In social justice-oriented spaces & conversations, there's this particular leap of logic that I keep seeing recreated. I've been thinking about these tweets for a couple years now. Here goes:

The leap is from "it is justified to need this" to "it is righteous to demand this."

I want to open by exploring "it is justified to need this."

I generally believe that marginalized, oppressed, and harmed people are the best authorities on what can bring them healing. That everyone deserves healing. That I can't begrudge people the tools of their resistance.

I have held some traumas - physical ones that put me in bed for months at a time, assaults that took months to process, a broken relationship that made me afraid of other people for like two years. I know that trauma plays out in confusing, non-linear ways. That healing is weird.

When someone states a need in their own healing & liberation, I generally start from the assumption that it is justified. Maybe additional/other solutions can be generated, maybe multiple pathways to healing are viable. But it's pretty rare that someone fakes a need for healing.

(I should have content warned this at the beginning. cw: discussions of rape, assault, abuse, structural violence, power dynamics)

When someone has been raped, and they name that publicly and ask that their rapist not be welcomed into social/personal events that they're at, that seems like a fair ask to me.

If you need this to feel safe, in the wake of traumatizing violence, that need is justified.

But that's where I often see the logical leap kicking in. The leap from "Right here, in this moment, this person is justified in needing this" to "as people of virtue, it is always righteous for us to exile all people who have ever committed rape or abuse from all spaces."

In trans community, there's this idea that you are not obligated to be a walking textbook for curious looky-loos or would-be allies. And I believe that! You shouldn't be obligated to perform free emotional labour for strangers, especially when it can go dangerously awry!

But I've often seen the logical leap here, too. "You are justified in not educating strangers about your body" gets shifted to "it is righteous to yell at allies when they haven't done their homework yet." As if all of us showed up fully informed about others' lived experiences.

I've been scorned by other social-justice-oriented people for taking the time to generously and gently lead someone away from their misconceptions about trans experience, and rewarding baby steps in the right direction.

I think that scorn is because of this righteousness leap.

I think the righteousness leap is insidious! It sees a boundary expressed in the name of healing, and it strips that boundary of any context, process, or ownership. It sees a fracture, and it demands that we replicate the fracture at every possible venue.

It translates individual trauma into collective trauma, and it depersonalizes the wounded party in their own healing. It creates frailty in our communities.

It also leads our communities into exile politics, carceral feminism, and rampant call-out culture.

I believe wholeheartedly in prison abolition, and in that world we need to solve our problems in a way that centers healing and justice, rather than punishment.

Exile politics wants us to send our harmful actors down river to a community less informed or prepared to handle them.

When someone has experienced oppression or harm, their healing is critically important. I start from the assumption that their needs are justified, real, and worth attending to. I think that's important!

When we leap from "it is justified to need this, as an individual in this moment" to "it is righteous to demand this, in every time and place," we assume trauma in the place that resiliency might have existed, and we assume to know what others need to heal (based on an anecdote).

And when we take the righteousness leap, we prioritize rules about who we keep out and what we demand of others, over continued listening and attention to those who are hurt or needing care.

When the righteousness leap produces a rule, we tend to apply it unevenly to those with the least privilege in our community. Trans women of colour are gonna get the righteous rules applied, but tommy rich boy isn't. He's insulated. People don't want to fight that battle.

The other pernicious outcome of the righteousness leap is that any stated healing need becomes permanent. In 2017 you needed to cease contact with that person? Well, now it's righteous for everyone to not talk to that person. Which means you're not allowed to move past that need.

Being unable to move past your healing needs of yesterday, because they've been generalized and weaponized by your community, means that your healing may get stuck.

Because healing isn't a one-and-done deal. It's a process, one full of experience and experiment.

In our lifetime, the world will change for the better. We will heal many of the rifts caused by capitalism, colonialism, racism, and industrialization. Our soil, our hearts, and our communities will find healing. We will abolish prisons and borders. We will repatriate land.

I don't know how we will get there, but I do know that the steps we take toward that world must be thoughtful, reflective, trauma-informed, resiliently hopeful, and emphatically caring.

Centering the needs of those who have been oppressed or harmed is critical! But I worry when I see people make the leap from "it is justified to need this" to "it is righteous to demand this." Because I think it displaces healing in favour of rigid, righteous punishment thinking.

Thanks for listening. Thanks for considering this.

Know that if you are wounded by something, I think your healing needs are real, justified, and worth attending to. I hope the people in your life actively listen to your ongoing, evolving expressions of both need and agency.

If any of this has rung true for you, one of the best texts I've seen exploring some of these questions is The Revolution Starts At Home. https://www.akpress.org/revolutionstartsathome.html