[fierceawakening]

You know… I absolutely think that if anything is government overreach, overturning Roe was. If you have a right to take antibiotics, you have a right to expel any unwanted visitor to your body even if it necessitates killing them.

But I feel like the reaction I have to some of the pro choice sob stories people pick is… I don’t know if I’m neurodivergent or just missing a gene somewhere but when I hear “I was in college. A huge unexpected thing happened and it might easily have upended MY ENTIRE LIFE”

My gut reaction isn’t so much Compassionate Worry as “that sounds like what being that age is like, yeah.”

With rational thought I can get to “oh they mean taking care of a baby is unexpected new work,” so I’m not saying I don’t get it at all.

But “every day is a new jump scare and you just make it work” was… a lot of being 20, for me at least.

[bibliodiscotheque]

??? I am immensely struggling to see eye to eye on why "being responsible for a HUMAN BEING, probably on your own as chances are the dad fucked off and never ever had to deal with the result of the choice you mutually made to fuck" is in ANY WAY similar to the average issues a 20-year-old will encounter.

I mean...pregnancy will probably permanently disable you and CAN kill you. That's very very very different from "zomg I'm failing this class" or "zomg I'm late on rent this month." And then being responsible for - again - an HUMAN BEING? That's very very very different from just being responsible for one person (yourself). Is it that difficult for you to imagine that??? It's very very very different. Like very very very very very very different. so different I feel like even the staunchest "abortion is murder and you will be damned to hell if you abort your baby" activist could see that they're different. So different I don't even know why I'm even bothering to attempt to articulate the difference as if you can't already see the difference I highly highly highly doubt I could even illustrate you. Like it feels that obviously different to me. I don't mean to condescend I'm just GENUINELY baffled???

[fierceawakening]

I’m watching a video on the philosophy of prison abolition and these two guys (one white. One black) are talking about how people really do want to see people punished for wrongdoing but no one admits to it

And I may well be biased but it’s feeling smug to me, like thevye caught people out having Bad Thoughts and are above it all

And I just… ok Mr Harvard professor, so what do YOU want to see happen to Donald Trump, then?

[fierceawakening]

It got better.

I really do think there's a gaping hole in a lot of the rhetoric though, where people really do just assume everyone who commits crimes is lower-class or poor, when there's a hell of a lot of crime that society's MOST powerful people engage in.

Maybe prison isn't great for fixing them either! But we really do need to talk and think about how to stop them. We have the opposite problem with them (or at least I personally have the opposite question): Are we doing enough? Do we show them unwarranted leniency? Is that a miscarriage of justice too?

The reason I don't like "no one should be motivated by retribution" is that part of the reason the powerful do bad things may well be "no one stops me, so it's fine."

To me that indicates that we're never going to be able to completely get rid of "You did the thing, and we now are imposing upon you a consequence we think you'll find highly unpleasant."

I also suspect that whether or not we ever succeed at ending incarceration, we will most likely have to retain some form of "this person needs to be kept away from that person," such as in cases of stalking and other forms of sexual predation.

It seems to me that the only way to fully believe in abolition is to have faith that everyone is reachable through kindness. I wish I thought that was true, but I've been awfully nice to people I know preyed on others, and it didn't stop them.

I'm concerned about us putting the same burden on bright eyed young social workers and getting the same result.

[onwardtorakichi]

I think what you’re missing here is that the vast majority of abolitionists are not rallying that there should be no imprisonment for anyone ever. What we largely believe is that, while prisons will need to exist for some, and long term or life imprisonment may be necessary for some, there is no way to fully reform a system that was built on slave catching and the punishment of minorities, and absolutely no way to meaningfully reform a for-profit prison system.

Abolition is about starting over with something new that can be focused on rehabilitation and serving the community, from the ground up.

Serving the community means some of the worst offenders, those who cannot be rehabilitated, will need to be imprisoned for everyone’s safety. But we can rethink what that looks like in a modern society. We have the power to imagine a better system for everyone.

[fierceawakening]

Thats not something I disagree with.

But that’s also not what I’d call abolishing prison.

If you’re IMPRISONING anyone you HAVE A PRISON in which to put them. The verb and the noun are intimately connected.

“We should imprison far fewer people” is the part reformers and abolitionists agree on.

Whether that number is zero or greater than zero is the part we don’t.

[onwardtorakichi]

It doesn’t matter if that’s what you personally would call abolition. That’s what abolition is. That’s what the movement is. Abolishing the current carceral state so we can look at it with fresh eyes and build something new and meaningfully different.

[onwardtorakichi]

Like I’m sorry but to imply that abolitionists - who are largely people of color, who have been the most impacted by and are the most familiar with the current carceral system - don’t understand the need to have a way to separate the few truly harmful people from society is… infantilizing and insulting, honestly.

The idea that people who have experienced some of the worst of humanity in history think everyone just needs smiles and kindness to be not a murderer or whatever is an incredible take to have. Listen to yourself.

Yes there are some people who believe there should be no imprisonment for anyone ever. If you talk to them, they will usually tell you about alternatives to imprisonment that still involve punishment or removal from society, and they’re a valuable part of the abolition movement.

But that’s not the whole of the movement. And it doesn’t matter what you personally think the definition should be - the movement is what it is.

[needabetternamelater]

How are we going to remove someone from society without a prison?

[fierceawakening]

Thank you.

The other part that confuses me tremendously is the idea that the prison system in the US is somehow a different beast than any of the prison systems anywhere else on earth because the US has a history of slavery, and that because of this the US needs to not have prisons (or I guess rakichi is saying we can but only after we rethink everything?) but other countries apparently… just can?

Like I totally agree that a history of slavery is bad and impacted how we developed policing and incarceration, but… if other countries developed both things without a history of slavery, wouldn’t that imply that violence against enslaved people isn’t their only function?

And if that’s true, shouldn’t we then be able to look at how other countries developed both systems without reference to slavery, and be able to remove the slavery related bits without abolishing the whole thing?

I’ve never been able to make sense of that talking point.

[needabetternamelater]

But also like: Whether this thing is meaningfully different from a prison is the thing in dispute.

[hungrynikita]

This person’s take is very disingenuous. Many of the leading voices in the abolitionist movement do very explicitly state that they are against incarceration in all of its forms, full stop. Mariame Kaba comes immediately to mind because she’s the most recent person I’ve read on this subject. Not only that, but they become aggressively defensive when anyone questions them on what to do with people who have shown they are not able to safely be around other humans.

It’s literally in the name. Abolition means something specific. There is another term for the idea (which I share) that the current system is horrifying and untenable and needs to be changed from the ground up, and that term is “reform.” There are a lot of people online who learned about abolitionism via 5-10 tweets who use the term incorrectly and then get huffy when someone assumes they actually mean the abolition of imprisonment for everyone under all circumstances, but people who are actually thinking, writing, and agitating within the movement almost always know what the term means and use it correctly.

I actually find it more “infantilizing and insulting” to suggest that the movement’s leaders don’t understand the term they’re using and just continuing using it rather than choosing another word that more accurately describes their belief system.

[fierceawakening]

Thank you. That’s my worry too.

Especially the way that not being for abolition is associated with whiteness when… the people I’ve heard “my ex husband is getting out of prison next month and I’m terrified” from?

Black women.

[against-forms-recognizable]

Prisons are a necessity of capitalism - or, of private property and the state specifically. When anarchists talk about police and prison abolition, we are generally discussing the dissolution of the monopoly on violence maintained by the state.

