i’m sure everyone can be normal about this post yes?
transcript:
a tumblr post:
autistichalsin posts:
Some of you are literally watching the right wing continuously try to expand the definition of “pedophilia” to include “existing around a child while queer,” and then agreeing with them when they say pedophiles deserve to be summarily executed.
Not only does this place innocent people in danger of political executions, it also puts children in danger, as most children who are sexually abused have this done by someone close to them, and feelings that they would be responsible for the death of their abuser if they reported leads to lower rates of reporting. It also leads to higher rates of abusers murdering their victims when they’re found out because the punishment will be the same anyway.
Part of being on the left is realizing that it’s better to let 100 guilty men go free than to wrongly convict one. Another part of being on the left is realizing that one’s life is never something others have the right to take away- even the most evil people alive. Yes, that includes mass murderers and rapists and pedophiles. Once you make one group acceptable to kill, you give others a vested interest in defining groups they have prejudice against into that group.
You have to start dealing with the fact that no crime makes one’s life forfeit. Not even the worst most depraved and sadistic acts. The worst people alive have rights, and if you can’t accept that they deserve them, at least try to accept that it is to your benefit that they retain rights no matter what they’re accused of. And if you can’t do even that, well… you just might be the kind of person who would cut off your nose to spite your face.
If you want to protect victims, if you want to protect minority groups, you have to realize that sex crimes, or any crimes at all, do not deserve the death penalty. Period.
brettdoesdiscourse replies:
When a certain kind of person “deserves” to die, bigots will make sure marginalized groups all are that kind of person.
little-gay-dowitcher replies:
My former neighbors were the “kill all pedos” type. They were also incredibly transphobic. And I was visibly queer. So guess who got stalked, harassed and threatened all throughout the brief period of time they babysat for their friend?
Stop enabling fascists. They’ve already proven they’re willing to attack minorities for no reason. Don’t give them a chance to excuse it.
The “pedophile” thing has always been a front for conservatives to wedge in, from what I’ve seen. They saw a real problem and then, as they always do, fearmongered and inflated it way out of proportion to reality, then started to expand the definition.
I’m old enough to remember when pedophile actually meant people trying to engage in sex with children. As in, actual children. The definition began expanding to older and older people, and expanding into fiction, fictional characters, and more.
They also started getting weird about any men being near children. I am also old enough to remember when fathers, uncles, and generally men, could be in public with kids without a woman around and without being looked at with suspicion. These days we hear countless stories of men stalked, harassed, and threatened when they’re out with kids they have every right to be with.
And that’s just the stuff that affects everyone, not just minorities and marginalized people. How the left ever got on board with this pedophile panic I don’t understand, considering conservatives have been equating LGBT with molestation and pedophilia as long as I can recall. Anyone who didn’t see this coming from the beginning is a blind fool.
I think it was the Catholic Church thing. A real case of pedophilia committed by figures generally considered conservative and right wing, which the left rightfully jumped on attacking…but then kept going when conservatives egged them on further instead of stopping. People got tricked into going nuts on it cause the right was all ‘well if that’s bad then you must condemn this…and this…and this…and this…’ with each step being something less and less real, less egregious, less of a true problem. But they’re good at stoking hate, and once the hate was kindled in people it took less and less to spread it just slightly further each time, until now we have people ostensibly on the left calling for censorship of completely fictional works and punishment of people who produce or consume them, despite no actual harm to any actual people being involved.
And that’s exactly the level of unthinking hate they want, for people to not stop and consider whether any actual harm is being caused, just condemn and punish and don’t argue or dispute the severity of what you’re calling for. Just hate, just view them as monsters, deserving of death. Even as the definition keeps expanding.
After all, what group is othered and made the enemy doesn’t matter that much to them, only that some group is hated to the point of an unexamined desire for violence and death. They can work with that, after all.
It’s a two-edged sword.
On the one side, you have a crusade among evangelicals and social conservatives aimed at civil rights organizers, liberal egalitarians, and progressives trying to provide relief to abused members of the LGBTQ community. These efforts are intended to re-stigmatize any kind of sex that isn’t within the bounds of Christian dogmatism and any kind of gender expression that isn’t purely cis-hetero-norminative.
On the other side, you have real pedophile freaks. Your Epsteins. Your Diddys. Your Catholic Priests. Your Falwell Jr / Ted Haggard / Mark Foley / Dennis Hastert / Bill Clinton / Donald Trump / Jerry Sandusky / Jimmy Savile / Vince McMahon sexual predators. These people benefit immensely when “rapist” and “pedophile” are accusations that are entirely politicized, because they can be dismissed just as easily.
The group matters, at least in so far as its “their team” versus “our team”. Focusing on religious, racial, and gender minorities plays into the white christian nationalism that says anyone outside your orthodoxy is evil. I can’t count how many times I’ve seen otherwise normal and rational liberals leap onto the “Muhammad was a pedophile! He had sex with a nine year old!” to justify their bigotry towards Muslims (especially darker skinned Muslims from Pakistan or West Africa). The Republican rallying cry of “Ground Zero Mosque” in New York flipped a few House races and state seats in 2010.
You see the same shit being played in Texas, with the concern trolling over Collin Allred’s lukewarm support for transgender military officers. It got so bad Allred had to issue a formal statement against boys playing in “girl sports”. That Allred is a black man running in a state with a storied streak of white nationalism has produced its own headwinds. But the state’s conservative leadership and its legions of law enforcement officials never seem to get in the way of the state’s strip clubs, brothels, and human trafficking rings, despite them practically being paraded down major highways leading between every suburb and major city center.
As soon as Elon Musk went red, all the conservatives muttering about his horny ass out-takes vanished right along their complaints about limosine liberals when Donald Trump took the nomination. It’s all kabuki. People (in power, at least) don’t seem to really care about this shit save as a slander against one another.