couldn’t be bothered to put this all in the tags so I’m rambling in the rb: I think #These types of people really have trouble recognising that there are more types of harm than directly harassing someone/going up to their face and beating the shit out of them In Real Life. The whole “it’s just pixels you’re protecting pixels” thing really reflects this because like… whether it’s people saying fetishistic depictions of child rape (or even just children being sexualised by the narrative) are weird and pro-pedophilic and harmful or people calling out racism within the way white fandomites interact with black or even just nonwhite characters, it’s all… “just pixels”, right? Yet I think when you put it into the perspective of people opposing or criticising what are easily recognised as bigoted depictions/interactions with fiction (racist, misogynistic, homo/transphobic, ableist etc), things start to click for them. (Most of the time. Or they just double down and defend bigotry in these contexts) I think this is because of a failure to recognise rape culture/pro-pedophilia culture as ideologies that, much like forms of bigotry, can be fed into and perpetuated via fictional content, depictions (I know I’m saying depictions a lot just walk with me), etc. I also find it very funny that while claiming not to be rape apologists, #They will try to counter these arguments about rape culture by comparing rape or other forms of sexual violence and abuse to things like murder, theft, etc (or the creation of art revolving around them) — which are… not the same as rape, which should be obvious to any self proclaimed feminist or leftist with even the slightest amount of common sense.
They are “anti harassment” (anti “harassment” towards creators in fandom who create pro-rape culture or bigoted works, usually) because, by their logic, they believe the only form of harm is DIRECT physical/verbal/etc harm towards another human being that can sometimes be accompanied by or personified as bigotry, not the spreading of bigoted ideologies/rhetoric. Misogyny is only bad if you go up to women irl and beat the shit out of them and call them misogynistic names to their faces, saying “I hate females they’re subhuman bitches who deserve to be raped” on the internet is fine if you do it in your “hehe jay kay! It’s #JustFiction I’m just kidding teehe I have a misogyny kink! Hehe!” way. Also™️, They get very quiet when you bring up the fact their “it’s just fiction” argument also protects people who create objectively bigoted fanworks. They get especially quiet when you tell them it most commonly protects people who create racist fanworks (because fandom culture is racist, keep up) because that’s………………….usually one of the forms of bigotry they don’t have any say in . Either way it all ends in bipoc + rape/sexual abuse survivors being called hysterical overdramatic killjoy bitches as it always does
