Statement on @\anti-tme-and-tma-users
I just had a long conversation with Snail where multiple things became painfully obvious:
Snail is a disabled and very sheltered person who did not realize how being underinformed in a conversation like the ones we have been having could lead to unintentionally parroting harmful rhetoric.
Snail did not intend for any of their posts to come across as harmful, patronizing, downplaying, or willfully obtuse, let alone encouraging the perpetuation of harm or of pro-para spaces.
Snail has been dealing with a harassment campaign that while not baseless, given their statements are incredibly damning at first blush, has spiralled out to include transmisogynistic, ableist, and intersexist harm that they absolutely do not deserve to be subject to and has taken an effect on their physical health.
And lastly, Snail is a very sweet person who is willing to have productive conversations about their wording with people willing to take them in good faith as someone who is underinformed and disabled.
I don't think that anything I say will change that there are some parties involved here who will never be willing to take Snail in good faith, gently correct them, or even really treat them like a human being, but I do think that we should not treat them like a pariah for still being on chapter three of this conversation while the rest of us are on chapter five. From their own experiences, they grew up in a very rural, very conservative, and very religious area where they were not as well-informed about sex and kink as a lot of us, and is still actively learning about how all of this works.
Snail is going to work on drafting an apology and explanation for how all of this got started, which I am very pleased to hear and hopefully will be able to help them work on so that their words and ideas are conveyed the best they possibly can. This has spiralled far beyond the root of the issue, and I don't think anyone invested in continuing to harass Snail is going to just stop as soon as this statement or their own drops, but I must digress.
I am not going to name and shame, because frankly, I do not want things to get worse for Snail - but if you have a fucking problem, take it up with me. I can handle that shit a lot better and I have the capacity to clown your ass to hell and back. Leave Snail the fuck alone. Just because they aren't a minor doesn't mean they're going to automatically be caught up on every bit of discussion, advocacy, and discourse, especially when they've been out of step with a lot of us and have only come to our attention because they said some shit that looked damning as fuck the first time you read through it.
Their disabilities make it incredibly easy for them to be taken advantage of, and make it difficult for them to word their thoughts to the standards of others. This has been used by both sides of this discourse to detrimental effect, with not only pro-paras taking their words in bad faith to try and schmooze into their social circle, but even people ostensibly on our side to excuse harassing and smearing them.
I couldn't even get to the source of the screenshots I was sent because I had to slog through people constantly, willfully misintepreting everything they said and putting them on the back foot to just dig the hole deeper no matter how many times they tried to reword what they said and explain that they genuinely did not know how to phrase it.
I shouldn't have to tell you how fucked up and dangerous it is to take a vulnerable person and treat them like utter shit instead of actually talking to them about what they said, how it can be harmful, and working to help them understand what's actually being interpreted from their words and how better to convey their actual intent. Frankly, we are all extremely lucky that Snail was willing to talk to me at all about my prior reblog given the shitstorm they've been put through, because there is no doubt in my mind that it would be entirely understandable for them to have walked right into the arms of someone who could tell they were vulnerable and manipulated them further into pro-para shit by taking advantage of their disability and their lack of information and understanding about sex, kink, and paraphilia.
We need to do fucking better than that. For all our posturing about wanting to help victims and prevent abuse, it seems to me right now that a lot of y'all are more interested on getting to dunk on people than in approaching this shit with the actual care and attention needed, and that you're willing to actively put a disabled person in fucking danger than treat them with the basic fucking decency of respect and understanding.
What the fuck were y'all thinking?
It took me one fucking conversation to clear the air. One.
Do better. Be better. Act like you got some g-ddamn sense.