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aronarchy · 1 year

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About prison thing: seems cruel to not want child abuse survivors to have a physical guard around their abuser

(the above was a follow-up to this reply made on my post:

First off: in my post, I was calling out saneism. I should be able to call out saneism—i.e. someone saying “psychopaths” are all “people who need to be kept away from other humans”—without being derailed, badjacketed, or having the original person’s saneism basically repeated to me/approved of (i.e. now associating “psychopath” with “person who just hurts other people/rapes/murders for fun,” another common saneist caricature of those of us with ASPD). I am frustrated that as a marginalized person and as a survivor of sexual violence and a survivor of years of child abuse I am almost never given space to discuss already-extremely-underdiscussed bigotry and harm which impacts me without being complained at, tone-policed, implied to be advocating something thoughtless/unreasonable/endangering, as if I obviously must not know anything at all about these topics, as if I owe everyone who stumbles across some post I reblogged to immediately drop everything and “genuinely answer” for all their comprehension gaps. As if I have not heard these “genuine fucking concerns” dozens, hundreds of times over and over. As if I don’t fucking know what I as a survivor want or need for my own safety—to the point of being “cruel”!

I’m sorry if this seems harsh, but for some context, I am already very anxious, stressed out, exhausted, and constantly overworked; I am also very emotionally exhausted all the time because of vast amounts of trauma; I don’t fucking appreciate being cast this way, or others trying to tell me (yet again) what they think I’m Supposed to want or feel or believe as a child abuse survivor, like the category must obviously be distant from me.

“Psychopaths” (generally considered to be an outdated term for ASPD) are not a separate species to whom different standards apply. “Psychopathy” does not uniquely compel a person to uncontrollably harm others. There is no uniform biological characteristic which can be blamed for violence. The myth that there is one is the product of centuries of eugenicist propaganda from the state and psychiatric institutions which have caused immense suffering and abuse for the marginalized, as well as misled victims of violence into scapegoating an underclass, believing misinformation about the actual causes and motivations and functions of abusers, and pursuing ineffective strategies for preventing harm. These are facts and I would appreciate if I could discuss them without being aggressively strawmanned.

how someone who just hurts people for fun should be treated? Someone who rapes, gets released, rapes over and over should be treated? People who don’t rape and murder deserve a safe society.

Note: I’m not approaching this issue from the POV of some sort of policy-maker who passes down mandates that will be put into place from above. I don’t have that kind of power, I will never have that kind of power, and I reject the notion that the optimal way to start change is through such top-down methods. These are only some reasons and suggestions; in every case of violent victimization, it is still the survivor(s) who generally know best about what to do for their particular situation.

Also note: I don’t believe “people who hurt other people for fun” are a particularly unique category among any people-who-victimize-other-people. Many people-who-hurt-other-people are not doing it for fun, but will still do it repeatedly and will not be deterred by a temporary prison sentence.

These questions are operating off several problematic assumptions. Here is some missing context:

Rapists and murderers are already pretty safe in this current society, relatively speaking. Plenty of cops, soldiers, killing numerous people daily, receiving little to no consequences (legal or otherwise). Extremely high numbers of rapes occurring daily. Most rapists are never reported to law enforcement. Most rapists reported to law enforcement will never spend a day in jail.

Likewise for murderers of queers, people of color, etc. Also see the epidemics of intimate partner violence and (trans)femicide and how little they overlap with imprisonment.

And especially for child abusers.

Police are the serial rapists, murderers, and child abusers (and child rapists) alarmingly often. It hardly matters what some random civilian thinks about whether or not they should get longer sentences because they are not being imprisoned in the first place, and the idea that it could possibly happen is so unlikely it is nearly unthinkable.

Many victims of rape, assault, child abuse, and attempted murder are in prison for fighting back against their attackers. Many more for less direct responses to abuse.

Massive amounts of rape, murder, and child abuse occur to inmates in prison, especially by prison guards, who have virtual impunity.

Prisons have never actually done much of a job containing rapists or child abusers for the safety of survivors, and that has never been their intended purpose in the first place.

Prison abolitionists additionally argue that these faults are not incidental, but inherent to the structure of imprisonment itself. Here are some crucial questions:

What are the steps involved in the building of a prison? What resources and social/political mechanisms are required? What are the steps involved in acquiring the ability to mandate and enforce the imprisonment of a person?

What are the precise steps which would lead to a person being imprisoned/contained?

