Love the sinner, hate the sin

[kaberett]

So I seriously need to work this out some more, but given that I'm still struggling to make words happen, here's a sketch:

I grew up as a small queer Catholic, who had to be closeted about both the queerness and the Catholicism, and was made very ill indeed by fighting my way clear of love the sinner, hate the sin.

And my sticking point with rehabilitative justice is routinely "okay, but what about the people who know exactly what they're doing and are doing it for fun and are categorically uninterested in stopping?" Of whom I have known... several. And I think at least part of my problem there is my pseudo-allergic response to anything that looks even superficially like love the sinner, hate the sin, where if you're just kind and loving and gentle with people for long enough they will Realise The Error Of Their Ways and that They Were Wrong All Along, because of how toxic and gaslighting that can be.

Which brings me back around again to the thing I've been attempting to write a post about and failing since shortly after my "I am twitchy as fuck about the rhetoric I'm seeing around antifa, here's why" (thank you for your engagement and input on that, various, it was enormously helpful and I haven't stopped thinking about it), in the general vicinity of talking at cross purposes, and I haven't managed to actually pin it down yet but I'm still intending to. But this I can sketch, around ideas-that-turn-toxic and abusers-will-abuse-anything and baby-and-bathwater and examining-my-motivations, so. Here's a sketch.

Comments

[sebenikela]

YES. THIS THING. It is so hard to make words about and so important.

I grew up in the Mennonite church and they're ALL ABOUT rehabilitative justice. The problem I see most often is the thing where the language and structure of rehabilitative justice is used to tell victims that they have to forgive the people who hurt them _and accept those people back into their lives/churches_, because we have to accept the perpetrator back into the community and not hold grudges and be kind, because we are all children of God and we are all sinners and........yeah.

Some of it is "abusers will use whatever system they have to hand to manipulate people," some of it is good old-fashioned victim blaming, some of it is people not understanding power dynamics. In some cases I know about (e.g. sexual abuse of students by a professor, or church members by a pastor), people want to deny that hierarchies of authority exist, because they don't really think they _should_ exist. (Because the priesthood of all believers, assorted church doctrines I won't go into). So they ignore those power dynamics. But they're still _there_, people just don't acknowledge them, so they just sit there leaching poison into everything.

And look: I think rehabilitative justice CAN be really...well, transformational is the buzzword, but _good_ anyway...when done well. But it's also not something that's going to work for every victim or every perpetrator. And so I think it has to be the victim's choice to pursue that path, because even if the process is done well, it asks a lot of everyone involved. And not everyone is willing to go through that--and that's okay, and that HAS TO be okay, and a respected choice. Otherwise it's only rehabilitative for the perpetrator (maybe, like you say), while for the victim it's re-traumatizing.

Anyway. I don't know how much sense that makes, but tl;dr I also think a lot about these things and I'm glad you wrote this down.

(I'm using "victim" and "perpetrator" because that's the language I learned this stuff in, and I need some words. Not to imply that these are the only correct ones you could use)

[cesy]

Yes - it can be a useful tool, but it can also be used badly or inappropriately.

this is my face of grump

[sporky_rat]

And there are times when that is not the tool that is needed at the time.

Off topic

[haggis]

For me, "we are all sinners" was the gaslighting phrase because it is used to a) undermine anything you know or believe that is inconvenient for the church or in conflict with their position and b) to gloss over any wrongdoing by authority figures in the church because it is so mean and judgemental to hold them accountable. It's a brilliant way of containing/deflecting criticism *rage*

Re: Off topic

[sebenikela]

oh yes that one is toxic for me too, because ALSO no, sorry, "was (occasionally, in isolated incidents) mean to someone I care about" is not the same as abuse/assault/whatever. There really are degrees here and pretending everything's fine because nobody's perfect is so unhelpful.