So. I want to talk about the whole 'denying people basic human rights because we don't like them' thing, and touch on the concept of 'normalisation' - which, by the way, is *not* what a lot of people in fandom think it is. Not that I'll be going in-depth on that right now.

[pedophilia ment]
So hey! Think of a group of people you hate. "But I only hate individuals!" you may cry. Well. Alright.
What about the political parties that oppose your own?
"Nope! I just disagree with them!"
Fair. Pedophiles?
"They hurt children!"
So you hate them?
"Well-"

Nazis? ISIS? Murderers, rapists, war criminals, *mass* murders, and so on are all groups of people. Are they all *unified* groups of people? No. But they're still groups of people.

Emphasis on *people*.

I'm not going to tell you to empathise or sympathise with people you hate.

This isn't a discussion on empathy or sympathy, and truth be told that's a topic I'm not really caring much to dive head-first into on very little sleep. I'd not be talking about this one had I not seen a whole lot of bullshit tonight.

Anyway. Have your hated group in mind?

Those people have human rights.

"But they're bad people!" you may cry. "They hurt others!"

Yeah, but they're people.

"You want me to support [insert hated group of choice]?!"

No. You don't have to support someone to believe they have human rights, and those rights inalienable

Here is a link to the declaration of human rights: https://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/index.html

I'm not a lawyer, so there may be some legal words here that I don't understand as being Legal Words instead of using the common definition, but I'm going to explain as best I can.

Article 1: This article basically says 'these are rights everyone deserves regardless of status, all people are born free' and 'people are sapient and should be decent to one another'

Article 2: In essence? 'All people are entitled to these rights, regardless of political affiliation, location, race, or any other signifiers'

Article 3: 'People have a right to live a life with liberty and without constant fear'

4? 'Slavery is bad and we won't let that shit fly'
5. I'm just pasting this one because it's real relevant: "No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment."

6. I'm a little fuzzy on the exact meaning, but my guess is this one means 'wherever you are, you deserve to be seen as an entity that the law recognises'. As in both 'you are not exempt to the law' and 'the law is not allowed to ignore you because it's convenient'

7 prohibits discrimination against people by the law.

8. "If your human rights are ignored you deserve a fair trial"

9. "No one can arrest, exile, or detain you without a good reason"

10. "Everyone deserves trial regarding crimes they've done and how that affects their rights"

11. "Everyone is innocent until proven guilty", "If you did a crime that wasn't a crime at the time you did it, you can't be tried for it", and "any crimes you commit are to be sentenced with the rules that existed at the time of the crime".

That last one seems to mean that if you say, stole a button in 1920, and the penal offence at the time was 2 weeks in jail, they aren't allowed to upgrade that to the penal offence for the crime that was changed in 1956 to be death by firing squad.

12. "Unless there's a good reason, the government isn't allowed to interfere in or snoop on your communications, property, private life and so on. Nor is the government allowed to attack your reputation or honour without a reasonable basis"

13. This one basically means that people are allowed to move freely within their borders, and that people are allowed to leave and return to their country.

14. Everyone has the right to seek asylum in other countries, though you can't do so cause you're certain types of criminal

15. Everyone has a right to a nationality and to change that nationality. I think it also means your home country can't just strip you of your nationality.

16. Adults have the right to marry, stay married, and divorce. Marriage has to be consensual. Family (as a group unit) is entitled to protection by society and the government.
I *think* that last one can be summed up as 'it's prohibited to destroy the concept of family'.

17. People can own property, and it can't be taken away for no good reason.

18. People are allowed to have their own minds with their own thoughts and feelings, and are allowed to have their own religions, even if the government doesn't like it. "Thought crimes aren't real".

19. Freedom of expression.

20. Freedom of assembly *and* to not be forced into a group/association.

21. Everyone has the right to take part in government. The government must have free elections. And everyone deserves equal access to public services.
EX: Libraries

Article 22 is one I actually don't think I could sum up accurately. I'm not going to try, and I suggest you look at it yourself.

23. Everyone has the right to a job that pays fairly, that has adequate safety, pays equally without discrimination. Everyone has the right to an income that supports them and supports their human dignity. Everyone has the right to join a union.

24. Everyone has the right to reasonable leisure time, work hours, and the occasional holiday off with pay.

25? Here it is, and I think its wording is important.

26. Schooling is not only a human right, it's compulsory in elementary ages. Also, elementary schooling is to be free. Higher education is not only expected to be offered, it's to be available to all based on merit. Schooling is to support humans forming their personality,

to encourage peace and understanding between nations, races, and religious groups. Oh, and parents get to choose what kind of education their kids get.

