You ever notice how people defending completely morally reprehensible bullshit will be as vague as physically possible? Because even they realize most people would find their opinions repulsive if they were specific about them.
People will say “Wow it’s so strange people in fandom can’t differentiate between fiction and reality. It’s really dangerous to think that ‘bad thoughts’ are equivalent to actual crimes” because they know damn well how bad it’d sound to directly say “I think adults should be able to create and distribute animated child porn on a public platform”
People will say “I just believe in free speech and think that any belief should be permitted to be voiced and if it’s truly wrong it won’t stand up against debate, but we need to hear everyone out and understand their point of view” because they know damn well how bad it sounds to directly say “I just think nazis should have the right to express their views; I agree with some of them so I want to hear them out about their arguments for ethnic cleansing”
People say “I just think women’s shelters should be for females” because they know how bad it sounds to say “I don’t view trans women as women and am so disgusted by them I would rather they be killed by their abusers than be legally equated to me in any context”
It’s so fucking disingenuous and gross.
The takeaway from this, to me, is to be very explicit and specific with your goals and beliefs. And if you find yourself in a group that uses extremely vague messaging, consider that maybe their beliefs are more fucked up than you’re letting yourself realize.
This was something George Orwell discussed in “Politics and the English Language.” Also: yup.
Lmao as if that’s the only thing about which tumblr can’t tell fiction from reality.
I don’t believe OP was saying these are the only things people are vague about but would you like to be more specific?
This post is like, “don’t trust people who have opinions that imo are vague, here is what they really mean” and gives the worst faith interpretation possible of each example except the last which is p clearly euphemistic.
Reminding people that fiction != reality on tumblr usually is in the context of people using moral panic style logic to reason “you wrote fic containing x thing, you must endorse x thing” or “I believe I am otherkin with x character and by writing explicit fic about x you are abusing me” and in those cases has no bearing on where they stand on if drawn/animated material ought to be classed as child pornography.
Like don’t attack people for opinions they don’t hold or things they haven’t said. Just because you read something into a statement doesn’t mean it is, in actual fact, there.
Sure if you’re actually making a broad statement about a broad issue, but if you ‘happen’ to post about the importance of free speech right after some nazi event has been shut down then it’s possible you just aren’t as slick as you think you are?
And the other reason people do this is so they can backtrack on things they have said implicitly if called on them because they have the defense of not saying it explicitly.
That’s not reading things into statements or assuming bad faith, that’s not allowing people to get away with saying messed up stuff cause they think they’ve found a clever loophole in which to say it.
fearlessstateofmind backup 