Don't get me wrong: I know this is true. I know, in most cases, it is really is a "small but vocal group" of any community who engages in silencing and intimidation.
But of the "large but silent group" of all these communities, who supposedly don't agree with the hostile disgorgements of the "small but vocal group," the people most likely to speak up do so primarily to defend themselves, to distance themselves from that "small but vocal group," to oblige me to reassure them that I know there is a "large but silent group" who is totally on my side, even though their silence indicates otherwise.
They reach out to me, while I'm navigating the expected bile of typical garbage nightmares, in order to seek my assistance in salving their own discomfort of affiliation. Which is exactly as unwelcome as it sounds.
"Hey, the rest of us aren't like those knuckleheads!" is not a comfort. It is a way of obliging me to concede that simply not being a dirtbag is sufficient action to consider themselves my ally.
I will not concede that. Because it isn't.
This urge to distance oneself from the "small but vocal group," and attempt to mask as solidarity what is actually a deflection of accountability, is a phenomenon I've previously described, not coincidentally, in a piece on Christian privilege and being asked to make distinctions between "real Christians" and the self-identified Christians who seek to do harm.
