“You wouldn’t bake a cat just because it jumped into the oven.”
It means that just having a really, really good opportunity to do something awful is not an excuse to do it. That it isn’t enough that you never go out of your way to do evil, you’re also supposed to go out of your way to do the right thing, even in situations where the wrong thing to do would be extremely easy and profitable, and passively allowing it to happen would be easier than going out of your way to do better than that.
there is a huge difference between criticizing an institution and criticizing individual behavior. i can criticize the makeup industry without criticizing the 14 year old girl who uses concealer because she’s self-conscious about her acne; i can criticize the plastic surgery industry without vilifying the woman who decided to get a nose job after two decades of pointed comments and bullying. it is intellectually dishonest to respond to an institutional criticism as if it were a personal attack; on the flip side, it is cruel and unnecessary to leverage personal attacks in the name of institutional criticism
if i see one (1) more person respond to a perfectly reasonable beauty-industry-critical sentiment with “but i personally enjoy eyeshadow. why are you attacking people who like eyeshadow :(” or “exactly, all women who wear makeup are miserable and brainwashed” i am going to climb a tree and bite the top of it
I don’t trust anyone who hasn’t acknowledged their capacity for evil.
“I’m just a smol bean uwu” No sir, what you are is someone who is so habituated to thinking of yourself as innocent that you will continue to do so even when you’re guilty.
To quote Chris Fleming
“You know that thing where the most toxic person you’ve ever met over-relates to woodland creatures on social media? I call it Vibe Dysphoria. She’ll put up a picture of a mouse in a jean jacket with ‘It’s me.’ That is not you. I don’t know how you got under the impression that you are a mouse in a jean jacket. You are an eel with a gun.She posts a toad with a basket of mushrooms like 'Me doing my little things.’ Oh madam, there is nothing little about your things. You gave me psychosexual issues I’ll carry to my watery grave. You are not a toad in the forest…You are a cruel woman who just happens to be small.”–Chris Fleming
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