrapoints, finally emerging from my cocoon no longer able to justify transphobia.
watching real-time the coup in Bolivia and how my supposedly truthful, level-headed country (Norway) broadcasted their lies
What changed me was being a lib that was mad at Trump and the administration. My entire life up until then I was incredibly apolitical - I grew up in a military family, went to college and joined the army reserve as an officer. Went to Afghanistan, came back jaded, but not critical of anything, but shit didn't really sit right with me. I got a federal desk job, where I browsed reddit all day, everyday, mostly the main political subreddits to get myself angry reading about what Trump was doing or whatever. Stumbled onto r/cth, and have been trying to educate myself more and more. Now that I'm at this point, I find myself hating working for the government and wanting to forget about my military service.
Sadly enough, I got a degree in history and when I went through some of my old course work, I realize I did papers on Marx, Foucault, Weber, etc, and none of it resonated with me. Hell, I didn't even understand any of it and I'm just disappointed in my shitty, past self.
I find myself hating working for the government and wanting to forget about my military service.
Don't hate it. Infiltration and insurrection is good.
Also, you can blow people's minds by being a veteran and shitting on the military industrial complex.
For the longest time I was just some vaguely anti-establishment, edgy-skeptical nihilist who hated everything and everyone; imagining himself somewhere on the left (because the right is full of intolerant assholes) but lacking any deeper systemic analysis to really verbalize my own thoughts even. Easy prey for Libertarians and AnCaps, I just had the most open mind and the most incoherent ideology but I didn't really care, politics was for dorks anyway.
What really changed me was enrolling in international business studies and realizing after a year or so, that even our lectors were all just grifting and basically we were simply 'educated' to be competent fakers of all that sounds smart and good and profitable without really giving us any kind of skillset beyond just fooling normies into giving us money or competently licking boots'n'ass of banks'n'state. At that point I dropped out, was cripplingly depressed for a year as my dream of becoming Don Draper was shattered by my own realization that Don Draper might not be the perfect role-model and then... I just kinda survived for a while. Started to study something else, humanities-related, worked with language for a while and started to read some critical media theory. That really blew my mind at the time because it was one of the first time's in my live that I simply had no fucking idea what I was reading; I felt stupid for the first time in years. I've got to say, early 'Breadtube' or 'Leftube' really helped at that stage as I understood the concepts rather quickly when they were explained to me verbally. From there on I read more stuff in all kinds of directions, radicalizing me further.
Also, climate change. That damocles' sword I've been aware of since forever, but for a long time I was hoping the magix of technology would be our saviour. Spoiler: The tech's been here for a while, the political will to actually utilize it, isn't. Realizing that probably radicalized me more than anything, but it took a while to come to that conclusion.
