… And the only problem is that no one was swinging the bar as hard as they could.
Now, this may seem like an odd comparison, with the Sandman and American Gods author being matched up with two of the world most despicable people, but bear with me for a moment.
Adolf Hitler was the leader of the Nazi Party, but they were also called the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. In a surprising twist; the Nazis were neither Socialists, nor were they particularly worker led or driven.
Kim Jong Un is the Supreme Leader of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. It may shock you to learn that North Korea is neither a democracy or a republic.
Neil Gaiman claimed himself to be a “feminist” and an “ally” to all sorts of minorities. If you’re following the pattern, you’ll already know that it turns out he was neither.
Now, I’m not going to rehash Gaiman’s shittery, simply because others have done so better than I ever could. I instead want to focus on how utterly useless self-labels are, and why we should never believe someone when they brag about themselves.
Much like the Nazi Party or North Korea or Neil Gaiman… self-labels are inherently worthless. I can call myself the Sultan of Brunei, that doesn’t make it true. That doesn’t even mean I have even the slightest spot in the chain of succession.
For the record, I don’t. In any way, shape, or form.
But this is why I loathe ever labeling myself. No matter the content I write, I am never going to call myself an “ally” to anyone. I will gladly accept those labels from the communities themselves, and will wear them with pride, but I won’t pin them on myself, because that is not my place.
It’s why I wince whenever I hear the saying, “When someone tells you who they are, believe them.” I would suggest we amend it to, “What someone says they are is irrelevant. They will show you who they are eventually.”
But we do have to be willing to see it, which is a separate problem.
TKO Creations 