Apparently, a new wave of people are indignant about the “Mary Hate” and misogyny again.
See this. Mary did this.
(Not Amanda Abbington…ok? I’m not an idiot)
But… Mary did this.
I believe Sherlock has a plan in mind, a goal, a reason to claim “surgery” and to spin a tale about a phone call that may never have occurred… (keep your friends close and your enemies closer).
John is, as he says, doing things Sherlock’s way.
Don’t tell me it was her only option.
Don’t make excuses for the poor, pregnant woman (*that’s* misogynistic).
Look at this picture again and tell me how nice she is, how sweet, how kind, how perfect for John. Tell me about your OT3.
I love this man. I am Mummy Holmes. Except… I do know who shot my boy. I have every right to be monstrous.NO. STOP IT.
I have had enough of this. I wasn’t going to say anything about the latest blow-up, but this? THIS IS SHAMING.
STOP IT.
You do NOT have a right to be monstrous. BECAUSE THIS IS A FUCKING TELEVISION SHOW and the people you are being monstrous to are REAL PEOPLE.
STOP setting up straw-man arguments and assumptions about what you think they must be thinking if they like the character. You do NOT know, because there are a hundred different reasons that might have brought them to holding the opinion they do.
STOP canonizing your headcanon and assuming that because it makes sense to you, it must be what the show is aiming for. You do NOT know, none of us do, because the show has historically been really great at thwarting all assumptions and expectations about what next season will bring. (Whether what it came up with instead was better or not is a whole different discussion.)
And most of all, STOP assuming that because somebody likes—or hates!—a particular character, that it says ANYTHING about what they really want or would condone in real life.
STOP mocking and shaming and telling people that they are morally bankrupt because they happen to see something different from you, or think something different from you, or perhaps have been exposed to different information than you.
I don’t care whether you love Mary, or hate Mary, or are wildly indifferent to Mary. I don’t care whether you think the show is better or worse for her presence on it. STOP ATTACKING OTHER PEOPLE, BULLYING AND SILENCING OTHER PEOPLE AND MAKING THEM MISERABLE BECAUSE THEY DISAGREE WITH YOU.
I grasp that people who are doing this may not even have been aware that this is what they’ve been doing. Some people have simply decided on their own stance and don’t want to hear about anything that disagrees with them.
In which case you do not have the right to shout down others just because you don’t like what they’re saying. You have resources to filter and control what you see on Tumblr. USE THEM.
Other people have gotten entrenched in these moral positions: Mary = evil murderer whom no one should ever love; Mary = John’s feminine savior whom only a misogynist could hate. They are trying to fight for the soul and moral rectitude of fandom, based on opinions over this one character.
But taking those positions in the first place is pointless. She’s a character. Whether you like her or hate her is a matter of personal preference, not a symbol of the state of your immortal soul. And while discussions can and should be had on whether those preferences and interpretations are perhaps tied up in mores and expectations of a misogynist culture, shouting people down whenever they start talking about the character is antithetical to productive dialogue. It’s silencing, and attempting to attack and shame people into either agreeing with your moral stance or shutting up about it is not only simply wrong, but also tactics worthy of the seediest lowlifes in politics and religion.
So if you feel like screaming at or mocking people for disagreeing with you about Mary, take a good hard look at yourself and then STOP.
I’ve said it before: it’s fine if you hate Mary. It’s fine if you love Mary. IT IS NOT FINE TO HURT OTHER PEOPLE FOR DISAGREEING WITH YOU ABOUT MARY.
Tells other people to stop shouting in CAPSLOCKS…. ^^
Well, yes, I was pretty irate.
I hope it was pretty clear, though, that I wasn’t shouting at people to stop shouting. I was shouting at people to stop being hurtful to others—for example by shouting, bullying, shaming or mocking others—for having differing opinions.
Fandom take a deep breath if you love her, fine, if you hate her fine.
Apparently, it’s not ‘if you love her, fine and if you hate her, fine’; ( although I don’t hate anyone. I just don’t like their actions. I certainly think they are compelling characters, and I’ve hated actions Sherlock and John have done too, without hating *them*).
