lacking motivation

"Maya angelou's family killed a pedophile that raped her, and that just traumatized her more. "I thought that I had caused the man’s death, because I had spoken his name. That was my seven-and-a-half-year logic. So I stopped talking for five years." Read I know why the caged bird sings."

and here is my comment:

the fantasy of killing a pedophile to defend your child is... an escape from reality. as with all fantasies where a single act of violence stands for a lifetime of effortful care. it lets us off the hook for the day to day labor of actually protecting the human beings around us. it gives us an excuse to look away from what abuse actually looks like.

it allows us to ignore that setting boundaries is a daily practice. it allows us to ignore the subtle ways in which we punish children for having boundaries. it allows us not to think about things we can do, the effort we can put in, in smaller repeated ways, to be kind and caring. to be safe to talk to.

it is a grand gesture that, were you to actually go through with it, would neither prevent the harm that you fear nor help your child to heal from it. it is an idea with no bearing on reality for 99.99% of people, while rape and abuse are a reality for a large fraction of people.

it is not useful to imagine killing a pedophile. it is not useful to claim you would kill a pedophile. it wouldn't be useful to actually attempt to kill a pedophile in almost any situation.

it is useful to think about how you can help your child know they can get help. they can say no. they can tell adults to stop. they deserve to be comfortable. they deserve to be informed.

the entire point of the post is that your child will not be saved by your imagined wrath. the entire point is that your day to day actions, and your attitude towards children as people, are more impactful to your child's well-being. far more realistic. more important.

not least because your child doesn't need you to be wrathful. they need your love. they need care. they need attention.

meanwhile, the public performance of wanting to kill child abusers doesn't do anything to child abusers. most child abusers believe they are doing the right thing for their children.

saying you want to kill abusers doesn't signal anything good to children, either. as others have said, it makes children more afraid to speak up and ask for help. that might be their mom, their coach, their troop leader. it gives those abusers leverage; the children cannot tell if they want things to be stable.

and it makes it harder for adults to BELIEVE children, too! because if their child was really abused, then they've staked their honor on committing that violence, even if it was against their brother or spouse or grandpa or pastor or neighbor or their other kid's favorite babysitter. and if they don't want to do that, well... then they must decide whether they believe completely their child, or whether their child's boundaries must really be respected, or... if maybe it's impossible to know.

how many abuse survivors have tried to disclose, only to be told that so-and-so wouldn't do that, or they didn't mean it, because so-and-so loves you and we all like so-and-so. this dichotomy goes both ways, psychologically. if a child abuser is entirely evil and has to be killed, then someone who's not entirely evil and i don't want to kill can't be a child abuser. this must be something else. there must be a mistake.

Like it's been touched on, the possibility that we're more primal and animalistic than other aliens by their standards. Our evolution is pretty skewed and we've held ourselves back developmentally multiple times in history, so it wouldn't be too surprising.

But I wonder if all the animal in us is something that makes us better people.

The other species might not be pack creatures, or as sociable, but the expectation of evolution is to bypass your primitive origins. So they didn't expect humans to be so.. wild.

But we didn't notice it in ourselves. The messes we make. The tripping and slipping. The noises of joy or confusion or upset in the backs of our throats. The innate instinct to respond to the cries of anyone's young, including other species. The gross habits. The collapsing in the grass and dirt when cooped up inside for so long. Wrinkles and cellulite and scars on healthy aging skin. Locking eyes on a prey animal, even with no intent to hunt. Sneezing. Farting. Napping around your pack when others are awake because they trust you to watch out for them while vulnerable. Getting sleepier in the winter because hibernation!

And the emotions. Oh, so many feelings. We might be exceptionally expressive compared to other intergalactic races. Our feelings just form so easily! And yet, for creatures that might have taut scales or small eyes or casing around their faces, they actually find it's harder to read a human's face. Because we're so used to being expressive, we honed the skills to keep what we're feeling from our face if we want to. If you see a human looking obviously upset, that's because they want you to know they're upset. Their faces scrunch in utter glee, their lips curl and teeth bare in simmering rage, they look at you with soft and sleepy eyes if they trust you- and wide and alert eyes if they don't. And they love so brightly, they can't even hide it.

And we bring this behavior to the stars. They see the accidental spilling of coffee and the hurling into someone to hug them and the decorated cabin because the humans need to nest or they'll get sad! And they ask, "Why do you do that?"

And the humans don't respond initially. Because they don't know how to explain Earth. How the beauty of being a social animal is also the most destructive part of us. That wonderful little mammalian brain is also scared of risks, and of uncertainties. It finds comfort and safety in simplicity, in staying in their little box and just eating and sleeping for eternity. But simplicity doesn't exist when you're a sapient creature with incredible intelligence. So there's this need for sameness and easiness intermingled with the need for community, that created this sad belief that you needed to shut out your individual animal nature if you want to keep a pack of your own.

