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Had a thought while watching @ContraPoints' latest video (link in the thread), in which she talks a lot about scapegoating and mascotting. Allow me to take an Aurini-like sip from my iced whiskey (if Harris Brewer finds this thread, I promise it's a bad whiskey) and pontificate.
Mascotting is something I've experienced from fellow Catholics. When they find out you're gay but still accept the Church's teaching, GASP, here is PROOF that the Church isn't homophobic, let us THRUST IT IN THE GAY FACES. At least, a certain subset of them do.
This can be really damaging. In addition to all the normal burdens that come with any Christian life, and the burdens that come with life as a queer person, *and* the peculiar burdens of being a queer Christian, you now also have to deal with expectations that you're a paragon.
Worse still, your story can be weaponized against other queer people. It's happened with me. Several years ago, a regular reader of mine popped up on another gay Christian's blog, in which the author was lamenting how painful a traditional-ethic life can be for gay people;
this reader of mine replied to this suffering with "Yawn," and proceeded to try and use my story as a counterexample, despite the fact that most of my blog at the time was about how hard it is to be a gay Catholic ... and apparently without knowing he was talking to my ex.
I was livid, and read him to filth. He never commented on my blog (or, as far as I know, my ex's) again. But he is not the last person I've seen express boredom and scorn when asked to empathize with the pain of queer Christians: there was another horrifying example last year,
in which a Catholic blogger and a Dominican priest sneered at an article in the NYT about gay priests, scolded them for coming out, and paraded their lack of sympathy, all while showing they had not really paid attention to what the article actually said: http://mudbloodcatholic.blogspot.com/2019/03/stop-crying.html
All this is because, at root, mascotting and scapegoating are, psychologically, the same behavior. Neither of them treats their "target" as human: the targets become symbols of forces or trends that the mascotter or scapegoater has certain feelings about.
If the feelings are positive, the target becomes a mascot; if they're negative, the target becomes a scapegoat; either way, they become a cartoon or a puppet, and any real details that interfere with assignment to these categories are conveniently ignored.
I think this is what a lot of ethnic/cultural minorities are objecting to when they complain of representations that most white people see as neutral or positive -- having their humanity reduced to puppet status. And may be hard to imagine if it hasn't happened to you.
I might add to this thread later. For now, I give you our dark mother's video which prompted it:
