u/Cautious-Cherry-5542

EDIT: Please look at my comment of my situation before further discussion.

We had a symposium on the topic, "What is love?" and it started off as a light discussion from each of the AoKs, for example defining love from art, history, bio, chemistry's perspectives, etc.

Someone brought up ethics and to summarize, their statement was "Love ceases to be love the moment respect is gone in the relationship and when people try to control, hurt, mistreat, etc. the other person". I thought no one should question this because it's.. obvious??

However, people started to disagree. It started off with saying "Love can manifest in unhealthy forms" but soon derailed into "Abuse is a form of love"??? This one guy kept on saying "Abuse is a way of expressing love for some people" and got so mad when I tried to disagree???

It wasn't just one person taking this stance. Four people were saying different versions of this, and three of them were so mad and passionate about it as well. The fourth person seemed to realize something was wrong, as he said "I don't think it's good or healthy", but he still said "I just think it can be a form of love! I just don't view love as a pure thing as you do!"

At some point, as we were going back and forth, the guy said, "If someone grew up in an environment where abuse is normalized and then abuses their partner, is that not love?" No it's not??? And when I said that much he got even angrier..?

Oh, before this he also said we should "distinguish between different types of abuse" and said, "If someone makes a mistake to you do they not love you?"

Previously, I said "Love can be paradoxical because it can be both extremely selfish and extremely altruistic." Another guy went off of this and said "You said it yourself! Love is paradoxical and selfish, so abuse can be a form of love!" ???

Our teacher was heavily traumatized. He wanted the discussion to be about the mathematical and psychological etc. aspects of love, NOT about "Is abuse love?" He had to butt in and force someone else to talk about a different topic because we were 3 seconds away from throwing hands.

I am traumatized after this. Is this a normal TOK experience, or is our school cooked??

+ I can't believe this is a discussion in a "woke" international school among 17-18 grown ahh people

DISCLAIMER: NOT A GENERALIZATION OF THE MILGRAM FANDOM OR AMANE FANS. This is targetted to a very specific group of Amane fans and like 85% of the people here are not in that group. I did notice that specific group tends to get very vocal in the fandom, so here we are. I'll be referring to this specific group as the Batons. Also, English is my second language, so the quality of this post will be worse than Mahiru's writing.

I noticed an Amane guilty spike recently. I don't think it's something Inno-ers need to worry about because she still has quite a high Inno majority, but I personally think a big part of it can be attributed to the Batons of our fandom.

To start with, I know sometimes it's done to be funny like people who go like "vote muu inno look at that face card" or "if u vote kazui guilty u genuinely dont have any music taste" or "vote kotoko guilty and i die with my wife", etc etc.

What differentiates Batons is that unlike many of these "insults", you can just tell they're genuine and unexaggerated, like they actually, wholeheartedly believe voting her Guilty makes you a child abuser? This is hard to explain, but I just came from a comment that lengthily talked about how voting her guilty means you want her to suffer and be tortured for all eternity even though she was abused and brainwashed. I understand what they were trying to say, but.. seriously? Did it have to be worded like that?

If it was a mere pet peeve, I wouldn't be writing this post, but this has gotten to the point it has started to impact the voting.

I'm part of the Korean community(which takes up a fairly major part of the votes), and people literally say "omg ill vote her guilty sheerly because of the annoying Western Amane fans". This started with someone complaining about a Baton equating Amane guilty voters to her mom and her cult and basically a child murderer.

So a PSA of sorts, I guess? I can tell you a LOT of Korean fans out there are voting her guilty right now not for any other reason apart from spite on the Batons. Personally, I think arguments I've seen on both ends are valid(as it has been for many prisoners), but the Batons have been quite unpleasantly vocal and intense in their opinions.

On a bit of a side note, the fandom as a whole, both Eastern and Western, should be more considerate of personal experiences and backgrounds that may lead to sensitivity towards a certain verdict.

We should recall there are people with personal experiences related to abuse and religious abuse who feel strongly for Amane's Inno verdict, which I think has been recognized relatively well, but we should recall there are people with personal experiences related to cults(especially in Korea and Japan!!!) which may make them feel strongly for the Guilty verdict.

I saw someone who's a steady Amane guilty-er who voted that way because of the personal damage they suffered from a sibling who fell victim to a Korean cult and an innocent vote, to them, felt like continuing to perpetuate her harmful ideologies and forgiving how she actively harmed others(Shidou & Mahiru) knowing the consequences when she herself was a victim. They talked about forgiving the case of her mother, but what she did to Shidou and Mahiru specifically mirrored their sibling's actions and hit a sensitive spot.

So thank you for reading this long, incoherent post, and I hope we can continue to grow as a fandom.