I don’t know if you like this kind of anons sending you links but I hate this post so much and you are so well spoken ... anyways, here it is goodmorningtoyouuniverse*tumblr*com/post/622086662775816192/3-part-anon-the-difference-is-that-one-is-being
Anon I will answer this this time but don’t send me these wank posts next time. What’s the point of addressing this essay by someone who’s delusional and hates Harry? Particularly considering the post has nine notes…
I’m not gonna post screenshots and I’m not gonna repeat the full text. Sorry. I really would love it if this didn’t get any more attention than necessary. I’m keeping the link there in case someone absolutely needs to read it, since I’m replying to it, because I don’t wanna censor it.
She’s replying to an anon without posting the anon, which is a tactic very commonly used by that side of the fandom to make their attacks without actually showing the defence.
She makes the accusation of Harry benefiting commercially of being seen as “such a progressive activist” which is bullshit from the word go. Harry is not doing such a thing. If you wanna look at someone who is doing such a thing, Matty Healy is right there. Harry isn’t being preachy, isn’t writing daily essays on activism on Twitter. Harry has barely been asked about social justice in interviews and he’s been very mild in his replies. Harry advocating for stuff, which he does, is not “trying to benefit commercially” from it. Absolutely fucking not. I want ONE example of it. I’ll wait.
But no, there isn’t one. Because he DOES NOT. His fans are happy that he’s educating himself and advocating for stuff he believes in. That’s it. He doesn’t DO anything to push that idea. He has NEVER DONE SO. She tops it off with “and you’re not actually doing anything to deserve that title”… what title? Progressive activist? Because he is 1. progressive and 2. an activist. Someone who advocates for LGBT rights, BLM, refugees, is anti-Brexit, pro feminism, etc, etc, etc, is… progressive. And sure, he’s not an activist in the same vein Angelina Jolie is an activist. But he is an activist nonetheless:
Considering the organisations he endorses, the petitions he’s signed, the protests he’s attended, and his general message. He is a “progressive activist”.
So two problems so far, she thinks he’s marketing himself as a progressive activist which he is not doing. Because he hasn’t done a single thing to PUSH this image (other than fucking doing progressive activist things). And she thinks he’s NOT a progressive activist, which he is by the literal definition of it.
Let’s continue. She says that “if Justin Bieber writes sexist songs then it’s irritating at best.” No, if Justin Bieber writes sexist songs then it’s a symptom of how much he hates women, whom he has admitted to cheat on and abuse. And whom he has disrespected his entire career, not to mention the literal rape allegations.
She says about Harry: “if you wear shirts that proclaim that women are smarter but then never actually write with any women and sing songs that are sexist and reduce women to sex objects…”
Harry does, in fact, write with women. Ilsey Juber and Amy Allen would like to have a chat with Sterre. Out of 9 writers in Fine Line, 8 if we don’t count Harry himself, two were women. 2/8 is a 25% ratio. Could it be better? 100%. And I do hope that Harry works on that. It’s definitely better than the industry standard, tho. Women writers have been historically shunned in the industry.
What about Walls? Walls has 33 songwriters, 32 if we don’t count Louis himself. One was a woman. That’s a 3% ratio. So… this seems a little bit hypocritical, doesn’t it? But I mean, I guess Louis doesn’t wear “WOMEN ARE SMARTER” shirts so it’s okay if he’s sexist!
Also, a little - but very important - detail, Harry writes with friends. Out of the 8 collaborators in Fine Line, 4 were also part of HS1, plus Greg Kurstin and Ilsey and Amy. The eighth one is Sammy Witte who was an engineer in HS1. Tom and Mitch are two of Harry’s best friends. Jeff and Tyler are super close to him as well. This isn’t the case with Louis, who hasn’t even met some of the writers in Walls. I think we can be a little more lenient if we consider Harry is writing with friends (and he has a way higher ratio of women writing with him), but what excuse could Louis POSSIBLY have for having just one ( 1 ) woman in THIRTY-TWO people. None of whom are friends of him. Some of which he’s never met. That’s active discrimination. But he hasn’t worn a Women Are Smarter shirt. So it’s okay.
