Okay, it’s time to tell this story.

One night during my time at Seattle IT, I was out having drinks with a friend and got a text from a guy I knew who had just left Seattle PD for a job in police reform.

We invited him to join us.

For context, because compulsory heterosexuality: I was still trying to date men, he was trying to date me, I was in love with the friend, he probably sensed that, and yes this is relevant for reasons you’ll understand later. Also, we’re two WW; he is Black.

He showed up to the bar and sat down next to me. I don’t remember how we got on this topic, but there was a record-scratch moment where he said that women shouldn’t serve on the front lines in the military or police.

We got into it. Like, in depth.

We debated every little point: About what matters when you’re in a crisis. About how the number of pull-ups you can do is pretty irrelevant. And how even if you’re judging solely on the physical feats that our culture counts as “strength,” plenty of women soar over that bar.

Finally, exasperated, I asked him: “Why is it so important to you that women be weaker than men?”

He answered, with just as much emotion, “Because otherwise you wouldn’t need us.”

This was one of those moments where you sit up straight and suddenly lots of fragments fall into place. I finally got it.

The myth that the world is unsafe for women and children keeps us in smaller worlds.

It’s kept many of us from seeing the truth of what they do.

It keeps us believing that we need them — not as equals, or as fellow humans, but as protectors who have power over US.

Many abusive relationships — including the ones I was in — follow this template.

They convince you that you can’t trust yourself.

That you can’t navigate the world without them.

That it’s big and scary and dangerous and only men can protect you from it.

If they let women in, the jig is up.

Our everyday lives are more dangerous than their front lines.

Whenever people start to realize that THEY are the problem, that they have an incentive to instigate and perpetuate violence, or even — as this man said to us that night — that we won’t want this version of them around once we realize we don’t need protection, they get clever.

They start fights to prove their point.

They generate fear.

They throw hands.

Sometimes, they even start entire wars.

The moment we realize that THEY are the ones CREATING the un-safety to justify their existence, we don’t need them anymore.

As I explained to this dude, far more gently than I would now, we need men as PEOPLE. But we do NOT need them in some trumped-up role of protector.

It’s both horrifying and fascinating now to watch these dynamics play out with precision as SPD and other police departments struggle to justify their existence.

On the streets, they create an atmosphere of terror. They make it clear that they are there to hurt you.

They WANT riots, so they can justify their riot gear.

They WANT us throwing bricks through windows — so much so that they stack them in piles right next to high-profile targets.

They WANT images of cars burning, so they mysteriously abandon a vehicle outside Nordstrom.

They WANT folks to drive into crowds and shoot us, otherwise they wouldn’t welcome such shooters with open arms. They wouldn’t turn a blind eye to the F150’s with no plates driving around the CHOP at 2 am.

By now they’ve even gone so far as to create fake reports of danger on their scanner, as @spekulation has documented.

Frankly I would not be surprised if they were paying folks to commit vandalism in the neighborhood so they could justify their presence —

ESPECIALLY since these supposedly brave people who do “dangerous” work to protect us are refusing to respond to the kinds of calls that even abolitionists want there to be a rapid-response team for, on the grounds that they’re scared and hurt by the presence of protestors.

In this story, protestors are not the abuse victim.

It’s the public.

We see through them, because we’re there when the media isn’t.

So they rely on the media to publish stories that only cite them as sources, with nothing real to back it up.

( @KromanDavid @Crosscut you’re still not off the hook for this. It’s not as bad as the Seattle Times or network news, but we expect better from you. Integrity, folks.)

Just like abusers do, when you start to see through them, they don’t just take away their fake “protection.”

They work to make you afraid of how your whole life will fall apart without them.

They invest heavily in copaganda.

They tokenize whoever they can.

Don’t fall for it.

We’ve all been gaslit. For years.

It’s time to wake up and see through the story to the reasons they work so hard to uphold it.

It’s THEIR power over US that’s in danger.

Not ours.

#defundspd #AbolishThePolice