En svensk tiger

I know there has been controversy surrounding the 20th episode of “Gossip Girl’s” fourth season. I know there are people who keep tweeting you and contacting you, telling you to officially apologise for condoning abuse. From what I understand you are considering doing just that.

Many of these people who so passionately speak against abuse are behaving very questionably themselves. Many of them have been harassing those who disagree, threatening them, slandering them. I have been subjected to this, friends of mine have been subjected to this, countless people I don’t know have been subjected to this. All in the name of speaking up against abuse. All in the name of taking a moral high ground.

Perhaps they feel that the ends justify the means and you must fight fire with fire. That harassing those who don’t hate Chuck Bass and who still ship Chair is a price worth paying for taking a stand against abuse.

Personally I think it’s hypocrisy.

Chuck and Blair are fictional characters. The scene in 420 was bad but no flesh and blood human got hurt. Chuck pushed Blair down on a sofa and punched a glass wall, causing a cut on her cheek. Ed Westwick did not hurt Leighton Meester and she did not end up with a cut on her face, nor did any real human being end up with their feelings hurt. Fictional characters were involved. I’m not saying that you can put fictional characters through anything and it is okay and has no consequence. I’m just trying to put things in perspective.

Because the people these anti-abuse enthusiast harass on the Internet are real. I’m real. I’m a flesh and blood person with real feelings. I have been called evil by these people, someone posted a large GIF that just said “FUCK YOU” over and over directed at me, I have been yelled at on twitter by complete strangers for tweeting that I like Chuck and Chair. I have even been threatened. And I am one of the lucky ones. Many others have been subjected to far worse. People are being harassed on tumblr, on twitter, on fanfiction sites. There are a lot of fanfiction writers who have been sought out by strangers who have reviewed their stories just to tell them that they are awful human beings for writing Chair stories and deserve to be sold into sexual slavery. Far worse comments than that have been made to people just because they enjoy Chuck and Chair. People are afraid to post on many message boards because they are being harassed. People are being harassed on facebook. There’s a tumblr called “fuckingchairfans” devoted to hating on those who like Chuck and Blair. Whatever Chuck does to Blair no real living human gets hurt by it. These comments and these threats hurt actual people, many of whom are teenagers. Many of whom feel a tight knot in their stomach when they check their twitter feed or tumblr responses. That is the difference.

I hear these activists saying that there are no excuses for Chuck’s behavior. Then they should be viewed in the same light. There are no excuses for their behavior. If it’s not okay for Chuck to drunkenly punch a wall when he loses the love of his life then it’s not okay to belittle, mock and insult others when they like characters or couples that you don’t or slander the actors portraying the characters in question. Especially not when the former only hurts people who are made up and the latter hurts people who are very much real.

Standing up for what you believe in is admirable. But I know one thing for sure. People who are truly against abuse do not bully others online. People who think: “You’ll never marry anyone else. You’re mine” is a horrible thing to say do not tell others that they deserve to have their head cut off for enjoying a work of fiction. People who are concerned with the emotional well-being of others do not harass strangers on the Internet. People who are concerned with what message is being sent do not campaign for their cause through slander, harassment and bullying. Nowhere in this type of behavior do I see anything that proves they feel abuse is wrong or that their slogans are more than empty words. If anything I think they are vastly damaging all serious campaigns against abuse not to mention disrespecting the people who experience it in real life. Whatever this campaign of theirs is about the word “abuse” is a means to an end and not the issue they are fighting. You do not fight abuse by abusing others.

I am asking you not to give in to bullying. I am asking you not to show them that harassments and threats are rewarded.

You know what your intentions were with the scene in episode 420. Stand by it. Don’t let bullies dictate what you should say or do. If you do then what have you actually gained? You’ve proved that abuse on a TV show is wrong (which we all knew already) but emotionally abusing strangers in real life over a TV show is right.

Remember you have support. For every person out there who’s complaining there are numerous who support you. If you give in to the bullies now you will have taught them that their behavior is the proper way to get your attention and to get their way. If you honestly feel that you should apologise for episode 420 then do so on your own terms. But logic tells me that if you felt that way you would have apologised already. Or not written that scene at all, not directed it that way, not have included it in the episode.

Remember the vast majority of the viewers were not offended by episode 420. Remember real abuse victims have said they were not offended and some have said they are more offended by people equating Chuck’s actions to the pain and humiliation they have suffered. Remember that many of the activists have also been crying “abuse” over Chuck getting Blair a transfer to Columbia in season three. Remember that you know what defines abuse and you know whether or not you’ve written a scene to portray it. Remember that characters on other shows are doing far worse things to each other and nobody is morally outraged.

Stand your ground. Keep in mind what I’m sure you have been keeping in mind all along, that you can never please everybody and you shouldn’t let any fangroup dictate what you should or should not do.

Thank you for your time and your attention.

destinedforfame:

(Source: slutcircus)

I don’t condone abuse. Not in the slightest. Abuse is horrible, horrifying, degrading and wrong on every level.

I also don’t condone using the term “abuse” to legitimise your hatred for a fictional character or pairing.



When it comes to fiction there will always be differences of opinion. You’ll never find a movie, book or TV-show where everybody loves the same character or hates the same character or views a situation the exact same way. Among Internet fandom this often leads to debate and in some cases fan wars. Few things draw as much passion as romantic pairings, whether you love a couple together (i.e. ship them) or hate them together. Shippers will passionately defend their couple and those who dislike them together will often passionately tell you why they hate them together. Especially if one half of the ship can be paired with another character they’d rather see him/her with.

The problem with this is that it’s all subjective. I can ship Mulder and Scully on “the X-Files” with all my heart, think that Rhett and Scarlett from “Gone with the Wind” are the best couple in fiction ever, love Chuck and Blair on “Gossip Girl” more than I like the show they’re actually on. Or I can think Mulder and Scully have zero chemistry, view Rhett and Scarlett as two mismatched people who only ever made each other miserable or think Chuck and Blair are toxic together. Either way it all comes down to opinion. I cannot prove to anyone else why I am right and they are wrong. Which is why, I think, people who dislike a couple together are so eager to use terms like “abusive” or “misogynistic” to support their hatred. It’s used to prove that their side is right. Because you can’t ship a couple where one abuses the other, right? If you do you condone abuse, don’t you?



Here’s my problem with this: Using terms like “abuse” and “misogyny” to validate your hatred for fictional pairings is damaging to the real problems. It belittles it and it waters down the term. I cannot tell you how many people cried “abusive” in season three of “Gossip Girl” when Blair Waldorf found out she had gotten a transfer from NYU to Columbia thanks to Chuck Bass sending in an application for her. A situation where a guy knew his girlfriend at the time was miserable at the college she was attending and knew she was too proud to admit it so he sent in an application to the school she wanted to attend instead. If she didn’t want to transfer all she had to do was decline. He helped give her an opportunity but it was up to her to choose whether or not she wanted to take it. I dare anyone to look up the term “abusive” in a dictionary and find anything there that goes with that scenario. Claiming it was abusive or controlling is a mockery of real abuse and the women (and men) who suffer it on a daily basis.

Here’s what I know about abusers: They belittle their partner, tell them things like “you are nothing without me” and “you’re lucky I love you because no one else ever could”. They try to control their partner. They try to isolate their partner from their friends and family. Sexual abusers force themselves sexually on their partner, obviously. Physical abusers use physical violence or the threat of physical violence. Abusers do these things repeatedly, breaking down their partner over time.

Here’s what I know about Chuck and Blair on “Gossip Girl”: Chuck builds Blair up, saying things like “you’re special enough on your own”, “you’re ten times hotter than any of those girls”, telling Nate “it’s stupid for you to want her to be anything other than what she is” when Nate complained she wouldn’t change for him. Chuck wants Blair to have a good relationship with her friends and family and helped her and Serena make up after their big season three fight. Chuck has never tried to force himself on Blair sexually. In episode 420 he kissed her neck rather intensely and pushed her down on a sofa but when she told him to stop he stopped. A sexual abuser would not have stopped. Chuck has never been physically violent with Blair (she, however, has woken him up by hitting him, has pulled his hair, has slapped him) and he wasn’t in 420. He punched a glass wall three feet away from her. That happened once. It is not a pattern by any means. He has never tried to control her, not even with the infamous IP storyline. What he did was wrong on every level but he did not force her to do anything against her will. There’s a world of difference between being wrong and being abusive. A world of difference between doing something bad and doing something abusive.



The way you view any given scene of an episode depends a lot on what you think of the characters when you begin to watch. If you hate the idea of Chuck and Blair together then you’re going to view any scene between them as negatively as possible. If you’re a Chair shipper you’re going to view any scene as positively as possible. If you hate Chuck you’re likely to view anything he does from a perspective of him being a bad person. If you like Chuck you’re likely to view the things he does with sympathy. The truth probably lies somewhere in the middle between these two opinions.

Everyone is entitled to their own viewpoint and I don’t have a problem with people hating Chair. I don’t even have a hard time understanding why some people don’t like them together. What I have a problem with is when people try to use real life issues, very serious real life issues, to validate their dislike. I find it disrespectful. Not disrespectful of the characters or the writers or the producers but of the people who live with real abuse. People whose partners would not have hit the glass wall but hit them instead. People whose partners would have tried to isolate them from their friends instead of help them mend their friendships. People whose partners would never in a blue moon support, much less actively help, them transferring to a school they’d rather be attending. People whose partners would tell them they are nothing instead of telling them they are everything.



