linkin_park_unshatter.mp3

Like, if these people have done the most damage to society, to the safety and dignity of minorities, to the basic decency upon which the world functions, are they willing to stand at the front of the effort to fix that damage?

I am genuinely begging people on this post to realize that our current system CREATES the issues y'all come onto this post to use as proof restorative justice won't work. There are many reasons people resist change, but one very relevant one is that a system where accountability is inherently tied to suffering does not motivate people to put in the effort to change. A deeply hurt person who has developed a lot of very toxic habits, who struggles to imagine a life for themself where they don't rely on those habits to have a sense of identity and safety, may seem like someone who "doesn't want to change." If we assume that is true, then no one tries to help, then there is no reason for that person to believe change is possible or that they could ever be cared for by society given what they've done, so why try?

I am truly fucking begging y'all to talk to like. Any poor white person from the rural US South who realized how evil and systemic white supremacy is, and becomes extremely personally invested in fighting that in their community. This is not some abstract hypothetical. & there are MANY people who would very much be willing to change, if change actually seems feasible. If you see yourself as unforgivable, because everyone around you seems to see you as unforgivable, is it not easier to just dig your heels in?

We NEED!!!!!!! people to be willing to come over to our side and that simply will not fucking happen if your every reaction to "we need to have a process that allows people to make amends and which incentives meaningful change" is "ohhhhhh but that's hard tho :("

having a process for people who have done morally horrific things to make amends, rejoin community, and do right going forward is actually fundamentally crucial for the left

Then, when me and @magicrainbowkitties rightfully pointed out that people who do the worst things have to both accept that they've done those worst things and also that to make amends they'll have to accept the greatest amount of risk in making things right.

You then promptly shifted entirely to

Any poor white person from the rural US South who realized how evil and systemic white supremacy is

That is literally what this post is saying we need to have a process for. What exactly are you caveating here????????????

I'm not moving any goalposts. I didn't say "someone who said slurs a couple of times." In the notes of this post, I have elaborated on how this post was prompted by reading about a woman who worked as a fucking drone operator for the US military. I have also responded to people talking about child rapists.

I am really frustrated and annoyed by your "caveats" because they make no sense. I do not fucking understand what you people think I am saying with this post. Like, genuinely, what the fuck did you think I meant by this section:

I say a system and process because its not "oh the drone operator said they were sorry and felt bad so its all good now :)" there is no shortcut here. but it is absolutely necessary. no revolution is comprised of morally pure people. in many cases, the most devoted revolutionaries are the ones who know exactly what it is like on the other side.

Did you think I was just fucking around and smashing random keys when I wrote this? By "process" and "there is no shortcut" I meant "people who did the worst things don't need to accept they've done anything bad and don't need to accept that making amends means accepting a great amount of risk"? Is that what you think I meant?

Its not just y'all. Other people keep coming on this post and adding "caveats" because, as far as I can tell, y'all cannot see a person talking about restorative justice without immediately assuming that they don't understand that bad things require actual effort to amend. The point of this post is that it is necessary to have systems for people to make amends, that actually facilitate and incentivize people to do that hard work, rather than providing zero support or clear pathways to actually go about doing that.

My original post is about the need for a formal, explicit process that facilitates people making amends. These caveats seem, to me, to suggest that people want those who have contributed to harm to make amends, but then get defensive at the suggestion that communities need to put effort into actually allowing that change to happen, making it clear how it needs to happen, and having that change actually matter, rather than simply talking about it in the abstract but doing nothing to facilitate it.

I will never disagree that people need to actually make amends and take on responsibility. I am saying that we need to make it clear what we expect from people and actually let that change matter and reintegrate them into our communities. What is best for victims is what actually works to prevent harm, not just in the moment but on a systemic level. If we want people to change, we have to actually make change possible, we have to make the mechanisms for change explicit and accessible, and make it actually matter.

We can talk all day long about how people need to take responsibility and it needs to actually matter and they need to be willing to take risks etc etc, but we do at some point actually need to grapple with what that means. If someone does harm, we need to be able to actually say "okay, this is what the process for taking accountability looks like," and then we need to live with the fact that the end point of this process is that person is still a part of our community. I see a lot of people talking about wanting folks to take accountability, but then also don't seem to want to discuss what that would actually practically mean, don't want to imagine being in a community with people who have done harm, don't want to imagine what social changes would need to occur for this process to be as productive as it could be. And then you end up with this fixation on people who don't want to change, itself a product of a system which does not incentivize meaningful change, used as a cudgel against any discussion about how to incentivize meaningful change.

I understand why people immediately go to "but will they actually take accountability? but will I be expected to personally make a person who harmed me a better person?" but there is a reason I distinguished between social vs interpersonal forgiveness and emphasized this being a process with no shortcuts. Trauma causes an aversion to nuance, because nuance is discomfort and vulnerability and risk, and that's all entirely understandable. But we can't just sit here in our trauma responses forever and talk about how much we want a better world while also being viscerally uncomfortable with what getting to that better world actually involves.

