Link to this Tweet here
Link to the tweet here for the image above
Link to the White house
If you need further help in a quick format, here is one, but i urge you to also add in the details for requiring an investigation, not just recount.
The conversations about accountability & apologies that we've been having in social justice circles these last few years have basically trained everybody to fawn.
We've been telling people that if they are accused of any wrongdoing or of hurting anybody's feelings, it is their obligation to apologize immediately, and never to hedge, disagree, or to explain their rationale what they've done.
In their apology, we expect them to articulate every single thing that they have done that was damaging in the strongest language possible and to declare outright that they have harmed someone, often multiple groups of people, even if they are not sure of the impact (or could not even possibly be sure).
If a person's apology is anything but immediate and entirely self-excoriating, we accuse the person of downplaying the damage they have done, failing to be accountable, and manipulating others.
In this way, we've made it impossible for a person to ever take their own side lest that be taken itself as a form of wrongdoing. We have trained our fellow social-justice-minded people to believe that if they do anything but worsen the case against themselves, they are being irresponsible.
I say we, in all of this, because I have partaken in all of this rhetoric, made these kinds of criticism, given accused people this type of advice.
And I have followed it myself, often to a damaging effect.
I have taken responsibility for problems in which I truly did not believe I played a part, I've overstated the damage that I've done so as not to risk understating it, I've ascribed malice to my intentions when I knew it wasn't there, I've agreed with people's most negative, bad-faith narratives about conflicts involving me that they were not even present for, offered up information about myself that was not a third party's business in the name of transparency, apologized for things I haven't done -- and in doing all of this, I have denied my loved ones the opportunity to really hear me about what I was going through and my motivations when I was in conflict with them, things that any true friend or close associate would obviously want to hear about if they cared about me.
This aim of giving the perfect apology and taking perfect accountability has been nothing but an isolating force in my life, because it has barred me from openly entering into necessary conflict with people when our needs were incompatible or they had hurt me just as much as I'd hurt them. The fear of being a manipulative, unaccountable DARVO-er has led me to roll onto my back and expose my belly, falling over myself with panicked apologies and the most unflattering information possible cast in the least explicable light, almost outright begging for others to become angrier at me and believing that it was only way I could ever possibly be accepted back.
We've drilled into people that the way to be good and responsible is to allow people to view us as negatively as possible, to even arm others with information that will confirm that point of view, and to never insert our own perspective or needs on the matter at all.
And yeah, there are a lot of shitty people out there who dodge accountability easily because their power ensconces them from any consequences. but the primary problem with that was never that they wrote a shitty notesapp apology that used the unforgivable phrase "I am sorry if you felt XYZ." The real problem was that there was no community that held enough influence to hold them to account, and for their victims there weren't ever adequate supports or protections.
instead of addressing any of that in a remotely systematic way, we have taken to picking apart every accused person's every word and deed for evidence of inner moral failure and created a culture in which we think we can determine a person's safety by how artfully they put words together when they are under threat. and what do you know, plenty of bad faith actors and conflict avoidant cowards and people who just dont understand what they are even being accused of can do that just fine.
one of the best ways i’ve found to combat that inherent depressive pessimism without veering into toxic positivity territory is simply the phrase “i’m open to the possibility”
this particularly works with anything negative i’ve forecasted. “i woke up feeling like shit today, so my day is gonna suck” isn’t a particularly helpful thought, but “it’s a great day to be alive!!!!!” feels hollow and insincere when i have a pounding headache & am running on three hours of sleep
instead i’ll tell myself, “i really don’t feel good right now, but i’m open to the possibility that coffee and breakfast might perk me up a bit.” or “i’m in a lot of pain today, but i’m open to the possibility that my workday might still have fun parts despite that”
sometimes, when your impulse is to slam the door on anything good, but you’re not exactly up to going out & hunting it down yourself, leaving the door open just a crack makes all the difference
Like genuinely. It’s always ideal of course if you can know who you are and what you’re after at a younger age, but if you’re not going to figure that all out in high school, which you probably won’t, your twenties are the PERFECT time to be truly beginning your life. Who the hell is calling people who might have just moved out of their parents’ house a couple years ago “old”?
legitimately the deluge of messaging women/girls are subjected to all their lives about how their teens and twenties are their "best years" is heinous psychic terrorism on a mass scale. not a coincidence that women are primed to believe that they're going to be "past their prime" and deteriorating like fucking spoiled milk right at a point in their lives at which they're likely to be only just beginning to truly come into their own
Americans really really need to be less paranoid and more capable of tolerating minor discomfort in public. Not everyone is a pervert/rapist/strangler/fiend. In fact, very few people are. Treating every violation of normal order as though it is a threat is why people are getting shot for turning around in a stranger's driveway. This happens within the frameworks of basically every ideology present in American culture. It is an American illness. If your vision of the world doesn't have room for saying "I'm sure it's nothing" then you really gotta work some shit out.
In a bit of a Slay the Princess Mood.
Formal dress event 👔