We say, instead, that's what community self defense and direct action are for. A liberated society must abandon the politics of safety and embrace violence as a form of self-defense and mutual aid. All of the de-escalation, firearm safety, hand to hand training provided to cops, given to each individual and regarded as important to existing within society as literacy is. For every possibility of a woman being sexually assaulted, a woman sharpening her knife in preparation.

The current systems hide the violence inherent to them from us, keeps the violence necessary to maintain our way of life relegated out of sight, in prisons, in third world countries, in the Omelas basements, in factory farms and slaughterhouses. By abstracting and alienating us from the ugliness required to maintain them they allow us to maintain a self-deceiving illusion of morality.

Ursula K. Le Guin said once, illustrating the anarchist's stance,

What is an anarchist? One who, choosing, accepts the responsibility of choice.

Prison abolition is not, generally, a stance that by getting rid of prisons we get rid of people doing horrible things to each other, or a stance that we can maintain society without doing violence to people who do not want to abide by certain norms. It is, instead, a stance that we must own up to that violence, that if we want the results of the violence, that we must be willing to do it ourselves - to look the person on the other end of it in the eye, to say what we want done in front of them, to do it ourselves and have to live with what that means, instead of relying on some outside class of enforcers like the police or military.

This would, of course, require letting the mask of all of the nice stories we tell ourselves about morality and ethics and goodness fall off the face of humanity. We will be forced to face some uncomfortable truths about ourselves. So what? Ignoring a problem doesn't make it go away. We won't be able to truly explore solutions to these issues until we can approach them authentically.

[needabetternamelater]

The last time we approached them authentically, that didn't turn out too well.

[fierceawakening]

Not sure what you’re referencing, but for me personally?

“For every possibility of a woman being sexually assaulted, a woman sharpening her knife in preparation” sounds awful for any woman who isn’t comfortable using violence.

Like, do we consider it her fault if she “chooses” not to fight back for personal moral reasons?

If we do, that’s a brave new world I want no part of, to be honest.

Also… standard worries go here about how we make sure actors who are not the state have the right person to enact their violence upon, etc.

[fierceawakening]

Like as much as is wrong with the state (and it’s a lot) at least safeguards like “innocent until proven guilty” and “cruel and unusual punishment is morally wrong” and “you get a defense lawyer even if you’re visibly and blatantly scummy” exist in the state apparatus.

“One who choosing accepts the possibility of choice” doesn’t actually mean anything. Are they saying “one who beats up Proud Boys?” “One who shoots rapists?” “One who shoplifts lettuce?”

[fierceawakening]

And how much of it have the people who post on tumblr done? I often get the impression it’s not very much.

Some people bloc up and scuffle? But it’s hard to know who is doing that and who is saying they fantasize about it.

[against-forms-recognizable]

“One who choosing accepts the possibility of choice” doesn’t actually mean anything. Are they saying “one who beats up Proud Boys?” “One who shoots rapists?” “One who shoplifts lettuce?”

The responsibility of choice - not the possibility. You have critically misread the quote.

Like, do we consider it her fault if she “chooses” not to fight back for personal moral reasons?

Do we consider it someone's fault if they starve to death because they considered consumption of anything that was once living to be unethical? Either you eat or you die.

If we do, that’s a brave new world I want no part of, to be honest.

The anarchist Fredy Perlman, in the opening lines of his seminal work Against His-Story, Against Leviathan!:

The darkling plain is here. This is the waste land: England, America, Russia, China, Israel, France…. Hic Rhodus! This is the place to jump, the place to dance! This is the wilderness! Was there ever any other? This is savagery! Do you call it freedom? This is barbarism! The struggle for survival is right here. Haven’t we always known it? Isn’t this a public secret? Hasn’t it always been the big public secret? It remains a secret. It is publicly known but not avowed. Publicly the wilderness is elsewhere, barbarism is abroad, savagery is on the face of the other. The dry sterile thunder without rain, the confused alarms of struggle and flight, are projected outward, into the great unknown, across the seas and over the mountains. We’re on the side with the angels.

Our boy Fredy here says, don't you idiots see, Hobbes' war of all-against-all never ended, it's still with us, we've just changed the set dressing so that the uglier parts of it are out of view, this is the big public secret and I'm throwing it in your face.

You're saying, "That's not a secret I want any part of! It's a good thing I'm on the side with the angels where we have standards like innocent until proven guilty!" And then you throw back on the earmuffs that let you ignore the screeching of the slaughterhouse that's backstage.

From W.H. Auden's, September 1, 1939:

Faces along the bar Cling to their average day: The lights must never go out, The music must always play, All the conventions conspire To make this fort assume The furniture of home; Lest we should see where we are, Lost in a haunted wood, Children afraid of the night Who have never been happy or good.

We have never been happy or good, we have never been on the side of the angels. Sorry to burst your bubble.

[fierceawakening]

No, I don’t think the world is purely hobbesian. I think we’re all good and bad, and punishments like prison will exist even in a just world, because some people will choose bad because it seems easy. All we can do is work to repair the system such that we get closer little by little to reserving prison for only those individuals.

Not sure why that disagreement requires talking down to me when “are humans basically good, evil, or both?” has been a matter of intense philosophical debate long before either of us were born.

Or why you’re in the one hand trying to get me to agree to be willing to use violence… while on the other refusing to describe the violence you yourself use.

It’s almost like you want me as your fall guy.

[against-forms-recognizable]

I think we’re all good and bad, and punishments like prison will exist even in a just world,

'Good' and 'bad' and 'justice' are made up concepts that don't refer to anything that actually exists in the world, they are simply tools you use in a project of directing the collective application of violence and coercion in such a way that you are better able to extract material benefit from the social environment.

All we can do is work to repair the system such that we get closer little by little to reserving prison for only those individuals.

Didn't you just pose in your last post an example of someone who, faced with the choice to commit violence or face harsh consequences, chose not to?

Or why you’re in the one hand trying to get me to agree to be willing to use violence… while on the other refusing to describe the violence you yourself use.

In years past on my blog I've discussed the fact that I do judo, I go to the gun range, and I enjoy fighting. Beyond that - I am neither afraid of violence nor stupid enough to use it or talk about it where the state can see. I can't tell you what I would do in any specific situation had I been wronged - that's a very complex question. I do know that having three eyebrows raised at all times in the direction of any form of retributive violence is an integral part of my framework for how to address justice within my circle and community, because people are manipulative and deceitful and 'justice' is often a code word for 'an excuse to delight in being cruel.'

Noam Chomsky once said of Michel Foucault, one of the most outspoken opponent of prisons to have lived, that he was "possibly the most amoral individual I have ever met." Which is perhaps unavoidable, since the issue of morality is inextricably tied up with prisons and one cannot exit from them without realizing that morality itself is a falsehood.

This is a badge anarchists wear proudly. From the anarcho-pacifist Emile Armand's 1927 essay Without Amoralization, No Anarchization:

The more the human milieu is amoralized, the more the guardians of religious or secular morality, those who want to keep human societies within uniform rule of conduct or absolute moral systems, feel their usefulness diminish. The more amoralization saturates the relations among men, the more the idea that an imposed, common moral system is necessary to living happily disappears; we feel the need for moral instructors less and less. Unconsciously, a new basis for ethical relations between isolated individuals and associates appears: it is the unity or association that sets out the rule of conduct to be maintained in order to reach the maximum of sociability, a sociability that in no way answers to a moral conception of good and evil, to a transcendent a priori, but is based on the self-interested observation that no one is, can or wants to be an object of consumption for me except to the extent that I am or can or want to be such for them. I have, the other day, touched very rapidly upon one point on which it is appropriate to insist, warmongers, the marshals of domination, the grand masters of exploitation and the blackmailers of politics are glorifiers of public or private virtues, lay moralizers, defenders of religion and wholesome traditions. When the global butchery of 1914-1918 broke out, it was under their flags that the honest, puritanical, moral anarchist theorists, communists and individualists alike, came to line up; how could all of these factions not have made a united front? They were all partisans of a unique, common, universal moral system; the wolves do not eat each other.

