Negativity gets a lot of bad press in the modern neoPagan movement. \u00a0“You don’t need that kind of negativity in your life.” \u00a0That’s not a terrible idea, you’re just being negative. “Negativity. \u00a0It can only affect you if you’re on the same level. \u00a0Vibrate higher.”\u00a0Depression isn’t real, you’re just being negative. \u00a0Sexism and racism aren’t\u00a0real, you’re just letting other people’s negativity get to you. \u00a0“Negative Nancy gained an electron or lost a proton. \u00a0Either way she’s unstable.”<\/p>\n
Fuck y’all. \u00a0Eat urinal cakes and die. \u00a0The fuck even is negativity?<\/p>\n
I’ll tell you what negativity is: it’s dogwhistle code. \u00a0It’s code for experiencing an emotion that makes other people uncomfortable. \u00a0It’s code for not laughing at oppressive jokes.\u00a0 It’s code for holding people accountable for their actions. \u00a0It’s code for not accepting apologies.<\/p>\n
Damn right, I’m negative. \u00a0I’m too\u00a0emotional to be butch. \u00a0Too large and hairy to be femme. \u00a0Too young to be an authority. \u00a0Too old to be relevant.<\/p>\n
My first impulse, of course, is to just blame the New Agers and be done with it, but that would be oversimplifying things. \u00a0The poison actually comes from the well of mainstream culture. \u00a0And there’s this whole awkward parallel with the fundamentalist Christian mad\u00a0on against “bitterness” (here code for “not submitting gracefully”). \u00a0But that’s another conversation. \u00a0When it comes right down to it, I don’t give two wet shits where the admonition against negativity comes from.<\/p>\n
I’m here to speak in defense of negativity.<\/p>\n
Firstly, I wish to speak in defense of emotional negativity. \u00a0You have the right to be sad. \u00a0You have the right to be angry. \u00a0You have the right to be depressed. \u00a0Each and every damn one of us\u00a0have the right to our mental illnesses and to the full range of emotional states. \u00a0Can we have \u00a0conversation about how our resulting behavior effects others? \u00a0Sure. \u00a0Some other day. \u00a0Because “don’t be so negative” isn’t saying “please don’t treat me badly”, it’s saying “your emotional state is inconvenient for me so straighten up”. \u00a0I’m sorry my lack of constant joy\u00a0is inconvenient for you; you being an asshole about my depression actually does me structural harm.<\/p>\n
Emotional policing and concern trolling is abusive behavior. \u00a0Fucking quit that shit, you damn assholes.<\/p>\n
Secondly, I wish to speak in defense of negativity in a more general sense. \u00a0Pointing out the bad behavior of well-loved people within a community is often dismissed as negativity. \u00a0So is pointing out that a practice or policy is either unhelpful or actively harmful. \u00a0Often, advocating for any change whatsoever is dismissed as “negativity.”<\/p>\n
Can someone please explain to me what’s wrong with getting shit done? \u00a0Or how you’re supposed to fix problems without first identifying that they exist? \u00a0And if I have to tell you six times that a window is broken, I may be less polite the third, forth, and fifth time. \u00a0and I may just yell at you the sixth. \u00a0That doesn’t magically mean the window is just fine and that there was nothing ever wrong with it and maybe there wasn’t even a window there in the first place.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Negativity gets a lot of bad press in the modern neoPagan movement. \u00a0“You don’t need that kind of negativity in your life.” \u00a0That’s not a terrible idea, you’re just being negative. “Negativity. \u00a0It can only affect you if you’re on the same level. \u00a0Vibrate higher.”\u00a0Depression isn’t real, you’re just being negative. \u00a0Sexism and racism aren’t\u00a0real, … Read More<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[49,217],"class_list":["post-1885","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-community","tag-rant"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8kUcm-up","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1885","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1885"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1885\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}