cheaper than droids and easier to replace

1. Does OP mention an obligation on victims to forgive abusers who have learned from their past actions?

2. Does OP mention any work on the part of victims to educate their abusers?

1. Does OP mention an obligation on victims to forgive abusers who have learned from their past actions?

2. Does OP mention any work on the part of victims to educate their abusers?

Subtypes/conclusions:

- turns out he would not do that

- the people who firmly believe he would do that are not sufficiently skilled

and

Mon cousin Bernard (1827), Charles Laumier; Vierges et Courtisanes (1834), Jules de Saint-Félix; Arthur (1838), Eugène Sue; Les Grotesques (1844), Théophile Gautier; Splendeur et misères des courtisanes (1847), Honoré de Balzac; Caprices et zigzags (1852), Théophile Gautier; Un amour maudit (1861), Xavier de Montépin; De loin et de près (1862), Alphonse Karr

Michelle Dionne Peacock was a 59-year-old black woman who, by our communities’ definition, would’ve been transmisogyny-exempt on account of being a cisgender woman. However, she was killed on account of Tommy Wayne Earl’s misogynoir AND transmisogyny, even going so far as to refer to her as a “male acting like a woman” when questioned on the murder. Earl had no grounds for his accusations apart from Peacock’s appearance which, last time I checked, doesn’t indicate anything save her blackness. Considering Earl also had to be separated from black inmates due to “not getting along with them”, I think it’s warranted to assume his transmisogynistic motive is equally rooted in misogynoirist behaviors/mindsets that masculinize black women. In other words: he’s just as much of a violent racist as he is a violent transmisogynist, and whether or not Peacock was actually a transgender woman meant nothing to him. Only his ideology mattered, therefore it was the only part of his crime he recognized. Most transphobes are like this.

Caster Semenya and her battle against the International Olympic Committee’s intersexist, transmisogynistic policies is another case I think of, though thankfully it isn’t a fatal one. In 2019, World Athletics (formerly the IAAF) introduced new regulations that forced intersex athletes and other athletes with DSDs like Semenya to take medication that would suppress their testosterone levels. Semenya refused, as was her right to. Ever since, she has been pursuing legal action against these regulations. In tandem with her legal battles, transmisogynoirist and intersexist cultural wars were sparked because of the barring of Caster Semenya. Her being a cis woman in actuality did not stop these culture wars from happening. People only cared about the narratives being fed to them, and again, most transphobes are like this.

Semenya is not the first nor the last cis black woman in the sports industry to be subjected to this treatment. Far from it. Serena Williams is infamously made a target by misogynoirist sports reporters and commentators whose actions against her often skew into transmisogynistic territories as well (see: Mark Knight‘s political cartoon for The Herald Sun from September 2018). In that same year, Williams addressed internet conspiracies around her having been “born a man” as well. Imane Khelif is an Algerian woman, and another athlete no less, who was subjected to similar treatment as the aforementioned gold medalist Caster Semenya. To no one’s surprise, Head TERF-in-Chief J.K. Rowling fed the fire against Khelif, claiming her opponent “had everything snatched away from her because the IOC allowed a male to get in the ring with her”. Mind you, Khelif is a cisgender woman. But again, most transphobes are like this. They don’t acknowledge anyone or anything else besides their own echo chambers.

Even Michelle Obama has been subjected to transmisogynoirist harassment from American right-wingers who repeatedly make conspiracies and accusations of her “secretly being a man”. Quite recently, UFC fighter Josh Hokit peddled this exact rhetoric on the South Lawn of the White House. Emboldened by the likes of Joe Rogan and in the shadow of the Trump Administration, no doubt. Are you starting to see the trend of non-white women being misgendered, largely to feed racist narratives against them— and if not that— to further erase the existence of intersex people? If you’re this far in, I’d hope so.

On a less public level, I was shared a video by a black co-worker that applies to this; said video was of a black woman being harassed in a women’s restroom. As she’s filming, an older white woman comes around the corner and insists that she is in the women’s restroom, implying that the woman recording shouldn’t be there. She tries to ignore the old lady at first, but ultimately (and rightfully) tells her to leave her alone. Only for that same woman to claim she’s “mean” for doing so, as if she didn’t spend most of her time harassing this woman.

