#abuse apologists

[furiousgoldfish]

people will go "I'm uncomfortable with you having any kind of bad reaction to abuse from this person, I need you to shut up and pretend you're okay about it, however I am very comfortable supporting your abuser and telling you how much compassion and admiration I think they deserve"

#victim blaming #victim shaming #child abuse #abuse apologists #abuse enablers #defending abusers #supporting abusers

[shewhotellsstories]

I don’t think it’s victim blaming in advance to say, “be careful of allying yourself with bad people and helping to uphold toxic systems, because those things can very easily be used against you.” Life comes at you fast, while you gleefully ignore the suffering of others remember how quickly you could find yourself standing in front of the gun. 

#gentle reminders #abuse apologists #white feminsim #reproductive rights #sigh

[harpnotes-joy]

Scamber Stan Hate Message appreciation thread. Reply with a message sent to you from a supporter of Scambuser. I'll start.

Hit and run. You gotta hand it to them- they're very good at emulating her behavior. She taught them well.

#justice for johnny depp #amber heard #johnny depp #abuse knows no gender #Abuse Apologists #amber heard is an abuser

[carrymelikeimcute]

I feel like if Izzy had made Stede stab him for his own (sexual?) gratification, at gunpoint, we'd be seeing posts calling him a rapist, is all I'm saying.

Because literally everything he does, short of breathing, gets spun in the worst possible way until you'd not even sure you're watching the same show.

#I don't think that scene is abusive #because it's clearly not intended to be in context #what I'm saying is that izzy seems to get assigned the worst possible motives #in every scenario #by certain corners of the fandom #while ed gets everything he does handwaved away as being not his fault or not bad to begin with #even when they do very similar things or even participate in the same action i.e. marooning the crew #edward teach critical #tw rape #izzy hands #izzy hands apologist

[salcioprince]

On the Dacre Montgomery Train. Chug-a-chug-a-choo-fucking-choo.

#Billy hargrove #Billy hargrove fanart #billy hargrove art #billy hargrove antis dni #not a Billy apologist #hes abused and a scrungle #my little guy #ft. short hair Billy bc yes #stranger things #stranger things fanart

[annabelle--cane]

I made a post about this in autumn 2020 but it made some people incalculably mad so I don't feel like fishing it out again and might as well re-state my idea. I think it's really interesting how power distribution in s4 is reflected in the characters' living situations. in mag 125, basira says she and melanie started living in the archives full-time, and while it's not explicit that jon and daisy are doing that too, I do think it's implied given that at various times they talk about spending all their time in the archives. however, martin explicitly does still have a place to live outside of the institute, and of course so does georgie, and they are the people that jon and melanie go to for support when considering quitting. I think that shows that they weren't just in need of moral support but also more tangible types of help, like a place to live once they were freshly injured and out of a job. melanie got that support because georgie thought she was serious about wanting to get out, but both georgie and martin thought that jon's heart wasn't really in it, and he never really got to prove himself either way since he didn't have the safety net of someone being willing to help him in the aftermath of an attempt.

#followers I am looking you in the eyes. please be normal on this post. no 30 paragraph responses calling me an abuse apologist for this. #tma #marina marvels at life

[raelle-writing]

Jin lying and police corruption

This is cross-posted from my co-run fan account on Twitter, @.DFF_Fanatics. Co-credit for this thread goes to @kerrikins the co-admin of Fanatics.

I think we inter fans should keep in mind that we don't have all the cultural context. People are mad that Jin didn't tell the police about Non's disappearance, but they forget that police corruption is very real - both within the narrative of DFF itself, as well in Thai culture in general.

It's shown a couple of times throughout episode 8 that the police can't be trusted. Once, when Phee's dad is threatened for sticking his nose into things and told to close the case, and basically says there's nothing he can do against that...

And again, when we see that Tee's uncle has a high-ranking policeman in his pocket.

The police are investigating Non's disappearance, yes. But the people pulling the strings of those investigations don't want him to be found. The mafia were the ones who made Non and Keng disappear, and there are businessmen behind that who are in on the money laundering. If Jin had spoken up about what happened in the forest, he likely would've disappeared as well - or been killed.

