#I think GamerGate and antishipping work much the same | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

honestlyvan · 2 years ago

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This feels exactly equivalent to my experience during the height of GamerGate. I got away from my social circles that aggressively went for GG for perceived slights and tried to find new circles to hang out in, only for those spaces to target me for being the wrong kind of queer and wrong kind of mentally ill. Being “anti-GamerGate” was not a coherent position, partially because GamerGate did not have coherent positions to be anti against, but a big part of it was people who were spiteful and angry realising that there was now a socially acceptable group for them to target all of that spite at. And in a mindset like that, when you’re not winning, everyone is miserable.

Being against one obviously reactionary position doesn’t mean someone isn’t also a different kind of reactionary.

Man, not to keep beating a dead horse but that whole "proship also means anti-harassment!!" thing really does feel like a slap to the face for proshippers who have been horribly harassed by other people in this community, especially for talking about things like bigotry.

Like I get the idea but the simple fact of the matter is that there's a lot of proshippers who are terrible people, who are transmeds and terfs and white supremacists and just generally assholes in a lot of ways and who DO harass people, and denying that isn't making our communities safer, it's just burying our heads in the sand.

#It does parallel the way I don't think 'social justice warriors' were ever a real thing #but ANTI-SJWs definitely were #mostly because if you actually looked at the behaviour and positions of so called 'sjws'#you can actually break down them into groups of sincere grievances expressed with varying degrees of competence #and pain looking to find an outlet #and yes also personal slights whether real or perceived #while almost invariably anti-SJWs were people who had had sometimes a single bad experience with someone from the former group #and were putting SO much time and mental energy into going after the whole group for it #using whatever justifications they could come up with #I think GamerGate and antishipping work much the same #and so there are ways to be opposed to them that come from a place of compassion and logic #and also ways to be opposed to them that boil down to 'people I am allowed to be abusive towards because they're Bad'#and if you're in that latter mindset and using that to interact with anyone #it becomes easier to justify why you're allowed to also be abusive towards your supposed allies #for further perceived slights #rather than to let go of the comforting illusion of righteousness #I don't want to say that people who fall into thinking like this lack principles b/c I can't know that #to me it just appears like unprincipled behaviour #going against strongly held beliefs for the temporary elation of verbally wrecking someone with their epic dunks #IDK. It's not comprehensible behaviour for me when simply ignoring the existence of people who say distressing things is so easy #with the secondary step of 'sometimes the truth is distressing and it's better to get yourself to try weathering distress'#'for the safety and benefit of yourself your friends and total strangers in your life'#but that's all outside the scope of this post it's just something I think about #when people who claim to be anti-reactionary act like reactionaries towards people (usually POC) in their community #always be sure you're not huffing your own farts that's how you get methane poisoning

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