Bonkers Bananaville
Quick PSA edit:
Actively and intentionally harming another person because they inadvertently hurt you is the behavior of a narcissist. If you find yourself doing this, I recommend getting in touch with a therapist. Online bullies who target people for “problematic behavior” are often narcissists who are trying to get away with satisfying their need to punish and harm others who have unintentionally caused them distress while simultaneously satisfying their need for applause. There are other ways to resolve problems. The fact that they choose to wage sustained bullying campaigns is because of their personality disorder, not because it’s an effective or just tool for solving social problems.
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So recently, a good friend of mine, mx, has been getting bullied and harassed by some folks in the DC fandom. The circumstances are complicated and stupid and basically amount to a bunch of emotionally fragile morons deciding that because my friend argued that a character is asexual because they grew up under messed up circumstances and didn’t develop into a fully realized social being, my friend mx must be acephobic. Now I will fully admit that the phrasing mx used, when taken out of context, sounds really horrible! They used the expression “barely a person” to describe the character. This is an expression that we use among our friends group in a joking way to describe a character (never a real person) who has not been fully realized as a social individual within whatever fictional world they exist. It’s not so much an attempt to deny the character’s humanity as it is describing what has happened to the person as a result of their life circumstances. Personally, I disagree with the idea that social circumstances would affect a person’s sexuality. Maybe it would affect their ability to relate to people so that if the person was demi or greysexual to begin with, it would push them away from the possibility of sexual relationships altogether? I can certainly see it contributing to a person being aromantic. And if I had been a part of that conversation that’s what I would have argued to mx. I myself am asexual. It took me a long time to come out as ace and I had to deal with a lot of shit from random people, family and friends. But you know who never gave me any trouble? You know who always listened to me and supported me? It was mx. They were 100% wonderful about it. They never ever made me feel uncomfortable. They never made any weird advances or comments to me, even before I came out, which other close friends have done. They never pressured me to be anything different than what I am. Never made even the slightest suggestion that there was anything odd about my identity. And they tried to tell me why I am the way I am or dissect it. They let me speak for myself. And the reason they did this is because I am a real living breathing human being and not a fictional character. You see, mx and I are the type of people who make a distinction between how we talk about imaginary constructs and real people. We differentiate in how we treat fictional representations and actual humans (and I guess furries too. I know a lot of furries. I don’t want to exclude them.)
So these assholes have been sending mx nasty messages, harassing them on multiple platforms, gotten them kicked out of a ton of Discord servers and are approaching anyone they come in contact with telling them that mx is a dangerous person because.... I don’t know, I don’t really understand their argument? Because mx phrased something in a way that reminded them of something fucked up other people have said to them? Nevermind that mx did not remotely mean it in the way that originally hurt them did. They can’t target the original person and mx presents an easy target so here we go into the land of scapegoats. I guess some people just want to find reasons to be upset about something so they can have an excuse to bully and harass others. Because if this was really about them getting hurt, as they claim, then why go to all the trouble of destroying the life of someone who doesn’t believe the things they claim? And it’s pretty clear they don’t based on how they treat the other people in their life who are ace. Now these folks have known mx for maybe half a year and in that time have had very shallow conversations with them about comic book characters. It’s hard to make any sort of real assessment of a person based on that. However, they’re now going around telling people that mx has now for 10, 15, 20 years, some of whom have known mx IRL for that whole time, some of whom know mx’s family, some of whom have lived with mx, in other words, people who are very close to mx and know them extremely well.... these asshats online are telling them, “Oh, mx isn’t who they say they are.”
Right. Because after having some disagreements about comic books in an online chat group, you have the full measure of a person. Because you can definitely tell everything about a person based on how they’ve analyzed a character and not based on how they actually treat real people that they know for twenty years. I think, given that I have heard every intimate detail of mx’s thoughts, feelings and life for the past twenty years because I am the kind of person they confide things in, even the fucked up things, I have a much better sense of who this person is than a bunch of whiny little bullies who take pleasure in harming as many people as they possibly can while looking justified in their abhorrent and despicable behavior by throwing up some fake front of social justice.
Oh, and one of these people deserves special mention. They’re a white person who claims to be a POC. They do so in order to call other white people racist and so that they can get lots of accolades and sympathy from others. As someone who has had to deal with the effects of systemic racism, this makes me furious. You don’t have to deal with the fear of family members being killed or imprisoned, you don’t have to deal with harsher treatment from the police or judicial authorities, you don’t have to deal with being treated as the brown friend, you don’t have to deal with the fact that there is not a single country in the world where you won’t be under increased surveillance or probable persecution or the threat of rape. So you do not get to claim some kind of moral authority that you think gives you permission to go around acting like a twisted, manipulative, toxic, abusive, sadistic fuck, while everyone lauds you for your imaginary struggle. Acknowledge your privilege and be an ally. Support people. Lift them up. Don’t claim an identity so that you can injure others. That’s seriously deranged.
