marysuewhipple:

People are really trying to ““support”“ KMT by saying that Rian Johnson should’ve been the one on the receiving end of the harassment instead of her.

And that’s…a lot lmao, but the big thing that stands out to me is this buck fucking wild idea that internet harassment is some kind of natural disaster, an uncontrollable phenomenon that was always going to happen. That it’s inevitably going to target someone, and the most we can do is try to aim it at someone who “deserves” it.

No, cyberbullying and harassment isn’t an some kind of tornado that we can only try to predict and plan for. It’s a choice.

People made the choice to harass Kelly Marie Tran. They made the choice to leave body-shaming and racial slurs on her social media. They made the choice to prioritize their own disappointment about a fucking Disney movie over the feelings and well-being of a real life person. They made the choice to treat fictional ships as more important than a real person.

They made the choice to hold a female character of color to a higher standard than the white female character. They made the choice to make it socially unacceptable to stan Rose Tico or ship her with her canon love interest. They made the choice to not stick up for her when the negativity came from their own in-group. They made the choice to maintain radio silence as all of this was going on. 

Whether on twitter or instagram or tumblr, whether it came from the racist fanboy collective or the angry FR/FP shippers, people made the choice to prioritize their own collection of online social capital over Kelly Marie Tran’s basic dignity and humanity.

This was not an inevitability. This was a choice, made by hundreds if not thousands of people, and it was the wrong one, and now we have people acting like the correct choice was “harass Rian Johnson/Adam Driver/Kathleen Kennedy instead.” It wasn’t. The correct choice was actually “don’t fucking harass people.”

Star Wars is fictional. Even if it matters a whole lot to you. Even if you felt crushed by TLJ. It’s still fictional. It’s a fictional story. Kelly Marie Tran is a real person. She’s more important. I don’t know how many times we have to say “Star Wars isn’t more important than real people” before the message gets through.

I hope that at least some of you learn from this.