(no subject)

[feotakahari]

I think “It’s okay to have fetishes if you don’t talk about them” is nearly as bad a take as “it’s not okay to have fetishes.”

Comments

[random_thought_depository]

Agreed. It functionally amounts to the same demand: "Knowing that you have this trait makes me uncomfortable and I want society to be set up to protect me from that discomfort by punishing anything you do that compromises my ability to pretend people like you don't exist, I want society set up to make you endure the chronic stress of hiding significant parts of yourself and I want society set up to isolate you from connection to and community with other people like you because I feel that's a price worth paying for my ability to just kind of pretend people like you don't exist." It's isomorphic to the kind of homophobia where a homophobe doesn't mind if people do stuff like furtive gay blow-jobs in bathroom stalls (may even indulge in that kind of thing themselves) but hates gay marriage and gay pride parades and so on. A certain kind of conservative is fine with the things they disapprove of existing as long as they remain stigmatized, hidden, and furtive, and I don't think they're much better than the kind of conservative who's offended that these things exist at all because it functionally amounts to more-or-less the same thing: "I won't try to hurt you for it if I don't see it" (besides, I think the first kind of conservative is usually just the second kind of conservative being realistic about the level of control that's practical).