As per the sexist lyrics… Harry hasn’t written any. The only questionable lyric is the skirt mention in Only Angel. But this is so blown out of proportion by these people that it’s comical at this point. Yeah, he says “couldn’t take you home to mother in a skirt that short” but he also says “but I think that’s what I like about it”…. he’s not judging her clothing. He’s not slut shaming her. He’s not asking her to change. He literally says he likes it. I do think this is a lyric that he could’ve done without, but it’s not the sexism these people think it is. I wouldn’t take my boyfriend (or girlfriend) home to my parents wearing certain clothes. I would ask them to try and dress for meeting the parents.
I know the other lyrics they question and it’s so… “such a pretty face on a pretty neck” because calling women pretty is sexist, I guess? “She’s a good girl/she feels so good” because having sex with women is sexist, I guess? And somehow they also think Woman is sexist because… he can’t be jealous of an ex…??? I guess?? Even though he admits his jealousy is irrational and he calls himself selfish.
Harry writes sexist lyrics? Nope. He has never. Not ONCE. And they have to scrap the bottom of the barrel to find anything to question.
Now, Louis… hoooo boy. Midnight Memories in ITS ENTIRETY is sexist as fuck. 90% of the songs Louis wrote for that album are ROTTEN. It’s rape culture of “you say no but your eyes say yes” or “you say no but it’s a little white lie” or “say whatever you want but don’t say no.” It’s gross. Vomit-inducing. And Louis still advocates for those songs. A line of a song is literally “I wanna be with every girl I meet”…. child….
And he didn’t stop at Midnight Memories. He left us a sexist bundle of dread in every album after that. Steal My Girl… it’s… right there in the title. “Find another one cause she belongs to me” I wanna BARF. What?! And Love You Goodbye? Saying she’s wearing clothes to provoke him when she breaks up with him and because she’s wearing those clothes “won’t you give it to me one last time”…. This one isn’t as blatantly sexist as the others, but it’s definitely ten times more sexist than anything Harry has ever written.
Then she comes for Harry’s unfortunate wording in the The Guardian interview. Which… it just shows you she’s just ready to pounce and just wants an excuse to say he’s problematic, because you can perfectly understand what he meant if you read it and analyse what he does with his platform. He said he’s looking for what to put all his weight behind. He didn’t say he has nothing to say about social causes and that he wont’t support anything until he finds the perfect thing (which is how she described it).
Before this interview Harry had advocated for gun control, pronounced himself anti Brexit (and even attended a Labour Congress meeting against Brexit), donated to several refugee organisations, supported BLM, pronounced himself a feminist, and advocated for environmentalism. Did he himself forget what he’s already advocating for? Or is he maybe saying that he hasn’t found the ONE CAUSE to make his life cause. Which is… noble. The fact that he’s searching for one. Because most people, particularly most celebrities, do not give a fuck and have no intentions of ever putting their whole weight behind anything. If he wants to take his time to research what the best use of THE WHOLE WEIGHT of his platform and name is, then good for him. Good for him for not being a white knight (ahem, Matty Healy). I do wish he had expressed himself better, but that doesn’t erase everything he’s done or change reality.
“If your image is built on being woke…” she says about Harry. It’s not. So anything that comes after it is bullshit.
“Maybe start by actually writing with qu*er/poc/women songwriters,” she says. He has… he is literally LGBT himself. He has written with people of colour. He has written with women. He’s only written with eight other people, yet all those groups are represented. The man’s backing band is 70% women (and he had a woman of colour until he had to fire Clare). Literally ALL his opening acts are women, people of colour or LGBT. No white cishet men in sight! There were women in his backing vocals in his album, women playing instruments. I don’t know ethnicities because most of them are anonymous but you can literally check the names. She says he “surrounds himself with white men only” but she’s either lying or hasn’t actually done her research because she is 100% wrong. “Don’t surround yourself with the Azoffs and Jenners only,” Jesus Christ they’re so fucking obsessed with Jeff and Kendall.
