FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA

re: that last post, ive said it before and ill say it again: no one deserves to die (deserving is fake and death is bad) but some people need to be stopped and choose to make death the only way to stop them

richard-lengthenhancer

I disagree. Pedophiles 100% deserve death.

you are moralizing and weaponizing your disgust in order to construct and justify a category of person you're allowed to murder

what do you think you deserve for this?

richard-lengthenhancer

Sorry, no person deserves to die, thankfully child molesters and pedophiles aren't human, so this doesnt apply to them.

denying the humanity of people who do horrible things accomplishes exactly three things:

give cover to people who haven't been caught yet by allowing them to use their humanity as "proof" of their innocence

silence any criticism of societal structures and institutions that facilitate those horrible things by putting the focus on individuals who are assumed to be so uniquely monstrous that the ways it was made easy for them are irrelevant

provide a shortcut to dehumanize anyone you feel like killing: simply accuse them of doing a horrible thing

3.a. if you've already established that only an inhuman monster could kill a child, then all you have to do to get people to burn down the jewish quarter is say that jews kidnap christian children to bathe in their blood

3.b. if you've already established that only an inhuman monster could commit rape, then all you have to do to get people to string up a black man you don't like is find a white woman who's willing to point at him while she cries and babbles

3.c. if you've already established that only an inhuman monster could molest a child, then all you have to do to get people to drag gay people behind their trucks is say that since gay people can't have babies, the only way they can make more gay people is by following a nefarious Agenda to "convert" children by molesting them

3.c.a. meanwhile if you try to address the rampant sexual assault of catholic altar boys, you're met with "don't be ridiculous, he's a priest!" (see #1) and with assertions that even if it does happen sometimes, those priests are just infiltrators who don't represent the church and there's no reason to make sure priests and altar boys are never alone together (see #2)

tl;dr: your disgust-based violent politics are not less reactionary than any run-of-the-mill homophobe or racist's disgust-based violent politics

richard-lengthenhancer

I realized how bad of a take this was after I added my last bit, i apologize for the idiocy i portrayed in my half thought out statements. And I appreciate the way you rebutted this with reasonable statements rather than going hog wild because I said something you didnt agree with.

hey no worries. we've all been there, and anyone who says they havent is either 11 or afraid of their social circle

unlearning our kneejerk reactions is a process, and it's not a linear one. its good to practice thinking before we post, but sometimes thinking after we post just has to be good enough

damnesdelamer

opencommunion

Angela Davis, Are Prisons Obsolete?

Ejeris Dixon and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha (eds.), Beyond Survival: Strategies and Stories from the Transformative Justice Movement

Elizabeth Hinton, America On Fire: The Untold History of Police Violence and Black Rebellion Since the 1960s

Mariame Kaba, We Do This Til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transformative Justice

Colin Kaepernick (ed.), Abolition for the People: The Movement for a Future Without Policing and Prisons

Robin DG Kelley, Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination

Victoria Law, "Prisons Make Us Safer" and 20 Other Myths About Mass Incarceration Assata Shakur, Assata: An Autobiography

Zena Sharman, The Care We Dream Of: Liberatory and Transformative Approaches to LGBTQ+ Health

Dean Spade, Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next)

Heather Ann Thompson, Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy

Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Abolition Geography: Essays Towards Liberation

Extremely tired of ppl tryna dunk on prison abolition by being like "well what are we gonna do with all the rapists then huh"

Like idk how to tell you this but most rapists don't go to prison. My rapist isn't in prison. It would have been extremely difficult for me to put him there, even if I had realized that what he did to me was rape immediately after the fact, which I did not. I'm not a good rape victim. Sorry for not being handy evidence in support of your rhetorical argument.

That's not even setting aside the number of rapes committed by cops, and the number of rapes committed against prison inmates in both men's and women's prisons. Perhaps the criminal "justice" system facilitates rape. Perhaps any purported deterrent provided by the vague prospect of prison time is offset by the amount of sexual violence perpetrated by the people who are theoretically supposed to be enacting that punishment in the first place.

