Something bothered me about this this morning when I saw it. And of course, it means I need to dig into it to see why, right?

So let’s unpack this, shall we?

It seems to me that the first statement is saying this: Excluding people from the fight for social justice, from the spaces where social justice takes place, is a form of injustice. To say that it is toxic, to me, implies that it is harmful to the social justice space to exclude people who make mistakes. So people who may have made a mistake shouldn’t be excluded from a social justice space (which has not been defined either…so this could be a meeting, a protest, a social media thread). Forgive, and move forward. Maybe? Maybe not? Let’s keep digging.

Second statement.

The demand for moral perfection, ideological purity, and conformity to exclusively academic language (which is classism btw) is simply transferred fundamentalism.

So I’m going to make an assumption that in this case, the morality and ideology the person is referring to reverts back to the first statement. Now it’s getting juicier. Because I think what this statement is saying is this: You put people into boxes when you expect them to meet your standards of morality, ideology, and academic capability. Which is the exact kind of fundamentalism that creates the impulse to cancel people from social justice spaces.

By this logic then, people who have harmed queer people by means of violence that have served their time in jail, educated themselves, and want to act as activists should have the right to do so, because to exclude them would be an unfair demand for moral perfection and ideological purity.

It’s actually also very much an argument that could be made for the Apostle, Paul.

I have issues with Paul.

And of course, in working all this out like I have, it makes me realize that I’ve probably missed the mark completely.

Here is the issue I have with the statement in this image. I don’t believe it addresses anything of accountability…..hey wait a minute….

The very statement is SELF REFERENTIALLY ABSURD!

Isn’t that statement absolutely conforming to a sense of moral perfection, ideological purity, and exclusively academic language? Hello?

This is a meme. It’s a joke. And it went over mine, and a whole lot of other people’s heads that felt they could use it to justify something.

And I can’t get that two hours of my life back.

Fuck.