duchessmalva | sample bad discourse

as an example, here's some stuff i've seen on my dash in the past week.

any of you guys know about tumblr user zubat, aka alex yrigoyen? it's come out recently that they have been, among other things, scamming people out of thousands of dollars through a fake trans charity they created, lying about their race (namely, claiming to be native american and then speaking over actual native americans), lying about their occupation, stealing art/photos and claiming credit, et fucking cetera.

obviously, all of this is awful, but a few of the responses i've been hearing are also very bad:

people pointing out that alex is mentally ill, as if this justifies their actions in any way at all. as a mentally ill person, i always hate this kind of stuff, but i hate it even more when someone did something actually seriously terrible and people are acting like their mental illness is a Get Out Of Being Horrible Free card.
people insinuating that alex is not actually mentally ill due to a lack of proof that their illnesses have been officially diagnosed... as if you need a professional diagnosis to be mentally ill.
people doubting that alex is even trans/nonbinary. this is blatant transphobia no matter who it's coming from — the sentiment is "well, they were lying about everything else, why not their gender?" but if alex had been cis, no one would be saying this.

moving on from alex, the debate over whether or not straight cis people who are asexual or aromantic have a claim to the word "queer" continues, and the ace community in particular is really bending over backwards to try and justify this, often winding up being ridiculously homophobic in the process! the other day i saw someone use the term "homoantagonism." they were being serious.

and just this evening, a mutual of mine, who is a trans woman, was being told off by a cis anon for daring to headcanon a video game character as trans. the character in question? samus aran. the argument? samus is not conventionally feminine, so headcanoning her as trans is bad because... uh... because...

i think you get what i mean. we could definitely make Bad Discourse Wrap-Up into a thing.