Not to mention it would've been just his word against the others. Fluke wouldn't have backed Jin up, and Por went so far as to delete footage to erase evidence. They would've immediately turned on him. They would've said it was all his idea, that he drugged Non and sold him off. They would've sold Jin up the creek to keep themselves safe.

Also from Jin's point of view - he just watched his friends drug Non, then take him away and then Non vanished. He knows he has no one he can trust, no one he can turn too. And he also knows that Tee's family is in the mix, that Tee is the one behind the money laundering they all got caught up into. I don't blame him for being scared.

We've seen what these people will do to those who get in their way. Not only to Non, but also to Keng. If they didn't hesitate to make a famous tutor disappear, then why would they hesitate to make another high schooler disappear? Jin would've been next if he'd said anything, and likely he knew that.

Did Jin do what's right? No. But arguably there was no right choice in this scenario. It was lie to the police because he didn't know who he could trust, or risk that he would be the next to disappear. And given that he's 17 years old, has no evidence, no one to back him up, and doesn't know who he can trust AND he knows that the mafia are involved? Yeah. I understand why he bent to the pressure and lied to the police.

You can see on his face that he hates himself for it, for taking that side. But considering the alternatives, I don't blame him in the slightest for not trusting the police, or his friends.

Police corruption isn't just a problem in DFF, it's been addressed in other Thai BLs such as Manner of Death or Not Me. My co-admin and I also gathered some tweets from Thai DFF-watchers that talk about this, because you can tell that it's a very real issue in Thai society.

Disclaimer that it's not to say that ALL Thai fans are on Jin's side, there's some that are definitely not. I just selected a few so that you could see that DFF isn't just spinning a narrative, it's relying on real-world issues too.

Please also check out this anon I got about police corruption in their country, for further perspective...

#dead friend forever #dff the series #dff #pheejin #jin dff #phijin #DFF meta #This is the post that got me called an abuse apologist on twitter btw

[proudfreakmetarusonniku]

Yall do not care about victims if you can stop sympathising with someone who recieved extreme sexual harassment and rape threats when he was sixteen because of. well anything but especially bc they were mean to your faves on Twitter btw. like tommy is a victim of serious stuff he did a whole show about how it traumatised him and if all you can take from that is “I don’t care because I don’t like what he’s doing now” you literally don’t care about victims. If a child can recieve graphic rape threats from people who knew his location and you can’t give them sympathy bc they were mean to your fave then you’re a monster actually

#imagine being so discourse rotted you’d say you wouldn’t care if a sixteen year old was violently sexually harassed #literal abuse apologist shit

[ameiniateria]

consistently I'm a little annoyed about the rift between c!Tommy and c!Dream fans in this fandom. like I like your guy too! I think he's great! actually, I think our guys have a lot in common! I'd love to see your take on this really messy, complicated relationship!

oh wait you think c!Dream is a pure evil, completely heartless villain that exists to do nothing but torment c!Tommy, who is of course a sweet innocent uwu baby who did absolutely nothing wrong, and therefore deserves to be murdered twice, imprisoned, isolated, starved, and tortured with no control over his own autonomy (but prison was actually way better than exile, which was the worst thing that ever happened to anyone on the dsmp. obviously. because c!Tommy tried to kill himself. yeah. don't think about c!Dream walking into a wall of lava and burning himself to death multiple times because he was so incredibly desperate for human connection. that was to escape, right? c!Dream couldn't possibly feel real emotions -- that would mean he's a person that -- oh no -- deserves compassion despite the terrible things he did. oh no -- that would make him -- gasp -- a lot like c!Tommy!) and actually he deserved more than that. he was never actually punished. c!Dream always won (citation needed).

also, c!Tommy was a child. do I have to say that again. well, I will anyway. c!Tommy was a child. c!Tommy was a child. c!Tommy was a child.

great.

