I have two specific fics that get endless (now-screened) comments that are never quite actually about the abortion and the "Jewish" Dúnedain, but they're never quite about anything else either. It does become clear.
Oh, I'm sorry about that! And yeah, it's pretty unavoidably apparent if you stick around long enough.
does this need reconciling? They seem like fairly different contexts, to me. I don't really think there's a… Not Like Other White People? equivalent to the latter. I think you can go on disliking both attitudes without dissonance!
I guess the issue I'm running up against is a bit broader—like, the particulars of these differ a lot, as do the other examples, but I'm thinking about the general issue of using an individual argument or statement or criticism that is in itself more or less correct (or at least defensible) but has often been deployed as part of a larger generally bigoted discourse.
So like, if someone goes off on MTG Aragorn wearing blue regalia as King of Gondor, I'm immediately suspicious even though "why is the regalia blue" is not in and of itself wrong (technically the regalia probably wouldn't be blue). It's become so associated with this "I'm not touching you" racist hyper-scrutiny that I find it difficult to believe it's ever in good faith. Meanwhile, the criticisms of NLOG rhetoric are often deployed in really gross ways in terms of misogyny, gender essentialism, and homophobia, but I'm super uncomfortable with the idea that those criticisms are so tainted by association that NLOG rhetoric can't ever be criticized even in situations unrelated to the homophobic/gender essentialist use of it. The fundamental question for me is at what point does a specific argument that is correct or defensible in isolation become so entangled with patterns of bigotry that it's non-recuperable in any context.
no subject
Oh, I'm sorry about that! And yeah, it's pretty unavoidably apparent if you stick around long enough.
does this need reconciling? They seem like fairly different contexts, to me. I don't really think there's a… Not Like Other White People? equivalent to the latter. I think you can go on disliking both attitudes without dissonance!
I guess the issue I'm running up against is a bit broader—like, the particulars of these differ a lot, as do the other examples, but I'm thinking about the general issue of using an individual argument or statement or criticism that is in itself more or less correct (or at least defensible) but has often been deployed as part of a larger generally bigoted discourse.
So like, if someone goes off on MTG Aragorn wearing blue regalia as King of Gondor, I'm immediately suspicious even though "why is the regalia blue" is not in and of itself wrong (technically the regalia probably wouldn't be blue). It's become so associated with this "I'm not touching you" racist hyper-scrutiny that I find it difficult to believe it's ever in good faith. Meanwhile, the criticisms of NLOG rhetoric are often deployed in really gross ways in terms of misogyny, gender essentialism, and homophobia, but I'm super uncomfortable with the idea that those criticisms are so tainted by association that NLOG rhetoric can't ever be criticized even in situations unrelated to the homophobic/gender essentialist use of it. The fundamental question for me is at what point does a specific argument that is correct or defensible in isolation become so entangled with patterns of bigotry that it's non-recuperable in any context.