Tolerance

Yesterday I was presented to an interesting article about how Atlus treats transgenders and homosexuals in its games. The writer claim we should boycott Atlus games by what he perceive as homophobia and transphobia from such games. While I don`t have anything against the writer perception and opinions on such themes, I have something to say about how he treated someone who disagreed with him.

In the moment someone spoke something in disagreement with the author, his first reactions was to make it seems that any opinion who aren't just agreeing with him was made by transphobic and homophobic individuals, and therefore not worth any consideration. This just show how much of a hater the author himself is.

The fact that someone disagree with you does not make this person a hater. If I disagree with an african-american I am not automatically a racist just because I look white (I am of mixed jew/native/european blood). If I disagree with a women that don't make me a sexist just because I am a man. if I disagree with a person who is not heterosexual this don't make me a hater.

Apparently, the author of such article doesn't believe that. He seems to believe that every single person out there is a hater and want to make his life miserable. He shows that any one who don't completely support his opinions are haters and therefore don't have a right to have an opinion on the matter. This, in the end is just prejudice of his part. And yes, minorities who are victims of prejudices can be as prejudicial to others as well.

This is inverse prejudice, where the victims of prejudice just start to expect that everyone will victimize them and that every single time someone do something they quite don't agree with towards their group they treat it as prejudice, as someone who don't see what he see because he is either oblivious to the matter or worst, a hater.

In the end, I feel the author, by the way he treated the issue at hand in his article and specially the way he treated anyone who didn't agree 100% with his opinion is at fault of prejudice. He just assumed that the only way someone could disagree with him, and handled this way, is to that person to be transphobic. It never occurred to him that people can and probably will disagree with him. That they don't feel or don't analyzed things like he do. And in the moment he start attacking the different opinion, he is not better than the haters.

Tolerance is not a one-way road. You cannot expect to be accepted as you are when you don't accept others as they are. Expecting people to be nice to you just because you are different while behaving like the same people you say you hate make you as bad as them.

Of course I defend that games and all forms of media should respect all kind of different people, and that everyone should treat everyone as they want to be treated back. This is a two way road. You don't receive respect if you don't respect back. Being part of a minority don't give an automatic license to be an asshole.

Tolerance must come from everyone, everywhere, every time. It is not something you can ask to others to have while you don't have it in you.