#discourse #dreblr #c!discduo #to clarify I don't think c!Tommy deserved exile #obviously #no one deserves to be manipulated and abused and bullied #I don't think anyone actually thinks that exile was a good thing #to be fair #it's a really annoying strawman but people keep bringing it up #c!Tommy went through some pretty horrific shit! #but so did c!Dream #there is no law on the dsmp #if you're mad at c!Dream because he blew up L'Manberg -- good for you #in the nicest way possible I do not care #doomsday was not a crime #no one even died #DOOMSDAY WAS NOTHING MORE THAN PROPERTY DAMAGE #what would you call c!Tommy griefing c!George's house again? #sorry for ranting #I'm just tired of not being able to follow like any c!tommy apologist blogs because they have inevitably posted #super rancid takes about c! and cc!dream #why is c!discduo discourse such a mess #why can't we be friends #I don't want to argue with any post directly because I think that's rude #but I wish we could have lore discussions in good faith and actually learn about each others' favorite characters #without accusing each other of being abuse apologists or whatever #I know I came off as kinda mean here #I'm sorry #no one's going to read this anyway #I'm just sensitive and this is frustrating

[the-unconquered-queen]

*Apologist ≠ you stan them even though you recognize they're "bad"; apologist here means that you stan them but you also think they either didn't do anything wrong or you make excuses for the things they did wrong to justify them. And then problematic doesn't just mean that the Choices fandom has mixed feelings on them, it means that they actually did do some bad shit.

#I thought of a couple more for the list but tbh since I havent played some books in a while idr if theyd count so it's up to you w 'another' #playchoices #for me full-on apologist I would say Noah #for Josephine I'm on her side except for her trying to murder her grandkids #and for Aerin I'm an apologist for killing Baldur (always love the murdering abusers trope) but not for the other stuff he did #unconquered queries

[furiousgoldfish]

No matter how badly you want the abuser’s past to justify or explain their current abusive behaviour, nothing will ever come even close.No matter what you’ve been thru, telling a child ‘You’re worthless and you’ll never make anything out of yourself’, is extremely obviously not going to make it better. A person who feels better after doing that, is enjoying their own sadism. They’re not thinking ‘oh, my past is now justified!’. They’re not feeling ‘well, now things are fair in the world, now that I broke this child’.

The casual ‘well I had it bad so now you get to have it bad too’, is not something that inspires the abuse, it’s there only to defend and justify it. It’s only there to enable them. They’re not doing it because it fixes anything, they do it because they feel they can get away with it.

They’re asking to be viewed as children who ‘don’t know better’, and ‘haven’t been taught any better’, but these are adults. Adults know what they’re doing. Adults are aware that some things are good, and some things are bad. People who do this actively defend, argue, and insist that what they’re doing is correct. Upon being informed that it brings harm, they don’t accept that now they’ve been taught better. They refuse to know better. They argue for their right to abuse, regardless of how many times it’s being pointed out. That’s not a person who is broken and trying to fix their own problems. That’s a person fighting to inflict harm. That’s a person aware they’re in a whole new situation, deciding to create more traumatized children, because it pleases them to do so. If it didn’t, they would have stopped at the first sign of harm. If it didn’t, they would have stopped before, because they already know it’s harm.

When you’re being abused by them, you don’t feel the pain from their past, you feel hatred they currently feel. The pleasure when they get to hurt you. You can see in their eyes that they revel in it, they’re enjoying it, it gives them a power trip, a sadistic type of high. And then afterwards, you’re supposed to believe this is an emotionally immature child who didn’t know any better, who did this out of sheer ignorance. And this same child demands to never learn, never experience any accountability, never have consequences, never stop doing it. It’s a nightmare.

If we keep giving abusers a pass, it’s only allowing them more abuse. If we create a social consciousness of abuse being unforgivable, unjustifiable, unearned, undeserved, and clearly an act of evil, we can at least have a good base to fight it. Forgiving abusers creates more abuse. Holding them accountable creates a barrier. And this is not something specifically victims should, or could do. Society is responsible for keeping abusers restrained and unable to do it again.

