thisdeadaccount:

boyonetta:

I’m gonna tell y’all a little story.

When I was in high school, I was transphobic and acephobic. Not to any great extent, I certainly didn’t think these people were bad, or disgusting, or unnatural–in fact, I tried to be very supportive of them, and believed they deserved all the same rights I had. I’ve always been for equality.

But I was bigoted in other, smaller ways.

One time, there was a trans person on television. I think they may have been a gay trans man–if not, they were a gay trans woman. I looked over at the others in the room and said, “I don’t get why they’re transgender if they’re just going to keep dating the same gender.” I thought, for some reason, that trans people could only ever be straight, and that the whole point of transitioning was so that they could be straight.

Another time, I asked my mother, “If I came out as asexual, would you disown me?” and she told me no, she would not. I took this as proof that asexuals were not oppressed, that they were just whiny babies trying to muscle in on the LGBT+ community’s territory. I took my bigoted mother’s oddly tolerant reaction to asexuality and used it to support my own bigoted beliefs.

Fast-forward to now.

I’m a gay trans man, and I support asexuals and aromantics wholeheartedly.

Recently, there’s been a bit of an uproar about Kubo, the creator of Yuri on Ice, tweeting something homophobic–seven years ago. Since then, she’s gone on to create an anime that is deeply personal and inspiring to many people, especially LGBT+ folk, especially mlm. She has talked at length about protecting the world she made from homophobia, about a world where everyone is free to love who they wish. She has paid homage to so many openly gay skaters–real people, who she obviously admires and studied at length.

She has been nothing but supportive of us and our community. She has given us something wonderful and uplifting, and…

…if that tweet from seven years ago is real, she’s changed.

Seven years ago, I was a completely different person. I was still in high school. I was still bigoted in a lot of small, insidious ways. I hadn’t figured out who or what I was yet. I hadn’t come to terms with it. I hadn’t opened my mind to different possibilities, and ways of life, and cultures.

Kubo comes from an extremely xenophobic culture. Anything foreign, anything out of the ordinary, is touted as “bad” and “wrong.” Japan isn’t the well-spring of equality a lot of westerners seem to think it is. It’s plagued by bigotry–in some ways, even more severely than America.

Seven years ago, when she was younger, maybe she was a part of that culture.

But she’s had time to grow and change, and she has spread nothing but positivity and acceptance during her time in the limelight. She has used her popularity to be uplifting and open-minded.

Now westerners are trying to throw something embarrassing she believed seven years ago in her face, and are using her ignoring their attempts to stir up trouble as proof that she hasn’t changed.

I’m sorry, but you aren’t doing this as a good deed. We all know you aren’t. You aren’t sneaky. You aren’t slick. We know what you’re up to, we’ve seen it a thousand times. You’re trying to do exactly what Kubo’s trying to avoid–stir up trouble.

Let us have this. Stop trying to take something positive and turn it into something negative. Stop digging years and years into peoples’ pasts to find a single thing they said when they were fourteen and use it as justification for ruining their online presence.

People change. People are supposed to change. It’s a natural part of the human life cycle.

Put down the torch and pitchfork, and let them.

#whats the point in trying to change the world if you demonize ppl for having to change in the first place