[fierceawakening]

I have no idea where this conversation is going or why, but I will say that you’re mischaracterizing my position if you think I said no one ever is deterred. I’m not sure how “I think we need to work to make sure only the undeterred remain sequestered from potential victims” contradicts anything I said previously.

And now I’m done, as I’m pretty sure all you’re here for is some kind of weird flexing, and I encourage you to use your own blog as your flex zone, not mine.

[bibliodiscotheque]

Even if we accept that it's a woman's fault for being raped if she chooses not to fight back (which disgusts me but accepting it for the purpose of argument)...what if she does fight back and fails to defend herself? What if she's just not as good as fighting as her rapist? What if she's disabled? I'm disabled. I'm never going to be good at combat. Am I just acceptable collateral damage?

[fierceawakening]

I’m watching a video on the philosophy of prison abolition and these two guys (one white. One black) are talking about how people really do want to see people punished for wrongdoing but no one admits to it

And I may well be biased but it’s feeling smug to me, like thevye caught people out having Bad Thoughts and are above it all

And I just… ok Mr Harvard professor, so what do YOU want to see happen to Donald Trump, then?

[fierceawakening]

It got better.

I really do think there's a gaping hole in a lot of the rhetoric though, where people really do just assume everyone who commits crimes is lower-class or poor, when there's a hell of a lot of crime that society's MOST powerful people engage in.

Maybe prison isn't great for fixing them either! But we really do need to talk and think about how to stop them. We have the opposite problem with them (or at least I personally have the opposite question): Are we doing enough? Do we show them unwarranted leniency? Is that a miscarriage of justice too?

The reason I don't like "no one should be motivated by retribution" is that part of the reason the powerful do bad things may well be "no one stops me, so it's fine."

To me that indicates that we're never going to be able to completely get rid of "You did the thing, and we now are imposing upon you a consequence we think you'll find highly unpleasant."

I also suspect that whether or not we ever succeed at ending incarceration, we will most likely have to retain some form of "this person needs to be kept away from that person," such as in cases of stalking and other forms of sexual predation.

It seems to me that the only way to fully believe in abolition is to have faith that everyone is reachable through kindness. I wish I thought that was true, but I've been awfully nice to people I know preyed on others, and it didn't stop them.

I'm concerned about us putting the same burden on bright eyed young social workers and getting the same result.

[onwardtorakichi]

I think what you’re missing here is that the vast majority of abolitionists are not rallying that there should be no imprisonment for anyone ever. What we largely believe is that, while prisons will need to exist for some, and long term or life imprisonment may be necessary for some, there is no way to fully reform a system that was built on slave catching and the punishment of minorities, and absolutely no way to meaningfully reform a for-profit prison system.

Abolition is about starting over with something new that can be focused on rehabilitation and serving the community, from the ground up.

Serving the community means some of the worst offenders, those who cannot be rehabilitated, will need to be imprisoned for everyone’s safety. But we can rethink what that looks like in a modern society. We have the power to imagine a better system for everyone.

[fierceawakening]

Thats not something I disagree with.

But that’s also not what I’d call abolishing prison.

If you’re IMPRISONING anyone you HAVE A PRISON in which to put them. The verb and the noun are intimately connected.

“We should imprison far fewer people” is the part reformers and abolitionists agree on.

Whether that number is zero or greater than zero is the part we don’t.

[onwardtorakichi]

It doesn’t matter if that’s what you personally would call abolition. That’s what abolition is. That’s what the movement is. Abolishing the current carceral state so we can look at it with fresh eyes and build something new and meaningfully different.

[onwardtorakichi]

Like I’m sorry but to imply that abolitionists - who are largely people of color, who have been the most impacted by and are the most familiar with the current carceral system - don’t understand the need to have a way to separate the few truly harmful people from society is… infantilizing and insulting, honestly.

The idea that people who have experienced some of the worst of humanity in history think everyone just needs smiles and kindness to be not a murderer or whatever is an incredible take to have. Listen to yourself.

Yes there are some people who believe there should be no imprisonment for anyone ever. If you talk to them, they will usually tell you about alternatives to imprisonment that still involve punishment or removal from society, and they’re a valuable part of the abolition movement.

But that’s not the whole of the movement. And it doesn’t matter what you personally think the definition should be - the movement is what it is.

[needabetternamelater]

How are we going to remove someone from society without a prison?

[fierceawakening]

Thank you.

The other part that confuses me tremendously is the idea that the prison system in the US is somehow a different beast than any of the prison systems anywhere else on earth because the US has a history of slavery, and that because of this the US needs to not have prisons (or I guess rakichi is saying we can but only after we rethink everything?) but other countries apparently… just can?

Like I totally agree that a history of slavery is bad and impacted how we developed policing and incarceration, but… if other countries developed both things without a history of slavery, wouldn’t that imply that violence against enslaved people isn’t their only function?

And if that’s true, shouldn’t we then be able to look at how other countries developed both systems without reference to slavery, and be able to remove the slavery related bits without abolishing the whole thing?

I’ve never been able to make sense of that talking point.

[needabetternamelater]

But also like: Whether this thing is meaningfully different from a prison is the thing in dispute.

[hungrynikita]

This person’s take is very disingenuous. Many of the leading voices in the abolitionist movement do very explicitly state that they are against incarceration in all of its forms, full stop. Mariame Kaba comes immediately to mind because she’s the most recent person I’ve read on this subject. Not only that, but they become aggressively defensive when anyone questions them on what to do with people who have shown they are not able to safely be around other humans.

It’s literally in the name. Abolition means something specific. There is another term for the idea (which I share) that the current system is horrifying and untenable and needs to be changed from the ground up, and that term is “reform.” There are a lot of people online who learned about abolitionism via 5-10 tweets who use the term incorrectly and then get huffy when someone assumes they actually mean the abolition of imprisonment for everyone under all circumstances, but people who are actually thinking, writing, and agitating within the movement almost always know what the term means and use it correctly.

I actually find it more “infantilizing and insulting” to suggest that the movement’s leaders don’t understand the term they’re using and just continuing using it rather than choosing another word that more accurately describes their belief system.

[fierceawakening]

Thank you. That’s my worry too.

Especially the way that not being for abolition is associated with whiteness when… the people I’ve heard “my ex husband is getting out of prison next month and I’m terrified” from?

Black women.

[against-forms-recognizable]

Prisons are a necessity of capitalism - or, of private property and the state specifically. When anarchists talk about police and prison abolition, we are generally discussing the dissolution of the monopoly on violence maintained by the state.

We say, instead, that's what community self defense and direct action are for. A liberated society must abandon the politics of safety and embrace violence as a form of self-defense and mutual aid. All of the de-escalation, firearm safety, hand to hand training provided to cops, given to each individual and regarded as important to existing within society as literacy is. For every possibility of a woman being sexually assaulted, a woman sharpening her knife in preparation.

The current systems hide the violence inherent to them from us, keeps the violence necessary to maintain our way of life relegated out of sight, in prisons, in third world countries, in the Omelas basements, in factory farms and slaughterhouses. By abstracting and alienating us from the ugliness required to maintain them they allow us to maintain a self-deceiving illusion of morality.

Ursula K. Le Guin said once, illustrating the anarchist's stance,

What is an anarchist? One who, choosing, accepts the responsibility of choice.

