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Time and time again, I see this. Abusers will pull out all of their character witnesses, and lie and lie and lie to dodge accountability. Entire communities gaslit. Once is a mistake. Twice is a choice. Multiple times is a pattern.
There comes a time when you can no longer claim you've grown, especially in direct response to harm you've caused others. If you're in a position of power, and have a habit of fucking up, you need to be removed from power until you don't. Grow elsewhere. Grow BEFORE you fuck up.
"That's not what I meant, I actually wanted to do something nice!" If you don't communicate your intentions first, you don't have consent. You can't backpedal after the fact and claim your intentions were good if one had no way of seeing that beforehand. Textbook gaslighting.
Final thought: abusers can be incredibly amazing to some people and horrifically unethical towards others. It is our job, the people, the other human beings in a community, to look critically at what is happening and to hold abusers accountable.