I don't think my rapist ever thought of what he did to me as rape. I don't think he thought it was violent or bad. I honestly think he was like 19 and wanted to fuck me and didn't really care what I wanted. He would probably have stopped if I'd put up enough of a fuss, but I didn't. Would subjecting him to the incredible violence of the prison system almost 10yrs later constitute justice? Like I'm incredibly angry at him and I don't forgive him, he massively derailed my fucking life and almost killed me, but I'm still not convinced.

Let's talk about unprosecutable rapes. Let's talk about the term "gray rape". Let's talk about people who are raped by friends or significant others, who aren't beaten or drugged, who don't put up a fight. Let's talk about how criminalization and the carceral system create entire classes of people who can be raped with relative impunity: prisoners, sex workers, undocumented immigrants. How do prisons protect them?

Cops don't protect people from sexual violence when their assailants are cops. Prisons don't protect people from sexual violence when they're assaulted in prison. The criminalization of rape only has a chance at being an effective deterrent for people who understand that what they're doing is technically rape, and believe that they might get caught and prosecuted. I honestly do not think that is true of most rapists.

This is…certainly something to mull over

In all honesty this is a terrifying train of thought for me and I don’t know what to do with it.

@cowthropologist mind helping me?

I mean, I wrote this post 3 years ago but sure, I stand by it. What questions do you have?

@cowthropologist I guess what do i do? Like the idea of rape has always been my worst nightmare and the thought of approaching it with some kind of nuance is mind boggling

well, what do you want to do? What do you do with any hard question or concept? Think about it, think it all the way through. Journal about it. Blog about it. Talk about it. Sleep on it. This post isn't meant to be some sort of comprehensive solution to the problems of sexual violence and rape culture, it's just some old stream of consciousness rambling of mine from several years ago.

There are lots of terrible things that can happen to a person in this world, you know. Rape is just one of them, and it's not necessarily any more traumatic than all the other ways you can be hurt. We assign a lot of weight to sexual violence in our culture, and say that it's the worst thing in the whole world that can ever happen to you ever in your entire life, but... who does that narrative serve? Who does it help? What does it accomplish? Consider that.

If you're looking for a place to start, I suggest the notes on this post. Go through them and read people's tags. There are a lot of interesting perspectives in there.

@cowthropologist i suppose the idea of decoupling something as a world ending event makes it so that when it does happen that person can continue you living. And reflecting on personal belief the idea that moving on from something means becoming apathetic to it. No the if it were to happen to me I’d still be able to care I’d still be allowed to be angry even to the point of hoping that person would die.

And the question “what does painting something as the worst thing in the world do?” It gives people a scapegoat like a Salem witch if you can pin that on someone they could be forced into practical slavey or death. And if you can say a certain group is that permanently linked to said thing you could possibly eradicate them.

If I understand you correctly, then I think I agree with you. I think that if we ever want to have an honest conversation about rape, then we need to stop treating rape as the worst thing in the world, and we need to stop painting rapists as inhuman monsters (or scapegoats, as you said).

I think it's very hard to be truly honest about sexual violence and rape culture. It's complicated and scary, and it can't be reduced down to a catchy slogan. I think a lot of people just refuse to deal with it at all in order to avoid that discomfort, so I applaud you for taking the time to consider it.

There's a lot of other stuff I could say about the points you've raised, but I doubt you want my word vomit. I have a lot of feminist theory in my brain, and these days it's all jumbled up... :/

#rape tw

Extremely tired of ppl tryna dunk on prison abolition by being like "well what are we gonna do with all the rapists then huh"

Like idk how to tell you this but most rapists don't go to prison. My rapist isn't in prison. It would have been extremely difficult for me to put him there, even if I had realized that what he did to me was rape immediately after the fact, which I did not. I'm not a good rape victim. Sorry for not being handy evidence in support of your rhetorical argument.

That's not even setting aside the number of rapes committed by cops, and the number of rapes committed against prison inmates in both men's and women's prisons. Perhaps the criminal "justice" system facilitates rape. Perhaps any purported deterrent provided by the vague prospect of prison time is offset by the amount of sexual violence perpetrated by the people who are theoretically supposed to be enacting that punishment in the first place.