Prison abolition is not, generally, a stance that by getting rid of prisons we get rid of people doing horrible things to each other, or a stance that we can maintain society without doing violence to people who do not want to abide by certain norms. It is, instead, a stance that we must own up to that violence, that if we want the results of the violence, that we must be willing to do it ourselves - to look the person on the other end of it in the eye, to say what we want done in front of them, to do it ourselves and have to live with what that means, instead of relying on some outside class of enforcers like the police or military.

This would, of course, require letting the mask of all of the nice stories we tell ourselves about morality and ethics and goodness fall off the face of humanity. We will be forced to face some uncomfortable truths about ourselves. So what? Ignoring a problem doesn't make it go away. We won't be able to truly explore solutions to these issues until we can approach them authentically.

[needabetternamelater]

The last time we approached them authentically, that didn't turn out too well.

[fierceawakening]

Not sure what you’re referencing, but for me personally?

“For every possibility of a woman being sexually assaulted, a woman sharpening her knife in preparation” sounds awful for any woman who isn’t comfortable using violence.

Like, do we consider it her fault if she “chooses” not to fight back for personal moral reasons?

If we do, that’s a brave new world I want no part of, to be honest.

Also… standard worries go here about how we make sure actors who are not the state have the right person to enact their violence upon, etc.

[fierceawakening]

Like as much as is wrong with the state (and it’s a lot) at least safeguards like “innocent until proven guilty” and “cruel and unusual punishment is morally wrong” and “you get a defense lawyer even if you’re visibly and blatantly scummy” exist in the state apparatus.

“One who choosing accepts the possibility of choice” doesn’t actually mean anything. Are they saying “one who beats up Proud Boys?” “One who shoots rapists?” “One who shoplifts lettuce?”

[fierceawakening]

And how much of it have the people who post on tumblr done? I often get the impression it’s not very much.

Some people bloc up and scuffle? But it’s hard to know who is doing that and who is saying they fantasize about it.

[against-forms-recognizable]

“One who choosing accepts the possibility of choice” doesn’t actually mean anything. Are they saying “one who beats up Proud Boys?” “One who shoots rapists?” “One who shoplifts lettuce?”

The responsibility of choice - not the possibility. You have critically misread the quote.

Like, do we consider it her fault if she “chooses” not to fight back for personal moral reasons?

Do we consider it someone's fault if they starve to death because they considered consumption of anything that was once living to be unethical? Either you eat or you die.

If we do, that’s a brave new world I want no part of, to be honest.

The anarchist Fredy Perlman, in the opening lines of his seminal work Against His-Story, Against Leviathan!:

The darkling plain is here. This is the waste land: England, America, Russia, China, Israel, France…. Hic Rhodus! This is the place to jump, the place to dance! This is the wilderness! Was there ever any other? This is savagery! Do you call it freedom? This is barbarism! The struggle for survival is right here. Haven’t we always known it? Isn’t this a public secret? Hasn’t it always been the big public secret? It remains a secret. It is publicly known but not avowed. Publicly the wilderness is elsewhere, barbarism is abroad, savagery is on the face of the other. The dry sterile thunder without rain, the confused alarms of struggle and flight, are projected outward, into the great unknown, across the seas and over the mountains. We’re on the side with the angels.

Our boy Fredy here says, don't you idiots see, Hobbes' war of all-against-all never ended, it's still with us, we've just changed the set dressing so that the uglier parts of it are out of view, this is the big public secret and I'm throwing it in your face.

You're saying, "That's not a secret I want any part of! It's a good thing I'm on the side with the angels where we have standards like innocent until proven guilty!" And then you throw back on the earmuffs that let you ignore the screeching of the slaughterhouse that's backstage.

From W.H. Auden's, September 1, 1939:

Faces along the bar Cling to their average day: The lights must never go out, The music must always play, All the conventions conspire To make this fort assume The furniture of home; Lest we should see where we are, Lost in a haunted wood, Children afraid of the night Who have never been happy or good.

We have never been happy or good, we have never been on the side of the angels. Sorry to burst your bubble.

[fierceawakening]

No, I don’t think the world is purely hobbesian. I think we’re all good and bad, and punishments like prison will exist even in a just world, because some people will choose bad because it seems easy. All we can do is work to repair the system such that we get closer little by little to reserving prison for only those individuals.

Not sure why that disagreement requires talking down to me when “are humans basically good, evil, or both?” has been a matter of intense philosophical debate long before either of us were born.

Or why you’re in the one hand trying to get me to agree to be willing to use violence… while on the other refusing to describe the violence you yourself use.

It’s almost like you want me as your fall guy.

[onwardtorakichi]

It’s so funny that someone upthread is calling me disingenuous for telling you, as an abolitionist, what most modern abolitionists - who are separate from anarchists (although related, with crossover) - agree on, while also acknowledging that there are many important members of the movement who disagree with any form of incarceration as a new system… like literally what I said.

Meanwhile you are constantly posting these half baked judgmental opinions without doing your own meaningful research and giving these little snide comments as if you’re coming to the issue with an open mind but You Have Concerns, then you push back on any information you’re given as if you didn’t want it and knew you were right all along instead of taking any of it to heart or taking the initiative to research it yourself any further. Talk about disingenuous!

This is the third time I’ve been through this exact song and dance with you. You love to post something like a question when it’s actually an opinion you’re not interested in changing and then you love to act a victim when someone engages with you, thinking you’re actually asking something.

Disingenuous… want me as your fall guy… lol.

[needabetternamelater]

"Yes there are some people who believe there should be no imprisonment for anyone ever. If you talk to them, they will usually tell you about alternatives to imprisonment that still involve punishment or removal from society, and they’re a valuable part of the abolition movement." WTF? How do you accomplish this? This seems to be opposite. Abolish prisons and still have punishment/removal from society? WTF? What does that even mean? This is "abolish prisons so there are no prisons and also have prisons."

[fierceawakening]

I think these people think prison means a specific instance of sequestering people in a particular way, where we think it means ANY exiling someone temporarily or permanently from broader society that involves putting them in a physical place. So they’re saying “prison isn’t necessary” meaning “this system” and we’re saying “except when it is” meaning “the building that’s used as an exile zone in some way for some length of time.”

[bibliodiscotheque]

"You did not automatically agree with me, therefore you are not interested in changing your mind/are engaging with me disingenuously" is a bizarre reaction.

[fierceawakening]

I’ve asked this before, but it’s come to my attention again that I’m confused and this may be hurtful to people I care about, so… what exactly does aromantic mean?

Im not saying I don’t think it exists, or something is wrong with people it describes! I just… to me romance is a genre of book, about beginning a relationship and being excited about it (and probably also horny, though I totally think relationships can exist without a sexual component, so I wouldn’t be surprised or disappointed by a romance novel where the mcs don’t have sex because they don’t feel like it.)

Or like with me, I think the best description of my sexuality currently is bisexual homoromantic. By which I mean men and women and others are all hot, but when I picture myself cuddling in bed next to someone and being happy because I love them and they’re warm, my imagined partner is a woman.

So if aromantic means “i get nothing out of snuggling” or “I don’t want a long term relationship,” thst makes sense.

But then there are qpps, and people sometimes but don’t always describe them in terms that sound snuggly, so romantic attraction can’t be “I want to spend the rest of my life falling asleep snuggling with you please and thank.”

So what is it? I don’t mean to say people are faking, I just mean I’m confused.

(People have told me the foregoing makes me aro and I just don’t see it, but… I really really do feel happier when I fall asleep snuggled up with someone I love, whether or not we had sex prior. (If so, that’s very nice.))

[fierceawakening]

That’s exactly why I don’t know what it means. Other than “I don’t think I’ll ever stop thinking men are hot but I most want a girlfriend.” But that isn’t what others seem to mean, so ????

