#etherealsuperposition

- is absolutely disgusting and indefensible, so far as I am concerned. My frustration is more that in attempting to criticize a work of art, or an artist, people became needlessly, pointlessly, over-dramatic, insulting, and aggressive. If you throw a punch or insult someone aggressively, of course they’ll respond in kind, more often than not. When you attack and insult more than you actually objectively criticize someone, regardless of how /justified/ that attack might be… -2 of 3, apparently.[fanmail from here on]Alright, the point I’m trying to make without rambling further is that, I feel, the people attacking both the critics of Michelle, and Michelle herself, don’t really represent the critics, or Michelle, which seems to be how people see it. I don’t see an argument or a criticism as valid if it resorts to insults and aggressive tactics, rather than actually informing people as to the wrongness of the subject matter. I have a great deal of sympathy for Michelle, and, frankly, I don’t think her comic’s perfect, I don’t think she’s never done anything wrong. But I can’t side with, or even really understand, the purpose of “calling her out”, let alone sending vast amounts of hate, in her general direction for her choices in her story. I hate the mentality of “don’t fight fire with fire” because of course as the marginalized party you’re the one who has to back down, you’re obligated to be morally superior, IE, not actually /accomplish/ anything against people willing to stoop to lesser tactics. My problem here is that I don’t see anything Michelle did as warranting that, I don’t see her intentionally insulting, debasing, or attacking asexuality. Did Crow say something gross? Absolutely, because she was /insulting/ someone, using problematic terminology… because she’s a bratty twelve year old girl. Saying that Michelle is actively insulting Asexuals directly because of that isn’t fair. Michelle isn’t sending anon hate to people telling them to kill themselves. Obviously this fandom is incredibly problematic, but a lot of your posts on that particular subject seem slanted and aggressive, and it just bothers me. I’m all for criticism, but I can’t learn anything from hate, from anger, or from insults, whether they’re justified or not.

Okay, so if I’m understanding all this correctly, you’re saying that people can’t expect anyone to learn from their words when they’re being aggressive, and even though you don’t like the “don’t fight hate with hate” argument you don’t think Michelle’s done anything hateful in the first place.

I don’t quite agree with you there.

I’m honestly a little confused when you condemn aggressively-worded posts/criticism, because that’s basically the “be polite and stay calm” attitude that fuels the “don’t fight fire with fire” argument. No, people might not be as open to learning when they’re faced with insults, but like you said, marginalized people shouldn’t have to tone it down to get their point across.

Yeah, people could’ve approached Michelle privately and tried to patiently talked things through with her—but they didn’t, what’s done is done, and I don’t condemn them for speaking up. I personally think that this discussion needed to take place out in the open, anyway—open discussion about problems is healthy. (Unless it takes a downward spiral into vitrol, which unfortunately it has in this fandom.)

As for Michelle herself, while I wouldn’t say she deserved to be run off this website, she has said some pretty nasty things. Like saying “I was going to represent you asexuals, but you were mean to me, so now I won’t and I want nothing to do with you”—that’s bad. That’s really, really bad and a pretty blatant guilt trip, imo. It needs to be addressed, calmly or not.

Just one note, I don’t want to lure you into an argument, I meant that. You don’t have to justify yourself to me, I was expressing my own opinion on the subject. I’m sorry if this felt like an attack, I am genuinely trying to understand this house of cards my favorite fandom became, and struggling with it.

That’s fine, I’m not arguing with you here and it didn’t feel like an attack at all. And trust me, I can relate to rambling a lot when you’re not sure what to think.