I'll mention again the therapy group I was in, and the enlightening experience of seeing people literally not understand the simplest sentence-- not be able to grasp its overt content-- if it was something they didn't want to hear. What part of 'I think you treated her badly' is incomprehensible? All of it, to the person in question. The words had no meaning for him, and he kept asking what we were saying. Not 'how am I not treating her well?' which would have indicated that something got through, but 'what do you mean?' 'I don't understand, what are you saying?'
I wish I'd bookmarked the person, some time back, who said they don't believe when someone apologizes right away for this kind of fail. Processing takes time, they said; possibly they didn't say it follows the five stages of grief, but one could argue it does, if you swap 'partial concession' for 'bargaining'. Denial, anger, 'well maybe you're right about this but you didn't have to be so personal about it', depression, acceptance. Unquestioned and entrenched attitudes don't change overnight. And if the groundwork was already in place for them to understand why, say, it was wrong to draw their illustrations using actual photographs of the actual people involved in the disaster-- err, why did they do it? From utter cluelessness to 'OMG I'm sorry what was I *thinking*??' in one day kind of boggles me. Maybe there are people who do Road to Damascus conversions, but it's not how I or anyone I've dealt with works, alas.
An overwhelming howl of protest is good-- it lets everyone know that yeah, it's not just a few people who are having problems with a work. Establishes and confirms norms and values. But expecting a complete and immediate turnaround on the offender's part is, at the very least, unrealistic; and like the poster mentioned in the preceding paragraph, I'm not quite sure I believe it when it happens.
Oh, and in case metafandom doesn't read my user's info, no you may not link this.