I find it interesting that so many of the people who call Chuck an abuser claim to have been abused themselves. Some might have been, I don’t know. I just find it strange that so many people who dislike Chuck have apparently been in abusive relationships themselves, have been in situations similar to the IP storyline of season three, have known people just like Chuck Bass in real life and been abused by them. Nearly all of them have apparently also been in Chuck’s shoes, having been abandoned by friends and family, having found out their thought-to-be-dead mother is actually alive and then been conned by her, have been screwed over by their uncle on more than one occasion, have found out their father might have murdered someone, have lost the love of their life to a prince/princess and been drunk off their asses while hearing the news, all before the age of twenty. And they all agree that they definitely would never react like Chuck did because only bad people react with frustration in situations like that.

Who knows, maybe they all have been in those situations? I have no way of knowing. But I wouldn’t put it past people to claim they have self-experienced knowledge in order to validate their arguments. I’ve seen that happen before, it’s neither new nor unique for people to do that, on both sides of the argument. I personally have never been in an abusive relationship and I have never been in a situation even remotely similar to what Chuck goes through on the show. I do however know people who have been in abusive relationships. None of them think Chuck is an abusive character and most of them feel it’s insulting to what they have experienced to hear that people cry “abuse” over the things Chuck does.

My point is that everyone should think long and hard before crying “abuse”. If you have suffered through abuse in real life and you think Chuck is abusing Blair then I have complete respect for that and I very much respect your viewpoint of the relationship. But if you have not and you’re just claiming such to validate your arguments you should keep your mouth shut. Have enough respect for the people who are subjected to abuse as to not use their pain to legitimize your hatred. That also goes for those who do not claim to have suffered through abuse but who happily, and self-righteously, use the term to describe the pairing without thinking twice about those who experience it for real. No one gave you the right to be a spokesperson for abuse victims, especially not when you’re not using it to help them but to get to “win” over the shippers.



Then there’s the issue of misogyny. Here’s a bit of fact: If a man does something bad to a woman that’s not misogynistic. If a man does something bad to a woman because she is a woman that is misogynistic. Chuck does bad things, not even the most avid Chuck supporter claims otherwise. However he does bad things to both women and men. For that matter so does Blair, so does Serena, so does Nate, so does Dan, so does Jenny, so does Vanessa, so does Rufus and so does Lily. All characters on this show do this.

Chuck thinks Lily does an amazing job running Chuck’s father’s company. Chuck admires Blair’s intelligence and passion. Chuck is the one character on this show who never judges Serena for her lifestyle (he called her trainwreck once after she had ruined a business meeting for him but that’s all). In fact Chuck takes a whole lot of crap from Serena yet he always comes through for her when she needs help. Chuck has often showed both respect and admiration for the female characters on this show. When he does bad things to women it has nothing to do with him hating women. There is a world of difference.

Whenever I read comments on message boards where people call Chuck misogynistic I’m surprised with how eager people are to use this term without knowing what it means and without caring that it’s things like that that makes some people roll their eyes at feminism. There are women out there who are being executed for having been raped, but the world must come to an end because a character on a TV show sent in an application to Columbia for his girlfriend. It also surprises me to no end how a lot of people call Chuck misogynistic while they also like to praise Dan Humphrey. Dan who got his plaid boxers in a twist when his girlfriend Vanessa was more successful than him. Dan who tried to sabotage her so that she would lose her spot at Tish and he would get it instead. Dan who cheated on her and was not sorry. Dan who jumped into bed with her again and strung her along while was actually pining for Serena. Dan who left her to look after his infant, letting her believe they could be like a family, while he ran after Serena. Dan who spend the first two seasons of the show criticising Serena for not living up to his ideal of a perfect woman. Dan who kept meddling in his little sister’s love life because he felt he had to protect her from losing her virginity.

I don’t consider Dan Humphrey a misogynist and I don’t have a problem with people loving him but I do take issue with people calling Chuck a misogynistic jerk and Dan a moral compass. Neither one of them is a villain and neither one of them is a hero. Both have good sides and bad sides. But if you’re going to get up on a high horse and preach about misogyny then you need to be consistent about it and not glorify or ignore what the other characters do. Be consistent or be quiet.



At the end of the day this is a TV-show. It’s great that so many people are passionately against abuse but why aren’t these people channelling that passion and that energy into something that actually matters? Why aren’t they out there trying to help women (and men) who are subjected to this in real life? Why aren’t they trying to help the support groups for these individuals? If there are people out there who will start abusing their partner because they watched episode 420 of “Gossip Girl”, or who will think they should put up with abuse because they watched that episode, then their problems go way beyond anything a TV show could ever have any real affect on.

Finally, let’s not forget how the episode ended. When Chuck punched the glass wall Blair left. The episode ends with her engaged to another man. Chuck ends up alone and miserable, his best friend turning against him. If that sends the message “Chuck’s actions were okay” then we did not watch the same episode of the same show.