But even for those souls, who resent in making mistakes and being gross and taking up space- the animal is still there. It rises, clawing it's way out when they feel their safety box is coming down and the people around them are a danger. It hisses, bites, filled with insults and rejection because it doesn't know if these box-destroyers are friends or threats.

The aliens listen to the humans speak. And there again, there are those big eyes and malleable faces that are so easy to understand. One has the stars in their eyes, with wonder and wisdom and intelligence of a thousand years. And another has fire in their eyes, of anger and passion and a fight that lasted their whole life. And another has the green of their planet in them, of a love for life that is reflected in generations of humans before them. And when you look closer, you recognize all these humans look winded, tired, but at peace. Because they all fought to claim their right to their nature. They all stood up and said to their people "I love you all, even if you don't love me. And I am here for you, even if you aren't here for me. But I am not living for you. I am living for me." And they ache for their wonderful planet-sized pack to live for themselves and be happy too.

Like humans grow up on a world where *anything* can kill you. Bugs. Mold. Unclear water. A sneeze. The sun. The rain. Plants. Mushrooms. Large predators. Large herbivores. Small predators. A cat scratch. The list goes on and on.

This kind of environment doesn't make people less afraid. Okay it might if they're sufficiently desensitized, and most people will do okay in settings they're familiar with, but in a new situation? Everything is a threat.

Humans adapting to spaceships and/or alien planets would not be confident and gung-ho. They would be cautious, curious, and exploratory. They would freak the fuck out at every new alien bug. They would be very hesitant to engage with any animal. They would freak out every other alien on the crew because the humans keep staring at them, watching them to make sure that none of the aliens are going to attack them.

And when a solo human with an alien crew meets another human, also the only human on their crew?

“Humans don’t actually feel anything at all, they just mimic emotions to trick others into believing them”

“Never trust a human. They lie like the rest of us breath”

“Humans spend so much of their lives acting, it’s impossible to tell when they’re being truthful”

“In human culture, great respect is awarded to ‘actors’ who are able to mimic other persons and emotions with startling accuracy”

“Some ‘actors’ are able to ‘perform’ hundreds of unique characters”

“Acting is so ubiquitous in the human culture that many consider it polite to lie”

“Sarcasm is a common, casual game played between humans, where one human says something untrue and the other human must guess what truth they are thinking. Humans unable to perform this ritual are often ostracized by their peers”

“If you see a human crying, do not immediately assume they are hurt. Humans have been known to use their ‘acting’ abilities to trick unsuspecting travelers into giving up an unreasonable number of belongings”

Which is very odd to the galactic community.

Rest comes in all sorts of forms across the galaxy, some having sleep similar to ours, some having hibernation/brumation cycles, some going into meditative states, some retreating to cocoons, some photosynthesising, some even being technologically advanced enough to simply just plug themselves in and literally recharge. But the seeming inescapability of human sleep is…a little concerning.

If a human is tired enough, they will be able to sleep just about anywhere. Bed, sofa, armchair, the floor, a table, three chairs lined up, propped up like a doll against the wall, on top of another person, on a rock that’s even vaguely flat, on a gnarled tree branch, sometimes even floating in water or suspended by a harness. Wherever. So long as we can breathe, we can and will fall asleep.

The same can’t be said of aliens, they’re a bit more picky by comparison, or they can stave off their exhaustion through emergency chemical reactions long enough to find somewhere appropriate to rest. Some are so specialised that they require their environments to be utterly perfect before their body allows them to rest. Those aliens are deeply jealous while waiting around at the Spaceport for their shuttle to start boarding and seeing humans clumped together on a bench in a very uncomfortable looking pile, snoring away.

And then, an alien species named the Khak’Cthrax, a species known for their aggressive behaviour and bodies covered in rocky scales and dangerous barbs, discovering this aspect of humans.

One Khak’CThrax soldier being deployed to assist in saving some human civilians from a war zone and ending up having to carry a teenager for a while due to there not being enough gurneys. The juvenile human ends up nodding off in the soldier’s hands and at first he thinks the teenager has perished because the Khak’CThrax are not the type of person you would consider comfortable to rest on much less feel ‘safe’ around inherently, but after the field medic explains that the child is only asleep, unsurprisingly from the day they had had, the soldier practically becomes a broody mother hen for the human. This little one trusted him??? Enough to rest while held in his arms??? They are his baby now???

We called out into the dark over and over. We sent out messages in hopes. We searched every planet we could reach, in hopes of any sign of life. Any at all.

We thought, hoped we were the last, because we couldn’t bear the idea of being the one ones this awake and alive in a world as vast as this.

And we died alone.

When the others are born, many many years later, they find us, everything we left for them.

They recover The Golden Record and look at it a million times over, they dig up our fossils and put us in museums, they study us for years and years, loving us as we love our ancestors’ painted hands on cave walls.

I love humans with jewelry. Humans that like sparkly crystals and wear them on their fingers and wrists and necks and ears, in their hair and decorated on their clothes. Honestly chances are, all aliens have jewelry they value from their planets. It's a space-wide thing to cover yourself in treasures from your world.