I've been spending so much time in fandom these past few years in large part to cope with having lost a lot of friends when I left an abusive relationship and people either ignored that that's what had happened despite clear evidence right in front of them, didn't believe me when I directly told them what happened, or actively supported my abuser despite being aware of lots of clear and painful evidence about which side of a harmful power dynamic they were on. Matthias Schoenaerts, some dude I don't know but who plays a character who means a lot to me, liking one instagram post by somebody he's apparently long-time friends with, who's been known for decades to be a serial abuser, when the post is repeating things people in my real life have said to me about my abuser — this is, shall we say, not good for me.
I don't need my fandom friends to stop making or interacting with content about him, but I do need y'all to respect that for my basic well-being I'm gonna have to do that, at very least for a good long while. I'd appreciate it so much if y'all would tag things you post about him so I don't have to see it.
It's so human to do something because you're focused on supporting your friend that you're not thinking about how that action could be harmful to other people. Maybe he'll look back on this and regret it, maybe even publicly apologize and distance himself from this serial abuser he's been friends with. A big part of why I let myself develop parasocial feelings about this person was how many of the women he's worked with talk about him as a thoughtful and non-creepy coworker. But then again, like a week ago when I was projecting my transmasc feels onto this man, I had to caveat the post with a list of many times he's played a rapist or other kind of abuser. Who the fuck knows. I don't know why actors take particular roles and I'm not interested in psychoanalyzing a stranger. It would be very costly for me to give this stranger the benefit of the doubt about something that would've cost him so little to fucking think about the significance of and then choose not to do.
It just sucks that I can't have fandom as an escape because we live in a rape culture. It sucks that this happened right before 2O2G filming starts and it'll probably steal from me what could've been such a fun time of screaming and movie speculation. This is why I, a white person, will never stop talking about racism in fandom until racism in fandom stops being a thing. We ought to be able to find joy in our hobbies, for fuck's sake, without getting randomly punched in the face by bullshit like this.