I don't think my rapist ever thought of what he did to me as rape. I don't think he thought it was violent or bad. I honestly think he was like 19 and wanted to fuck me and didn't really care what I wanted. He would probably have stopped if I'd put up enough of a fuss, but I didn't. Would subjecting him to the incredible violence of the prison system almost 10yrs later constitute justice? Like I'm incredibly angry at him and I don't forgive him, he massively derailed my fucking life and almost killed me, but I'm still not convinced.

Let's talk about unprosecutable rapes. Let's talk about the term "gray rape". Let's talk about people who are raped by friends or significant others, who aren't beaten or drugged, who don't put up a fight. Let's talk about how criminalization and the carceral system create entire classes of people who can be raped with relative impunity: prisoners, sex workers, undocumented immigrants. How do prisons protect them?

Cops don't protect people from sexual violence when their assailants are cops. Prisons don't protect people from sexual violence when they're assaulted in prison. The criminalization of rape only has a chance at being an effective deterrent for people who understand that what they're doing is technically rape, and believe that they might get caught and prosecuted. I honestly do not think that is true of most rapists.

This is…certainly something to mull over

In all honesty this is a terrifying train of thought for me and I don’t know what to do with it.

@cowthropologist mind helping me?

I mean, I wrote this post 3 years ago but sure, I stand by it. What questions do you have?

@cowthropologist I guess what do i do? Like the idea of rape has always been my worst nightmare and the thought of approaching it with some kind of nuance is mind boggling

well, what do you want to do? What do you do with any hard question or concept? Think about it, think it all the way through. Journal about it. Blog about it. Talk about it. Sleep on it. This post isn't meant to be some sort of comprehensive solution to the problems of sexual violence and rape culture, it's just some old stream of consciousness rambling of mine from several years ago.

There are lots of terrible things that can happen to a person in this world, you know. Rape is just one of them, and it's not necessarily any more traumatic than all the other ways you can be hurt. We assign a lot of weight to sexual violence in our culture, and say that it's the worst thing in the whole world that can ever happen to you ever in your entire life, but... who does that narrative serve? Who does it help? What does it accomplish? Consider that.

If you're looking for a place to start, I suggest the notes on this post. Go through them and read people's tags. There are a lot of interesting perspectives in there.

#rape tw

Extremely tired of ppl tryna dunk on prison abolition by being like "well what are we gonna do with all the rapists then huh"

Like idk how to tell you this but most rapists don't go to prison. My rapist isn't in prison. It would have been extremely difficult for me to put him there, even if I had realized that what he did to me was rape immediately after the fact, which I did not. I'm not a good rape victim. Sorry for not being handy evidence in support of your rhetorical argument.

That's not even setting aside the number of rapes committed by cops, and the number of rapes committed against prison inmates in both men's and women's prisons. Perhaps the criminal "justice" system facilitates rape. Perhaps any purported deterrent provided by the vague prospect of prison time is offset by the amount of sexual violence perpetrated by the people who are theoretically supposed to be enacting that punishment in the first place.

I don't think my rapist ever thought of what he did to me as rape. I don't think he thought it was violent or bad. I honestly think he was like 19 and wanted to fuck me and didn't really care what I wanted. He would probably have stopped if I'd put up enough of a fuss, but I didn't. Would subjecting him to the incredible violence of the prison system almost 10yrs later constitute justice? Like I'm incredibly angry at him and I don't forgive him, he massively derailed my fucking life and almost killed me, but I'm still not convinced.

Let's talk about unprosecutable rapes. Let's talk about the term "gray rape". Let's talk about people who are raped by friends or significant others, who aren't beaten or drugged, who don't put up a fight. Let's talk about how criminalization and the carceral system create entire classes of people who can be raped with relative impunity: prisoners, sex workers, undocumented immigrants. How do prisons protect them?

Cops don't protect people from sexual violence when their assailants are cops. Prisons don't protect people from sexual violence when they're assaulted in prison. The criminalization of rape only has a chance at being an effective deterrent for people who understand that what they're doing is technically rape, and believe that they might get caught and prosecuted. I honestly do not think that is true of most rapists.

This is…certainly something to mull over

In all honesty this is a terrifying train of thought for me and I don’t know what to do with it.

@cowthropologist mind helping me?