“You know, I’ve seen some people say they find it harder to root for the f/f ship when the guy is this nice” I feel like people who really thirst for femslash content are always pigeonholed into just being about diversity. You have to be like I really love this couple that HAPPENS to be two women not to get flak if the male character chill. Even without the cheating bit,f/f couples get held at a higher standard just to be empathize with.

Hmmmm, that’s an interesting point. But saying the opposite, that you like a ship because it’s two women (although as you know, it’s never just that, that’s the start of a whole bunch of requirements that have to be checked to be into something–and look at how I’m justifying it even here, lol) also gets dismissed. That’s why people try to say it’s not just about two women in the first place.

People act like fandom culture’s changed recently with how diversity is used as a tool to bludgeon others into forcing your ship’s superiority, but ship wars have been a thing for a long time, this is just another tool to win them, and one that was seen as a disadvantage not too long ago. Or even now, when you have f/f relationships or m/f relationships involving POC in mainstream media, there’s a backlash. It’s pretty understandable that people try to counter that and try to justify their ship. But of course it gets messy, and the original ship war culture where it can’t just be defending a ship but putting down others distorts it. So then it becomes about how if you don’t ship something, you’re against the very thing it offers, e.g. homophobic for not shipping this f/f couple, racist for not shipping this other couple, which is of course going too far to win a ship war. BUT sometimes people who hate a ship ARE homophobic or racist! The very roots of where we are now are so convoluted and messy, there’s no easy platitude where it’s like, oh, you should just ship and let ship. I mean, as a personal approach, that is mine, but it’s only so easy for me because other people have already fought for so much.

But going back to your point, we’re already aware of the hate f/f ships get for existing, and then if there’s cheating it’s worse, and then if it’s cheating where the guy is nice, well, the perception and external gaze we’re always of seems that much worse. I don’t know if that’s what it was for the people who I saw say that, probably not, they may just be thinking, this guy’s so nice, but it’s hard to keep all those other elements out, they’re such a part of us.