Everyone's a little bit PURE, IRREDEEMABLE EVIL
A snippet from an old message board discussion (here if you're that curious) that I wanted to share because it made something click in my mind:
Most people don't really think about things like racism or sexism or any sort of -ism as having any degree of nuance or gradation. "Racism/sexism is a bad thing, therefore only bad things/people are racist/sexist" is how many, many people tend to think about it, and to those many people racism and sexism are binary qualities...either a person or thing is racist/sexist and therefore bad or it isn't racist/sexist and therefore good, it's all conceived of in absolute terms.
So when someone says, for example, "Hey, Golarion is kinda racist" what they take away from that is "Hey, Golarion is bad, and if you like it you are also bad." Same with someone criticizing an RPG full of cheesecake artwork as being sexist...it becomes an absolute condemnation of both the game and those who enjoy it for whatever reason.
We've been taught from childhood that RACISM IS BAD and SEXISM IS BAD, but not really that there's an important distinction between, say, "having no point of reference about a given ethnicity beyond a broad stereotype" and "literally being Hitler". That's why a lot of people get so easily defensive about these things, and it's so hard to have a constructive discussion on these subjects sometimes. That's why like 90% of Internet discussions on the subject quickly turn into "NO I AM NOT SEXIST/RACIST, YOU'RE JUST OVERREACTING/YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO JUDGE/YOU'RE THE REAL RACIST".
Looking back, I get the impression this is the real point Avenue Q's Everyone's A Little Bit Racist was trying to make, though kinda clumsily. I can't believe I only just now realized that.
Most people don't really think about things like racism or sexism or any sort of -ism as having any degree of nuance or gradation. "Racism/sexism is a bad thing, therefore only bad things/people are racist/sexist" is how many, many people tend to think about it, and to those many people racism and sexism are binary qualities...either a person or thing is racist/sexist and therefore bad or it isn't racist/sexist and therefore good, it's all conceived of in absolute terms.
So when someone says, for example, "Hey, Golarion is kinda racist" what they take away from that is "Hey, Golarion is bad, and if you like it you are also bad." Same with someone criticizing an RPG full of cheesecake artwork as being sexist...it becomes an absolute condemnation of both the game and those who enjoy it for whatever reason.
We've been taught from childhood that RACISM IS BAD and SEXISM IS BAD, but not really that there's an important distinction between, say, "having no point of reference about a given ethnicity beyond a broad stereotype" and "literally being Hitler". That's why a lot of people get so easily defensive about these things, and it's so hard to have a constructive discussion on these subjects sometimes. That's why like 90% of Internet discussions on the subject quickly turn into "NO I AM NOT SEXIST/RACIST, YOU'RE JUST OVERREACTING/YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO JUDGE/YOU'RE THE REAL RACIST".
Looking back, I get the impression this is the real point Avenue Q's Everyone's A Little Bit Racist was trying to make, though kinda clumsily. I can't believe I only just now realized that.