Not sure if this is an okay place to say this, but holy shit, I just realized that the whole “Throwing around heavy terms like ‘Pedophile’ to describe ship art of things you personally don’t like,” has absolutely numbed me to any online accusations that could actually be TRUE. Like. I saw a post that goes “I am calling out blah blah for being a pedophile,” and to my horror, I immediately sighed and went “Which ship and fandom is it NOW,” before catching myself and realizing wtf I was DOING.
People– the people who are doing this unwittingly, rather than those doing it on purpose– need to realize that this is what normalization ACTUALLY is.
By throwing around accusations constantly, they are numbing people and training them to expect a certain outcome.
Normalization is about actions in the real world that affect other people, not about tropes in fiction that everyone know are stories.
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