on “tolerance” and why it actually isn’t that great.
[transcript]
So, the other day, I kind of impulsively came out to my friend as bisexual, which I sort of immediately regretted, because she’s always kind of been like, borderline homophobic? Like, only a little bit, but it’s still there. So, much to my surprise, her response was, “oh, that’s okay. I don’t think of any less of you.” and that really got me thinking; why do we consider tolerance as some sort of universal benchmark for social egalitarianism? You expect me to be happy that you chose to acknowledge my existence, instead of rejecting me on the spot, or beating my ass? Like, why is this a thing that we reward in society? I don’t understand.
The thing about tolerance is, tolerance is not synonymous with acceptance. If you tolerate something, the implication is that it’s still inferior. You still think the other person is inferior to you, you‘re just choosing not to actively discriminate them and you expect to be patted on the back for that. Your ability to hold your nose doesn’t take away from the fact that you still think something stinks. The very fact that you think you have the power to grant or withhold acceptance from someone is evidence that oppression is still in play.
At the end of the day, I don’t really give a shit about whether or not you think you can tolerate me, because you somehow still have the belief that you can make an arbitrary value judgement that can somehow determine whether or not I deserve access to a safe environment or basic human rights, and that’s not cool. So, ultimately, the one thing I cannot tolerate is you being a gigantic asshole.
the worst part about being bilingual is being only like… moderately bilingual. like you can make conversation but you can’t like read articles and shit. or if you can understand but not respond. or if you only know enough to look impressive to a monolingual person, but you’re just pathetic to people who are native speakers lolol