Admittedly, I used to sympathize with people’s reasons for using TME/TMA terminology in communal spaces. I felt obligated to use it since it was the least I could do for my peers. In retrospect, this terminology is flawed. People regard it as another version for AGAB terminology (which cannot be stressed enough that it was appropriated from intersex spaces in the first place), but it’s deeper than that.

I am not a woman, but your average person is going to assume I am a black woman. They have the potential to exercise the same violent misogynoirist, or even transmisogynoirist, mindset against me as Tommy Wayne Earl had against Michelle Dionne Peacock. My experiences aren’t like that of an actual black trans woman, nor was it for Michelle, but that doesn’t change the fact that our societies don’t care about distinction. Our societies can and will operate on its own optics regardless of who we are, and once they perceive us one way, they aren’t going to stop and check if that’s actually true or applies to their beliefs. If American white supremacists can still peddle “Michelle Obama is a man!” conspiracies in 2026 and with confidence, what makes you think society as a whole will suddenly start caring about who does or doesn’t apply to its systems of oppression?

Not only does this terminology overlook the nuances of sex and how it is experienced among people, but it also overlooks nuances like the racialization of gender and sex, especially when those nuances CAN and HAVE led to the discrimination of people like Michelle Dionne Peacock, Caster Semenya, Serena Williams, and many, many more.

You cannot separate these cases of racist, misogynoirist discrimination and violence from the transmisogynistic rhetoric therein. You simply can’t. It’s all connected. The notion that any of these women are men relies on our societies’ fearmongering around black people (and in Khelif’s case, people of color in general) and transgender people alike as well as how they dehumanize us. Worst of all, we see the fallout constantly in our communities, seeing how black trans people— especially black trans women— hold the highest statistics of being hate-crimed out of any other transgender demographic.

And as you can see it is not like instant death, they too are just animals and they are often just gently curious about the presence of humans! But people who study and dive with sharks will tell you you're safe as long as you stay calm and know what you're doing. The world's leading professional night divers and experts on these squids, specifically??? Stress in every interview and article and paper they write in that you simply do not fuck around with these squids. They know what they're doing and they still all have at least one story of being attacked, in some cases having to be hospitalized. Considering just how rarely anybody puts themselves in the pitch dark nighttime ocean on purpose, let alone during a squid feeding frenzy, it sounds like they're quite a bit more likely to consider you potential food than other marine predators. We also don't know how many fatal attacks might have ever happened, because what humboldt squid like to do with large prey is just drag it away into the darkness forever. The two worst attacks ever proven involved two or three squid at a time latching on to a diver (in BOTH cases they were professionals and knew the risk!) and jetting straight downward with enough force that both divers suffered injury from the sudden pressure change alone, including burst eardrums, nearly passed out and they probably would have died if they hadn't broken free. In general, people who die drowning in the dark open ocean are either never found, or they're found in pieces picked over by enough scavengers that the precise cause of death can only be narrowed down to "the sea." But now you know ONE of "the sea's" possible murder weapons :)

There's a short section on Humboldt squid in Wikipedia's entry for Cephalopod attacks on humans:

And if you can get past some of Animal Planet's hokey presentation style, this video includes a bit of interview with one of those professional experts who still got nearly squidded from existence:

There is of course some debate about all this, with some arguing that all proven documented attacks occurred on people with reflective diving equipment, which they say the squid must have mistaken for the shine of fish. However, there are lots and lots of people who have to fish around these squids to survive, who do not have access to that kind of equipment, and also have a consensus that if you fall in the water when big squids are out hunting you might disappear without a trace or perhaps just get your head bitten open. With many modern science guys agreeing with this sentiment, this is one case where the "they're just misunderstood sea friends" crowd is kind of outnumbered. The sea at night is theirs and not ours is all. It's not ours during the day either but since we are neither marine nor nocturnal animals we are double fools in the eyes of the squids, which by the way are these eyes:

No for real:

Also because I can't reblog every addition together:

did… did she really say that? iconic

What a red flag actually means: something here is an indicator of a potential problem (but might be fine with a reasonable explanation)