Harry befriended Kendall seven years ago. Move on. He’s not friends with the Kardashians or the other Jenners. He’s friends with Kendall. One ( 1 ) Jenner. And he sees her twice a year. Jeff is his manager. What the hell is the problem? He has a lot of friends who are LGBT, poc, of all nationalities, all religions. I’m not gonna name them because that reeks of tokenism and I don’t wanna fall into that. It’s very easy to just fucking Google….
You know who surrounds himself with white men only? LOUIS FUCKING TOMLINSON. His entire backing band is white cishet men. His supporting act is white cishet men. He has NO FEMALE FRIENDS. He has NEVER HAD A FEMALE FRIEND. His friends are 90% white and 100% cishet men. There’s one friend who isn’t white (and he’s a misogynist and homophobe, Nizam Kabir).
Then she adds a condescending paragraph about BLM with “it’s good that he went to the protest because I remember the disaster with the sticker” ??? What? What the hell is she talking about? Nobody said anything about the sticker (the BLM one in his guitar, I presume). Not anything negative, at least. It’s literally her imagination. What did happen was that Harry took his time to properly support BLM because he was scared of being seen as a white saviour/white knight, but that’s it… he’s been openly and loudly supportive of BLM since 2018, which you can absolutely not say about Louis fucking Tomlinson.
In fact, before this brief encounter of a week Louis had with BLM (which has now 100% stopped, while Harry continues to advocate for the cause, put his name out there to support it, educate himself, etc, plus, you know, all the stuff he did before), the one encounter Louis had with race issues was him being fucking racist. Saying the n word, being super mild when his sister said the n word, talking down about “urban music” (a million times).
I actually proper hate this entire message which is why I’m asking you guys to never ask me to reply to one of these again. I can. I can rip her entire nonsense to shreds, as I’m proving right now (and it’s not because of some quality I possess but because she’s wrong and ridiculous). But I don’t WANT TO. Because I hate the current climate of “my fave is better than yours” or “my fave is more woke than yours” and weaponising social causes that are actually hurting millions of people around the world, which I am part of (she’s a white European woman - she wouldn’t get it).
I love what Harry does because I feel represented in it. I feel like he sees me and supports me. I feel connected in the sense that we’re both learning and doing our best to help. We’re both hurting by what’s happening. I feel seen. I feel supported. And I’m pretty sure that’s the case for most (if not all?) of his fans. I don’t need to qualify and quantify and put a scale of what he did versus what Taylor Swift or Shawn Mendes did because I don’t give a fuck. I don’t support Harry BECAUSE he’s “a progressive activist” (and I doubt anyone does). It’s simply a nice bonus. I love that he makes me feel this way and I don’t think I’d be this dedicated to him if he wasn’t this way, but it’s not why I buy his merch, go to his concerts, or stream his music. And to have a competition of whose fave is a better advocate or more “problematic” is trivialising the causes.
So there, I replied once, I won’t do it again. And if she wants to continue making this into a stan war, then you know right there who actually cares and who doesn’t.
To close this, she ends her post saying that Louis isn’t ALLOWED to be outspoken or support causes. He’s almost thirty and worth 50 million dollars. He’s under no binding contracts that could dictate what he has to do. He can do whatever the fuck he wants. He CHOOSES not to. And like I said, you don’t have to require that from an artist to support them, but to make a conspiracy theory and give this super privileged white, cishet, christian, European, ADULT, millionaire MAN false oppression is simply insulting for all of us who are actually oppressed.
Sterre, you’re clearly trying to morph Louis Tomlinson into Harry Styles and erase who Harry Styles really is… Piece of advice, if you want to stan Harry Styles, just stan Harry Styles.
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