bree-3po-deactivated20190814:

I think this is something a lot of pro-social justice people struggle with, actually!

I’d be lying if I said I completely thought everyone was just “doing their best” and abiding by principles because I do think “Tumblr trends” play into it somewhat. Like, it’s fairly “cool” to hate Mackelmore or Jennifer Lawrence for all their faults so they’re kind of in the permanent bad-books, but I’ve seen people like Gabourey Sidibe who said the T-word (and blatantly making fun of trans women) or Pink who has worn dreads, wrote the song “Stupid Girls” which was all sorts of problems, and apparently supports Autism Speaks (can’t get confirmation on that though) but she’s also regarded as a body-positive super-cool bad-ass babe.

Here’s a few things we gotta remember though:

Even if it feels that way, Tumblr is not a single hive-mind. Some people might actually consistently call out Azalea Banks as much as they call out Jennifer Lawrence.



A lot of people on Tumblr are young, or shy, or insecure (or a combination of those things) and thus might join in with what seems “popular” to feel more like they fit in.

Calling out problematic behaviour is NEVER bad.

Ignoring problematic behaviour IS.

There’s no one golden rule saying you MUST DISLIKE SOMEONE if they’ve done something “problematic.”

Like, if you like Miley Cyrus or something… you’re allowed to. And okay, so it might feel like everyone on Tumblr says you’re not allowed. But… are they the Problematic Police? Are they going to come to your house and seize all your Miley Cyrus music? No. You’re not really restricted in any way, just maybe don’t defend some of the shit that she does or try to convince anyone else that she’s actually an amazing person.

Every single person on this planet has a right to be offended by something. If you know a trans person who says Gabourey saying the T-word didn’t hurt them, that doesn’t mean that other trans people who were offended are wrong, you know? And every single person in the world has a right to their own personal “zero tolerance” policy. It’s not up to you to tell someone, “But this person only said [thing] one time, this many years ago!” If a person is hurt, you cannot convince them to be unhurt.

But you also asked me where we draw the line. Again, Tumblr is not a single hive-mind. For me, I think where I draw my own personal line is in intent.

I’m not going to say that I think ignorance (as opposed to intentional hate) is always forgivable because I think sometimes ignorance is really not excusable (like at this point I wouldn’t expect a fully grown person to “not know” that saying the R-word is wrong) but I think it’s generally pretty easy to tell.

Like honestly a lot of what Jennifer Lawrence has done and said comes from pure ignorance mixed in with youth and having a lot of spotlight pressure. I still think she’s obnoxious but mostly because she just generally seems to always want the spotlight on her. But I’m not going to act like her complete lack of social awareness it he same as someone who chooses to say something disparaging about transgender people or POC of anything like that.

I think that’s also the other factor for me is, if you were to hypothetically be in a room with one of these people and say, “Hey, this joke you told/thing you said/thing you endorsed really hurt me because of [X experience]” do you think they’d be likely to be self-reflective, or is it a lost cause because they already clearly know and don’t care that they hurt your feelings?

So anyway yeah those are my rambling thoughts but they’re not perfect.