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This "redemption narrative" piece is worth digging in on, because T.C. is right, it is common.
People love redemption stories, and whenever names get named, there's always some discussion of what forgiveness or restorative justice looks like in these cases. https://twitter.com/q_aurelius/status/1276153040832212994
People love redemption stories, and whenever names get named, there's always some discussion of what forgiveness or restorative justice looks like in these cases. https://twitter.com/q_aurelius/status/1276153040832212994
And a lot of these discussions are sincere--I'm not talking about "but that was five minutes ago hasn't he suffered enough." I'm talking about folks--including survivors--who really believe that there should be paths for people to grow and return after they've behaved badly.
And certainly we can talk about putting structures in place to support that, but:
1. We need to be putting that effort into paths forward for survivors first, and
2. We have to be mindful that restorative justice is a framework that doesn't entirely apply here.
1. We need to be putting that effort into paths forward for survivors first, and
2. We have to be mindful that restorative justice is a framework that doesn't entirely apply here.
Restorative justice is a framework that acknowledges that removing people from their communities (through incarceration) harms the community. But it seeks to protect vital communities--where people live and work, where their families are, where they are invested in remaining.
Professional communities are not, typically, vital communities. Removing a person does not harm the SFF community in the same way that removing someone (or a whole class of people) from their family, neighborhood, town, etc does.
Removing someone from a professional community certainly does not inflict the same harm on them as incarceration.
(Yes, even if the person is experiencing a mental health crisis, because being in crisis and out of prison is better than being in crisis and in prison).
(Yes, even if the person is experiencing a mental health crisis, because being in crisis and out of prison is better than being in crisis and in prison).
So restorative justice is starting from the position that removing someone is worse for them *and* for their community than keeping them there, and that's not something we can assume is true of a professional community. The community may indeed be better off with the person gone.
So we really need to lead with empathy for the harmed, which gets back to my first point about how we should be spending our energy on paths forward for survivors.
If we're spending energy helping abusers "redeem themselves" but none on helping their victims recover from the harm done? If we're looking for ways that abusers can get their careers back but not for ways to restore the careers they damaged? That's not restorative justice.
The "bad guy sees the light and becomes a hero" trope is attractive in fiction, but fiction rarely focuses on the harm they left behind, except for how they feel about it. The people they harmed are relegated to backstory.
And that's not a narrative we should facilitate.
And that's not a narrative we should facilitate.
So to begin with, "what's the path forward for redemption?" is the wrong question, because it is prioritizing an abuser's access to a space, and there is no path forward to redemption that prioritizes the abuser over the people they've harmed.
The right question is, how do we heal the harm caused? How do we make victims whole? What do we do to restore the tangible and intangible things that victims lost--and that the community as a whole lost--because of the abuser's behavior?
And if that sounds vague, let me go ahead and put a face on it for you: abusive, manipulative behavior that I experienced within this industry has had a huge impact on my writing. The last story I had out was in 2018 and you're not gonna see another one from me this year either.
So if you're a person who enjoys my writing and wants to see more of it, then I invite you to sit with that loss for a sec. You, too, are someone who has been harmed, even if only in a small way, by abusers in our industry.
And the version of this story where the people who did this to me get to change and come back? Even if they become a force for good in our community, that's not the story that started with them causing harm. It's the story that started with them getting caught.
(That story hasn't even started yet because the worst of them haven't even 'gotten caught' in any way that has meaningfully changed their behavior, but that's another matter).
The story that started with them causing harm ends when that harm ends. It ends when the damage that they did to me as a human being and the damage they caused my career are repaired. It's not the story of them getting their next book deal; it's the story of me getting my first.
And even if they do change? Even if they do meaningfully apologize and become a force for good in our industry?
That is not a story in which they are the hero.
That is not a story in which they are the hero.
That's not to say there's no path forward for people who've truly changed and grown. But when survivors are cross about these 'comebacks' it's not because we're bitter. It's because we're still hurting, and still being rendered as unimportant bit players in someone else's story.
