Don't Tell Me You Have Values. Show Me.

One of the first women I met on Fetlife was a leftist consent activist who ultimately admitted to having raped a man years before. She was sorry about it, though, and these days, she had a better working knowledge of consent. She swore it. 

I only came to grips with consent after I entered the kink scene, so I know this is often complicated terrain. In the same breath, though, I’ve never raped anyone. Assault is a low bar. You don’t need much knowledge to avoid raping people. Infidelity is a low bar as well, but our leftist didn’t seem to care about such things in monogamous relationships either. She ultimately developed a relationship with a mutual friend and promptly began involving me in their public smut-fests. She didn’t care about my consent either, even if I did have “heterosexual” on my profile. 

She was every creeper you’ve ever found in your inbox, but she called herself a left-leaning activist, and people believed her. In those days, I thought she was one of a kind. Seven years later, I’ve learned there are four kinds of people: 

There are the obvious left and right-wing folk. 

There are also the centrists, but there’s a fourth breed: The person who claims to have left-leaning political views but actively exhibits right-wing ideologies. They scream about diversity and consent while behaving like pick-up artists and racists. They are complicit in what they accept, but if they keep labelling themselves as ethical, nobody will even look far enough to notice their principles.  

The left wing advocates for social and economic equality; for the absence of social hierarchies; for cooperation, particularly in terms of diversity. Not all left-wing pundits support those principles. They’ll say all the right things, of course, but when action is taken as fact, they will joyfully destroy you due to your race or illness. They’ll blame you for abuse and sometimes, they’ll even assault people. 

I have serious moral problems with the right, but none are so toxic as a left-leaning person who actively exhibits right-wing ideologies. They have an unerring belief in their own morality, so when they attack, they do it with absolute cruelty. 

I’m not about to say such people are muddying our water because they’re not in our water in the first place. They’re just pretending to be. Self-righteousness and certainty give birth to ugliness, so don’t tell me you have principles. Show me.