As She Pleases

I was told that if I keep liking Utena and being a fan of Utena that means I value fiction more than real life victims and that I have no backbone. If those allegations are true ofc I don't condone what Ikuhara has done and all of my sympathy is with the possible vitcims. I have been kissed against my own will multiple times and I know how terrible it is.

What should I do when one of the creators of the thing I love has allegations made against him?

Learn the difference between Allegation, Conviction, and Hearsay

I just learned that Kunihiko Ikuhara has allegations of sexual misconduct against him. He apparently tried to hit on his young teenage girls fans when he was visiting American cons in the 90′s and tried to kiss someone against their will.

I heard about this while I was making the Utena in a Nutshell video, unfortunately I couldn't find an actual source. The most I found was a single Twitter post from one artist about their own experiences, and a ton of "I heard from a friend" posts.

So I just wrote it off as hearsay because hearsay was all there was.

I found all of these allegations from a Twitter convo.

Twitter convos don't amount to much these days.

I was told that if I keep liking Utena and being a fan of Utena that means I value fiction more than real life victims and that I have no backbone.

Emotional blackmail like this is a red flag that someone is lying to you.

Believing every second or third hand accusation you hear about a person immediately, condemning the accused immediately, and tearing up any shred of association immediately is not caring about real life victims. It's being a gullible fool.

If the accusations were credible, they wouldn't need such rabidly emotional and manipulative arguments like this.

I am a sexual assault survivor. Chants like "no means no" at VGK games are nothing more than social justice cosplay, and this performance is a very unfunny farce.

Want to make a real difference? Do actual social justice.

Donate to the local women's shelter.

Vote out the GOP/GOP equivalent in your country. (Vote in your local elections, because that's where those fuckers first take root.)

Insist that there be actual, comprehensive, medical fact based sex ed in your school system. Young people have the right to know about their bodies, what healthy sexuality, and what healthy relationships look like. (Sex ed I assure you the Hockey 5 never got.)

Sex ed that covers:

*Issues of consent, like power dynamics

*how consent is an ongoing process -- check in early and often

*the fact that nobody is owed sex, EVER

*that consent can be withdrawn at any point in an encounter -- a person's body is their own and they have the right to stop anything that doesn't feel good or feel right for them. (Yes, even when it's your spouse. Yes, even if they're a sex worker.)

*if you are too drunk/high to drive, you are too drunk to consent to sex. You don't have to be reeling drunk to be too drunk. (Everybody in that room was too drunk to consent!)

*"slut shaming" is a tool of oppression and is toxic to both men and women. (EM's allegations can also -- understandably -- be seen an attempt at reputation repair. She was a "good girl" and a good girl could never, ever want to have a group sex encounter, doncha know?)

*never do anything that could be taken as preventing somebody from leaving an encounter. If somebody wants to leave, let them go.

Do anything but trivialize sexual assault down to a chant meant to get in the opposing team's head and smugly pat yourself on the back for having done your good deed.

Imagine replying with this to somebody (who was violently sexually assaulted*) when they make a post about don't trivialize sexual assault for the purposes of getting into somebody's head, because that is not social justice it is social justice cosplay.

I pray that this person fixes their heart. And soon.

*EM did not say no to almost everything that happened in that room. The records are very clear about that. Which doesn't mean that what happened in that hotel room wasn't awful, but it wasn't a "no means no" event.

To give an an idea of how complicated it can get? Kyle Beach actually orgasmed during his sexual assault. Trivializing all sexual assault down to "no means no" plants the wrong ideas about what a sexual assault can be; that if a person didn't say no (because they were too afraid to, or otherwise coerced into saying yes/going along with it, like Beach) it's not a sexual assault.

I am a sexual assault survivor. Chants like "no means no" at VGK games are nothing more than social justice cosplay, and this performance is a very unfunny farce.

Want to make a real difference? Do actual social justice.

Donate to the local women's shelter.

Vote out the GOP/GOP equivalent in your country. (Vote in your local elections, because that's where those fuckers first take root.)

Insist that there be actual, comprehensive, medical fact based sex ed in your school system. Young people have the right to know about their bodies, what healthy sexuality, and what healthy relationships look like. (Sex ed I assure you the Hockey 5 never got.)

