Political Memes

Especially after that shit they said in their reply about “it’s not my job to educate you” – that’s one of my biggest red flags for social media grifting:

...particularly from the performative faction on the left I alluded to, they love that line. Your usual fash would just call you dumb for not understanding them when they don't want to back their stuff up, which of course is kinda the same thing just without the smugness.

When someone actually BELIEVES IN their rhetorical position, they’re usually excited to share its details with other people

You're right that I don't believe in it, I was going for a "taste of their own medicine" thing which apparently backfired. There's a fucking metric fuckton of papers and discussions in leftist literature critiquing leftist performativity, goes back at least as far as Adorno (though not under that name, quoth him: "Actionism is the anti-intellectualism of the left". It's far from vague, or even obscure.

To the "I'm using the standard meaning of performativity, don't bend my words" (what? enbies and women are performative? Doesn't even begin to make sense) I got the reply of "vague" and "dogwhistle", adding to the prior "yo misogynist and enbie-hater". I thus concluded that they were sitting on a high horse, that they're engaging here to feel good about being, in their own eyes, a moral and upright person, not to actually engage. And I gave precisely that attitude of theirs as justification why "It's not my responsibility to educate them". More correct would've been "I'm not your therapist" but oh boy that's even nastier. I rather take the downvotes.

Overall, you indeed won the main prize today: Someone realised that in/outgroup mechanics work the same on the left and right. You don't see that kind of covert othering I was subjected to by MindTraveller from e.g. anarcha-feminists because, being anarchists, they understand the toxicity of these kinds of dynamics, how they reinforce rule and authority, how they're anything but organising horizontally, at eye level.

Also experience shows that explaining things to the performative faction doesn't change their position -- because they're not here to argue. They're here to beat you with their chosen cudgel so they can feel good about themselves. Related recommendation: Zena&Poppy on the puritanical "progressive, which often is the end-stage of performative folks.