How can I become a better progressive?

And even though it's gross for a privileged privileged princess to whine about how haaaarrrd it is to be a terrible white bitch, I hate myself and I don't want to hurt anyone. These are some of the people I care about the most. Uhh... I'd thank you not to use that kind of language to describe human beings living their lives and thinking about things who so happen to be white women. I know that you think you are referring to just yourself so it's okay, but the reality is that you are demeaning many, many people with that language. In just about every progressive movement that there has ever been, women are encouraged or outrightly ordered to put themselves last, and that to do anything else makes them selfish and horrible people. Women then police each other to make sure this happens. It becomes a competition of self-abnegation. The woman who can demean herself most completely, and put herself furthest to the back, is the most virtuous. Consider that by doing this, you are a part of the problem that you are trying to solve. The goal is to treat everyone with respect. Demeaning yourself and other people who share your race, gender, or socioeconomic class is not going to get you there. To treat other people with respect you need to first have respect for yourself.

I really ought not say things like that. I feel I ought to, that we all deserve it, but that's also really terrible and not actually true. When you think those things, and feel like people like me "deserve" them, it might help to remember that I spent my childhood having them shouted at me by adult men of all races and degrees of wealth, who thought they could brand me with a deep-seated belief that I was inferior and weak, with an inferior and weak mind and character. Is that what you want to do? Do you want to do the work of people like that, help convince them that they are right? If your definition of the perfect progressive is one in possession of no qualities or characteristics that have ever been shared by anyone else who ever oppressed anyone else, you're not going to find it, ever. It's not possible. I wonder, if you feel at times that any white woman deserves to be called a "white bitch" because some white women have oppressed many other kinds of people before, what kind of names you think gay men in general deserve to be called, since Dan Savage wrote about his anger towards black Californians, whose widespread opposition was a factor in the end of gay marriage in California? I wonder what names you think Native American men deserve to be called because of the rates of domestic violence on reservations? I hope you can see this is not a good path to go down at all. I think the sort of "internet social justice awareness raising" that is targeted to teens and college students is so rarely focused about making life tangibly better for anyone. It's so often only navel-gazing and so focused on ranking who is the most progressive, transgressive, or revolutionary of all. Who gets to be disgusted by whom, and under what circumstances. It's more complicated than the court at Versailles, and it would be different if it were making the world better but it's not at all. It seems to me in fact like a way to ignore the real world and actually avoid doing anything about anything at all.

Oh, god, step away from the social justice internet. Seriously, it makes me want to weep and scream. I'm a lifelong leftie, I make my living working on the left, and I minored in women's studies (and majored in the political economy of communication) from a very leftie university. So as to establish my cred. Women's studies in the 90s had a little of what you are describing, lots of talk of privilege, a hyper-awareness about language and degrees of oppression, but it wasn't a fraction as bad as the stuff I see on the internet now. I'm going to echo http://ask.metafilter.com/235367/How-can-I-become-a-better-progressive#3410553 here--I think a lot of it is posturing so as to avoid doing the actual work. I see so much--forgive me--bullshit navel-gazing and snitty slap fights on the internet masquerading as activism. White people yelling at other white people about how racist they are, as if bellowing their righteous indignation was anything like actually doing anti-racist work or being an ally. Or, anything else that involved getting one's ass out of a chair. (Personally, I think any time one is taking offence on behalf of someone else one needs to do a little self-reflection about needing so much attention and being so aggression.) And sometimes I'll read someone spin something out that is clearly drawing from all that really esoteric and hyperbolic post-modern theory from women's studies and I'm surprised that anyone well and truly believes that stuff was meant to be a blueprint for actually being an activist. I also see a lot of people on the left who are kicking the shit out themselves and other activists, who think they are changing the world, when what they are really doing is working out their own personal anxieties and disorders on the people around them, and dressing up their hurt and anger with fancy words pretending it's about privilege and oppression. Don't be those people. My suggestion is this: if you want to make the world a better place, be a better person. Stop hating yourself. Consider therapy. Think about what skills you have that could actually help improve things and find a place where you can offer those skills in good faith towards a cause that you believe in. Accept that we live in a fucked up world, and that fucks us up, so sometimes we make mistakes. Learn to sincerely apologize. When in doubt, do the thing that seems most kind. STEP AWAY FROM THE INTERNET. You don't need to read more and learn more and practice a script and score 100% on your Progressives 101 exam before you can become an activist. You just need honest intention and a willingness to listen and collaborate. A desire to do some grunty heavy lifting. But, definitely, try to love yourself first.

