The whole “castrate all rapists” meme, is extremely extremely racist. Do you not have ANY clue about how systemically that was used against innocent black men accused of raping white women? Like rape is a heinous crime. I am a survivor myself. I understand having rage, I understand having bitterness, but have an ounce of empathy for other people’s trauma.

Also I’ll say it again believing victims is not the same as believing accusations

If a third party accuses someone and the person they say is the victim says that it’s not true. Believe the victim. Denying the experience of the individual you’re claiming to be defending is fucked.

I Look Aside For Regicide

I hope something is being done about those Return Of The Kings assholes, I’m not advocating violence per say, I’m just saying if I saw one getting punched until he admitted he was asking for a beating I might be inclined “not to notice”

It’s interesting that you can find a ton of various stats on false rape allegations

but nothing or next to nothing on false accusations of assault, theft or anything else pretty much (except domestic violence). It’s almost like people believe victims of crimes that don’t disproportionately affect women tend to not be doubted or something

Also I Think The Flaming Sword Vigilante Ultra Black And White Vigilante Culture Contributes To Rape Culture

By forcing victims never to complain about unintentional wrongs from people they basically like, to never complain about slips in consent practice (like when they did in fact want to fuck but wish their partner had asked more clearly or checked in more because it would prevent future problems) because it forces us to demand nothing be done about the reckless driver who almost hit us with their car, or did hit us but managed to swerve to avoid injuring us severely or forcing us to demand they be charged with attempted murder. We can’t talk about someone fucking up AT ALL without painting them as pure evil.

And that scares the fuck out of me.

So I’m Going To Talk About Something Kind of Uncomfortable

I feel like social justice culture doesn’t really have a good solution for the fact that abusers often do claim victim status. My abuser accused me of being the abusive one, to maintain control over me, used the fact that I sometimes fought back when he hurt me as evidence of my abuse. I was battered, and isolated and he was sociable and popular.

How do you think that would have gone had we been involved in political organization? Even without that I was expelled from what remained of my social group, people believed I was what he said I was.

I’m not saying that believing survivors is not paramount, or that we as a society do not have a huge problem with brushing aside true accusations as malicious or false. I’m saying that maybe the vigilante guilt on accusation model focuses more on punishing the guilty than protecting the victim sometimes. That sometimes it is more interested in wielding its flaming sword and feeling righteous than assuring that its flaming sword is used in the cause of righteousness.

There have been cases of positionality protecting abusers in political organization. There have been cases where mutual accusation lead to the political organization shrugging its shoulders and expelling both parties. And I have seen first hand cases of survivors shouted down as rape apologists for criticizing the witch hunt way organizations went about handling things AND seen abusers and rapists unscathed by accusations because their victims were afraid to come forward because of how well they’d seen those vigilante systems work to their abusers advantage. As well there are numerous people who would benefit from being able to go through an accountability process who are afraid to use them because they don’t want to see the person who harmed them unintentionally painted as a monster and marked as such for the rest of their life

You Know, It Makes Me Really Uncomfortable

When people kick people out of organizations for admitting to wrongdoing, when people don’t believe in the possibility of redemption because that means you’re going to leave the ones who lie about it, the ones who will deny to the grave that they did something wrong.

People screw up, people do sexist shit, people screw up consent because we live in a society that doesn’t teach people to get consent properly, and that doesn’t mean that there aren’t people who are irredeemable, my rapist and abuser will deny that he did anything wrong till the end of his days, he will deny that it happened. He is the person who needs to be expelled, not the person who didn’t ask consent explicitly enough and stopped when they were told no, and went through the accountability process and admits to all of this and would never do it again, but so many people will expel the person who admits to doing something wrong and keep the unrepentant monster, because the latter doesn’t admit to being wrong.

Kicking out working class QPOC who used fucked up language once, and did the accountability process and admits it freely and keeping the guy who covers up his emotional and physical abuse of his partner is vile.

I believe in transformative justice. I believe deeply in the possibility of redemption and people who don’t scare the daylights out of me.

Believing Survivors is not the same thing as believing accusers.

By which I mean, if someone is telling you someone did x, y, or z to someone else, but the person who was supposedly the victim denies the allegation.

Believe the victim, don’t turn shit into a shitstorm against the victim’s will. Check with survivors and people said to be survivors before spreading shit around.

I’ve seen abusers start witch hunts against other people to conceal their own behavior, do not let them do it.

A Little Scenario

Let’s say you live in a society where driving is hugely important, until you do, you’re a nobody, a total loser, so of course combine with how nice it would be to get to go places you want to go, you’re desperate to drive.

However, in this society driving is also a fraught and somewhat taboo activity. Driver’s ed is just an explanation of the working of an internal combustion engine, and a series of photos of injuries from car accidents. Your parents maybe explain how the suspension works, and tell you not to do it till you’re 30 and married.

In movies and tv the driving scenes are often obscured in weird ways, and give either no advice or directly terrible advice, like saying the best thing to do on icy roads is go as fast as you can, and that red means go, and yellow means hurry up on traffic lights, and that the break is located under the middle of the back seat and that headlights should only be used during midday.

Let’s also say in this society, you’re considered an absolute MONSTER if you hit somebody with your car… unless it was an accident, or they had a reputation for maybe not paying a ton of attention to traffic lights, or were out after dark, or were wearing insufficient reflective tape and foam padding, or didn’t look each way before crossing the road long enough, or were too close to the edge of the sidewalk, or had maybe irritated you at some point in your life, then it wasn’t really hitting a person with your car.

Now, this is a society that makes it easy for people who want to murder someone with their car to get away with it, and get forgiven, but also a society where a lot of people will unintentionally hit pedestrians without meaning to because there’s no cultural mechanism for teaching safe driving. It doesn’t mean they’re monsters, but they did immensely harm another human being, and that cannot be downplayed.

Now consider consent? Do decent people fuck it up? Yes. Does that mean they didn’t do something horrible and destructive? Nope. What do we do about it? Teach people how consent works.