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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: May 8th, 2024

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  • Maybe… My understanding (which is admittedly based on not much hard evidence) is that right wingism is more of a symptom than a cause, and that there are basically two or three drivers:

    • insecurity, particularly financial (e.g. shows up as “they’re taking our jobs”, or "fucking dole bludgers). I think greed is sometimes an excessive response to this.
    • trauma (e.g. I was treated terribly, and so I’m gonna treat the world terribly in turn).
    • power-hunger. (which is probably often a reaction to the other two, a need to control your world).

    The insane far-right that are in power in the US, and the people surrounding them are most of the third category… I don’t think much of the base is in that category. But that group knows the triggers for people in the first two categories, and abuses the fuck out of them…

    So yeah… I guess you’re right in that “convincing them of the truth” of any single issue isn’t going to solve anything. But I think aiming to solve those underlying insecurity and trauma issues might… Not that I have any quick-fix solutions…


  • That example’s a good one for a anotger reason: right wingers do need to feel safe, but that doesn’t mean that anything needs to be done about trans people. RW perceptions of what needs to be done are wrong, because they are based on myths and misunderstandings about the risks transness. Or another way to say it: the need for safety is real, solutions proposed by rightwingers are not appropriate, even aside from the issue of trans rights, because they won’t solve need for safety - hiding the bogeyman under a rug or behind criminalisation won’t make it go away, and will increase misunderstanding.










  • That sounds fucked, dude. Best of luck with your complaint.

    TBH now that you say this, it sounds like might be in a similar situation to me at my last job, which I persevered with for 3 years of riding burn-out (because the work was almost ideal for me, and the people were mostly amazing), and then quit.

    There’s already lots of other good suggestions here, but one point that might be worth noting: I think there are two different purposes types of therapy: psychological help (e.g. understanding your own brain, and figuring out ways to change it), and counselling (listening to your problems, and probably offering some professional guidance).

    It sounds to me that given the circumstances you describe above, counselling is probably more immediately valuable - what you really need to do is to get some clear external perspective on your situation, from someone with whom you can share details privately. A good counsellor should be able to help you find multiple paths out of your predicament (you might also benefit from seeing multiple different counsellors, since they will all provide different perspectives). In my experience this really helps to ground your understanding, and helps answer the “Is it me, or them, or something else that’s the problem?” question.

    IF that process provides more indication that your angry outburst are because of what’s going on in your head, and not just a fairly justified response to a shit situation, THEN maybe it’s a good indication that you should look in to psychology or anger management approaches, or similar. If your angry outburst have existed prior to this work situation, then perhaps you could skip the counselling step, but it still might be worth it.

    At my last job I was having angry reactive outbursts (which I had had in the past, but to a much lesser degree, and they were now spilling over onto family and friends), and getting anxiety (which had never happened before). I saw a few psychs and counsellors, and the last one I saw while at work said something like “If you anxiety is about a real work problem, and not an imagined/exaggerated/catastrophised problem, then it’s not anxiety, it’s stress”. That really tripped a switch in my mind, and made the decision to quit super clear. Immediately after handing in my resignation my anxiety levels dropped off a cliff, and my anger slowly dropped back to tolerable levels over the following months.



  • How much of the situation is within your control?

    Perhaps you can’t change the supervisor. You can still leave.

    Or perhaps you can change the supervisor (e.g. talk to someone else in the org and get help).

    Or perhaps the way you’re reacting is part of the problem, and that is amplifying the problem, and perhaps you can change something about how you’re acting, to reduce the problem.

    There are always multiple ways to change a situation, but you have to actively seek them out yourself. People on the internet might give you useful ideas (there are lots in this thread), but they don’t have the full context, so they can’t give you off-the-shelf answers.