#abuse excuses #abuse apologists #child abuse #abusive parents #abusive past #abusers who use past as an excuse #often they'll be lying about their past too #playing it up so that it would seem like sufficient justification #if you're abusing someone its not a time to bring up your past #but the victims past #and what you've done to them #it's not about you #you'll be judged based on what you did #not on your stories about past #leave past in the past could come handy in there

[ourfag]

i think part of the resistance i’ve seen in response to the view of ed as an abuse victim—not just the view of izzy as someone who abused ed, but of ed as someone who was abused by him, as opposed to interpretations that pursue an image of Nuance and Complexity (unnecessarily, because their dynamic has heaps of both, but there seems to be a popular impulse to conflate complexity with shared culpability) by characterizing their relationship as being toxic/unhealthy in equal reciprocity, or as “mutually abusive” (oxymoron)—i definitely see the influence of racism there, but i think the racism is also working to amplify an adjacent issue where we tend to receive very specific cultural messaging about What An Abuse Victim Looks Like, and ed is excluded from a lot of that criteria.

he’s outspoken. he’s boisterous. he’s Very Cool and he Wears Leather. he’s physically bigger and browner than the person mistreating him. he spends the first season with a big grey beard, he’s covered in tattoos, he projects the image of A Man’s Man, to say nothing of his being a man in the first place. we see him get aggressive and we see him get angry (and sometimes we even see both at the same time). we see moments where he’s surly, prickly, insensitive, arrogant. his survival techniques and trauma responses incur collateral damage to other people, and in the second season this extends into affecting people we actually sympathize with. he’s extremely private about expressing fear. without examination, his professional relationship to izzy seems to position him as the one with the power slanted in his favor.

most damningly, we see him react multiple times to izzy’s abuse with physical violence. this is behavior that gets referenced all the time in the construction of narratives condemning subjects of physical abuse, let alone emotional abuse. which is why writing that intends for its audience to interpret a character as being unambiguously A Victim Of Abuse will often, for simplicity’s sake, avoid showing the character regularly engaging in anything of the kind.

and again, all of these departures from the image of The Model Victim are compounded by his being a man of color.

without any of the shorthand designed to point a big flashing arrow at his mistreatment, all we have left to work with are the words and actions we see from ed and izzy onscreen. who instigates conflict, and how does the other respond? how are they able or allowed to respond? how do we see them speak about each other to outside parties? does one go out of their way to control or isolate the other? what consequences does either party stand to face in saying “no” to the other? in acting against the other’s wishes? in trying to leave the relationship? when either of them attempts these things, how do we see the other respond?

i realize and appreciate what people are driving at when they garnish their analysis with disclaimers that they’re not saying ed’s just a poor innocent abuse victim, they’re not saying he’s a perfect angel who’s never done anything wrong, and that’s true, but these are points already contained implicitly in statements like “this show’s protagonists act like human people” and “ed’s emotional struggles are portrayed in a realistic and believable way.” my assumption is that these disclaimers are anticipatory responses to worst-faith interpretations of any discussion that attributes any victim status to ed whatsoever, so i definitely sympathize with their inclusion, but a (very small) part of me still worries about them potentially reflecting or reinforcing a belief that there is any way for someone to behave towards their abuser that imparts a responsibility for them to make right whatever damage the abuser receives, or for that matter any degree of ambiguity over their status as an abuse victim in the first place.

part of what i find so gratifying about ed as a character is that i don’t feel like the show’s writing is pressuring me to consider that ambiguity at all. which was a really nice thing for me to discover!

and tbh—did using ed to deconstruct The Model Victim even factor into the writers’ agenda?? ive got no clue. im guessing no? ??maybe?? probably not?? but if you create a main character whose central premise is that he feels trapped in a performance of exaggerated masculinity that he’s desperate to escape, and then you set him up with a character premised on embodying a tangible obstacle against that escape, then i guess that’s the natural shape your story’s gonna be inclined to take

