i think one facet of why I am so bothered by the framing of interpersonal harm/violence as always being perpetuated intentionally and knowingly as part of some sort of Evil Plan is that frames instances of interpersonal harm/violence as successful interactions. they wanted this thing and they went out and took steps and accomplished it. whereas I very VERY strongly feel that interpersonal violence and abuse is a profound social failure! human beings want and need genuine social connections. while people may lack a concern for the experience and well-being of those around them, etc, I think in general most people want to succeed in having interpersonal connections with others. and so, patterns of harm and violence are a failure in that. which is why I often find myself characterizing ppl who can't get out of the patterns of causing that kind of harm as pathetic, I guess - being pathetic in no way means I'm saying they're not responsible for that harm, obviously. it's just like. well for example with my evil abusive grandma, like... being herself is her own worst nightmare. I don't think she wants to have the kind of relationships with her family where we're only here out of a feeling of obligation rather than any kind of genuine affection and desire to be around her. but she is fundamentally unable to move beyond her comfort zone of coercive control to try to learn new ways of interacting that might result in the changes that she would probably admit she desires deep down. and ultimately that IS ALSO selfish, like, she is unwilling to endure the discomfort of taking responsibility for her behavior! she can't psychologically face the reality of what she has created and so she displaces blame onto everyone but herself in order to maintain any psychological stability. but it's also fucking pathetic. and it's a profound failure to end up in that situation. it doesn't mean she has it "worse" than the children she has abused and coerced for decades, because like. these things don't get weighted like that. ultimately she is responsible for the harm she has done. but the harm isn't a success, it's a failure. framing her as a manipulator who just Likes Hurting People because she gets some sort of inhuman pleasure from it would frame the results of her abuse as a success. and I just don't think that's true! at all! I think she's a failure! I think interpersonal violence is failure!
eta: to clarify this is a response to social constructs such as The Criminal, The Abuser, The Killer, etc, which posit people who do certain things as being fundamentally different from other people. I am not trying to come up with some sort of Abuse Formula. I am in fact speaking to the complexity of human behavior lol
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