Is Facebook a Train Wreck For You, Too? Here’s How I Handled It!
Image licensed under Creative Commons
Social media can be toxic nowadays. In the aftermath of this brutal election, I see people arguing, families splitting, insults flying everywhere.
It is partly what inspired me to write this and encourage those people who feel marginalized in today’s society to contact me directly to share their stories and make their voices heard in a safe, anonymous way.
Today I posted the following on my personal Facebook page and am sharing it here for anyone who would like to use it. Feel free to share this post.
Hi there! Please read carefully because your decision to stay Facebook friends with me is just that: yours, for now.
I would never normally post hate documents, but I’m awfully tired of comments like, “You need to stop reading the liberal media.”
I spend, on average, 6 hours a day reading. Most of that is NOT from any media at all. It’s from real people sharing from their real lives.
THIS . . . is not from any media outlet. It is direct from the source. In their own words. This is the party and agenda elected to office. Here. In America, 2016. I will highlight for you a few particularly disturbing passages in a comment below this post.
This is about way more than some spray-tanned demagogue elected to the highest office in our nation. People chose to put this party into majority power in both houses. Essentially ratifying this document. This is what the Republican Party IN THEIR OWN WORDS ran on.
Since Election Day I’ve been horrified. To be clear, I have voted Republican in my lifetime. (I vote in every election, not just Presidential ones.) I’ve never before seen a party so openly discriminatory. This isn’t about Republican vs. Democrat for me.
It’s about hate vs. love.
Intolerance vs. acceptance.
But I will not be silent any longer. Not at all.
Right now, I need to use my voice and the privilege afforded me as a white, cisgender, heterosexual, married female to stand up for those who feel marginalized or voiceless or afraid.
I need to do this for me because I can’t live with myself if I stay silent.
More importantly, I need to do this for my family and friends who are directly impacted in negative ways by this hateful rhetoric.
I will absolutely not stand by in silent witness.
So here are my FB rules:
1. I have no problem with you. Unless you post something racist, sexist, homophobic, anti-LGBTQ, or hateful towards any group or religion. Then I will absolutely call you out for doing so. Please feel free to unfriend, unfollow, and/or block me now.
2. I really want to keep loving so very many of you. So I promise here and now that if you do unfriend, unfollow, and/or block me, I will not notice and it will not change our relationship (if any) off of Facebook. Unless you speak to me the things I listed above in 1. But I’m super optimistic that will never happen!
3. Instagram is politics-free for me. Feel free to connect with me there, if you want, rather than here.
4. I will unfriend, unfollow, and/or block as I see fit to maintain the kind of positive environment I prefer and/or positive relationship that I want with you. I hope that you will extend to me the same courtesy I detailed in #2. If not, that’s your choice and I respect it.
5. This is non-negotiable. Any negative comments, on this or any other post, will be deleted and will also help me to pinpoint who I need to unfriend, unfollow, and/or block. Anything other than a “like” or “love” (especially a “ha-ha”) on this post will indicate to me the same. None of this amuses me.
I’m not debating anything about this post, but welcome respectful discourse going forward on my posts
6. I encourage you to take any anger or frustration this causes you and channel that into something productive for your family or society as a whole. That’s what I did and it feels great!
7. If you’re reading this and feel like you or someone you know would love to share their feelings/story in a safe, anonymous way, please click HERE.
1. Overturn the Supreme Court’s 2015 decision to legalize gay marriage in all 50 states. Marriage is between “one man and one woman” (pg. 31 of the GOP Platform), and Republicans “do not accept the Supreme Court’s redefinition of marriage and we urge its reversal, whether through judicial reconsideration or a constitutional amendment returning control over marriage to the states.”
2. Discourage gay couples from adopting children. “Every child deserves a married mom and dad,” the platform says (pg. 31 of the GOP Platform).
3. Make it legal to discriminate against LGBT people. “We oppose government discrimination against businesses or entities which decline to sell items or services to individuals for activities that go against their religious views about such activities” (pg. 32 of the GOP platform). That includes adoption agencies, and doctors, nurses, and other healthcare professionals (pg. 37 of the GOP Platform) who “should not be forced to choose between following their faith and practicing their profession.”
4. Force everyone to use the bathroom of their biological sex at birth. Barack Obama and bureaucrats are trying to “impose a social and cultural revolution upon the American people by wrongly redefining sex discrimination to include sexual orientation or other categories” (pg. 35 of the GOP platform). Their “edict to the states concerning restrooms, locker rooms, and other facilities is at once illegal, dangerous, and ignores privacy issues.”
5. Make “conversion therapy” legal for minors. “We support the right of parents to consent to medical treatment for their minor children,” (page 37) of the GOP platform says. That’s “an endorsement of the debunked psychological practice of ‘pray the gay away,’
allison writes 