#man thats a lot of words when i couldve just said ‘im not an ed apologist bc he has nothing to apologize for’ and yalld get the message #had to get it off my chest though #abuse tw #sorry about the verbosity Im Aware. Its An Ongoing Issue #this is actually after i went through and edited to make it as concise as possible #the good news is ive finally managed to limit myself to a mere half dozen commas per sentence #the bad news is all these words are mush in my brain now and i can barely tell if theyre actually saying anything #are any of these paragraphs related to one another? i dont fuckin know #i do know i agreed with them when i wrote them though #am i procrastinating in the tags because im nervous about posting this? maybe. shut up #im gonna go do todays wordle

[brainrothawks]

endeavor apologists are nuts, cause now we’re going to have to have the same convos with anime only as the convos people were having way back when the todoroki abuse was really delved into. people saying “touya had it better” “he was given choices” “enji was being a good dad, he didn’t want touya to hurt himself” like??? bro “didn’t want touya to hurt himself” in the same way a flame doesn’t want to be put out. enji completely neglected touya and pushed him onto rei so he didn’t have to face the responsibility himself. sure, maybe deep down enji the father didn’t want his son to hurt himself but we all know he was upset that touya wouldn’t be able to accomplish what he was born to do. touya todoroki wasn’t a loved child that enji cared about. he was a failure, his first failure among 3 others until he forced rei to have shoto. that’s why his name means “arrow” because his only purpose was to surpass endeavor the hero and all might his rival. enji todoroki is a coward who abused his whole family, including touya. enji todoroki is a selfish man who only wanted children and wife so he could get what he wanted. fuck enji, fuck endeavor.

#i really don’t understand enji apologists #like we all watched/read the same thing #why do you guys not understand there are different forms of abuse #touya was 13 #bnha spoilers #mha spoilers #bnha #dabi #touya todoroki

[luciuscodedswedeboy]

#idk if i wanna post this on insta tbh #lest the gentlebeardie/ed apologists come after me #but maybe this’ll be safe here? #like you’d think Ed being an abuser this season wouldn’t be disputable but apparently he’s having big feelings so it’s fine #edward teach critical #gaslighting #edward teach #our flag means death #ofmd #ofmd memes #dorian’s memes

[ayrennaranaaldmeri]

i will say is seeing people unironically go 'gale's arc is about how bad he is at communicating' is just the funniest fucking thing i have read in my entire life and i haven't laughed that much at something since the early access conspiracy theories

#tbd #fandom wank #if this is the best that m*stra apologists can do lmaooooo #bestie your arc seems to be about your failing reading comprehension #anyway you are all wrong #gale's arc in bg3 is actually to find tara the best snacks #and using the crown of karsus is the good ending akshually as you see #by becoming the new magic god he can get tara the best treats. even better than pigeons and beholder jerky. #spellplague idgaf #see I can also say nonsense #sorry it's just so fucking funny to me i have to talk about it #ok but let's not fuck around #he's a male victim of a female abuser in a 'romantic' relationship where she had all the power #and at the end of the day that is the only reason there is any discourse about whether he is a victim of her at all #i'm tired of fucking around okay? we all know that's why. #anyway i respect every mxstra hater i truly do

[mikodrawnnarratives]

Me, before finishing Renegades Trilogy: Oh okay! This series shows complexities on both sides but over all it echos anti police brutality shown in the "heroes"

Me, after basically reading "the anarchists were completely in the wrong and being a renegade was the 100% path the whole time": I'm sorry w h a t

#renegades trilogy #nova artino #i am NOT accusing Marissa Meyer of anything #tho it's a little strange to me how the complexities are made out to be more black and white toward the end #I need to reread the book to give better examples but #did anyone else feel this way? #supernova marissa meyer #renegades marissa meyer #supernova spoilers #or maybe this is just me being an anarchist apologist #renegades anarchists #y'know renegades kinda demonstrated the abuse of power and there were interesting ideas there #they just didn't feel fully realized to their potential #nova felt like she went to the opposite side rather than them meeting her halfway #renegades salt #renegades trilogy salt