Love the sinner, hate the sin
Nov. 1st, 2017 10:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaberettSo 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.
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.
(no subject)
Date: 2017-11-02 08:42 am (UTC)I internalised a /lot/ of forgiveness oriented christian messaging: god forgives all and therefore so must we, etc. This, combined with your average Geek Social Fallacies, left me very vulnerable to abuse (actually by outsiders, not from people within the church, for whatever reason). My Worst Ex had previously Done A Thing That Is Bad, and prior to confessing this to me, spent plenty of time building up 'even your God couldn't forgive me' logic. Of course my God could! And he's not doing it ANYMORE, so... it would be unfair of me to walk away, right?
I don't think Worst Ex is in the category of 'abusers abusing for fun and don't care'. Some of the time it's obvious that he does care, and from outside observation he does seem to be a bit _less_ terrible now than he used to be. But that doesn't make him reliable, yanno? He probably IS rehabilitable but that's... a job for a professional shrink.
(And yet. No one is truly rehabilitable without community support. Humans don't work like that.)
TL;DR forgiveness rhetoric is a dangerous beastie