This all was brought on by a post I responded to where someone was defending the joke “love loses” (as a way of saying “love wins” feels exclusionary to that poster I think?) I was super confused because I usually hear aro people very loudly saying they DO experience love, and that it’s us allos who assume love has to be romantic. Someone thought I was saying it proved that aros can’t experience love fully, rather than “don’t say that, jerks will take it as a confession.”

I deleted that post because I didn’t want to be misunderstood, but it brought back up for me that I’m confused. Is “love loses” the thing (“stop saying love is so important, it’s not!”) or is “I don’t want a relationship” the thing, or is “hey, if I want a relationship with my friend and you dislike that because we’re not schmoopy, go to hell” the thing? Or… ???

I don’t have to grok what a person wants to be all for them getting it consensually, so it’s not a huge deal but. What. I eventually understood (I think) asexuality and demisexuality, but this one?

I got nothin.

Thought for a hot minute it was “I only want fwbs,” which I’m fine with too (tried it for myself and felt lonely, thus decided “I must be whatever alloromantic describes”), but that doesn’t seem to be what everyone is getting at.

[fierceawakening]

I mean, I guess that’s what romantic attraction IS, but if it’s what romantic attraction is then romantic attraction for me is “you’re my close friend, I like you sexually, that most likely means we are or are going to be exclusive anyway, I have this really great idea, let’s sleep in the same bed.”

So I can understand what it means if someone doesn’t want that, I guess? But I don’t get how that’s different from a friend. I mean. There’s sex? And I’m monogamous? So it’s not exactly like my relationships with friends with whom I am not having sex?

But there are several friends I would absolutely indicate a desire to have sex with if they weren’t partnered, so the whole “how can you possibly think my qpp is JUST a FRIEND thing” baffles me.

I don’t want to offend, but if I didn’t care I’d be saying “If I did not have friends I would probably be dead. Are you *sure* we see friendship the same way?”

[bibliodiscotheque]

That response was to ceanthusspinosus, sorry. There's more context in my prior reblog.

[fierceawakening]

I’ve asked this before, but it’s come to my attention again that I’m confused and this may be hurtful to people I care about, so… what exactly does aromantic mean?

Im not saying I don’t think it exists, or something is wrong with people it describes! I just… to me romance is a genre of book, about beginning a relationship and being excited about it (and probably also horny, though I totally think relationships can exist without a sexual component, so I wouldn’t be surprised or disappointed by a romance novel where the mcs don’t have sex because they don’t feel like it.)

Or like with me, I think the best description of my sexuality currently is bisexual homoromantic. By which I mean men and women and others are all hot, but when I picture myself cuddling in bed next to someone and being happy because I love them and they’re warm, my imagined partner is a woman.

So if aromantic means “i get nothing out of snuggling” or “I don’t want a long term relationship,” thst makes sense.

But then there are qpps, and people sometimes but don’t always describe them in terms that sound snuggly, so romantic attraction can’t be “I want to spend the rest of my life falling asleep snuggling with you please and thank.”

So what is it? I don’t mean to say people are faking, I just mean I’m confused.

(People have told me the foregoing makes me aro and I just don’t see it, but… I really really do feel happier when I fall asleep snuggled up with someone I love, whether or not we had sex prior. (If so, that’s very nice.))

[fierceawakening]

That’s exactly why I don’t know what it means. Other than “I don’t think I’ll ever stop thinking men are hot but I most want a girlfriend.” But that isn’t what others seem to mean, so ????

This all was brought on by a post I responded to where someone was defending the joke “love loses” (as a way of saying “love wins” feels exclusionary to that poster I think?) I was super confused because I usually hear aro people very loudly saying they DO experience love, and that it’s us allos who assume love has to be romantic. Someone thought I was saying it proved that aros can’t experience love fully, rather than “don’t say that, jerks will take it as a confession.”

I deleted that post because I didn’t want to be misunderstood, but it brought back up for me that I’m confused. Is “love loses” the thing (“stop saying love is so important, it’s not!”) or is “I don’t want a relationship” the thing, or is “hey, if I want a relationship with my friend and you dislike that because we’re not schmoopy, go to hell” the thing? Or… ???

I don’t have to grok what a person wants to be all for them getting it consensually, so it’s not a huge deal but. What. I eventually understood (I think) asexuality and demisexuality, but this one?

I got nothin.

Thought for a hot minute it was “I only want fwbs,” which I’m fine with too (tried it for myself and felt lonely, thus decided “I must be whatever alloromantic describes”), but that doesn’t seem to be what everyone is getting at.

[fierceawakening]

So I guessed “limerence” meant “I like cuddling with you,” but I looked it up and…

…so it’s just someone who’s super gothic?

🤷🏽

[ta-bajna-cerna-okybaca]

Honestly as an aroace I don't quite know what romanting attraction is either, but that's mostly because I've never felt it. My experience is hugely based on hearing other people describe romance and then looking inward and finding a gaping hole where those feelings are supposed to be. To me it's mostly defined by the negative space that's left behind by said hole.

Like. I love reading romance novels and such, I love the idea of relationships and cuddling and getting married to a special person, but when it comes to putting it in practice I've never once encountered a person I would actually want to do it with. It's always 'not this one' 'no, not this one either'. Just the mere thought of doing it in real life is off-putting tbh. If I try to imagine a person I'd love to cuddle in bed with and feel warm and loved, it just kind of comes out blank. The most 'crush-like' feelings I think I've experienced manifested as just wanting to be constantly spend time with the person, and nothing more. No desire to cuddle or go on dates or hold hands or whatever other romantic gestures there are, no 'butterflies in my stomach' or blushing at every action like they mention in stories.

Ngl since I don't quite get romance myself I've never even really understood the difference between "romantic actions" and "platonic actions". How does a date meaningfully differ from going out with a friend platonically? Aren't you doing literally the same things? Getting dinner, watching a movie, taking a walk together. Is it the attraction to the other person that makes it special? How does snuggling in bed romantically differ from cuddling with my parents when I was younger? Maybe you could try to clear that up for me in return idk.

I'm not sure how much I can comment on the love loses joke because I haven't seen the original post. 'love wins is exclusionary' feels like a very strange statement to me, because as you said there are many forms of love. It could just as well refer to 'loving thy neighbor' general love as it can to romantic love. I personally have no trouble with love wins and use it myself occasionally. But also I have no trouble with love loses. Maybe since I've only really seen it in the context of romantic love, a rejection, breakup or a divorce. Like the Destiel confession was very much a #Love Loses situation. The thought of using it as a denouncement of love in general leaves a bad taste in my mouth, but I do kind of get why someone would make such a joke. When you're dealing with amatonormativity on a daily basis, ig can be freeing to completely reject it and the entire concept of love along with it. (tho to me personally that's like throwing the baby out with the bathwater.) I certainly don't think it's a harmful enough joke that I'd feel the need to argue with other aros because it makes us look bad or whatever. Jerks will take anything as a confession, self-policing won't really stop them.

Sorry if this is too long or rambly or whatever, I'm really not used to speaking about this topic much. (or public speaking in general. usually I just ramble in the tags. Posting it publicly like this is kind of scary ngl)

[fierceawakening]

I'll respond to the rest of this later, but my assumption was that the poster was riffing off "love wins," which was/is a slogan used by the gay rights movement, basically to contrast what we want (to be free to love one another) with what often seems to motivate the people who don't want us to get it (hatred and prejudice.)

I'm pretty sure the poster was talking about that sense of it because they also mentioned not liking "love is love," which was/is another common gay rights movement slogan. Their rationale for that seemed to be "there are different kinds of love," and I could see why someone who does not experience romantic love would say that.

