Regarding https://www.tumblr.com/txttletale/738341757552672768/big-fan-not-even-particularly-involvd-i-just
Hard disagree. Until science demonstrates that people into (say) BDSM really are disproportionately more likely to become predators, someone's kinks will remain precisely as irrelevant to it as their pesto preferences, which is the exact reason that comparison works well and is not a fallacy.
It's just that "could this person's pesto taste mean they're a PREDATOR?" is transparently bullshit in a way "could this person's kink tastes mean they're a PREDATOR?" isn't. The only reason the latter equally absurd premise gets entertained is that 1) both things are related to sex, which doesn't really say much when so many things are, 2) because it aligns with people's collective biases and objectively incorrect assumptions about how abuse works and why it's perpetrated. Like that's it, that's the reason. It's very comforting to think that being a predator comes with obvious red flags like the kink preferences they announce and that's a big reason people think that. It's broadly comparable to the (extremely widespread until only a few decades ago, at least in the West) stance that sexual assault is motivated by how the victim dressed rather than a constellation of victim vulnerability and perpetrator being someone who'd take advantage of that. It's scary to think that you can't actually protect yourself by not wearing short skirts, so people will pretend like hell like that's all there is to it, even if it means they get burned and left without support when this paper-thin shield doesn't work. Same "reasoning" with the relationship between kink and predatory behaviour.
It's all pesto, in the end, and pushing back against the supposed link by framing it as absurd is the correct approach here IMO.
sure, the comparison works well in terms of being objectively correct -- they even acknowledge this in their example. i agree with basically everything you're saying here and the reason i agreed with anon instead of rejecting them (as i have every other 'oh you gotta be soooo careful about people talking about kink in case they're a PrEdAtOr' anon i've gotten) is that they are expressly making an exclusively pragmatic argument -- that from the purely rhetorical perspective, reblogging a post about how kinks don't make someone a sexual predatory -- which is of course correct -- from someone who turns out to be predatory for other reasons looks bad.
like, i think anon also agrees on all that stuff you said with you (or at least, that was my interpretation of that ask) -- they were just pointing out how extra diligence about who you platform making that argument is needed not because that argument is suspicious but because it is more rhetorically/politically disastrous for someone making that argument to be exposed for the argument than it is with something totally unrelated.
