transformative justice and “healing”
[] Few try get past the superficial self-validating rhetoric. I’m tired of surface-level rhetoric and the ways people twist it to justify almost anything.
I appreciate Courtney Desiree Morris’ work on addressing misogynistic abuse in organizing circles []. I also have ongoing questions about Morris’ transformative justice followup piece in the context of trying to hold abusive, misogynistic men in organizing circles accountable, because in my own experience, taking the handholdy route didn’t challenge the expectation that I should fulfill a nurturing, forbearing female caretaking role; focusing on acknowledging the ways they had been marginalized resulted in a one-sided dynamic that effaced my struggles and also their social positions (they were also older, well-connected men) that they had leveraged against me. Basically, I am referring to their sense of entitlement and the way they wanted their marginalizations to serve as excuses for their behavior (compensatory sexism). “Transformation” is a pretty lofty goal. I think expressing and validating my anger in the face of being expected to simply absorb dominant perspectives was part of the healing process for me in this particular context. I have long been expected to efface myself and not “make a fuss” about these kinds of experiences.
I tend to feel irritated by hand-waving responses like “I hope you find healing”. The expectation from others of endless forbearing and compassion rankles, like I’m supposed to just journal a bit, weep tidily and press flowers into notebooks in anticipation of spring.
gender-based violence/absence of solidarity
transformative justice, trauma, compulsory forgiveness
[tw]
i liked what jeopardymaze said in dw politics:
I’ve always felt that the emphasis on forgiveness in any culture (thanks mostly to Christianity) is just another way to give victims of injustice a guilt trip. It’s emotional policing for the traumatized, pure and simple. Women are expected to forgive everything, or they’re not whole for some reason. Forget the nightmares, PTSD, STDs, physical injury, shunning from assholes in the community, no, we have to obsess over whether she forgives as a sign of healing, not whether her physical or mental state is improving.
How far backwards do you have to bend in your ideology of “treating everyone as humans” that you will tell people to be nice to a sexual predator but repeatedly talk down to and diminish the feelings of an actual abuse victim?
(via commiekinkshamer)
[tw] transformative justice
another one of the strange things about ~transformative justice~ is the preachiness about being nice to rapists from people who regularly cut others down for petty self-righteous reasons and clumsy wording in that toxic ~sj~ way.
gross dudes
a lot of these dudes have shallow liberal “feminist” politics that revolve around “sex positivity”. the only time i saw [abuser’s coblogger] respond around gender (other than shutting down women responding to my abuser’s sexually derogatory posts) on sepia as a blogger there was to defend the right of hypothetical women to talk about sucking off men. like how challenging is it to have a politics thats basically about women being sexually available to men and also to avoid responsibility. ok, so at minimum pro-choice. wow, that must be so hard.
depression/anxiety
depression intensifies more when im cabin feverish before a deadline.
i just remembered that this dude liked to scream in my face on campus. did great things for the panic attacks. he had a hair-trigger temper. one of the things he got angry about was that i didn’t medicate for depression/anxiety, which he did, and this meant that i didn’t value my education like he did. afterwards once he kneeled on one knee in princely, conciliatory fashion like a classic creepy moodswinging abuser. i hope he gets hit by a truck before he completes his ivy league phd in ~theories of difference~.
the last call
the “feminist” theorists my abuser liked were so horrific. i want to talk about them with someone. can someone talk about them with me?
I do find it funny that lesbians are perceived as man-hating but gay men are not perceived as woman-hating, and in fact are often illogically shielded from accusations of misogyny simply by being gay
(via commiekinkshamer)