Once again: Yes, it will be hard, and complicated, and cause a lot of discomfort for everyone on a lot of levels. It will take a hell of a long time to get where we actually want to be. We will fuck it up a lot along the way. There is still no other choice. If we cannot hold multiple concepts at once and synthesize them productively, then our great-great-grandchildren will be dealing with the same trauma and horrific systems we are right now, because we want the fruits of a better world without doing any of the labor to get there.

This, exactly.

happy moments should be cherished, not over-thought

people will come and go no matter how long you wait for them or how badly you want them to stay

making new friends opens up whole new worlds

apologies can make all the difference

random acts of kindness can change someone’s day from bad to bearable

the only person you’re stuck with is you so learn to love, forgive, and accept yourself

sometimes the worst people for us are the ones we think are the best

it’s not selfish to be personally hurt by something and anyone who tells you otherwise probably feels guilty themselves

the world can feel ugly at times, but don’t overlook the beautiful things or they may just not be there one day

tell people you love that you love them even if you think it’s implied

don’t betray your friends

being yourself takes time since change happens often, so it’s okay to not know who you are at any given time

never give up on your dreams or you’ll regret all the things you could’ve done

don’t ever lose yourself in the name of love

trust yourself

life has its highs and lows, so be prepared for how low the lows can be

do things spontaneously— just for the fun of it

better to regret than to wonder “what if” forever

always make sure people know you’re there for them

there’s never a perfect time, and if you wait too long, you lose your chance

everyone has shit going on in their lives, so be kind to people

always be thankful for the people who have stuck around

don’t waste time beating yourself up over things you can’t change

if you’re trying to decide between holding on and letting go, it’s probably time to let go

I think trans men who still look like girls are awesome

I think trans men who don't have the time or money to look more masculine are awesome

I think trans men who want to transition but are scared of what their family would think are awesome

I think trans men are awesome

A completely and sincerely asexual person has a fixation on vore specifically because it's a non-sexual form of intimacy. Outsiders view this interest as inherently sexual and there isn't a "safe for work" context for it, so it falls under the category of kink and fetish.

A person who likes the floaty high you get from engaging in masochism goes to a BDSM club to participate in a scene for the same reason you might go to the club to drink. They don't necessarily want to have sex or get horny, they just want to get kinda brainless from that specific feeling. Every once and a while I just ask my partner to slap my ass cuz the mental jolt feels good, but I don't want to do anything sexual.

An older person who has never heard the term age regression goes to "ageplay" events to participate in completely safe for work age regression. This is really common for people over, like, 30 and a lot of essential miscommunication happens because younger people hear an older person say ageplay is nonsexual (and mean it in a bdsm community context), when it really is true for them.

Someone goes to kink community events purely for the community, this stuff is sometimes purely sexual for them, but often they engage in it without sexual motives.

A person wears leather accessories because they view it as a proud part of LGBT history, but don't actually have any interest in leather as a fetish and don't intend to send a sexual message to anyone by wearing it

It's like how someone might go to shabbat or church while being an atheist. There's a spectrum from true believer who is doing everything in the name of god to person who enjoys an abstract feeling of spirituality to person who is genuinely just there because they're 65 and all their friends belong to that church or they want to talk to people and be social. You can say "well you must inherently be religious" but in practice people are really complex and do things for complicated reasons. If someone says "it's not sexual to me, but it's kink because that's what I've always called it" it's pointless to yell at them about how they don't understand their own feelings.