One thing I have learned, the hard way, from experience, is that trying desperately to be a good/liberal/kind/moral/correct/progressive person is a pursuit that is 100% about you. It's extremely self-centered. It's about constructing an image of yourself that looks good. It is an dead-end path that will not actually result in more kindness, morality, or progress in this world. Here's the thing, my friend, and I say this with kindness: when you suffer inside, when you hate yourself, when you feel angst and pain and confusion, you WILL share all of that with the world. When you suffer less inside, when you love yourself, when you experience clarity and joy - you will share those lovely qualities with the world instead. Do not obsess about the details of what is correct. Do not obsess about which causes and labels to align yourself with. That kind of identity search, unfortunately, despite what I absolutely believe are genuine beautiful intentions, are all about producing a version of you that you can accept. It won't work. Constantly searching for the perfect outlooks, attitudes and opinions is an endless quest at which you will fail. Ethics ARE extremely important, and listening to others is incredibly needed in this world. So do that: listen to people. Completely, without spending all your time trying to figure out if their stories affirm or contradict your beliefs. Ask yourself which actions will lessen suffering in the world and pursue those things. This is not easy, but it is simple. Do not listen to people, hear the first 2 seconds of what they are saying, and then go off in to a tailspin about how they are saying something that you didn't already officially believe, and that makes you horrible, and now you have to re-align yourself and reject everything you thought you knew, etc etc. Believe me, I know this is hard. But the path to authentic kindness does not involve plastering yourself with the correct labels.

I am going to gently, lovingly suggest that you try therapy anyway. Because hating yourself is not normal or okay, and I'd bet a lot that you do need to be a happier person instead of a better one.

You're gonna paralyze yourself by overthinking. Sounds like you already have. I'm a woman of color, a dyke (married, even!), and politically too far left to be called a liberal, and I give you permission to stop trying to attain some mythical, unattainable standard of Being Good. I also think you should get some therapy, because even at my most politically active activism, when I was trying to save the whole fucking world, I didn't think as badly of myself as you do of yourself for making mistakes, not knowing things, and not actually being able to save even a little piece of the world. You are not a terrible person. But you're the one who has to start believing that. A very wise person named jessamyn has said that everyone's hardest struggle is their hardest struggle. That yours might not be as hard as some other person doesn't make it not hard for you. You deserve and need to treat yourself right. You can't hate yourself while trying to spread love and empathy.

With all due respect, you need therapy. The key fact is that you hate yourself. All of the rest of this about not being a good enough liberal and being too privileged and so on is the result of your brain trying to make up excuses to keep you away from therapy so that it doesn't have to change.

I'm glad to read your response. I stopped in because I wanted to tell you something. You are a real person. This seems trite and obvious, but I can tell that there is something inside you that does not believe it. You are not a machine for helping the humans that deserve your help. I have thought the way you were thinking, and on some bad days I still do. It never helped anyone or anything. It didn't make me more effective. It exhausts you, physically, to spend energy hating yourself and discounting your ideas simply because you are the one who had them. Just because it is easier for you, due to your circumstances, to get the help and support that you need for the pain that you feel does not mean that your pain is false, or that you are undeserving. Suffering is not a zero-sum game. Also, I agree with cairdeas when she says: In just about every progressive movement that there has ever been, women are encouraged or outrightly ordered to put themselves last, and that to do anything else makes them selfish and horrible people. Women then police each other to make sure this happens. I'm going to gently suggest that you stop reading social justice websites for a little while -- not because they are not valuable sources of help, thought and information, but because you don't need your awareness raised any more than it already is, and reading constant internet arguments and shaming will not help.

I agree that therapy is a good option, because what you're saying sounds like straight-up obsessions and perfectionism (this is coming from an experienced obsessor). It reminds me of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrupulosity, a type of obsessive-compulsive glitch that makes you over-focus on being morally perfect. Instead of the usual religion, you're getting your impossible-to-achieve morality from progressive "rules." So I'm thinking that instead of hating yourself and trying to become impossibly perfect, you might want to, say, get a lot of vigorous exercise and consider cognitive-behavioral therapy. If you refuse to try therapy, then I agree that volunteering can help, but I'd vote for volunteering in a way that shows you how impossible it is to be pure. For example, when I lived in the US, I spent a lot of time as a volunteer for undocumented Mexican immigrants. When you get deep into their world, you see that the issues are waaaaay more complex than any outsiders on the right or left can see. I was a far-left do-gooder. The family I spent the most time with had "anchor babies" and encouraged others to have them, expressed racist beliefs, and kept pulling their kids out of school for no good reason, so the kids struggled to learn English. No one, neither the helpee nor the helper, is noble and pure. It simply can't happen.