Oh absolutely, and the MC does adapt; it just takes him some time, as you said happens for some people :] I do think the 'bounce off' part is important to at least acknowledge though; I feel like a common pitfall of stories that try to open the reader's mind is they have the MC 'learn the lesson' too quickly, and it just doesn't feel organic; deeply ingrained biases don't just disappear overnight once you 'see the light' and make you a perfectly enlightened person who never slips back into old habits and patterns of thinking. I feel like this is a big part of what makes a story feel 'preachy'
Haha, I admit I'm guilty of using 'toxic' as a shorthand for some behavior patterns that hurt others But I'm also frustrated with society's tendency to attribute malicious intent behind those behaviours ('laziness', 'selfishness', 'attention-seeking', 'manipulation' etc) when it's absolutely not necessary and incredibly hurtful when it's wrong. As well as society's perception that only 'good' people (who have literally done nothing wrong and never hurt anyone, ever (aka no-one, really)) 'deserve' good things. I wish we'd help mentally ill people not because they 'deserve' it (which inevitable leads to policing the line between 'deserving' and 'undeserving'), but because making people's lives better is always good, regardless of who it is. If you made a 'bad' person happy, who cares? So much of the worst of humanity comes from our seemingly intractable sense of outrage at the idea that other people might get things they don’t deserve.
Even flinching from a hug? I thought the 'toxicity' people complained about was more stuff like not respecting other people's boundaries (ironically, not hugging people who don't like it is an important part of respecting people's boundaries). Though I guess that sounds like something the Autism Speaks-type advocates would do ...
Interesting ... I've been thinking about the pros and cons of 'canonically' revealing a character's identity, and at what time. Looks like there's benefits to doing so, but also benefits to not starting off with it revealed so readers don't get locked into a preconception ...
... I'm tempted to perhaps just write characters without revealing their disability, and only reveal it if audience members with the same disability pick up on it Cowardly perhaps, but hopefully it doesn't hit people badly like that if I never said I was trying to portray their disability? (I also get the feeling some people have 'disability impostor syndrome' where even if they know for a fact they have the disability, they're afraid they're depicting it 'incorrectly' and some people really do police the experiences of other disabled people even though the experience of a disability (esp. mental ones) vary from person to person)
Oh yeah; and there are two sides of the coin here - 'I'm disabled so I can't be ableist', and 'you're ableist, so you're not 'valid' as a disabled person'. On the one hand, you don't want to demonize the ableist disabled person for not being the 'perfect victim', and on the other hand, as you said, you still need to look at your own biases when comes to your characters, even if you're disabled yourself XD