This post has content warnings for: intimate partner violence, sexual assault, substance abuse.
- they/he/roo
Ry, a dumb kangaroo who is here | 36 | non-binary | mental health, piano and vidgames | polyam | ΘΔ | Boston, MA
You must log in to comment.
in reply to @shel's post:
The last section here before the conclusion is so very true and so broadly applicable. Like, in this, as well as in conversations about prison abolition and even regular ol' "tough on crime" rhetoric, you'll often see rhetoric about what certain groups of people do or don't "deserve", and I always insist that it's not about what "abusers" or criminals "deserve", in some ways it's not about them at all, it's about outcomes. The simple fact of the matter is, rehabilitation is a better outcome for EVERYONE than escalation and recidivism
One thing i am interested in seeing explored is where does that impulse towards punishment, seeing people get "what they deserve", come from, and more importantly how do we curb that impulse on an individual and community level? Cuz we can rationally see that rehabilitation is a better outcome for all involved, but i think punishment has a very strong emotional pull for a large segment of people, even people who would call themselves prison abolitionists, that cant be undone simply through pure rationality. My best guess for the "where" is christian dogma about heaven and hell, but as to the "how to stop it" i have no clue.
I suspect that it’s more the negative framing that’s the problem — Americans (and Canadians, for the most part) really seem to hate it when they see people getting something they think they don’t deserve. Prisoners, of course, don’t deserve anything, but this attitude extends to social programs and disability accommodations as well. Americans would rather make a program more expensive to administer and gatekeep the fuck out of it than risk that anyone might “cheat” the system and get something they don’t deserve.
And the problem with grace and mercy is that, by definition, nobody deserves it. If you deserved it, it would be justice, not mercy.
This is on my mind a lot. One factor I'm not quite sure how to fully talk about yet is that it's much easier to think about something than to do it, but it's also easy to convince yourself that because something is possible to think about, it would also be possible to do. This is especially true when people are angry and hurt over real problems, because there are strong emotions involved in these discussions, and not a lot of energy or inclination to extend compassionate thought to someone you think is hateful.
I'm going straight to the extreme end of this line of thought because this is where I see people end up fairly quickly if they start thinking of people "getting what they deserve" in the abstract, and also because I happened to see another "All people who have committed [terrible crime] need to be wiped out and if this is a difficult concept for you, you don't care about protecting victims and you're not a real anarchist" post on another site.
I think a certain billionaire whose name rhymes with Melon Husk is repulsive and dangerous, and I have said at least once that I wouldn't piss on him if he was on fire. But if he was actually on fire in front of me—if this was no longer a hypothetical situation, no longer about how his actions make me feel, but me watching a human being burn to death—I am pretty sure the only thing on my mind would be how to make it stop. Not because I suddenly found a wellspring of compassion for him or because I realized it was wrong to not care if he died or even because I suddenly decided he deserved to live, but purely—selfishly, even!—because watching someone suffer and die is horrible.
None of us know how we would really feel about being directly responsible for someone's suffering or death until it's too late to choose not knowing. This is probably true regardless of your starting point; any time I've been in a position to physically defend myself or someone else, what I did was the equivalent of shouting to scare off a mountain lion. Mountain lions are easily frightened, so are most humans, and I was betting someone would only be aggressive if they felt like they were in control. If they had called my bluff, I think I would have probably been completely fucked. I can't imagine actually hurting someone and I don't think I could do it. But I've never had to make that choice. A guy who buys a gun because he can imagine the exact actions he'd take to coldly execute anyone who threatened his family doesn't know he won't immediately puke and panic and need years of therapy after seeing what his bullet does to another person's body.
You can recruit otherwise peaceful people to a killing cause—war, fascism, even revolution—by convincing them they've been hardened against the enemy. They might actually be; I suspect it might feel similar either way because the emotion you're accessing for how you feel about that decision in advance is "this person deserves to die" and not "I wish I had never heard anyone make that sound." The people I might trust to make a killing choice haven't tried to banish their doubts about whether it should be done, and they're also the last people I would want to have to live with that.
To me, this is plenty of reason to avoid anyone being in that position and if I see a total lack of compassion toward that, or thoughtfulness and self-awareness characterized as cowardice or apologist behavior, I know who not to take seriously.
An unsettling number of people can imagine a world where we don't have prisons, we just very leftistly execute anyone who causes unforgivable harm. "Define unforgivable harm" and "explain how we know for sure they're guilty" doesn't seem to get anywhere, possibly because they came to this opinion thinking of cases where the injustice was obvious enough to draw a line anyone with good intentions can clearly see.
So I want to know who they're going to task with killing the people who deserve to die. If they plan to do it personally, I want to know who they expect to shoulder that burden if it turns out they don't have the same grim determination and motivating fury with their finger on a trigger that they do when they're scolding other people for being insufficiently radicalized.
If they can only answer that question in the abstract, and they can't envision the actual logistics of building, maintaining, and staffing their execution grounds, my conclusion is that people really will just be saying any old shit when it's not real.
