YZZAJ @Jazzy_Butts@gameliberty.club

One thing I’ve noticed lately is the conflict between people who require semantic nuance to convey what they’re trying to say or represent and people who are so unilaterally focused on persecuting whatever it is that they’ll conflate all similar concepts under the single label that they think best defines the negativity of the aspect.

One of the most prevalent examples pertains to fascism. There are people who represent (arguably) fascist-adjacent ideologies that are nonetheless distinct from fascism, and they rely on this nuance to convey their specific convictions. But to their opponents, they are all just “fascists.” It gets so extreme that the rhetoric even extends to “capitalism is fascism” (an ironic statement considering that fascism is a socialist ideology.)

It happens with people who are attracted in some capacity to “minors” also, regardless of whether the subjects depicted are even real people. A lolicon values drawn material for its severance from the reality of the child, an ephebophile is explicitly attracted to adolescence. Yet both of these people will be labelled “paedophile” by their opponents, because it’s more important to “call them out” than to actually understand what’s happening at all.

The same thing is done with the term “gay.” A man can be overtly bisexual, or even attracted only to overtly feminine forms, including ones with a penis. But to his opponents he is “gay” because some component of his sexuality involves homosexual attraction. Nuance is stripped, and there is no way to differentiate between men who are actually gay (as in, attracted overwhelmingly or even exclusively to the masculine) and men whose sexuality encompasses ANY attraction to the masculine at all.

The onus is on finger pointing, labelling, “calling out.” “I’m calling you a fascist/a pedo/gay because that’s WHAT YOU ARE,” so goes the refrain. It’s an empty, desk-thumping statement that achieves nothing but a superficial expression of disgust. When confronted with this idea, the response often goes something like “I don’t care about understanding these scum, they don’t deserve a chance to justify themselves.”

I don’t like boiling hostility down to fear, I think it’s generally disingenuous (which is why I favour the -misia/misic suffix over the -phobia/phobic suffix when describing prejudice.) But it is, admittedly, rather difficult to justify this reaction as anything but a product of fear, even if it is more technically accurate to call it a product of zeal.

I hope that in my own quest to “call out” those cultural memes which I consider harmful, I do not stray onto this path myself.

@CentaurBreeder @marisa_chan @marine @netdoll @errante @gamercat @ink8 that's right, it ain't fun if everyone is calling himself a hero

if i was black i would be like blade