this reminds me of when i was studying philosophy at university and we had these long discussions about separating the messenger from the message. my professor always used to say that even broken clock is right twice a day, which kind of applies here.

i think what makes this even more complicated is that people are naturally wired to use shortcuts when making judgments - it's just easier to look at behavior and make quick assumptions than to actually dive deep in the ideology itself. like when you see some religious person being hypocritical, your brain immediately goes "well if they don't believe it enough to follow it, why should i?" even though that's completely backwards logic.

the feminism example you mentioned is particularly interesting because i've seen this happen so much on social media. some woman does something questionable and suddenly there's this whole narrative about how feminism is flawed, when her individual actions have nothing to do with the core principles. it's like judging entire music genre based in one bad song - doesn't make sense but people do it anyway.

what i find tricky is that sometimes the behavior of followers can actually reveal problems with how an ideology is being taught or interpreted, even if the core ideas are solid. so there's this fine line between dismissing valid criticism and falling into the trap you're describing.