27. People have the right to interact with and benefit from society, basically. + People have the right to protect their ideas.

28. Half sure this one means 'Everyone has the right to a world in which these beliefs can be upheld'

29. This one is another one that's a little hard for me, personally, to interpret and explain my interpretation.

(Please hold while I type up the next 25 tweets.)

And article 30?

"None of the above can be used by anyone, government, group, or individual, as justification to do all that shit we just told you not to to"

At least, that's how I read it.

Now you may be asking why I just did an 'I'm not a lawyer, but here's my interpretation on this thing that is basically a law' series of tweets, seeing as how.
Again.
I'm not a lawyer.
Also I linked them, so why did I lay them all out anyway?
(Sorry, to those who read the link)

Because I think it's very important for me to lay out what I'm talking about when I say 'human rights'.

I'm not saying 'being liked is a human right', nor am I saying 'human rights means people are not allowed to be criticised'.

I mean literal fucking human rights.

The LITERAL MANUAL states that these rights are given to *all human beings at birth*. They are rights that you, by virtue of being a living person, and everyone else are entitled to. To be human is to have rights.

And some of y'all? You want to deny people you hate human rights.

[pedophilia mention]

I see people consistently saying shit like "pedophiles have no rights", and "I think [person group] should be tortured slowly and with extreme prejudice", and "[group] aren't real people."

I see it in all sorts of circles.

Most disappointingly, I see it a lot in social justice. The whole *point* of social justice is to see to it that our human rights are upheld, and that those rights are *improved upon*.

You don't support social justice if you think people should be tortured.

You don't support social justice if you think someone should be executed without a trial.

If you think that someone's actions can remove their human rights completely, you're against social justice.

And yet some of you look at someone you don't like, be they people who you hate for a dumb reason ('I don't like their fiction!') or for a valid reason ('they murder people!') and you decide "That person has no rights".

Do you have any idea what you're saying when you say that?

You're pointing at someone and saying 'They have no right to protection against enslavement'. You're saying 'This person doesn't deserve the right to their own thoughts'. You're saying 'that person doesn't deserve to live'.

"Shannon, calm down! It's just a joke!"

Now see, here's where we start talking about 'normalisation'.

See, fiction doesn't normalise things the way people think it does. It's not a case of 'I saw bugs bunny mutilate and murder a black person, so I'm gonna to it too!'

While fiction can *reinforce* the normalisation of ideas that are already there, it doesn't actually have a much of a large scale effect as people think it does, let alone the 1:1 effect a lot of people think it does.

What *is* however a powerful force of normalisation?

Comedy.

Or at least the idea that something is a joke.

Now, I'm not going to say mean or cruel jokes aren't allowed, or that you're not allowed to joke about serious subjects like murder. As powerful as jokes are in making things seem normal, they're not all-powerful.

[gross, dead baby joke]
If someone hears a joke like, say, 'if you put a dead baby in a blender, you get salsa!', they're generally not going to go out and put a baby in a blender unless they are *very detached from reality*. Most people who *are* detached won't either.

[infanticide, cannibalism]
Why's this? Because we, as a society, acknowledge that killing infants and mutilating their corpses and then *eating them* is morally reprehensible. It's drilled into us, and a one-off joke isn't going to convince the average person it's okay.

[infanticide]
Know what might convince someone that it's acceptable in any way?

A consistent bombardment of how babies are actually evil/worthless/better off dead might! Not likely because babies have some of the best PR in the world. But let's change targets... to... Say...

Men.

"But men are privileged!" you shout. "They have even better PR than babies do!"

Do they though? Men are regularly characterised as buffoons, as helpless, as unable to resist their base desires, of being nothing but walking sex drives, and more.

They're bombarded by messages that the only 'manly' emotions are anger and superiority, and then they're told they're violent by nature and unfit to care for their own children unless it's with a gun or a bank card.

Privilege or not, their PR is *shit*.

And all those preconceived notions? Yeah that's why it was so easy for a pretty big chunk of the feminist circles to be taken in by radfems on sites like tumblr and twitter.

You know. That whole "K*ll all men" slogan.

I saw a lot of people saying it was just a joke.

"It's just venting. No one means it. Everyone is just having a joke at the expense of men for once."

A joke that even now makes it hard for men's voices to be heard in a lot of feminist spaces, and that is commonly used by bad actors as proof that feminism is toxic.

Thanks to all the people going 'haha funny joke, lol k*ll all men amirite?' you ended up with a lot of young, impressionable girls and women being exposed to radfem rhetoric. Because you know what? There were plenty of people who *weren't* joking, and most were radfems.