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Okay this is a spicy one
I think there's a clear difference between portraying woman characters as sexually empowered and objectifying them, but so many people that want to do the latter will use the former as their defense of it. I also have noticed that because they're fictional, people will say some of the most heinous misogynistic things and just go "well she's not real so it doesn't matter!" Which always feels like idk, testing how far you can go with it. Like imagine making discriminatory remarks about an LGBT+ character or BIPOC character and going "it's okay, they're not real!" like it just.. feels a bit icky. Almost like you want to say those things to a real person but use this hypothetical person as a means to do so without consequence.
I mean do what you want of course but as soon as I see people dropping casual misogyny regardless of context it makes me a bit nervous and I pull back almost immediately.
And to clarify I mean in direct remarks, obviously writing about difficult or dark topics is another matter. E.g. the people that go "I want to do [dehumanizing/degrading thing] to her" vs people writing a fic that contains slurs or depicts scenes of discrimination.
