What you're experiencing is the fact that short-circuiting, unconscious emotions can only be hidden—not fixed—by the pressure of social stigma. The solution to

What you're experiencing is the fact that short-circuiting, unconscious emotions can only be hidden—not fixed—by the pressure of social stigma. The solution touches on a concept I've struggled to describe to others—that there is a divide between truths that we consciously know (fed by culture) and beliefs we unconsciously feel (fed by emotion). Empathy (the actual experience of a person's problems not the "imagine yourself in their shoes" kind) is the only thing that fully informs our unconscious emotions. See the famous Jane Elliott "Blue eyes–Brown eyes" exercise: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHxFuO2Nk-0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHxFuO2Nk-0 What I like about our current hyper-aware culture is that I think it will eventually lead to an acknowledgement of the nature of this divide, and we will soon be acknowledging many other -isms that fall into this category for which there are many. I hope the overwhelming nature of it will not cause us to throw our hands up and resign to it all, but rather cause us to consciously decide when it is appropriate to turn off empathy (creating consciously accepted -isms), rather than letting it be determined to the whims of a culture out of ignorance (hidden unconscious -isms). I hope to see future cultures unfold in this sort of way.