Yeah, I think that's at least a big part of it. Purity culture has been creeping further and further into the US/maybe other Western too way of being for the last twenty years (at least), so even people who lean left and weren't raised in a Christian cult of virginity have internalized it to some degree. There's far less "yeah, it has problems, but I love it" than there was even when I was in college earlier this decade.
I'm also wondering (and this is me going out really far on a limb) if maybe trauma has something to do with it? I suspect that most of the people doing this (not just about B99, but also SU, and, uh, IDK what the others are but I know I've seen similar discussions around them) are mostly abuse survivors (likely also heavily queer and neurodivergent as well). I know that abuse survivors can very easily fall into this sort of dichotomizing thinking, that either something is pure good or pure evil.
And it makes sense to develop such a thing, because most abusers swing between lovey-dovey one moment and then horrible the next, and reminding yourself "no, the abuse makes the whole relationship bad" is a way of surviving, of getting and keeping yourself away. But once you're OUT and reasonably safe, it's a really awful thing to keep carrying around with you. And it's hard to acknowledge that this survival mechanism is hurting you now, and harder still to get rid of it.
Which doesn't excuse the harassment, of course. There's no excuse for that. These people need to find ways of coping with their trauma that don't hurt others.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2019-12-16 08:34 pm (UTC)I'm also wondering (and this is me going out really far on a limb) if maybe trauma has something to do with it? I suspect that most of the people doing this (not just about B99, but also SU, and, uh, IDK what the others are but I know I've seen similar discussions around them) are mostly abuse survivors (likely also heavily queer and neurodivergent as well). I know that abuse survivors can very easily fall into this sort of dichotomizing thinking, that either something is pure good or pure evil.
And it makes sense to develop such a thing, because most abusers swing between lovey-dovey one moment and then horrible the next, and reminding yourself "no, the abuse makes the whole relationship bad" is a way of surviving, of getting and keeping yourself away. But once you're OUT and reasonably safe, it's a really awful thing to keep carrying around with you. And it's hard to acknowledge that this survival mechanism is hurting you now, and harder still to get rid of it.
Which doesn't excuse the harassment, of course. There's no excuse for that. These people need to find ways of coping with their trauma that don't hurt others.