Still thinking a lot about this, but also in terms of who I'm willing to put in the work for. https://twitter.com/NeolithicSheep/status/1275830775720615937

Obviously I can't forgive someone on behalf of the people they've hurt. I can only forgive on my own behalf.

But to whom am I willing to offer grace and compassion and why?

The Greek writer Pausanias said there were three maxims inscribed in the pronaos of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, where the Oracle dwelled.

"Know thyself"
"Nothing to excess"
"Surety brings ruin"

Stobaeus cited 147 maxims, so possibly the Greeks got excitable. Wikipedia has a nice list. Some are useful, some will make you tell Apollo to fuck off ("Control your wife"? Seriously, dude? This is why you are no longer a major divine player)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delphic_maxims

But I digress.

I think it's human nature that I won't be able to offer that grace and compassion to everyone. I also think it's vital to interrogate my reasons why not and ensure that they aren't eg because of racism.

Therefore it is vital to know exactly why I feel I can offer it, when I do, and to examine to whom I'm offering it for trends in race, gender, disability, behavior, etc.

Heavy thoughts for a person sitting here watching oxen eat, I know.

Also I should make it clear that while technically grace is unearned and everyone deserves human rights....

If someone isn't doing the work to be a FORMER abuser I feel like that's a very different hard conversation.

And I say all this as a victim of assault and abuse. I don't want a world where the people who did that to me are defined by it forever, because that doesn't give them any room to do better.

But they have to put in the work. And it is work, I think it's easy to fall into exercising social power for your own gratification - one reason I'm an anarchist is because in the best of (not all, alas) anarchist spaces explicit attempts are made...

...to disable those hierarchies, and to envision and work toward a world that's free of them.

It takes work to break out of that, to deprogram, to teach yourself to respond in new ways.

I think people need both a community of others who are also doing this work AND a community of people who do not have a history of being abusive.

It needs to be separate from the community supporting their victim(s).

They need to understand that they may never be able to be around the people they've harmed. That they aren't owed access to those spaces.

But I don't think it makes anyone at all safer if we insist that they must have no access to community at all.

And I still don't know what the fuck you do with someone who refuses to put in the work, who doesn't ask for the help they'll need to become a less harmful person. Because the current system is not the fucking answer.