What people have now decided it means: abuse

I've lost count of the number of times I've now had to read variants of "My partner takes all my money and gives me back an allowance because he says it's a man's job to control finances, but he's racking up gambling debts" being met with "Wow this man is a walking red flag" no Becky that is abuse. That is not an indicator. He is an abuser. Call the police. We have lost the concept of a proxy: a thing that indicates a more important thing. And it's relevant to this conversation because I'm actually going to go out on a limb here:

With the obvious exception of paedophilia, age gaps themselves aren't a problem at all - they are a proxy for the actual harmful phenomenon. Hea me out, let me explain

The reason we don't like age gaps is because of the implied power dynamic. If one partner, usually male, is older than other - particularly if the other is still quite young - the risk is that what we're seeing is a worldly wise predator who is exploiting the lack of life experience of a young beautiful woman by mentally abusing her until she's no longer young and pretty enough to satisfy, at which point he'll move on to the next. There have been enough examples of this in human history. It's unfortunately not an uncommon pattern. Genders can also be diverse in this scenario

We can't necessarily see that dynamic from the outside. But we CAN see an inherent element of it: the ages of the people involved. So age becomes a proxy for the abuse. And, hey, it's often correct.

But here's the thing: the ages themselves are not causing harm.

The power dynamic is. The abuse is.

Plenty of age gap relationships are loving, healthy and steadfast. Two people met and genuinely fell in love regardless of the outer packaging, and have a relationship with all the highs and lows and challenges and rewards as any more traditional pairing. This happens all the time

Is the age gap a red flag? Sure! It indicates a potential issue.

Is it inherently abusive? Absolutely fucking not.

OP is right - we need to stop focusing just on the numbers and twisting the facts to fit by infantilising the younger partners, and start focusing on the actual harms. The DiCaprio Pattern of only dating under 24s repeatedly is itself a proxy, too, actually - but a much stronger one than the simple presence of an age gap.

(Even so, in DiCaprio's case, until any of his former partners come forward and describe him as abusive, actually, even that is up in the air - my personal interpretation, given how strong a pattern it is, is that he's a loser who views women as trophies (consciously or not). If any have come forward and I don't know about it, of course, fair enough. But those women were adults capable of making their own decisions, even if they might later come to regret it. And regretting poor decisions is part of life! That's how it goes, particularly with relationships. As long as they weren't abused, there's no biggie. And just as he was looking for young-and-beautiful, there's no way they weren't, on some level, looking for rich-and-famous; it goes both ways.)

Also, another element of this: I think a lot of modern extreme puritan discourse on this is actually ironically down to the age of those taking part. Up until your late 20s, ten years is actually a huge span of time to you, because in your own life you were in a completely different developmental phase ten years ago (teenager), and a completely different phase again ten years before that (child). That skews your sense of what a ten-year gap means. Whereas once you're in your 30s and beyond, ten years is like. Yeah I was an adult ten years ago, and I still am now. That's two adults. Who cares.

Death Note is a show with a very clear central premise: no one should have the power to kill others without consequence. Not the cops, not corporations, not the Mob, not civilians, no one.

Even outside of the 2000s-era criticisms of the Japanese justice system, even if you're looking at it in a vacuum, Death Note makes it incredibly obvious what it's trying to say. It starts this off by making it very clear, right out of the gate, that the audience identification character really, really should not have this power.

For Death Note's original target audience, Light is everything you're supposed to be. He's smart, diligent, good-looking, athletic, popular but not too popular. He's The Perfect Middle-Class Japanese Teenage Boy. If you're the kind of edgy, smart Japanese teenage boy who would want to watch an anime supernatural crime drama in the mid-00s? Light is built for you to imprint on like a baby duckling.

...And then the show goes out of its way to point out, in the first proper story arc, that Light is the villain of this piece. From the introduction of L to the end of the Raye Penber/Naomi Misora arc, the show makes it very, very clear that Light is a hypocrite with a massive ego. Sure, he says that he's only killing criminals to make a better world. Sure, maybe he panicked and killed fake-L in self-defense. Sure, maybe the life of Reye Penber and any law enforcement chasing Kira were worth the clear drop in the crime rate. Maybe.

