Reply to Topic
I think this is true, and good to point out. It's impossible to say you don't consume art from X because of Y without it reading as potentially aggressive, unless you go out of your way to say otherwise or something. It carries an implied criticism whether the person means to be critical or not.
I also think there's a distinction between just describing a reaction, and justifying it on a philosophical level. I used to be very scared of flying, and that fear was a real thing that I had to take into account even though I knew it wasn't rational. I just didn't defend the fear as a reasonable thing or suggest others should be more afraid. Similarly, I think it's totally reasonable for someone to say that the intellectual case for consuming art from <insert anyone personally problematic here> holds water, but that they just feel bad anyway, and it's not worth the trouble to push through that discomfort.
In short: it's possible to say this stuff as description, rather than prescription.
I also think there's a distinction between just describing a reaction, and justifying it on a philosophical level. I used to be very scared of flying, and that fear was a real thing that I had to take into account even though I knew it wasn't rational. I just didn't defend the fear as a reasonable thing or suggest others should be more afraid. Similarly, I think it's totally reasonable for someone to say that the intellectual case for consuming art from <insert anyone personally problematic here> holds water, but that they just feel bad anyway, and it's not worth the trouble to push through that discomfort.
In short: it's possible to say this stuff as description, rather than prescription.
We are all of us preachers in private or public capacities. We have no sooner uttered words than we have given impulse to other people to look at the world, or some small part of it, in our way. Thus caught up in a great web of inter-communication and inter-influence, we speak as rhetoricians affecting one another for good or ill.
Communication comes from a desire for communion. We feel apart and wish to be joined. Listening, real listening, is where we move towards the other. Talking is where we attempt to move the other towards us. Communication, as desiring, also comes from a place of pain of discomfort. We find something not quite right about the world and so we try to alter it with symbols. We're always prescribing in the sense that we're always seeking symbolic alteration, even even we're only prescribing a description ("Look at this."). And this means that there is an inevitable moral aspect to all communication. And thus we're never entirely above criticism when we speak, as we're always prescribing. Albeit, not every mild prescription (e.g., of a description) should be treated as a Fire and Brimstone sermon and attacked as an exorbitant demand placed on the hearer.
