You seem to hellbent in defending end-otw-racism in ONTF’s posts, kudos to you and your level-headed explanations. But perhaps you should inform the movement to update or clarify their manifesto more? The idk factor to that is stitch’s anti stance and the pungent smell of anti coming off from the lingo.
Comments on that post asking ao3 to outright ban things allowed on ao3 that they think is racist isn’t helping the cause either. Definitely won’t convert ONTF’s crowd. She herself has been decried by some of the campaign’s followers as the racist who founded the abuse guideline therefore it must be overhauled… which is… rich.
Yeah I don't think I have much chance with like...the larger, less pragmatic crowd of tired, angry, wounded people clustered around #EndOTWRacism, and I'm not especially interested in nitpicking the finer points of messaging with the people who launched the campaign, nor in re-litigating OTNF's reputation (any more than I already have in the notes of some of my previous posts.)
As someone who's pretty rabidly anti-censorship on principle, I felt like I got what #EndOTWRacism were going for with their manifesto: they wanted to avoid demanding censorship and they were sincere in wanting AO3 to step it up on AO3's own commitments anyway, because they thought there was more AO3 could do that wouldn't require censorship.
It was exactly the kind of extremely watered-down, limited-scope "don't give a hard time to anyone who chooses not to join" sort of thing that someone like stitch (infamous in some circles for calling POC who don't agree with her "pickmes") would never come up with.
If some of the voices #EndOTWRacism cites or reblogs are harsher or more demanding than what they themselves originally outlined, well, that's to be expected. I don't agree with every single thing said by OTNF (equally infamous in other circles for implying that trying to write diversity on purpose made fic boring), but I still reblog lots of her content. I don't agree with the finer points of every single individual post I reblog either, but if OP's perspective has something to contribute to the discussion then I still believe they're worth sharing. I think of it as the social media dialectic: you have to share things that don't perfectly align with each other in order for your blog to achieve synthesis!
I understand (vaguely) why some people are leery of stitch, and I eventually stopped following her on twitter because the vitriol-to-enlightenment ratio wasn't doing it for me, but I think it's honestly pretty childish to take such a strong "guilt by association" approach. It demonstrates underdeveloped theory of mind. As OTNF said recently to one of her anons, do you think everyone else has the same mental associations with stitch that you do?
I get pretty exhausted with any fandom organizing that focuses more on personal associations than it does on facts. And I get exhausted with the process of side-picking in general. So much of the time, something characterized later as "this ideological stance vs. that ideological stance! choose your side! neutrality supports the oppressor!" is actually just "somebody said something kinda thoughtless that slightly offended someone else, they both vagueblogged about their hurt feelings instead of trying to understand each other, suddenly three hundred strangers are analyzing this interpersonal squabble in the context of whatever sociopolitical problem they're most outraged about, and now half my friends won't talk to the other half."
Over and over, I see people talking past each other because someone's stray thoughtless comment becomes a synecdoche for A Whole-Ass Political Platform. Trying to sever the connection between the inciting thoughtless comment and A Whole-Ass Political Platform may trigger onlookers to assume you are defending the political platform rather than distancing yourself from it. Defensiveness on both sides leads to absurd doubling down. In the rush to have the right opinions faster and more pithily than everyone else, new thoughtless comments are made. And so it goes down through the telephone game of public opinion until people who have very little context for the inciting incident are screaming at each other.
If you don't agree with what #EndOTWRacism has in their list of demands, then just... don't support the campaign! It's fine! But don't avoid supporting it just because you think stitch gave it cooties, or because some people who are supporting #EndOTWracism's campaign also have other more extreme demands you disagree with. That's how normal political campaigns work: you fight for the stuff you can both agree on, with allies who are otherwise radically different from you. There are countless left-wing political commentators and activists and even writers I follow and happily ally with who nevertheless have terrible opinions about dead dove content.
Like, of course I'm gonna do my best not to ally myself with anyone wielding political power to enact bigotry, but at the end of the day, both stitch and OTNF are in the "racism bad, dark kinky fic good" camp. To an outsider, they're far more similar than they are different. We shouldn't lose sight of that just because we happen to be more familiar with fandom drama than most.
tl;dr: If you don't like antis, then don't approach potential allies with the anti thing of "I saw you reblogged something from so-and-so. They're a gross pro-shipper. If you don't block them immediately then everyone is going to think you're okay with pedophilia." We're all more mature than that, right?
