I was discussing the incident mentioned later in this piece with my wife yesterday and I saw another post by someone earlier doing something mentioned in here and I'm finally going to say something about it.
There is a serious problem in leftist spaces, especially online, especially on Tumblr, when it comes to language.
The way people are expected to speak just to even enter these spaces is incredibly complex, to the point of being outright hostile to those who haven’t already spent time in them. And it’s not just newcomers; people who have important things to say, people speaking from lived experiences, people who don’t have English as a first language but still deserve to be heard, are constantly talked down to or even pushed out entirely for not using the "right" words.
This gets even worse when you factor in how often new terms are coined in English, and then people are shamed for not immediately knowing or using them.
I saw someone reblog their own post saying something like, "I know for a fact more than half of y’all didn’t understand a fucking word I said here."
And honestly? That stuck with me, because yeah, I’ve felt that before. Not because I don’t value critical thinking! because I absolutely do! I just made a post on that too! but because so many of these posts are written in a way that makes them Functionally Inaccessible to anyone who doesn’t already have the right background knowledge. And at a certain point, if you actually want your words to have an impact, if you actually want to create meaningful change, then you’re going to have to accept some things:
- People will not always use perfect language.
2. People will not always know the exact terminology you personally prefer they use when engaging in discourse.
3. Dismissing or attacking people for how they say something, instead of engaging with what they’re saying, is actively harmful.
And more than that, if you genuinely want people to understand and engage with the things you’re talking about, especially people who don’t speak English as a first language, especially people without access to higher education, especially people who don’t even know where to begin when it comes to self-education (because yes, that is a skill that has to be taught) then you are going to have to be the one to adjust sometimes. You are going to have to let people say things imperfectly. You are going to have to take a step back and engage with the message rather than just the words being used to express it.
One of the experiences that made me realize that I, as a non-native English speaker, was not welcome in Tumblr leftist spaces was when I spoke about real-life oppression I had experienced. I left one word out of my post, a word which honestly, was not even important when talking about an incident that had Happened To Me, not theory, not hypotheticals or any what-ifs of oppression, a story, a story about something that happened to me.
And because of that, people sat in a Discord server, picking apart my words, accusing me of awful things, and then came into my askbox throwing jargon and buzzwords I’d never even heard before, then got mad at me for being frustrated that this was happening.
Think about that. People who are directly impacted by oppression are being pushed out of spaces meant to discuss it because the way they speak doesn’t conform to certain expectations. That is not justice. That is not solidarity. That is not progress.
There is a fundamental disconnect here between theory and praxis. Ironically so many of you do not know what praxis is, because most of you engage with a lot of theory, and not a lot of praxis, you use the word praxis a lot, but, ironically, you have no idea what it means.
{to put my money where my mouth is, it means Doing Something, in the simplest possible terms}
In theory, leftist spaces should be accessible. They should be places where people can speak openly about their experiences, learn from each other, and work toward meaningful change. But in practice? There’s a gatekeeping of language so intense that many people, particularly those who are marginalized in ways beyond just their political beliefs, are outright excluded.
And this is something I need people to sit with:
The assumption that the "right" language is easy to learn, or that anyone who doesn’t use it is being willfully ignorant, is an inherently privileged stance. Knowing where to find information, how to process it, and how to integrate new terminology into your vocabulary is a skill that is largely tied to education. Having the time to engage with leftist literature and theory, to stay up-to-date on every new term that gets introduced, is also a privilege. And the fact that so many people refuse to acknowledge this, that they expect perfect articulation from everyone, regardless of background, and punish those who don’t measure up, is a huge problem.
Worse still, the same people who act as gatekeepers of this language often fail to communicate their ideas in a way that is accessible at all.
This doesn’t mean that complex ideas should never be discussed. It doesn’t mean that people shouldn’t strive for accuracy in their language. But it does mean that if your goal is to educate, if your goal is to spread awareness, if your goal is to help people understand and join the movement, if your goal is to engage with fellow oppressed people, then you have a responsibility to meet people where they are. You have a responsibility to make your language understandable.
Because if people can’t even process what you’re saying, then what’s the fucking point?
And before anyone says, "Well, people should put in the effort to learn!" Let me make something very clear: They do.
People who are new to leftist spaces, or who are coming in from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds, are often trying their best to engage. They are listening, they are learning, they are processing. But if the response to every mistake, every slightly off phrasing, every unfamiliarity with a new term, is immediate hostility,
or even if it's just 'hey I see you're sharing a personal moment, but can you change your language to make me, personally, more comfortable with you discussing your oppression?' then you’re not teaching.
You’re just making sure only the people who already think and speak exactly like you get to stay in the room.
Your language, your terminology, your theory? none of it means anything if you can’t make it accessible to the people who actually need it. And it means nothing if you use it to Exclude rather than Include.