In spending 5 months looking for a roommate (i finally found one! Shes actually signing the lease this weekend!! Finally!!) I have now talked to soooo many people, mostly neurodivergent trans women, who tried to take accountability for the kind of small missteps that naturally occur in any new housing arrangement, and who's roommates completely turned on them and un-personed them in exactly the way youve described. I keep bringing up in conversation stuff you've written here about overstating harm and ppl's inability to navigate conflict without creating a bad guy, and heres one more incredible piece of writing to add to the pile. Much to think on, thanks for sharing <3
The frequency with which people label not being good about chores as "abuse" is so absurd and I hear it so often. Legit like "oh they left dirty dishes on the coffee table they're my abuser" it's completely ridiculous and insulting
I really want to respond to this post, because right now I'm going through a situation that's tied up in a lot of the problems that you're describing... but that fact also makes it harder for me to focus on the topics without, uh, spiralling, I suppose. Well, I'm just gonna try to get some thoughts down so I can feel more like I can move on from this topic if I need to.
...I feel like the word "abuser" entered into common usage as a way to legitimize the level of pain being experienced by some people that otherwise wouldn't have been acknowledged at all. Like, it would be extremely convenient for the top people in power if trauma wasn't something that really happened to anyone at all, much less as the result of anyone's actions. So those kinds of people will do what they can to encourage the idea that trauma doesn't exist. And that still exists as a common tactic for some people who have hurt, or are willing to hurt, other people.
But yeah, once "abuse" started getting used more commonly, among people who already understood that trauma was a real thing, they started using the word to get into arguments about who it actually applied to--and sometimes it could be applied to other people who also acknowledged that trauma is a real thing. But using the word against them kinda puts them into the same category as people who don't--and that really hurts, when there are still people who deny trauma's existence (and will use situations like this to say they're allies to anyone being called an abuser, even those who still believe abuse is real).
...I fear it's not as simple as the existence of the word itself, though. I am part of a community that is already very careful not to use the word "abuser" to describe anyone, emphasizing the idea that actions are abusive, people are not. But even with this being the case, it has still led to months-long arguments and grudges over whose actions qualified as abusive, who qualifies as enabling the abuse when they didn't participate in the actions but don't view those actions the same way, and to what degree there needs to be retribution for such things.
And at least one person, I feel, has taken ownership of the abuse that has happened to them in ways similar to what you describe in your post: holding onto these past things as things that still define them today, and still holding resentment against the people who did those actions, despite not referring to these people as "abusers".
...One idea I've been thinking about more and more is how one major thing that's at the core of a lot of abuse is isolation from others, in one form or another. And usually what's at the core of that isolation, more specifically, is fear of expressing pain. And... I guess there's a fair bit of irony here that someone being abused is often afraid of expressing their pain to others, due to all kinds of fallout that could result from that... but as you point out, someone admitting to pain or abuse they've perpetrated could also isolate them from other people, make them afraid of expressing their own pain. And it... really, really sucks that this vicious cycle, of someone isolating themselves through the act of isolating others, is part of the whole process. I don't know how to dismantle that.
But now I wonder if it would be useful to have a word for just that: having the fear of expressing one's pain to others. Because that can exist with or without a perpetrator. It's something that can be looked at in isolation and resolved on a case-by-case basis. Maybe it could help with healing these types of situations specifically.
I think that it can feel freeing to call someone my abuser. It can be a magic word in some situations, in some communities, that absolves you of any wrongdoing. It can justify mistakes you made because you’re the abusee/survivor and they were (and had always been) the abuser. It can feel extremely good to give yourself that absolution. I was reluctant to apply the label to the person who isolated me from my friends and gaslit me into believing I was their abuser precisely because the thought of being absolved in that way was so intoxicating. It let me erase any harm I’d caused in the relationship; it made me into the unassailable “good guy” and them the reprehensible “bad guy.” It was simple and easy. I think the appeal of turning something messy, hurtful, and complicated into something pure and manichean like that can be hard to resist in some situations.
this was pretty cathartic to read for a few reasons but the one that sticks out in my mind is that a person i knew irl once blocked me online for having a very, very similar opinion and that made me feel like i was somehow wrong to post, or even to come up with the idea. but i stuck to the idea in the end despite that pain and i think reading this post, seeing those ideas reflected in someone else, helped knock that thorn loose from my mind. so thank you
i'm going to think about this post for the rest of my life, thank you for writing it. incredibly applicable to a lot of my experiences, and immensely enlightening
thank you for writing this, especially the points made about why healing is hampered by framing people who have hurt us as "my abuser". i really needed to hear this.
This essay as a whole is super meaningful, I can't say enough about it. But one thing that really stuck out to me was that section "we make people into abusers by making them into abusers"
Without getting too into it, this really helps me understand the a really bad friendship I had with someone. He was constantly dodging any sort of label that could get him called out and seemingly never taking ownership for almost any of his actions, but I could never really understood the mechanism for why this type of behavior occurs beyond "it's a result of a toxic environment" or any other cheap phrase flattened for widespread use so hard to the point it lacks any meaning.
It's happening because of the inhumane torture of being labelled Toxic, or Abusive, or Narcissistic, or whatever other diluted catch-all term people use to remove your humanity. That kind of discussion poisoned the well for any criticism I tried to share with that person, since anytime I tried to point out a mistake it quickly turned into a game of "but who's the ACTUALLY bad person here".
It also really hit home that people who are traumatized don't typically want to make others suffer for their actions, they just want them to never hurt someone like that again. Cause in the end, that's how I feel about that guy (aside from some monetary damages but that's neither here nor there), and this whole sanctification of words like "abuse" only makes that harder.
I'm one of those trans women who got labeled an abuser and had my community cut me out. Never thought it would happen to me. Thank you for this post.
I'm doing much better today, years later. I have a new community that doesn't constantly try to find the new Evil Scapegoat for their problems. Thank goodness.