But the Love Loses one I was less comfortable with. It sounded like it was meant to be antagonistic toward gay people and gay rights by calling us too amatonormative, when... dude. I for one don't think I fully understand what being aro is, but I very firmly want everyone to live the life they want, and would only give a darn if someone acted romantically interested in me only to later reveal that they're not and expect me to deal with it, or some other weird thing.

I feel a little weird even analyzing it to this degree, as the original post was just me going "you're so mad at allogays that you're going around saying love loses? During Pride? And then being baffled that people think you're being a jerk? My dude amatonormativity blinding us is indeed a thing, BUT it is NOT what's happening here, I promise you."

[bibliodiscotheque]

I feel this on the opposite side of it. I'm aro, at least I believe I am, but I don't actually know what alterous attraction is "supposed to feel like," either. I believe I'm aro because I've never felt romantic attraction. I believe I've never felt romantic attraction because I've never looked at a person and been all "I want to date you. I want to marry you. I want to commit to you to a degree more intimate and more involved than friends." I've never felt differently about any particular person, other than the positive feelings I have for all my friends. I feel closer to some friends than others, but most people do. I've had crushes on fictional characters...never felt that about people. But then people say "romantic attraction isn't 'I want to date you, I want to marry you, I want to commit to you to a degree more intimate and more involved than friends,' you can be aromantic and want all that" and I'm confused. When people say "I feel alterous attraction but not romantic attraction" I have no idea what they mean by that. I can believe someone would want to commit to a friend on a more involved level than they commit to other friends. But there's a certain point I'm listening to someone describe alterous attraction and I'm like...why do you feel that this is meaningfully different than romantic attraction? Like you, I'm not gonna be like "no, you can't define your attraction that way," but it makes me feel odd to have people define their attraction in a way that apparently makes a statement about MY attraction. I always figured I was aromantic BECAUSE of the level of commitment and intimacy I desire from other people. But apparently that's not what romantic attraction means? I mean, I know feeling romantic attraction doesn't necessitate a desire to be intimate or commit. But I don't know what romantic attraction is "supposed to feel like" if it's not about the level of intimacy you desire from someone. Even if that desire is all fantasy and not necessarily a reality you want enacted. If romantic attraction isn't about that, what does that mean about me, then? I feel like people are gonna be mad at me that I define feeling romantic attraction the way I do, but in what other way do I define romantic attraction? In what way do I "know" if I feel romantic attraction or not?

I guess at the end of the day we just have to trust that people who feel alterous attraction and desire commitment and intimacy in a way that resembles romance actually, genuinely do feel attraction differently than alloromantics, that there is some interior difference between alterous and romantic attraction. & we're just never gonna know what that difference actually is as long as there's no machine that allows us to live in someone else's brain. But a part of me remains a little, perhaps uncharitably confused by why people feel alterous attraction is meaningfully different than romantic attraction.

[fierceawakening]

…That said I do still think much of the time when people say “white feminism,” “bad feminism” would actually suffice.

Sometimes the refusal to engage with viewpoints other than “being female matters more than anything else all the time” comes from being in circles that are primarily white and just not hearing anything else. Or worse, hearing that people saying other stuff matters too are your enemy and thus not engaging.

Which is bad! But sometimes it’s just being a newbie and not being able to drink from a firehose all at once.

And sometimes (here’s the thing I still agree with the old me on despite having changed my mind on a lot) it’s just “I have finite time and energy for The Struggle and I happen to be oppressed primarily based on gender. You really don’t want me trying to do black feminism, I’d be terrible at it. I’m one person and have chosen to focus on shit I know from personal experience.”

(And yes the third thing happens! The third thing is why I choose to focus on fighting ableism over fighting sexism. It’s not that both aren’t important, it’s that personally the first affects me more, so I’m more invested in the lifelong slog that is fighting for justice on that front.)

[bibliodiscotheque]

Imo the best activism comes when you choose an area to devote your efforts and money to. We all have limited hours in a day and limited money in our accounts. I know that what's happening in Gaza is atrocious, but I choose to devote my resources to combatting homelessness in my community. I can call my senators about multiple issues, that's not a hassle, but when it comes to allocating money for donations I allocate mine for homelessness. Giving people on the streets money as well as donating to orgs. For me intersectionality means understanding why your "issue" is connected to others - I understand why race, class, gender and queerness intersect with homelessness. Intersectionality doesn't necessarily mean you need to devote your life to addressing every human rights violation ever.

[creepymutelilbugger]

[fierceawakening]

"you can't change your physical characteristics" most people do so, janet

[bibliodiscotheque]

Additionally - pronouns are not biological. There's no pronoun gene. There's no gene that says "you will be a he" or "you will be a she." Changing your pronouns isn't "defying biology." There's no reason we COULDN'T all be they/them. I don't believe we need to all be they/them, but there's no reason I need to know your sex by the 2-3-letter word people use to refer to you in absence of your name either.

[thydungeongal]

I think an important part of the "D&D is easy to learn" argument is that a lot of those people don't actually know how to play D&D. They know they need to roll a d20 and add some numbers and sometimes they need to roll another type of die for damage. A part of it is the culture of basically fucking around and letting the GM sort it out. Players don't actually feel the need to learn the rules.

Now I don't think the above actually counts as knowing the rules. D&D is a relatively crunchy game that actually rewards system mastery and actually learning how to play D&D well, as in to make mechanically informed tactical decisions and utilizing the mechanics to your advantage, is actually a skill that needs to be learned and cultivated. None of that is to say that you need to be a perfectly tuned CharOp machine to know how to play D&D. But to actually start to make the sorts of decisions D&D as a game rewards you kind of need to know the rules.

And like, a lot of people don't seem to know the rules. They know how to play D&D in the most abstract sense of knowing that they need to say things and sometimes the person scowling at them from behind the screen will ask them to roll a die. But that's hardly engaging with the mechanics of the game, like the actual game part.

And to paraphrase @prokopetz this also contributes to the impression that other games are hard to learn: because a lot of other games don't have the same culture of play of D&D so like instead of letting new players coast by with a shallow understanding of the rules and letting the GM do all the work, they ask players to start making mechanically informed decisions right away. Sure, it can suck for onboarding, but learning from your mistakes can often be a great way to learn.

[a-wa-c]

I think this also hurts group dynamics as well.

When you have people that have actually done some reading on the rules vs. people that just coast and foist the majority of the game onto the GM, it makes it appear like the more knowledgeable players are sweaty power-gamers or rules-laywers.

Best example I've got with asking players to make informed decisions was when I ran the Wilderfeast Quick Start. The GM has the info about what ingredients can be gathered in any of the regions, but the party then has to cook it. They know what the ingredient does and just have to make the decision on how they want to combine their ingredients as a party.

[thydungeongal]

#i just wanna play a silly game#i feel like. gatekept. while reading this#i don’t have the drive to read a several hundred pg game manual i just wanna play a game w my friends#like. it’s a game. play it how u want#jeeze

My point is not to say that people who don't want to learn the rules shouldn't play, only that people who don't actually know the rules aren't necessarily engaging with the game to its fullest, especially in the case of a relatively rules-heavy game like D&D, and that as the previous poster mentioned it can actually result in a bad rules dynamic where the DM needs to do more work due to player unwillingness to learn the rules as well as casting players who actually know the rules and can engage with them in unfavorable light. All of these are negative elements of the culture of play surrounding.

Like, there isn't anything meaningfully gatekeepy about saying "players who don't know the rules of the game aren't as good at playing the game as the people who know the rules of the game." Because playing games is a skill that can be cultivated and knowledge of the rules is an important part of that skill.

