Looking at the comment thread on Dave Freer's latest blog, it's honestly amazing how people tie themselves in logical knots because they can't accept that queer people just, like... exist?
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The idea that you can SAY something racist without fundamentally BEING racist - than you can be racist in speech or action, but without the INTENT to be racist - honestly doesn't make sense to them. Which is very odd: they can surely understand the idea of accidental *rudeness*.
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You can hurt someone without meaning to. You can upset someone with ignorance, or thoughtlessness, or by stereotyping in any context. These are basics of human behaviour. But apply the same to racism, homophobia and sexism, and somehow intent becomes an inviolable yardstick.
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I find this especially puzzling when it comes to instances like the Freer post & its comments, where the intent is very clearly to disparage me by referencing my queerness. If intent is required to declare homophobia, surely this meets their own standards?
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But still, I suspect they'd disagree. Their intent is to disparage ME, not queerness, so even though a gross misapprehension of queerness is crucial to that disparagement, queerness itself is still not the actual *target*, and therefore not the subject of their intent.
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This is, frankly, bullshit. Again, the Puppies are quite capable of detecting and taking offence at such "incidental" or inferred disparagement when it's directed at THEM, or at institutions they care about - the real issue is that they're just not moved by the issues.
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Which is, in turn, why so many of them are happy to stand beside genuinely horrifying people, so long as they themselves aren't the subject of their horrific remarks - and why they're then angered and mystified to be told their acceptance of those beliefs is akin to sharing them.
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To be clear: being friends with or supporting someone doesn't, ipso facto, imply that you fully condone, know of & agree with everything they've ever said or done. But clear political statements, in a context where you're explicitly being asked to respond to them, is different.
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As, for that matter, is affiliation with a group or movement with an expressly political stance. Again, nobody expects every individual member to be 100% behind everything such a group does or says, but continuing membership/affiliation is, itself, a statement of general support.
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This is something individual Puppies seem to struggle with: the idea that the political aspect of their movement, whether Sad or Rabid, is chock-full of things like the Freer thread that comprehensively demonstrate the racism, sexism, homophobia etc within their groups.
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So when they see other people saying, in generic shorthand, "The Puppiest are racist," they take immediate offence and think it's all a propaganda-style exaggeration, because THEY'RE not like that, which means THEY'RE being maligned!
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But I mean. In any other context, it should be pretty easy to accept that if (for instance) you enthusiastically vote for a politician who then proceeds to do and say really shitty things, people who are aware of your vote might, not unreasonably, be critical of your decision.
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Or, well. That SHOULD be easy to accept, but given the current political state of America and the Republican party, that's probably a bad example. *sighs heavily*
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The point being, if you belong to a group whose express argument is that left-wing, pro-diversity goons are involved in a Sekrit Conspiracy to take over SFF, which is Wrong, but whose group members also routinely demonstrate the same biases they're claiming don't exist... yeah.
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ANYWAY. This thread has gotten away from me a bit, but the point is that I continue to be baffled by the total, barefaced willingness of various Puppies to believe total lies about me and my family just because another Puppy said them. FIN.
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End of conversation
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