Sex ed that covers:

*Issues of consent, like power dynamics

*how consent is an ongoing process -- check in early and often

*the fact that nobody is owed sex, EVER

*that consent can be withdrawn at any point in an encounter -- a person's body is their own and they have the right to stop anything that doesn't feel good or feel right for them. (Yes, even when it's your spouse. Yes, even if they're a sex worker.)

*if you are too drunk/high to drive, you are too drunk to consent to sex. You don't have to be reeling drunk to be too drunk. (Everybody in that room was too drunk to consent!)

*"slut shaming" is a tool of oppression and is toxic to both men and women. (EM's allegations can also -- understandably -- be seen an attempt at reputation repair. She was a "good girl" and a good girl could never, ever want to have a group sex encounter, doncha know?)

*never do anything that could be taken as preventing somebody from leaving an encounter. If somebody wants to leave, let them go.

Do anything but trivialize sexual assault down to a chant meant to get in the opposing team's head and smugly pat yourself on the back for having done your good deed.

Refusing to Show Evidence - This is self explanatory.

Emotional Blackmail - If someone responds to requests for proof or doubt with a big emotional spiel about "Believing the Victim" that's a massive red flag. Victim and Accuser are not synonymous, and this kind of emotional blackmail is unnecessary when you have an actual case. This goes double for "But if it's true then it's really bad!" That warrants more scrutiny, not less.

Mockery - Turning the subject into a punching bag casts doubt, because sexual abuse is a serious topic and should not be funny. And if the accuser is treating it as a big joke, it's clear they already had a bug up their ass about the accused before these came out.

Hyperscrutiny - Spending more time scrutinizing the response to the accusations than presenting evidence. Again, if you have proof you don't need to do this.

Association Fallacy - If the proof of accusations is just shit from their social media the accuser is twisting into "self reports." Proof of actual wrongdoing is the only acceptable thing to submit.

For a lot of people the exhaustion is performative. It's a lot easier to claim you're overwhelmed than to admit you're lazy and don't care.

However, for an equally large amount of people they don't do themselves any favors. They constantly gorge themselves on news, telling themselves they can't "look away" and need to "stay informed" but the brain can only handle so much information at once.

Seriously, BINGING ANYTHING IS BAD FOR YOU STOP FUCKING DOING IT!

Additionally, they have the outrage meter at 11 all the time. Always freaking out, always screaming, always demanding blood and guts and other performative outbursts. So of course you wear yourself out.

You need to learn to let your anger burn slowly. You need to learn to stop performing and letting your anger explode so everyone can see that you have the correct opinions.

I said this about Gaza and I'll say it again here: It's a marathon, not a sprint.

A lot of people don't want to hear that. They want change NOW. But you're not getting change now. You have to do it the slow way, you don't actually get another choice.

"We need left wing populism!" Populism is the politics of the stupid and never actually solves anything. Stop broadcasting that you're stupid.

You. Have. To. Do. Things. The. Slow. Way. There. Is. No. Other. Choice.

I suppose armed revolution is possible, but that would require the vast majority of you to want to pick up a gun. And you don't. And given that, your only choice is to

Vote regularly

Stop making excuses not to vote

Stop holding dipshit opinions about instantaneous change in a 2 party system

Stop whining about the 2 party system while decidedly not voting for third parties at your state or local level.

Stop binge watching news and political youtubers seriously why are so many of you so averse to the basic fundamental reality that binging anything is bad you all need addiction counseling or to be smacked with a really big bat.

Stop throwing a hissy fit when the concept of linear time doesn't adjust to accommodate your minuscule attention span.

None. Blood Libel is when Christians falsely accuse Jewish people of murdering Christians to use their blood in the performance of religious rituals.

QAnon was an example of Blood Libel, insisting that a cabal of Jewish billionaires were stealing the adrenal fluid of children to achieve immortality.

Yeah that's what QAnon was about.

In the last few years, Israel has insisted that any accusation of genocide against Palestinians is a form of blood libel. They are wrong for a number of reasons.

The genocide is actually happening, and therefore writing about it is not "libel."

Nobody is accusing Israel of using the blood of Palestinians for rituals, only spilling it wantonly.

Not at all. I do have moral principles. I'm against the Death Penalty, and I'm against the government intruding on the personal lives of adults. What makes it a moral principle is that I still hold that without making exceptions for things I find gross.

It's just that when it comes to real problems, they need to be fixed. Posturing helps nobody and does nothing, especially when it's cowardly little pussies posturing about how they'd become murderers if they had an excuse.