These are all deeply flawed characters. The entire show is packed with them. Apparently, if you want to criticise a character’s actions, and make people face up to the pure facts of what a character they support ( in many cases, unconditionally) *did*, you shouldn’t make your opinion known. Because it might hurt someone’s feelings. Or be “mean”. Everyone is entitled to their own opinions and to express them freely.
Recently a new tag was developed specifically to protect people from accidentally viewing my opinions and those of others like me. To head this argument off at the pass, because I see it coming, I never wanted John to kill Mary. I never posted or implied anything like that. I just resent the one big happy family POV because I think it’s a bit much to forgive and I doubt it is sincere. Maybe it is. We will see what happens in the future. It is, most definitely, upsetting to me that people are so blasé and ultimately dismissive about my favorite character being shot and killed (temporarily or not). But they certainly have that right. And I can be upset about it.
They never had to agree with me. I never expected that. And now, I have not invaded anyone’s space, but am still being told to stop showing my support for Sherlock. Just because he forgave Mary (if he really did), doesn’t mean I have to. And others can continue to support her. I am neither required to agree, nor to shut up. And I don’t see why I should have caps rants telling me enough is enough.
You’re all probably sick of this by now, but I’m posting this publicly because I spoke up in public in the first place, and iwantthatcoat sent me a very civil message requesting clarification and making some points that they do indeed deserve an apology for.
So! Yes, I am sorry. I deliberately added this onto your post because I had things to say that involved using it as an example, but I did not mean to sound like I was specifically targeting you the way I suspect that I did. To a fairly large extent, I was not speaking directly to you or your post, but rather to the range of commentary I have seen that effectively attacks fans for holding…whatever opinion they hold.
To be clear, I’ve seen aggressive, attacking posts from both pro-Mary and anti-Mary people (and, while we’re at it, plenty surrounding johnlock and tjlc as well). I hate that you have been attacked, even to the point of name-calling. It’s no more right for you to get bullied—let’s call it by name—over your interpretation than vice versa. And for anybody inclined to go after iwantthatcoat for their thoughts on Mary, there are in fact some damn good reasons the show has given us for exactly their opinion.
This is precisely why I finally said something (and the reason I went off more temperamentally than I normally do or probably should have done in this case): because, while some people post things in public that are kind of rude (sometimes language can get away from us and say more than we mean to say, or even more than we mean at all), other people are flat-out nasty about it, and behind the scenes people are getting outright hateful, bullying messages about it.
That said, the clarification. What I was specifically responding to in your originating post was this:
“Don’t make excuses for the poor, pregnant woman (*that’s* misogynistic).
Look at this picture again and tell me how nice she is, how sweet, how kind, how perfect for John. Tell me about your OT3.”
This part is the part that is coming down on people and mocking them for their opinion. Taken together with the “I have a right to be monstrous,” it read to me as very much in line with similar posts I’ve seen essentially mocking or attacking people over the opinion on the character.
I realize, given other things you’ve said, that is probably not what you actually meant to be saying. With that taken into account, it is a perfect example of my point (which, as I said, is why I added it to this thread): on this issue (and a couple of others), people keep stepping over the line, sometimes without even being aware they’re being hurtful because they’re so caught up in their interpretation and in making their point. (And, to be fair, sometimes due to brainfog. We all stick our foot in our mouth now and then.)
And to be clearer than I was earlier, here I stop speaking directly to iwantthatcoat so much as I am to Tumblr at large:
Absolutely, everyone’s got a right to an opinion, and to express it—while keeping in mind basic respect for other human beings. However, at the point where you (or I) find ourselves saying something that boils down to, “There’s something wrong with you if you can’t see that” or “You cannot reasonably justify having that OT3,” we are no longer saying, “This is my opinion and I think it’s valid,” but rather “If you have a different opinion, then yours is invalid.”
And then again, if all we had to worry about was posts saying that sort of thing on Tumblr, it’d be a hell of a lot less big deal than it is that some of us are sending people hateful anon messages calling somebody a ‘cunt’ or ‘bitch’ or telling them we hope they’ll die for expressing an opinion we don’t like. That just needs to stop. No, not even if you think they’re the one being hateful first. If they’re doing something wrong, then tell them off for what they’re doing, not because you’ve jumped to the conclusion that they’re Satan.
And now, I hope, I am done saying things on that subject.
