i cannot emphasize enough that if "ship and let ship" actually stopped at "don't have shipping wars over harmless differences in opinion" and "don't attack people for shipping harmless things you don't like", it would be fine.

but instead it's used to defend shipping twelve year olds with forty year olds, shipping twins with each other, shipping canonically gay men with women, shipping characters with their abusers, and other such definitely-not-harmless nonsense.

and if "don't like, don't read" stopped at stuff like high school aus, zombie apocalypse aus, and other genres and tropes that just not everybody is into, it would be fine.

but it's used to deflect any criticism of bigoted fan content, even if the criticism isn't saying you shouldn't make that kind of fan content, just pointing out what's potentially harmful about it. it's essentially used to argue that there shouldn't be criticism of fan content.

if "your kink is not my kink (and that's okay)" was about stuff like latex fetish, dominance/submission, yiffing, literally whatever "weird" but consensual shit, that would be fine.

but it gets used to defend the sexual depiction of child abuse and the fetishization of deeply racist stereotypes.

and if you can't see why people would distrust those slogans after seeing so much of this shit over the years, if you can't see how they've become dogwhistles for predators and people defending predators, then i don't know what else to tell you.