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🧵 Thread (22 tweets)

Visakan Veerasamy@visakanv• about 8 years ago

1. There is an interesting relationship between morality and digust. Immoral behavior often described as disgusting https://t.co/RDLRn3E3xO

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Visakan Veerasamy@visakanv• about 8 years ago

Replying to @visakanv

2. It seems people form or inherit mental models of what "clean" or "normal" is and are viscerally repulsed by any violations of this

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Visakan Veerasamy@visakanv• about 8 years ago

Replying to @visakanv

3. Consider how, for example, chocolate shaped and styled like poop is repulsive even when you know it's chocolate. https://t.co/4kI8zDqyir

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Visakan Veerasamy@visakanv• about 8 years ago

Replying to @visakanv

4. In a podcast with @tferriss, @sebastianjunger talks about the trauma of seeing people have their limbs blown off https://t.co/JFS7SkUFPz

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Visakan Veerasamy@visakanv• about 8 years ago

Replying to @visakanv

5. It's bc we have this deep-rooted assumption abt 'sanctity' of the human form. 1st time you see amputees is jarring. Kids sometimes cry

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Visakan Veerasamy@visakanv• about 8 years ago

Replying to @visakanv

6. (Which reminds me of cute videos of kids distressed when they don't recognize their fathers without their beards) https://t.co/oKcHnGjjo5

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Visakan Veerasamy@visakanv• about 8 years ago

Replying to @visakanv

7. We're arriving now at what I really want to talk abt: homophobia, and transphobia especially. Feel like people don't talk about this much

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Visakan Veerasamy@visakanv• about 8 years ago

Replying to @visakanv

8. I distinctly recall being both homophobic and transphobic as an adolescent, in a sort of idle, ignorant way. "Inherited from society"

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Visakan Veerasamy@visakanv• about 8 years ago

Replying to @visakanv

9. Gay men and transwomen made us uncomfortable. We mocked and insulted them quite openly. (Lesbians were fetishized, trans men trivialized)

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Visakan Veerasamy@visakanv• about 8 years ago

Replying to @visakanv

10. The homophobia of my boyhood seemed fun & innocuous, but I realized later how hurtful it must've been for queer folk silently struggling

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Visakan Veerasamy@visakanv• about 8 years ago

Replying to @visakanv

11. I can't remember precisely when I decided that homophobia was wrong, that traditional masculinity was toxic and fragile and boring

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Visakan Veerasamy@visakanv• about 8 years ago

Replying to @visakanv

12. I think it was just a matter of progressively being exposed to actual gay people and hearing real stories + seeing that they're ppl too

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Visakan Veerasamy@visakanv• about 8 years ago

Replying to @visakanv

13. Once upon a time, the sight of two men kissing would "gross me out". That's entirely gone away. Probably a matter of exposure over time

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Visakan Veerasamy@visakanv• about 8 years ago

Replying to @visakanv

14. Something that hasn't entirely gone away though: I still feel oddly unsettled or weird when looking at trans people who don't pass well

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Visakan Veerasamy@visakanv• about 8 years ago

Replying to @visakanv

15. I feel similarly when I see a person who is "disfigured" in some way I don't expect, breaking my limited assumptions abt what's "normal"

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Visakan Veerasamy@visakanv• about 8 years ago

Replying to @visakanv

16. But this is a good thing! Me being uncomfortable around people different from me is just like a child freaking out over clean-shaven dad

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Visakan Veerasamy@visakanv• about 8 years ago

Replying to @visakanv

17. I'm sharing all of this bc I feel like we don't really understand, collectively, how to help people grow out of their limited models

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Visakan Veerasamy@visakanv• about 8 years ago

Replying to @visakanv

18. The real villain is ignorance - and yeah some people are definitely more ignorant than others, and some ignorance is much more damaging

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Visakan Veerasamy@visakanv• about 8 years ago

Replying to @visakanv

19. We're all miseducated, ill-prepared, clunkily groping our way around in the dark, panicking, yelling in fear and discomfort

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Visakan Veerasamy@visakanv• about 8 years ago

Replying to @visakanv

20. Innocent people get brutalized, murdered and live hellish lives of fear and pain as a consequence of our actions/inaction. Sad but true

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Visakan Veerasamy@visakanv• about 8 years ago

Replying to @visakanv

21. Anyway. I think we shd examine our biases, challenge ourselves to be uncomfortable, open ourselves up to one another, learn+grow. /fin

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Visakan Veerasamy@visakanv• about 8 years ago

Replying to @visakanv

(I can already think of some uncharitable ways to read the above tweets. Hoping for good faith. I tried my best. Still have a lot to learn.)

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