And respectfully, if the idea of learning the rules of D&D seems like an insurmountable task, you don't have to learn them, but you might actually gain something out of actually making an effort because it can make engaging with the game more rewarding for you. Or if the idea of learning the rules of a game that has hundreds of pages is an insurmountable obstacle, there are lots of games with much more modest page counts! D&D is actually relatively heavy as far as RPGs go but it's not the only RPG, and you can get rewarding mechanical engagement combined with cool stories for a much smaller time investment.

[tenleaguesbeneath]

Pointing out that, if you're playing a game with a several-hundred-page rulebook and haven't even made the effort to read the parts of it relevant to your character, then you're pushing a lot of cognitive load onto your friends, isn't gatekeeping. Nobody's kicking you out of your group for it.

[mantis-lizbian]

i also think that the OP is kind of more about the people who bite back against people going "hey, maybe try something other than D&D" with "but those games are too crunchy/hard to learn" when they don't even really know the actual rules of D&D. i mean, i've had people like this push back against learning PbtA games.

i really hope this was just an unusual case, but i've even had that exist response from one of the local DMs where i live, when i invited him to be a player in a game of Masks i was starting up.

[thydungeongal]

Oh yeah, that was definitely the original context. And it's really funny to hear "learning another game is hard" as a reason for not engaging in game beyond D&D when clearly people are not learning D&D either if they consider the act of reading the rules beyond the pale.

[inspectorballs]

The folks this post is about are the reason you get dudes on Reddit posting about prepping to DM games for 60+ hours a week and still feeling inadequate.

At this point, it’s a fun game for *almost* everyone at the table. And nobody wants to take on the role that has you showing up to game night with a wagon full of paper, an external hard drive, and a heart condition due to anxiety.

Be kind to your GM. Learn bits of the rules and help out :)

[prokopetz]

Quite so. If you just want to fool around and occasionally roll some shiny math rocks, that's a perfectly cromulent aspiration, and there are plenty of games that will give you exactly that – but if you just want to fool around and occasionally roll some shiny math rocks while simultaneously insisting upon using a rules-heavy system whose rules you refuse to learn, what you're doing in practice is making the GM do all the work of playing your character for you. It isn't gatekeeping to point this out; it's simply a fact. To be sure, there are a few GMs who are receptive to that sort of thing – it's often termed "black box" play in the hobby's jargon, likening the rules to a box the players can't see inside – but most GMs merely tolerate having all the work of making your character happen dumped on them for the sake of avoiding drama. It can be worthwhile to think carefully about whether this is something you're really okay with doing to someone you call a friend.

Like, there's this stereotype of the "play literally any other game" crowd as a bunch of arty snobs who want to force everybody to play semi-freeform Jungian psychodramas about giant telepathic bugs or what-have-you, but in my experience, the greater part of them are folks who've been GMing Dungeons & Dragons for years, and spent that time single-handedly doing all the work of making the game happen, and all they really want is for their group to pick a game whose baked-in expectations regarding mechanical engagement are compatible with the level of engagement they're actually willing to put forth!

[bibliodiscotheque]

This is all assuming the GM insists on following all the rules to their fullest extent and won't have any fun improvising or running a casual game. You are all going "if the players' play style and the GM's play style are at odds it will not be fun for either," which is true, but from that you are coming to the conclusion "therefore if you have a casual play style you are a bad player and being shitty to your GM" and, like...if the GM also has a casual play style it is not an issue for a player to have a casual play style!!!!! If you are a player with a casual play style you can find a GM with a casual play style! I am a GM with a casual play style & it's baffling that this post insists we don't exist and insists GMs all secretly resent the players that don't care about the minutiae of the rules. I also don't care about the minutiae of the rules, I don't structure my games so that they'll collapse if no one adheres to the minutiae of the rules. No, players, your GM does not necessarily secretly resent you if you don't know all the rules. If you ARE a GM and you secretly resent your players, you need to be a goddamn adult about it and TELL THEM your play styles are incompatible instead of being all boo-hoo woe-is-me about your players "not caring" about you. "It's not fun for people who care about rules to play with people who don't care about rules" and it's also not fun for people who don't care about rules to play with people who care about rules...no one is having fun incorrectly, y'all, you just need to find people you can have fun with.

Like, if this post is about "people that can't even do the basic character creation," fine, but "I just wanna go on a fun romp with my friends and roleplay and I don't care about minmaxing or doing The Most and gaining the The Most XP to level up" is a fine way to be a player. Some people I know don't even play with XP or levels. You can bend D&D to your will. You can take the bones of D&D and make it a different game. You're allowed to do that! You can play a non-rules-centric game and have a ton of fun. Even if it isn't ""technically D&D."" You don't NEED to learn another game, even if it IS be more suited to your play style, if you're already having fun and have found people that have fun playing D&D the same way you have fun playing D&D!

[darkshrimpemotions]

The thing is, until you get past the mindset of "justice=punishment" you will never be able to create lasting change. We have actual proof that punitive justice creates more crime and makes criminals more violent. We have actual proof that rehabilitation reduces crime and recidivism. But some of y'all are so stuck on this idea that the wrongdoer must be punished for justice to be done that you will choose sating your need for revenge over actually moving toward a better world every time. And that's sad!

[darkshrimpemotions]

Everyone in the notes saying punishment doesn't undo the bad thing: exactly! Punishment does not create or preserve healing, prevention, protection, fairness, or goodness. The only thing punishment does is satisfy a sadistic public desire for revenge and give us the illusion of control.

[fierceawakening]

Said it before, will say it again: what about people like Mr. Trump, whose rehabilitation most of us wouldn’t even know where to begin?

Or someone like Mr. Epstein, who was able to use his power and influence to lessen the one punishment he was given, and went right back to the same terrible behavior?

I want a world where we never have to punish anyone. But when I look at the things corrupt powerful people do, and the ways they repeat these behaviors over and over, I have great difficulty imagining the social worker clever enough or patient enough to truly facilitate growth.

Can you give some examples please of people who had very high social status and a pattern of recidivism, but who restorative justice worked on? Where can I find their stories?

I’d really like to be convinced, but right now… again, I need some examples that show clearly that it’s more successful to treat the powerful this way as well as the powerless.

Without those examples, I’ll really struggle not to keep believing that we should be merciful toward the powerless but also strict with the powerful, and look at their patterns of exploitation as well as their pleas for mercy.

[fierceawakening]

Like, some people’s answer to “dude, why did you commit this crime” is “my guy I was desperate. Did you think I just go around stealing from people? Nah, man.”

Or “my guy, that law is unjust. I broke it because look at how it actually affects people in my community. I don’t believe it’s fair of society to impose that on people.”

But some people’s answer to “dude, why did you commit this crime?” is “oh everybody would if they thought they’d get away with it. Other people are just pussies, you know? Wink wink.”

Im not sure the second group is reachable. I’ve known a lot of very caring and brilliant social workers, and usually when I’ve asked them how they pull that off the answer is, “we don’t.”

So… should we have a more restorative justice system? Very yes.

Do we need to “get past mindsets?”

Nah, dude. That’s cult shit.

That’s “if you feel wronged by a powerful person, it’s yourself you need to work on.”

The answer is always more nuance, not less.

If someone tells you to unlearn or get past something, the first question you should ask yourself before you start unlearning is “why was that ever there in the first place? Is there something it was warning me about, however imprecisely?”

Then you can heed the warning (or not, as you deem fit) but focus it on what actually matters.

[fierceawakening]

I dunno. Maybe it’s just my trauma history, but… the inner voice that wants revenge on the people who did lasting damage to my body that will be there until the day I die is both stupid and wise.

