It Is Always Malice

I used to write for color redacteds. I used to believe the lie that they weren’t malicious. That they didn’t understand. Then, I found myself engaging with them in my personal spaces and I quickly realized that I was socially conditioned to give them the benefit of the doubt even when being directly confronted with their fuckshit.

I understand that some of it is the numbness you build throughly your life as you are forced to navigate overwhelmingly hostile spaces with very little real-time support. I've developed so many techniques to mask my reactions in those spaces that they are second nature. I'd turned down the dial on recognizing misogynoir, an experience that had no name for most of my life, that I found myself actively participating in my own oppression. Silencing myself. Hiding myself. Convincing myself that I was the problem who needed to be fixed.

All lies.

That's when I stopped pleading with myself to change. That's when I stopped looking at them and regarding them as foolish ignoramuses and began correcting my perspective of them.

Color redacteds aren't foolish. They aren't ignorant. They are violent. Extremely violent and composed of malice. Cruelty is their love language and they adore the suffering of others. They see their ability to inflict harm as an inherent right, and those who internalize their values believe the same thing. They built a culture that rewards violence and punishes joy. And they make or take every opportunity they can to reinforce it.