otherwise interesting post ruined by the bold insistence that you can never accidentally abuse someone & that all abusive people are self-aware evil masterminds
I don't think my parents are aware that what they did was abuse. in fact I think one of the reasons they abused me was because they lacked the self-awareness, introspection, and education needed to realize what they were doing counted as abuse. if they did have more self awareness &etc, they would have likely stopped. it is not productive to insist they woke up in the mornings with the intent to psychologically torture a kid for no reason, when that is self-evidently not the case or within their motivations.
I'm speaking annecdotally here but I think many cases of abuse are like this. I think when reckoning with the reality of how abuse functions in our society, you must come to terms with the mundanity of it including the fact that abusive people are primed to overlook the harm of their own actions through the shield of mundanity and (lack of) intent.
