In Anticipation of the Inevitable Strawman Arguments

Every time I write about Hindu genocide and persecution and it gets shared, inevitably people come back with a "retort" about how that doesn’t justify the oppression of “hundreds of millions of Muslims”.

Nowhere in my writing do I suggest that any kind of oppression is justified. But without fail that is the response some people make and they do so with righteous indignation and accusations of divisiveness.

According to these people, Hindus are not really allowed to talk about what happened to us and what happens to us at the hands of Islamic fundamentalists. Because that leads to Islamophobia, they argue.

Which leads me to an imperfect analogy, but it works on a few levels so I’m going with it. If you are a woman who was assaulted by a man and are not allowed to talk about it or name it, would that make you LESS fearful of ALL men?

Would your silence address and combat the toxic masculinity? Is talking about assault conflating toxic masculinity with all of maleness and with healthy masculinity? Is naming what happened to you really just a justification for the persecution of ALL men?

If you spoke about what happened to you and someone accused you of being a misandrist would you feel safe? Would that feel accurate? Would that make you trust men more or less? If your allies spoke about what happened to you and were accused of being misandrists...

...seeking to punish all men, would that even make sense?

When survivors are silenced, it only makes them more fearful and generalizes their fear. The only thing that works and heals is naming the truth.

We cannot unite if one group’s fear of oppression is validated and another group's experiences of being oppressed is gaslit and used against them.

We cannot heal by using false equivalencies to silence survivors.

We cannot move forward without truth and reconciliation.

*false equivalences
*are gaslit