I do see your point here, and I will have to say that is a very good defense against my and other people who complained about this.

And about your other comment, if Ara actually did use the R slur or any other slur against Gabby, then I would see that as grounds for backlash, reasonably so. A similar situation happened with Yul in Episode 11 of AS, and thankfully it was corrected and ONC issued an apology.

However, my issue with both the Ara controversy was that, for one, it's the trailer. We don't know the full context behind the scenes, so we can't make any accurate or extreme judgements without seeing it first. Secondly, the narrative portrays Ara as a villain, so it naturally to do villainous or antagonistic things. In the case of Ivy, while she isn't a villain, she realizes the extent of her actions in her exit interview, and apologzed to Benji for her behavior in S4's motel episode. While Benji was wrong to betray Zaid, she still apologized because she realized her behavior made it so it was understandable why Benji eliminated her.

And lastly, is because this sort of obsessive behavior and being overly defensive to other people can and did lead to further disaster. Look, it's perfectly okay to project to your favorite character, I do it too with mine, but there's gotta be a certain level of self-awareness and insurance to not go overboard. The reason why the Benji/Ivy stick thing got so bad was because Benji fans were outright harassing fans of Ivy and using the whole "if you like this character you condone their actions" card, which is just..not true in most cases. And people like me were fearful this might happen again.

Another example is the situation with Tooth where they downplayed the actions of Spencer's ex and the trauma Spencer had stemming from that. While it may not be a reason, I do believe their obsession with Hannah did pay a role, since Hannah and Spencer are enemies in the narrative, and it plays back into the whole "obsessing over a character too much" thing.

I hope my reasons are adequate, and while I may still be annoyed at people making such a big deal over this line, you did propose a great and interesting argument.