Stupid, because revenge wouldn’t actually make anything better for me. It wouldn’t remove the chronic pain.

But wise, because while I shouldn’t take its advice literally and most revenge quests are actually a disaster, it expresses that I deserve better. That I was violated, and that violating me was morally wrong.

The part of us that wants criminals to be sentenced isn’t always and only sadism, which posts like this pretty heavily imply.

Sometimes it’s “the social contract was broken. That’s not okay. We get to be treated with decency, because we provide and care for each other. If you spit on that, we respond.”

Remember the way, when Trump first became president, the media twisted itself into absolute knots to say something other than “he lied?”

That was false hope. Some people just give no shits about the social contract.

Conservatives are right that they exist.

What conservatives are wrong about is who they are.

They’re most often the powerful, not the powerless. In this society, they’re usually rich white men. Sometimes rich white women.

Go ahead and make examples of them. They know what they did.

Jesus forgives them (according to my religion anyway.)

We mortals can try too if we want, but it’s not actually required.

[bibliodiscotheque]

I generally lean more to the "rehabilitative/restorative justice" side, but I agree on 2 parts:

Rehabilitation will feel like punishment to people that don't want to be rehabilitated, and some people will not willingly choose to be rehabilitated. In a perfect non-punitive system, will we force people to be rehabilitated? What will that involve? Is forcing someone to be rehabilitated or engage in reparative justice (i.e. financially compensating their victims or victims' families) when they don't want to not punishment? (Not qs directed @ you, Fierce, but abolitionists)

Unfortunately, there will always be people that will not respond to any preventative measures but the threat of punishment. I wish this were not true, but it is. There will always be people who would gladly hurt people if they could, and will not be convinced against it by any means but "there will be consequences to your actions. You will not be able to continue to live your life normally if you persist." As much as the prison system frequently and grossly transgresses human rights, if there are people who will continue to hurt people at all odds and will not be rehabilitated, to me the best way to deal with it IS to separate them from common society so they cannot continue to hurt people. That doesn't mean they can't continue to live comfortably, as much as people balk at the idea of a serial killer living comfortably in prison - to me that's what "punishment isn't the point" means. Indefinitely separating someone from society against their will IS a punishment, yes. But the point isn't necessarily to punish them, the point is to prevent them from further harming someone. I don't agree with the people that say "prison isn't supposed to be comfortable because it's a punishment;" the punishment is the lesser aspect (although it does serve to deter people that don't want to go to prison), the greater aspect is "preventing further harm."

[apolloendymion]

really fucking sucks that the catalyst for the mcelroy brothers' "downfall" was when one of them *checks notes* displayed symptoms of the mental illness he was very open about, in a way that was deeply embarrassing but ultimately pretty harmless

[apolloendymion]

when travis came out about having npd, people were like, "you can't have npd, you're too nice! you're a deeply kind person!" because people with npd are monsters, right?

and then when he had a public meltdown about things not going his way in a social game, suddenly everyone couldn't shut up about how "annoying" he was, and every unrelated quibble anyone had with the mcelroys came to the fore. nevermind all that kindness. be rude one (1) time and you've lost your status as "one of the good ones".

[apolloendymion]

i can't help but think about something he said on his podcast with teresa, about how he tends to dominate conversations without realizing it. they came up with a nonverbal signal for when he's doing that, so he can back down a bit. iirc, this was before he knew he had npd, so like, he was working to manage these tendencies on his own! he's as close to a "~good little narc~" as you could possibly get. he's everything people theoretically want from ppl with personality disorders. god forbid he slip one fucking time.

[fierceawakening]

What did he actually do?

It certainly doesn’t sound like it warranted canceling, I’m not saying I doubt anyone here. Just that I’m trying to figure out what it actually was and every source I find goes into a lot of background info about why people liked them, and they were never my thing.

Some people use the word “meltdown” to mean “goes unresponsive for a bit” and some people use it to mean “is wildly verbally aggressive to a lot of people after being set off,” so. What was it? How did it relate to his disorder?

(And was it the kind of thing lots of people without any disorders do when sufficiently pissed off, or unusual somehow? A recorded rage fit could easily be a performance for engagement by a celebrity, too.)

[bibliodiscotheque]

This was a bit ago, over a year I believe, iirc he was huffy about not winning in a way that was rude but not "harassing individual fans" belligerent. I don't remember what he said but he made comments on a stream? Where he was playing a multiplayer game with fans along the lines of "this is supposed to be fun and it's not fun for me." Definitely inappropriate behaviour from an adult to a fanbase full of teenagers, cancellation worthy? Eh, not in my opinion. Huffy but not ragey, rude but not abusive.

[bibliodiscotheque]

My issue with "some autistics are privileged because they have the option to mask" is that it's only a privilege to have the option to mask insofar as you actually mask

If you don't mask then you don't benefit from that privilege!

And the constant refrain of "you have the option to mask, therefore you are privileged" basically sounds like "it doesn't actually count as discrimination because you have the option to mask so you chose this anyway, it's not as bad as the discrimination other autistics face for behaviours they actually have no control over and you basically have no right to even consider it discrimination"

[bibliodiscotheque]

Begging people to stop associating "invisibly disabled" with "low support needs/not 'severely' disabled"

[bibliodiscotheque]

I'm so serious if y'all actually want to convince people to read more you have to allow people to just read for fun and entertainment. You have to quit it with the "white women only read romance because they're too coddled and dumb to read REAL literature" you HAVE to

[bibliodiscotheque]

I know what people mean when they say "oppression on one axis doesn't negate privilege on the other" but actually very frequently oppression does negate privilege lol

[bibliodiscotheque]

It will always be hilarious to witness modern art haters run in circles attempting to define what art is in a way that always excludes modern art. For every criterion you use to define what art is there will always be modern art that fits that criterion and traditional art that doesn't fit that criterion. What they actually mean is "modern art is not art because I dislike it."

[bibliodiscotheque]

"Fem gay men have so much representation" how much of that representation DOESN'T use his femininity as the butt of any jokes ever. Quickly now

[fierceawakening]

What in the hell is incest even about? I mean the real thing, not the fanfic about an older person teaching a young person fun stuff. (It's not my fantasy, but I figure it's just that--"I'm going to imagine a scenario where giving/getting sex lessons to/as a youth is not an actual bad idea, it sounds like it could be fun if it didn't mess people up.")

Was listening to a woman the other day relate that her father made her milkshakes with sedatives in them and abused her while she was asleep from it.

And I just. I mean, revulsion of course. And deep sadness for her, when someone whose task it was to keep her safe... did that kind of thing instead. Just.

Why.

Maybe this is my own failure of imagination but why would you desire your child? Like if I try really hard I can vaguely imagine someone responding to un(der)developed bodies the way I do to developed ones, but... your own kid? How would that not be weird?

And the sedation thing, too. I mean I know it's a thing some predators do, just look at Cosby. But again, like... probably a failure of imagination on my part but half the fun of sex is the responses. I can imagine a nonconsensual sadist wanting upset responses rather than happy ones but wanting none?

I don't get it.

Maybe I shouldn't want to get it, but I don't know. For me understanding why people do bad things makes them... a little less scary, somehow, even if the reason why is complete nonsense.

so ???? Anyone know what the hell is up with dudes (and non-dudes; there are plenty of creepy ass women out there too) like this?

[bibliodiscotheque]

I wonder if it's less about fantasy and attraction and more just about access. These people have urges and don't have an outlet for them elsewhere for whatever reason - and don't care about harm - and so use their child for sex because they have easy access to them. They might not even be attracted to their child, they just want sex.