As a survivor of abuse and sexual assault myself, I deeply appreciate this thread that draws the nuanced distinction between excluding an abuser from the social and community spaces the survivor is in; and cutting them off from all material livelihood. https://twitter.com/CartaMonir/status/1356452164642701312

Like yeah the dude that did shit to me transferred to Rutgers and lived a whole life I don't know about and that's Fine. That's good actually. He's allowed to have friends and shit I just wanted him far away from me and my own community spaces.

If someone is serial domestic abuser/rapist/etc. then there's cause to think they might be harmful but as prison abolitionists we should recognize that cutting off material needs like housing doesn't solve the problem

Someone like that certainly should be excluded from community spaces but they do ultimately still deserve to live alone in a shitty apartment working some random boring job. We just don't want them being Influencers with Clout and Social Status they can use to prey on people

And in an ideal society someday what we'd want is a way to reform those people I just don't fuckin know how personally

You never have to forgive your abuser

That doesn't mean they literally deserve the death penalty.

Deplatformed? Sure. Removed from leadership? Definitely? Can't live a quiet life with a handful of friends and a job? Please, come on, that's not "you have to forgive an abuser"

And I still stand by what I said 7 years ago that if we give the death penalty for one-time abuse and sexual assault then nobody will EVER be willing to be accountable, they will Always deny and make things worse, because the alternative is the death penalty.

I want a culture where someone who causes harm can be told what they did and their response is to accept responsibility, accept blame, and be willing to do whatever the survivor asks for as accountability, including leaving shared community spaces if requested.

Literally if my rapist, when told, had just said "oh fuck I am so so so sorry. Whatever you need I'll do it just let me know. I'll keep away from you otherwise" like... That would've saved me another 9 months of being retraumatized by battling over narratives and Title IX

But nobody will ever do that if they know being labeled an Abuser means people won't even allow them to find housing with people who don't even know the survivor. The stakes are too high. They'll act in self-preservation and further harm the survivor. I've seen it so many times

We absolutely need to prioritize the safety of survivors and their trauma but I draw the line at literally wishing death upon another human being who is not a police officer, politician, or a member of the Capitalist/Bourgeois class; and actually trying to make that happen

And I say this AS A SURVIVOR MYSELF who did spend 9 months embroiled in Title IX and social battles for space that would make me feel safe after what happened. As someone estranged from my biological family to keep myself safe from abuse.

And before people Speculate: no, I've never once been told by anyone that I had been abusive or commit sexual assault nor accused of such by a single person.

Even that guy in college never called me abusive. He called me insane, deranged, psychotic, a lot of shit to discredit me. But he never said I was An Abuser.

So no this isn't me trying to save my own skin or whatever this is me having values and applying them consistently. This is me being a religious person, who truly believes in t'shuvah being possible if someone makes the effort to truly change and mend the harm done.

Abuse and sexual assault are actions someone has taken not an intrinsic trait. "Abusers" are not Lizard People that emerge from the womb Abusers and sneak into communities to harm people. They ARE our community members who BECOME abusive, or Commit, sexual assault

So how do we structurally PREVENT abuse and sexual assault? It is NOT by acting like the only people who could abuse and rape are people who intrinsically are the Kind of Person who could do that and everyone else is a Good Person who could Never.

It is not by creating a culture where committing these ACTIONS (this horrible, HARMFUL, actions) immediately results in all of us treating them like they were never a real human being in our community and insisting they be unhoused and unemployed.

We
1. Ensure the safety of the survivor, first and foremost
2. Seek accountability, if possible
3. Interrogate how we allowed this to emerge. Why "abusers" keep appearing from the ether? They aren't. We need better consent education. We need better healthy relationship education

We need better access to mental health resources and we need community healing and material resources so people don't feel like everything is a matter of life or death.

there's SO MUCH we need. It's not easy. There's no easy solution. But we could start, I think, to work on it

Most people still don't learn about consent, or about how to communicate their needs in healthy ways. IDFK I just can't believe in a world where abusers are lizard people who must be exterminated. As a survivor I cannot accept that