Ja.

: Commenting that a franchise doesn't have enough queer people and
: relationships, and that the balance between straight, cisgender peeps and
: queer people of all sorts in it is not heterophobic. Actually that term
: itself is quite laughable given heterosexual and cisgender oppression of
: queer people, and the significantly unicorn-level rarity that cis and
: hetero people face oppression because of those two traits actually occurs.

*Stares at keyboard for five minutes*

You know... I've had a longtime policy of not speaking up and disagreeing with friends when I see them going too far on a position that I agree with at the basic level. Ironically enough, it has had the opposite of the intended effect; there's a lot of people I'm no longer friends with because those differences drove us apart.

Friends deserve honesty.

So, that little bit of intersectionalism up there? "Heterophobia is nigh-nonexistent because heterosexuals and cisgenders are not oppressed" is wrong. Bigotry is bigotry, and is morally wrong no matter what side of the oppression equation you stand on.

This kind of dovetails with something else you said a few months ago. You said something about how even extreme tactics will call attention to real problems and push people to solve those problems, thus doing more right than wrong. Paraphrasing, you can't do wrong if you're morally in the right. But there are plenty of activists who, instead of fighting hatred, simply spread more hatred.

Take K. Tempest Bradford's article challenging readers to not read books written by straight white cis-male authors for a year. I could have understood if she talked about minority authors who were overlooked because of their race/sex/identification, but she is telling readers to discriminate against authors by the color of their skin and the orientation of their gender*. Just replacing "White" with "Jewish" in that article is enough to give me the heebie-jeebies.

And I've heard people like Scalzi and Hines say that white people won't read something written by minorities, but I haven't met a single person who flips to the About the Author page before buying a book. And I don't live in a nice progressive politically-correct** neighborhood. I live out in the sticks of Fox News redneck white trash flyover country. Hell, Scalzi and Hines engage in a form of minority erasure by accusing other authors with diverse casts of only writing strong white manly men shooting monsters to save buxom white women.

Besides which, woman have been prominent writers since novels became a thing. Many of the founding figures of modern science fiction were women. Hell, I just found out that C.J. Cherryh*** is a lesbian, which reminded me that I have to read the Faded Sun trilogy again.

Earlier than that, Paizo (The people who publish the awesome Pathfinder RPG) was looking to hire a new employee. One eligible candidate posted, on the official forums in front of God and everybody, a challenge to Paizo to set a standard for the whole RPG community and promote diversity by hiring a woman. Not her, of course, but some female out there.

Paizo is... well, their headquarters are probably within artillery range of your house. They already have female employees, some in upper management. They have set the standard for diversity. Their character iconics include transgenders, bisexuals (I think) and daring adventurers of all skin tones and modesty of dress. This woman went and poisoned the well. She might as well have asked Paizo if they stopped beating their wives.

What made me facedesk was when she said that Paizo had to make the move because women look at a paucity of females in a position and assume that it's not available to them. Women are dainty things that won't fight for what they want, they have to be given it.

Alright, I might have added the word "Dainty". But the sentiment was still there.

Before that, there was the guy who said Gencon was racist, and tabletop gaming had a race problem. His evidence?
-He didn't see a lot of minorities... in a hobby that skews toward the upper socioeconomic demographics.
-He saw an overabundance of minorities in the convention center's staff... when the convention center is in downtown Indianapolis (~74% black) and those jobs skew toward the lower socioeconomic classes.
-A guy in a Nazi uniform was seen outside Gencon. There was also a single booth inside selling Nazi paraphernalia.

With that paltry evidence, he accused Gencon of direct, institutionalized racism.

This is just stuff I've noticed because it's wandered across my path. And then there were the Gamergate tweets that would have been truly alarming if you replaced any combination of "Straight white gamer" with "Jew". I didn't know about Gamergate until it had mostly blown over. I wasn't involved. I saw men threatening women, but I also saw ugliness coming from the other side. I heard of minority developers being dismissed as sock puppets and I saw vast swaths of gaming culture hatefully demonized with tired stereotypes from the nineties.

I don't know who was right. I don't know who was wrong. It was a vast roaring FoF-radar-wrecking shitstorm that I didn't have the patience or energy to wade into. But I have friends whom I have known for a long time and whose opinion I respect. They (and I) have been yearning for integrity to be brought into gaming journalism, and they felt that Gamergate was that opportunity. They celebrated when one of the websites (The Escapist?) updated its ethics policy, though I forget the exact details.

On the flip side of the coin, Sarkeesian lost all points with me when she pulled that stunt at Utah University. There was no credible threat against her, the FBI and the local law enforcement agencies confirmed that there was no credible death threat against her, and she still canceled her speaking engagement because the university wouldn't ban guns and search everyone going into the auditorium.

In short, summary, whatever, no side is as pure as the driven snow. If you think your side is morally right and can do no wrong... you need to pay better attention. I've got assholes who are nominally on my side, like Theodore Beale, Tom Kratman, and Micheal Z. Williamson. If you're not willing to cop to that and call out the crazies on your side of the debate, whatever debate that may be, you're letting the crazies poison the conversation.

Well... I've been afraid of driving away people I consider friends. Still had to be said.
This involved a lot more than five minutes of staring at the keyboard.

*Quick question: Orientation of their gender. Is that proper grammar? I typed it that way because it flowed nicely with "Color of their skin", but it just doesn't feel right.

**And yes, some of the stuff these people advocate does sound politically correct, like a commissar going over a script to see if it upholds Party doctrine. Does this have the right amount of minorities? Is it properly respecting other cultures, or is it engaging in filthy capitalist cultural appropriation? Is this character truly representative of a minority, or merely tokenism?

***Fun fact: her brother painted concept art for the canceled Halo MMO. It's a small world.