You have not begun to see the horrors of love

Hey guys, this is my cat Tonks. She passed away yesterday morning while I was out of town. She was 20 years old.

She loved belly rubs more than anything and always got along with the dogs in the house. Everyone who met her loved her, even ppl that don't usually like cats.

I get a lot of versions of this question, and I answer it seriously every time, because it’s both important and not important at all. Anyone who asks respectfully gets my whole ass answer.

It’s just not really about that. My job isn’t about defending the idea of hurting someone else. It’s about stopping the state from inflicting further hurt, torture, pain. It’s about pushing back for some fairness against a monumentally stacked system. And it’s about stuff that’s normal human stuff that counts as crime for some reason.

Yeah, it’s hard to do a sex abuse case. Sometimes the images stick around and it bothers me. But honestly? Mostly those cases have real plausible theories of innocence or they’re cases that I will lose because the evidence is there, and the question is not whether the perpetrator will go to jail but how long.

Those cases are so rare, though. I get so much pointless bullshit. Felony of a teen taking mom’s car without permission. Two kids that try to break into a car and get so scared by the alarm that they run away. Trespassing on dad’s house because his new girlfriend wants you to stop coming around. It’s just human stuff, and the violence of the state is not necessary or helpful.

I also reject the idea of punishment completely. The state has a responsibility to stop people from hurting other people again. But inflicting pain doesn’t do it, we know this by now. So I argue for mercy and for real solutions to real problems. I’m here to build a future, not get caught up with doing violence to someone because of the past.

So yeah, sometimes it’s hard, but mostly my conscience is dead clear: I’m not responsible for the crime. The damage has been done. I want to start the healing process, and I want it for everyone involved. When that’s not possible, I just want to tell the authorities they don’t get to just Do What They Want.

The more I do this job, the more I am a genuine pacifist who is against violence in all forms, and actually I don’t see a contradiction between that and what I do for a living. State violence is a pervasive evil that tears apart families, communities, and countries, and it’s far more damaging and awful than any individual crime. The average prosecutor has more blood on their hands than a serial killer, but it’s invisible: people who died in jail, who froze to death on the street, who were shot in a drug deal. Their violence begets violence.

When I get blood on my hands, it’s because I put my hands over the wounds and try to stop the flow. I’m okay with it.

Being attracted to any kind of body is normal. Fat bodies. Trans bodies. Disabled bodies. All normal. Being extra attracted to a specific kind of body is normal too. Totally normal to have a type.

Not unlearning the societal stigma attached to those kinds of bodies, the people who inhabit those bodies, and the people who fuck them, to the point where you do any of the following:

Only want to date/fuck the person in secret.

Reduce the person to the feature that you desire and ignore the rest of who they are as a person.

Expect the person to be a walking porn fantasy instead of a real person with their own sexual preferences and boundaries.

Would no longer love the person if the stigmatized aspect of their body changed.

Consider yourself superior to the person, think the person should be 'grateful' that you love their body, etc.

See the person as a temporary adventure while planning to eventually settle down with someone whose body isn't stigmatized.

Is bad and harmful and you shouldn't be dating anyone until you've worked on your shit, because this makes you a very terrible partner. This doesn't mean you are a bad person with bad-fetishist-desires who can only desire people badly, it means you need to unlearn societal stigma so you can be a better partner to the people you desire.

Imagine what it means to tell a person that sexual attraction to their body isn't normal.