sashalilyrat:

[warnings for this post and included source links: buckets and buckets of ableism, especially anti-autism ableism, including uncensored slurs, mentions of abuse and murder, classism, transmisogyny, misgendering, rape apologism, and mentions of other -isms and slavery. please also note that most of the source links contain photographs of the actor in question.]

you know what? I’m pleased that the the majority of Marvel fandom has, from what I’ve seen, taken a staunchly Do Not Want attitude towards the probable casting of Benedict Cumberbatch as Doctor Strange

but I am really, really sick of the stock answer to “why don’t you want Cumberbatch to play Strange?” being given as simply “because he’s yet another white cishet dude (and Strange doesn’t need to be white)”

I mean please don’t get me wrong, I absolutely agree that the endless parade of white cishet dudes leading Marvel films is racist and boring as fuck and that casting a MoC as Strange instead would be wonderful; that is certainly one totally valid reason to be highly disappointed and frustrated with the (not-yet-officially-official-but-all-signs-point-to-highly-likely) casting of Cumberbatch, yes

but can we please, please, PLEASE - I am literally begging here - please acknowledge that the problem with Cumberbatch specifically, and the reason so many people are so upset about this rumour, isn’t only that he’s ‘another white cishet dude’

the more pressing issue is that he’s specifically a white cishet dude who has said and done some incredibly vile and disgustingly bigoted things and as a result he is a walking trigger to a sizeable amount of people

this is not just a case of, as I’ve seen people claim, “tumblr collectively deciding to turn on him just because he’s white and he’s said a few slightly problematic things and tumblr is fickle like that”

this is a man who prepared for the role of an iconic fictional monster - a literal nonhuman creature (albeit played in a supposedly sympathetic reimagining) - by watching autistic children like zoo animals (presumably without their consent) and deliberately copying their mannerisms and movement, and publicly described these children as “very upsetting” and “not fully evolved”

who, three years later, apparently has not learned at all from being called out (not nearly enough) on this vileness because he continues to reference this ‘research’ and describes a 17-year-old autistic person as “[having the] the mental age of a one and a half year old. Everything was just about bodily functions. Smell. Sexual arousal. Shitting. Whatever…”

who furthermore has, on multiple occasions, said that’s it’s ‘dangerous’ and ‘lazy’ to interpret any of his characters as autistic or otherwise neurodivergent (including Alan Turing, an actual human being posthumously widely regarded as autistic) because he’s met people with “those conditions” and it’s “a real struggle all the time” and he doesn’t want to “offer false hope for people going through the reality of it” (and also casually throws around the term ‘sociopath’ for good measure), despite the fact that the vast majority of people who headcanon characters as autistic are actual autistic people desperate for positive representation

a man who has literally said things about autistic people identical to things our abusers have said to us, identical to the things that allistic parents say to justify murdering their own children

(need I point out that a fairly large proportion of people in Marvel fandom are neurodivergent?)

a man who unabashedly proclaims that disability should be a punishment for supposed wrongdoing, that if people don’t live (his idea of) “morally decent, contributing lives” then “It makes me want to belt them, make them lame for a bit so they’re dependent on other people’s mercy…”

who said that the Edwardian British class system was “honourable” because “there was a duty of care from the top down”, and has repeatedly complained about “posh bashing” in modern Britain

who continually misgendered Chelsea Manning without even a single attempt to correct himself, and simultaneously defended rapist Julian Assange saying the sexual assault claims were “character assassination”

(and this is just the tip of the iceberg, I’m literally just picking out a few of the most clearly horrific quotes here; I haven’t even touched the countless examples of his more ‘casual’ ableism or his racism or misogyny or heterosexism or ace-erasure or fat-shaming or mansplaining or fandom-shaming… nor the fact that he apparently refused to change his surname to distance himself from his slave-trading ancestors even at his own mother’s request, merely because I can’t currently find a source for that, but I don’t doubt that it’s true)

and if you think that all that is just “a few slightly problematic things”, ignoring the countless people deeply hurt and triggered by his words and actions, then fuck you tbh

so yeah SIGH YET ANOTHER WHITE CISHET MAN, by all means complain (rightly!) about the continuing lack of diversity in the MCU, but look: I for one would accept pretty much any other boring-ass white cishet man in the role if I just never had to see and be triggered by Cumberbatch ever again, and I know there are many other people (particularly neurodivergent and disabled people) who feel the same

he’s not just ‘another white cishet dude’, the point is he’s a particularly vile one who has hurt and continues to hurt a lot of people

and can we just please, please, please stop ignoring that detail when people ask why Marvel-fandom-at-large doesn’t want him? please?

I don’t think that’s an unreasonable request