Haha, that was actually exactly what I had in mind!

Yeah, it's a tricky issue! On the one hand someone who doesn't experience a particular thing is never going to have the same understanding as someone who does, but on the other hand, if you assume everyone who disagrees with you is speaking from a point of privilege you're going to mess up fast.

For the reverse, I've also seen communities end up basically destroyed because someone with a variety of marginalised identities was harassing and abusing people under the guise of doing it for social justice and the mods were unwilling to step in because they felt it was "out of their lane". So it's also worth considering how much leeway your willing to give someone who's saying they're speaking from a place of oppression when they're engaging in tactics you wouldn't tolerate in someone who's not.

Well to be honest I can't be sure, but there have definitely been some discworld arguments in the past where people who had pretty much never commented before reacted with a great deal of vitriol and abuse to criticism and some of them may not have been white cis straight dudes, but they /were/ pretty obviously not acting in good faith and started straight out of the gate with abuse and nastiness. Like it's one thing when people disagree on whether something's bad and quite another when they immediately jump to the abuse.

And I have sadly met people in fandom who seek out criticism of things they like so they can abuse the people criticising it and these sites are unfortunately not immune to that. It may have been out of line for me to say that those people were always white cis straight dudes, but there have definitely been incidents in past reviews where people were not at all acting in good faith.

Lrnu gung'f n tbbq cbvag.

va zl rkcrevrapr Znex trarenyyl cersref gb hfr "gurz" va trareny gb nibvq zvftraqrevat.

Gubhtu v'z abg fher ubj ur'f ersreerq gb wnpxehz va cerivbhf cbfgf fb vs ur'f fhqqrayl fjvgpuvat sebz "ur" gb "gurz" vg pbhyq or n fcbvyre.

Thank you for this! I'm more of a lurker on these sites partially because of timezones partially just because I prefer it that way but I've been following the Monstrous Regiment reviews with some discomfort.

Something that's really struck me throughout this debacle is that while Pratchett isn't generally super great with minority representation, this book, in particular, a lot of wlw, women and trans people find really important and meaningful. And well, you're none of those things. So I think that at some points you've (understandably) approached this through the lens of some of Pratchett's previous work, and some of the wlw, women and cis people here have found that a bit uncomfortable.

I'm white, cis and not wlw (tho not straight) so I don't feel super qualified to comment on a lot of this mess but, well, I'm not that surprised that this has been brewing given that a lot of the time the people defending Pratchett are well, white straight cis dudes, but here a lot of wlw, trans people and women have found this book meaningful to them for various reasons and might be inclined to defend parts of it.

So while I don't really blame you for reacting to this through the lens of some of the previous arguments that have happen over Pratchett's books (because I've been here for most of them and I remember how many privileged people reacted badly to Pratchett being criticised for his treatment of marginalized people) I do think before engaging in an argument it's worth taking a step back and making sure that what you think is happening really is happening before you put yourself in the conversation - especially if it involves an axis of marginalisation you don't experience if that makes sense?

Just discovered that Mark Watched Little Witch Academia! Here's a link if anyone's interested http://markdoesstuff.fetchapp.com/get/d456dd0f

A PSA to anyone who doesn't know: don't download episodes before Mark posts in spoils or on twitter to say they're ready because if you try and download them before that it can mess things up.

Steven Universe! Episodes 15,18,19,21
http://markdoesstuff.fetchapp.com/get/49ae2e3e

my thoughts:

"That's kind of a creepy looking shark but it's not really that ba-WHAT THE FUCK"