Sitting and watching ruminants eat and thinking about communities and the ways they go wrong and the complicity of the community when things go bad. And talking to Twitter about it so I don't blow up @CommuMx's phone this early.

This is both re the SFF stuff of a couple weeks ago and some local stuff that isn't mine to tell. But in both cases the prob goes beyond individuals and indicts the community at large, because people could have intervened in the dynamic that was causing harm but did not.

And the local stuff is not predatory abuse and sexual harassment like the SFF shit, but a harmful dynamic nonetheless. And in the case of both communities there were people in a position to be listened to by the person causing harm by virtue of shared privilege who let it go.

"Conflict with your friends feels bad" is an essential principle of human psychology. But arguably we have an obligation to our friends to step in before things rise to the level of conflict.

Also, look. I come to everything from the lens of someone who works with a variety of animals who can hurt me in various ways. Dogs bite, sheep and goats can shatter knees in ways you will never recover from, cattle can fucking kill you by accident.

Knowing this I've spent a lot of time reading about what we know about how organisms learn. I regret to inform you that the same principles apply to human beings - we are not all that special.

And one of the principles is this: it is much easier to stop a behavior that is not habitual. Interrupt the fuckery the first or second time someone tries it and odds are extremely good they will not try it again.

If you let the fuckery continue for weeks, months, or years, you are going to have a much harder time getting them to stop. The behavior has now become habitual. You will wind up in conflict with your friend.

Remember like a week ago when Cannon tried to bolt? He tried it because Kendy had been physically unable to stop him. The asshole tactic had worked for him in the past.

I stopped his ass that day and he has walked on a loose lead ever since. I interrupted the behavior the very first time he tried it with me, and he has given up on that tactic as unworkable.

When you've got someone who is persistently harassing those they perceive as having less power than they do, that's not just a personal failing. That's a failing of every community member they would have listened to who didn't say "what the fuck, not cool" every time they saw it.

When you have someone persistently accumulating organizational power, that's not just a personal failing but a failing of everyone they would have listened to who didn't say "yo, step back and share the power here."

I say "who they would have listened to" because it's probably going to need to be someone who shares some number of their privileges. That's why it's most effective for cis white dudes to check other cis white dudes for eg.

The role of marginalized people is most often to care for the victims of these interactions and do what they can to mitigate the harm that way. But for example expecting Black people to check a white person acting in ways that perpetuate racist harm is bullshit.

Expecting women/people who are in bodies that are forcibly femaled to check cis dudes who are getting off on harassing them is bullshit.

But too often that's what we're doing as communities, because the people who share privileges with the people causing harm are their friends. And refer back - conflict with our friends doesn't feel good. So we take silence or a nervous laugh at face value and let it slide.

We gotta knock it the fuck off *as communities*. Like I've watched SFF go through this cycle since RaceFail in 2009 where systemic problems are brought up in the context of individuals, everyone pledges to do better, and then next year we do it again. And again. And again.

"Fucking exhausting" doesn't begin to describe it. It's not the kind of community we should want to live in, honestly. Because it means *we are not stopping harm from occurring*.

We can talk about restorative vs punitive/carceral justice all we want but it should be extremely fucking evident that it is a far better tactic to stop your friend the first time they float a shitty joke in private with you, the first time you notice them doing EVERYTHING.

Stop this shit early enough and we're discussing how to heal bandaid level wounds instead of how to do fucking open heart surgery on our community.

Anyway thank you for your patience and in return here are various ruminants eating breakfast.