Three current and former detainees who spoke to the Guardian said that, between 2023 and 2025, they endured months of abuse from an assistant warden named Manuel Reyes and his associates. In their complaints to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), the detainees also said that they faced retaliation for reporting the abuse to authorities, alleging that Reyes and other staff beat them and denied them medical treatment. “I was treated worse than an animal,” said Mario Garcia-Valenzuela, one of the detainees. “We don’t deserve to be treated like this.” Garcia-Valenzuela, a trans man detained at SLIPC, has alleged that, as part of the unsanctioned work program, Reyes forced him to move heavy cabinets and cinder blocks, and to clean using industrial-strength chemicals without gloves or protective gear. When Garcia-Valenzuela complained of injuries from the work program, he said, Reyes and his associates forcefully stripped him naked and mocked him. Kenia Campos-Flores, who is trans and non-binary, told the Guardian that they suffered from persistent migraines and chest pain after exposure to cleaning chemicals they were made to use during unofficial, overnight work shifts. Campos-Flores also alleged in a complaint they were persistently sexually harassed by Reyes, who entered their dorm and stole possessions including their boxers. Another trans detainee, Monica Renteria-Gonzalez, complained that a stripper chemical he was told to use to clean the facility floors seeped through his fabric shoes and burned the skin of his feet. On more than one occasion, while Renteria-Gonzalez was bent over cleaning, he said, Reyes came up from behind and inappropriately touched him. The assistant warden also told Renteria-Gonzalez he was watching the detainee through security cameras, including while he was showering. A fourth detainee, identified by the pseudonym Jane Doe, is a cisgender, queer woman who said that Reyes forced her to perform oral sex on him on a “near daily basis” between February and May 2024, threatening to kill her if she refused, according to her complaint. [...] “This was a sadistic late-night work program,” said Sarah Decker, a senior staff attorney with RFK Human Rights. “It was designed to target vulnerable trans men or masculine-presenting LGBTQ people, who [Reyes] coerced into participating.” [...] Garcia-Valenzuela had fled to the US in 2014 from Mexico, where he was tortured by members of a drug cartel. “I have no choice, that’s why I’m fighting,” he said. “Because I know that as soon as they deport me, I’m going to be handed over to the cartels and I’m going to be tortured and killed – ripped into pieces.” But in SLIPC he faced a new kind of horror. He alleged that on more than one occasion he was told to move heavy metal filing cabinets back and forth across a room. When he struggled to lift the furniture, Reyes would taunt him, he said, saying: “If you think you are a man, I’m going to treat you like a man.”

And no one in the community seems to be interested in bringing it the fuck up. Even a post which starts off by talking about forced detransitioning under ICE! You'd think this would be the perfect example of this kind of violence in action, but for some reason people don't seem to think these people make good enough victims for the cause. Why is that?

At a time where reproductive rights are also being drained away, where there is very clear targeting of people's ability to control if they are pregnant, is it really so much to ask that we don't start talking about trans men's ability to "financially and socially defend themselves" as if that means jack shit to the brown undocumented trans men being used as slaves and sexually assaulted by federal employees specifically because they are trans men.

"Focus their energies on protecting the most vulnerable" the majority of people I see who talk about reproductive justice forget trans men. The majority of people I see talk about 99% of social issues forget trans men, much less nonbinary people in general. When exactly are we allowed to focus our energies a population that has a 51% lifetime rate of sexual assault across races, and which goes up to 71% for Native trans men? A population that, no matter what study you look at, is paid less than cis women (also see here)?

"Relatively privileged"? Are you fucking kidding me? Do you have any idea how insanely hurtful and straight up misinformative that is to say, in these circumstances?

The callousness this shows towards trans men is just unconscionable, and is highly suggestive of a lack of knowledge about the violence trans men face as well as a lack of openness to questioning ingrained ideas about transmasculine people. I don't mean this as an attack but this is a very clear example of how people internalize transmasculine erasure and repeat it uncritically as fact. We cannot tolerate this rhetoric. I'd like to once again highlight this HRW report, specifically the section “"Butches Get Punched”: Violence Against Masculine-Presenting LBQ+ People” in “This Is Why We Become Activists”:

"Unless they present hyperfeminine, butches don’t have access to the job market. You will not be considered if you don’t wear nice women’s clothes. If you set up catering, you will get told, “I am disgusted; a woman who thinks she’s a man is cooking for me.” So butch lesbians normally have an assistant, or their femme partner if they have one, who is more feminine-looking to run the front so customers don’t know a masculine-presenting person is cooking behind the curtains. Many of us become sex workers [due to lack of job opportunities].… But then when police raid brothels and homes, the masculine lesbians get treated “like men.” This means more forceful handcuffing, kneeling, and stripping their shirts off." – Rosa, lesbian and sex worker rights defender El Salvador [...] While gender expression is thus less explicitly criminalized than sexual orientation—the same project reports 66 countries that criminalize same-sex relations between consenting adults —LBQ+ people interviewed for this report repeatedly named gendered discrimination against masculine gender expressions[238] in particular as the catalyst for a lifetime of economic marginalization, discrimination and harassment at work, psychological abuse, and physical and sexual violence. Their accounts point to the need for deeper research and analysis of how masculine gender expression by LBQ+ people increases their risk of exposure to various human rights violations and abuses. Some reports on violence against LBQ+ people (explored below) have treated gender expression as a signifier of sexual orientation or gender identity, limiting knowledge production on how presentations of masculinity are themselves policed and violated.

This kind of attitude gets trans men is exactly what is described by this report as "limiting knowledge production on how presentations of masculinity are themselves policed and violated." It's just not right and its not remotely accurate. It can and does get trans men detransitioned and killed, and then those victims ignored and forgotten by the very people who claim to be acting purely out of a desire to focus on the most affected. The insistence that trans men don't need specific, focused attention and concern is exactly what creates the circumstances for their vulnerability!