But then Light kills one of the very few unambiguously Good members of the Death Note cast, does so in a smug and cruel way, and the entire scene is framed as tragic in a way that none of the criminal deaths really were. The whole world goes quiet. And Naomi Misora stumbles off to commit suicide. By the end of that arc, even if you'd otherwise be sympathetic to Light- even if you're still rooting for him to get away with it- it's a lot harder to justify what he's doing. He's not just breaking a few eggs to make an omelet- at this point, he's actively happy to kill anyone who gets in his way.

So. Okay. The Perfect Japanese Teenage Boy (TM) can't be trusted with the power to kill indiscriminately. Maybe the problem is just that Light, as a person, is an asshole with impure motives, and if you gave the Death Note to someone who's a better person, you'd be better off. Maybe you could find someone who's motivated by love, and they'd do a better job with that power.

Everyone, say hello to Misa Amane, who is utterly driven by love and devotion, and probably one of the crazier/more evil characters on the show! She'd do anything, no matter how terrible, just because Light told her to do it. She is utterly without remorse, utterly without fear, and utterly driven by a darkly Romantic fanaticism.

Light gets to dodge what's coming to him twice because of Misa and love- once because Misa's love for Light lets him start the Yotsuba arc, and once because Rem's love for Misa becomes a diabola ex machina. In the world of Death Note, love is not a pure enough motive to let you kill indiscriminately - in fact, it makes you worse.

Okay, well, (our hypothetical edgy teenage viewer might say), cLEARLY the problem is that everyone here is too emotional, and you need to be able to detach from the situation to use the power of life and death. Of course you'd kill indiscriminately if you've got feeeeelings about it, but someone who is driven by Logic and Reason? Surely they'd never do anything wrong.

...And then L gets his hands on the Death Note, and immediately starts trying to figure out how to use it to prove that some of the rules in the Death Note are fake and Light is guilty. L's plan is to have a criminal on death row write in the Death Note and wait the 13 days to see if he dies. It's simple. Logical. Effective. It's also extremely reminiscent of the stuff Kira's been doing this entire time, and the implication is that, had L lived longer and used the Note more, he might become No Different.

(I think it's significant that in The Movie, L uses the Death Note exactly once, with himself as the victim, and he turns down the Death Note when it's offered to him. TheMovie!L is an unambiguously heroic character, and therefore, he will not kill without consequences.)

The power to kill without any consequence to yourself corrupts you. It makes you want to use it to solve more and more of your problems. It turns you into a fucking monster, one name at a time. And nothing can stop that process except refusing to use that power. Love cannot shield you. Rationality cannot shield you. Justice cannot shield you.

And every other character who gets the Death Note reinforces that theme. The Yotsuba Group? Big corporations should not get to kill without consequences. Mello? Criminals/genius detectives should not get to kill without consequence. Mikami? The Perfect Japanese Adult is outright sadistic about how he uses the Death Note. And on, and on, and on.

Near outright tells Light, in their final confrontation: "You are a murderer, and this notebook is the worst weapon of mass murder in the world." Using the Death Note is not justice; it's not going to bring about a perfect new world. It's murder, full stop. Light has become a mass murderer, a monster, by killing over and over again.

Death Note has a theme: no one should be allowed to kill without consequences, because it makes you a monster. It is not subtle about that theme. It is very, very blatant, and the only way it could be more blatant is if Near stopped to deliver an Atlas-Shrugged-style monologue about it.

and so seeing people reduce that to 'haha ACAB' gets my goat, because no. No, it's not just ACAB. anyone with the power to kill indiscriminately and without consequence- whether it's a cop, a megacorp, an autistic supergenius, a mob boss, or a perfect audience-insert- would become A Bastard.

There is a category unmentioned here in the 'people who use the death note' and that category is the Shinigami. Yes, Rem's mentioned in the 'things you do for love' situation, tho she's not the only one who uses the Death Note in a selfless way (even under manipulation).

Because Rem and Gelus both use the Death Note to save Misa, and they both DIE for doing so. And that's an important context here, the Shinigami, the people who are MEANT to use the Death Note, are near-immortal immoral monsters. And the one way for them to be killed? Is to use the Death Note to benefit someone else.