i could swear i’ve raved about this phenomenon before, somewhere

we are all pretty aware that “rape” is a bad thing, but the culture is still full of people doing things that dance around the line

so we encounter people who believe “rape” is bad, but find themselves (or their friends) having done something that could be classified as “rape”

now, we never want to think of ourselves as evil, but “rape” is clearly a thing only “rapists” (Evil People with twirly moustaches) do

thus, cognitive dissonance, and the gut reaction is to define “rape” such that the thing that was done is not “rape”.

which is why i’ve been putting it in quotes: people easily forget that it’s a horrific act and instead treat it as a horrific label. if you can argue that the label doesn’t apply to what you did, you are scot free!

the same thing has happened with “racist”, bringing us such gems as “i’m not a racist but” and “i’m not a racist because”

it doesn’t matter what effects our actions have on anyone else as long as we can argue that they don’t fall into one of a set of predefined buckets of bad behavior

this is particularly fun with dragoneer; he is the owner of the biggest furry art site, and here he is, completely oblivious to his position of power as he dispenses moral judgment and graciously offers to let the victim climb on a soapbox to “attack” someone else who is popular and powerful.

not only that but (i believe) he’s a bit paranoid about delegating any meaningful power or responsibility to anyone—hence the constant lack of admins and devs. so of course he would turn to zaush, who appears at first blush to have no idea what he’s doing. his qualifications don’t matter. his behavior and ethics don’t matter. the only thing that matters is that dragoneer believes zaush won’t do anything to sabotage FA.