Originally Posted by
JeanGreyForever
I had a friend who was going blind so she would post lots of things on Tumblr decrying able-bodied, straight, white males (with a bunch of other descriptive words that I can't remember now) so that's how I learned about ableism. It hasn't really caught on too much yet.
I actually have had more success with a "semi-passive resistance," as you call, to help teach one of my more bigoted friends. She was incredibly sexist (to women) and had a lack of knowledge about other cultures. She actually praised me, because she said I was one of the few who didn't instantly decry her, but actually took the time to listen to her and explain the faults in her line of thinking in a respectful way. It took a month, but I managed to convince her that Muslims weren't actually bad people, and that Muslim women aren't as repressed as they seem to be, at least not historically. I think she was a bit disappointed by the last part because her ideas were that Western women are the worst beings to ever exist in the world and that feminism is destructive.
Of course you can only have so much patience with someone like this, so I lost it on her when she started to speak up about her views on blacks and Romani people. I think since then, I've mostly been stuck in "full on assault" mode.
I think that describes Jean really well too, since she seems to be patient and one of those people who would make a deliberate effort to help people see the error of their ways. But eventually it can all be too much, when there is very little progress (even if the fact that there is progress is quite remarkable in the first place), and she blows up.