Some people decide what they think about everything based entirely on their personal loyalties.
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Making people aware of abuse & changing their feelings on it won't change systems of power.
Those require other solutions, but the more of us who are willing to bring things into the open & the fewer of us who are willing to keep quiet about or turn a blind eye to what they see, the harder it makes things for those profiting from abuse.
Changing hearts & minds will not automatically fix things that are systemic, but it can *expose* systemic problems & make those who perpetuate them work harder to do abusive things they used to do with ease.
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Changing hearts & minds will not automatically fix things that are systemic, but it can *expose* systemic problems & make those who perpetuate them work harder to do abusive things they used to do with ease.
One of the most horrible things I discovered on the way out of Christian fundamentalism was how many fucking people just don't want to *know* about abuse & get angry about being told about.
With family abuse or abuse within a specific community especially, they'll often tell you it's a "private matter". You can tell some people that a person they know is sexually abusing a child & they will scold you for "gossiping" & sharing someone's "dirty laundry".
Abuse is never a fucking private matter.
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One of the most horrible things I discovered on the way out of Christian fundamentalism was how many fucking people just don't want to *know* about abuse & get angry about being told about.
With family abuse or abuse within a specific community especially, they'll often tell you it's a "private matter". You can tell some people that a person they know is sexually abusing a child & they will scold you for "gossiping" & sharing someone's "dirty laundry".
Abuse is never a fucking private matter.
(which is not to say that abuse victims are not entitled to their privacy. They are. Abusers are not)
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(which is not to say that abuse victims are not entitled to their privacy. They are. Abusers are not)
The people who get mad at someone for exposing a person they are loyal to or for making someone's "private" acts of abuse public are the people who are continuing to create & participate in the abuse culture that allowed Epstein to do what he fucking did.
It just sucked when I found out that many people I loved & trusted just didn't want to hear it when it came to abuse in our communities. It broke my damned heart how many people fell into that category.
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The people who get mad at someone for exposing a person they are loyal to or for making someone's "private" acts of abuse public are the people who are continuing to create & participate in the abuse culture that allowed Epstein to do what he fucking did.
It just sucked when I found out that many people I loved & trusted just didn't want to hear it when it came to abuse in our communities. It broke my damned heart how many people fell into that category.
That's what hurt me the fucking most, personally.
I could point to specific instances of abuse happening within our community that were clearly reprehensible, absolutely indefensible acts.
Whenever it was something that couldn't be defended by other means, the next best thing they could come up with is just telling me it's something that shouldn't be talked about in the open or that I needed to lighten up & think about other things & that they tried not to focus on such upsetting topics.
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Changing hearts & minds will not automatically fix things that are systemic, but it can *expose* systemic problems & make those who perpetuate them work harder to do abusive things they used to do with ease.
It's a very good start! People with changed hearts & minds will fix the problems that they created and perpetuated, before the change.
Yet, musicians (eg: Pink Floyd, Peter Tosh, Patti Smith, Bob Dylan) have been singing songs of protest for a long time, and things haven't quite improved.
The torch is passed to us.
We need magical poems that cast spells and make shit happen, code poems. To change the systems of the world, which codify injustices in software, we need #FreeSoftware
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R relay@relay.mycrowd.ca shared this topic
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I myself was fortunate to reach adulthood with very little experience of sexual abuse, but the very second I understood how abuse really worked & that it was happening all around me all the time, I was all in on "this has to stop."
I was about 20 at the time, starting my junior year of college. And it took so long to understand that it's not that no one knew it was happening, but that they accepted it as normal. In my young naivety I briefly imagined that if people only knew, they would care.
Turns out that although yes, there are some people who only need to learn to understand & recognize abuse to hate it with the fire of a thousand suns, there are a lot of others who know & for one reason or another have decided to tolerate it.
Indifference to abuse is complicity. End of fucking story.
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That's what hurt me the fucking most, personally.
I could point to specific instances of abuse happening within our community that were clearly reprehensible, absolutely indefensible acts.
Whenever it was something that couldn't be defended by other means, the next best thing they could come up with is just telling me it's something that shouldn't be talked about in the open or that I needed to lighten up & think about other things & that they tried not to focus on such upsetting topics.
Losing my trust in so many people who had been such loving & supportive presences in my life was fucking devastating. Learning that my oh-so-very-righteous community could ignore the most obvious & heinous abuses there are left me filled with frenzied rage & confusion for years.
But now I know that was a system of oppression operating as intended. And it's something that's gotta be smashed into a million tiny fucking pieces.
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Losing my trust in so many people who had been such loving & supportive presences in my life was fucking devastating. Learning that my oh-so-very-righteous community could ignore the most obvious & heinous abuses there are left me filled with frenzied rage & confusion for years.
But now I know that was a system of oppression operating as intended. And it's something that's gotta be smashed into a million tiny fucking pieces.
I myself was fortunate to reach adulthood with very little experience of sexual abuse, but the very second I understood how abuse really worked & that it was happening all around me all the time, I was all in on "this has to stop."
I was about 20 at the time, starting my junior year of college. And it took so long to understand that it's not that no one knew it was happening, but that they accepted it as normal. In my young naivety I briefly imagined that if people only knew, they would care.
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One of the most horrible things I discovered on the way out of Christian fundamentalism was how many fucking people just don't want to *know* about abuse & get angry about being told about.
With family abuse or abuse within a specific community especially, they'll often tell you it's a "private matter". You can tell some people that a person they know is sexually abusing a child & they will scold you for "gossiping" & sharing someone's "dirty laundry".
Abuse is never a fucking private matter.
@artemis Concur.
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One of the most horrible things I discovered on the way out of Christian fundamentalism was how many fucking people just don't want to *know* about abuse & get angry about being told about.
With family abuse or abuse within a specific community especially, they'll often tell you it's a "private matter". You can tell some people that a person they know is sexually abusing a child & they will scold you for "gossiping" & sharing someone's "dirty laundry".
Abuse is never a fucking private matter.
It tells you a lot about a person who chooses to ignore that kind of thing.
We had neighbours who fought and our neighbour who lived in the same house (different unit) knocked on my door to ask what to do. It sounded worse than just shouting.
We decided we would knock if we ever heard it again and go in if necessary.
They ended up moving shortly after. But doing something to protect the person possibly getting beat up was never a question of "should we?"
It was just a matter of how.
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R relay@relay.infosec.exchange shared this topic
