oxynotus:

god apparently we need to get some things straight about this Rose Christo business, because the way that certain parts of tumblr respond to things like this is really poor.

“take what is posted on kiwifarms with a grain of salt” is a good, healthy practice that allows you to verify information.

“everything that is posted on kiwifarms is automatically false/made up/a lie by virtue of being posted on kiwifarms” is stupid as hell.

i don’t like kiwifarms, and i don’t think that should come as a surprise to anybody, but that doesn’t make everybody who posts on KF is wrong about everything. the fact that her brother posted information, which Rose then presumably read and posted about on her (public!) twitter, makes it very likely that he’s telling the truth about this situation.

the world is not divided into “people whose morals align with mine” and “evil, hatemongering liars who never tell the truth.” stop playing into cushy lies that make you feel good inside. stop enabling people’s sob stories in some fucked up attempt to increase the diversity of your world view. stop insisting that truth is in the hands of the person who claims victim status the fastest.

Rose Christo, whatever her intentions or beliefs, is operating on a fact of certain tumblr circles. that fact is that social capital is awarded to people based on aspects of their identities or experiences–people of color, LGBT people, abuse survivors, et cetera are given more of a platform and are more celebrated than others. there are some legitimate reasons for this, but the way that it folds out in these circles often leads to a couple of things:

1. people faking their identities for an extra boost/personal attention/gain of that social capital;
2. people insisting that anybody who claims these identities must be telling the truth, because otherwise you’re upsetting the status quo of giving them an elevated status.

if you say that Rose Christo fabricated any part of her story, then you’re accused a lesbian of color who survived child abuse and the foster care system of lying. that leads to backlash on anyone who doubts the story, whether they’re on tumblr or on kiwifarms. people KNOW this when they claim oppressed identities that they don’t actually have.

(for the record, i’m not saying that all of her story was fabricated. i’m not saying that she never went through abuse, that she isn’t a lesbian, etc. i’m saying that all of these things together, with whichever parts are lies, are protective against criticisms and accusations.)

and if those accusations are specifically coming from somebody from kiwifarms–well, you can just breathe a sigh of relief now. surely somebody from KF is maliciously making up lies. they say “autistic” as an insult and they bully people, so why would any individual member of the forum /ever/ be telling the truth? Rose’s morals are better than [Rose’s brother]’s morals, so we have a clear winner here! no need to delve deeper into the story in any sense, because we can just let social capital via X Identity solve it for us.

like…no. that’s not how this works, that’s not how any of this works. care more about the pursuit of truth than about picking apart the membership of anyone involved. look at how each person is respectively acting, look at who is providing evidence.

this is getting rambly. also, please don’t come whining to me about defending KF. i do not give a shit about KF. i give a shit about what’s being said there, but i’d care just as much if it was posted on facebook or here or something. this performative “wellllll he’s from kf so hooooow could this be truuuuue?” bullshit is just annoying to me either way.