Several “favorite” troll-y messages I get multiple times a month and the ways these arguments make no sense when applied to other common scenarios:

“Do you really think they’re going to listen to you?  Disney doesn’t care about your feelings, they care about money.”

This one is always funny because the question posits that I am some naive young thing who actually thinks Disney will deeply commiserate with my opinions.   I mean, is there a single person in the US that does not think about, discuss, and criticize aspects of their government?   Do you expect Obama to listen to you when you have an issue with foreign policy?   Does it matter that he doesn’t care about your hurt feelings?   You discuss these things because they are relevant- because they affect you and those around you in some way- because we’ve all been taught that the road to a successful government is a populace informed about its issues and policies.   We’re all taught that even a seemingly meaningless vote is important in some small way.  We vote with our choices and we vote with our voices.  

Of course, Disney (and media/society/whatever in general, which is really the full scope of what I talk about) is not as important or influential as a government.   But it’s kind of hard to refute that the social ideas we are exposed to day in and day out have no influence on what we do or how we think.   No one is born with an inherent understanding of how to function in modern society.   It is something you are taught.   And you are not taught it in a classroom; you are taught every day, in every way.   The way your parents talk to you- the television shows you watch- how other kids treat you if you are different from them- the ads you see at the bus stop.    They all shape whom we are and become.  You need to try and understand what you are absorbing.

“It’s an innocent, cute tale.”

Probably 90% of oppressive forces are not intentional acts but social norms re-asserting themselves through everyday actions and dialogue, and often through seemingly positive messages.   It doesn’t mean Disney or any other media company is the devil out to get us- it means that when everyone absorbs the same problematic messages at a subconscious level, these messages are inevitably going to assert themselves in the media people produce, regardless of media form.   If it’s a cute children’s tale it will be less obvious than it perhaps would be in an R rated adult film, but that doesn’t necessarily make it more acceptable.   If anything, the smooth mesh of innocence+bad messages (ex.) just makes it harder for a child to distinguish between the two. 

“It’s just a kid’s movie.”

As I sometimes refer back to- one of my followers once adeptly responded to this with something along the lines of, “Please read a book on child psychology if you really believe that.”   I don’t think anyone actually believes that though- if you don’t think what kids watch has an influence on how they perceive the world, then surely you would not be uncomfortable allowing your seven-year-old child to watch 2 hours of violent death scenes several times a week?   Maybe throw in some hardcore porn?   We like to limit what children are exposed to at certain ages because most of us really do realize that: children are impressionable, and that you can say something to them as many times as you like, but the movie will often stay in their brain a whole lot longer.  Not saying, of course, that Disney is equivalent to violent action movies or anything, but that the fact that it is a kid’s movie being watched by kids- those with the most flexible, malleable brains among us- should be cause for extra vigilance, and not easy dismissal.

“You guys should be discussing something that is actually important, like war or _insert cause here_.   Not representation in Disney movies, are you kidding me.”

Why assume people can only discuss or think about one or two topics, ever, or that the only topics we should ever discuss in lives are only, only those that concern the most serious issues (those that cause death or suffering are usually the examples given)?   No one really lives their life that way.   Why act as if you’re doing the world some great moral good by telling people not to discuss a legitimate problem?   You’re not better than us; you’re wasting even more time and space than the kid who spends five hours debating which Skittles flavor is better.

Why ignore the intersectionality of how bad representation is a reflection of real oppressions/ real oppressions are what cause things like bad representation?   Black people are far more likely than white people to not be shown in media, and when they are shown, are far more likely to be relegated to background roles, and those background roles are far more likely to be the role of the “bad person.”   To you, none of this “matters,” and yet this is exactly part of the larger social force that leads to the death of Trayvon Martin, assumed to be a drug dealing criminal until proven otherwise because he had the audacity to be walking around in a hoodie and fitting society’s stereotype of what a bad guy “looks like.”   And he mattered, didn’t he?   No injustice occurs in a social vacuum.