TRIGGER WARNING: Mentions of pedophilia and sexual assault.

A/N: I’m going to be upfront by saying that this ask was incredibly
frustrating to me. Your summarization of my arguments couldn’t be any farther
from my thesis. I’ll link back to quotes in previous posts, but man… with all
due respect, I have no clue how you managed to come up with these conclusions.

I’m not going to sit
here and re-argue what I’ve already said. The original post is up for viewing [x],
so I’m just going to summarize and clarify things again.

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You: Are you arguing that joking about pedophilia doesn’t normalize or
silence its survivors?

My original argument: Joke culture has changed dramatically over the
years. We’ve become more conscious of the meaning behind our words – which includes
jokes – and how they can reproduce harmful assumptions.

In other words, I was saying how rethinking
our words prevents the harmful normalization
of these sensitive subjects.

Relevant Quote:

“Does that mean that he advocates for sexual assault and
pedophilia? No.

Were the
jokes made in poor taste? Yes,
100%.

So, why now? Why is it only now that these
jokes are resurfacing and provoking a negative reaction? Why weren’t they
burned at the media stake like they are today?

Context and timing are critical to
understanding why.

As I’ve mentioned, society has grown more
conscious of the type of humour we employ and at whose expense it befalls onto.
Newer social movements have made us rethink how our society is constructed,
which includes the meaning and similar construction behind our words and how
they can perpetuate and reproduce harmful assumptions.”

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You:
You’re defending James Gunn and Himaruya.

My original argument: I criticized the harmful and offensive tweets/ tropes
they used several times in the post.
They used shock humour in poor taste. Nonetheless, they had no malintent
towards the groups implicated. What
I did defend was how they were capable of learning from their past mistakes. I
believe in the ability to evolve and change, which includes a more conscious
understanding of how even unserious things like humour can have adverse
cultural consequences.

People
shouldn’t be defined by their past if they’ve proven to have learned from it. I
can support their present character without condoning the things they did. Not
everything is black and white like you portray it. Just because I defend one
aspect of a person doesn’t mean that I inherently support everything they do or
have done. I ask that you look back through the post and count how many times I
criticized Himaruya and expressed revulsion at his early content.

Recommendation: Philip DeFranco does a good job covering how cancel
and outrage culture acts as the antithesis to individual growth and character
(ex: the James Gunn situation and more recently David Dobrik’s past tweets). If
we keep holding people accountable for stupid tweets that they made in the past,
how are we going to progress as a society when we don’t even permit it?

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You:
Both make content with racist/ imperialist undertones.

My response: Hetalia doesn’t promote imperialism, and it isn’t
racist. I’ve dedicated a whole post using primary source material and an
academic peer-reviewed article that maintains the same thesis [x]. I have yet to
see anyone use actual source material to support your argument.

You:
You seem to think white-washing and race-bending a character for cultural accuracy
are morally equivalent.

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My response: Please don’t put words in my mouth and don’t take my
answer out of context [x]. 

For one
thing, the nations don’t have races. Because they represent several groups of
people, Himaruya was smart enough not to assign them one.

I’ve
always agreed on that notion that Seychelles skin tone should be much darker.
In the OP you mention, I don’t even form a definitive stance. What the anon had
commented is that some fans inaccurately make Spain and Portugal dark-skinned
(not to be confused with tan) when traditional ethnic Spaniards and Portuguese peoples aren’t.

The
question I proposed is if Seychelles’ skin tone in fanon is correctly adjusted,
why should fans get mad when actual people from Spain and Portugal get
similarly upset when their personifications are given darker skin tones than
what is culturally accurate? It’s a double-standard. Why should one move for
cultural accuracy be favored over the other?

Moreover,
Hetalia itself has nothing to do with
white-washing or legitimate issues of achieving diverse race representation in
the media. It has to do with the portrayal of nation-centric personifications.
While fanon aims for more cultural accuracy than canon, which is predicated
more on stereotypes, Spaniard and Portuguese are only stereotyped for being tanned.

Lastly,
although you didn’t mention this, I could have clarified this better before. As
mentioned, while Hetalia is based on world stereotypes (which aren’t 100%
accurate), fanon tends to tweak the appearances of characters to attain further
cultural accuracy.

For
example, the American stereotype is the blond and blue-eyed golden boy. On the
other hand, I’ve seen America depicted as African-American. This is 100% okay!
It’s culturally accurate, regardless if it doesn’t fit the stereotype. America’s
racialized history isn’t that well-known to the world, which explains said stereotype.
The same thing would apply to Canada too, another multicultural society. As a
POC myself, I can say that it won’t be long before ‘minorities’ (an already
politically charged word) become the majority in terms of numbers. It therefore
wouldn’t be culturally inaccurate should fans choose to tweak their appearances
to fit this mould.

Again,
the reason I’ve used Canada and America is because they were both multicultural
in origin. This is above and beyond how the world has also become increasingly
multicultural. Just know that the stereotypes Himaruya uses to make his
characters are predicated on traditional and stereotypical and/or ethnic appearances
of people from each nation.

That said, if you have a comment, please leave it below. I
want to direct the conversation to one place and would prefer not to drag this
out anymore.