Which exact factors are allowing for an unimprisoned abuser to harm their victim(s) without being stopped?

Which exact mechanisms are preventing a victim/survivor from leaving, resisting, or being safe from their unimprisoned abuser?

It’s not just pure physical distance, is it? Many nonincarcerated people in a relatively close location to someone else are obviously not in a position to abuse, rape, or murder them. An important factor is power—social, economic, not just with regards to spatial access.

A common sociological definition of the State is an entity which has acquired a monopoly over the usage of legitimized violence over a certain geographical area—the establishment of a particular imbalance of power, of the rulers over the ruled. Similarly, a police force is the arm of the state enforcing its monopoly on legitimized violence. The police decry civilians “taking justice into their own hands” because you are supposed to call the police when you’re threatened or you’ve been harmed, you’re supposed to let them handle all of it, and they maintain their power to be the sole actors capable of legitimately defending a victim of violence through an imbalance in material resources.

And yet. The police and the jailers don’t really protect (people), do they? They seem far more focused on the preservation of capital and the state. They rarely give a damn about actual victims of abuse. When they do show up after a call (rare), they tend to harass and victim-blame (if they aren’t just asking aggressive, invasive questions); if they do do something useful, it is almost always too late.

There’s a lot of red tape involved in official processes. Lots of difficulties and inconveniences and risks for victims, especially those of us who are marginalized. Then you maybe take the perpetrator to court. Your status as a victim and the perpetrator’s status as an abuser are put up for debate. This judgment is not permitted to occur in any other setting because innocence/guilt has to be judged by a court of law—the courts monopolize the right to legitimately determine the truth of a situation. Survivors questioned invasively. Victim-blamed. Gaslit. Put down for being disruptive. Unable to fight back against inaccurate framings because the judges hold the epistemic authority in the situation. The process is often traumatizing for survivors.

Maybe they go to prison. What then? They’ll be raped/tortured by other inmates or the guards or they’ll rape/torture other inmates or both—people even more disempowered, more trapped in a situation they cannot leave. They’ll circlejerk with other imprisoned abusers about how abuse is great and valid and justified. Maybe they die or they finish serving their sentence and get out maybe so traumatized/facing unemployment/homelessness they’re no threat anymore or maybe with even more patriarchal/authoritarian attitudes after a slap on the wrist so they go right back to abusing and ignore restraining orders and whatnot because they only work if the cops care to enforce them, and I do not want survivors’ safety solely in the hands of authorities. Maybe they will choose to help, sure. But maybe they won’t. (they usually won’t). The fact that we have to rely on them happening to decide in our favor in order to be safe is already a problem!

And power imbalances like these are what’s allowing abuse to happen in the first place!

When I think about police response to abuse I don’t first think about successful arrests and incarcerations of abusers. I think about cops showing up and arresting the victim. I think about the abusers taking their victims to court for “false accusations” and winning their lawsuits. I think about how many abusers/harassers/stalkers online have threatened and/or tried to report me or one of my friends to the cops to shut us up and get us further abused, and how lucky we’ve been so far. I think about how utterly laughable it is to imagine someone like me calling the cops over the abuse or sexual violence I’ve experienced here because there is no possible world where they would not demonize me and level violence at me if they respond at all, because I am nowhere close to being a “perfect” victim, and none of my stories have been clean or clear-cut. I think about everyone who has harmed me deeply over the course of the years and how though I can try to move on I will never achieve anything near genuine justice and they can all forget because to them it was just another Tuesday and overwhelming social forces have stacked the deck against me everywhere. They will likely go to their graves thinking everything they did was perfectly in the right, with everyone around them nodding and laughing along.

I think about my primary abusers as a child threatening to call the cops on me if I hit back. Feeling extremely unsafe each time. I think about them asking me to just call the cops on them if it’s really so bad, if I think it’s “abuse,” and see how they judge it—a rhetorical question; they know they’re safe and I’m not.

About safety I think, instead, about how I’ve slowly worked to cut ties with and escape the toxic and controlling people I was trapped with, both offline and online. I think about what my friend circle here has tried over the years. Not perfect, but trying our best, and getting better. We’ve always known that the police and courts and prisons have nothing for us; no one has really cared for us or tried to keep us safe before; we protect us and defend each other. Trying to get the ball rolling, fighting to deplatform abusers and force them out of positions of power and cutting them off from the leverage they hold over victims’ heads. A lot of failures. A few gains. I think about how many times I’ve seen someone—in the news, or somewhere closer to me—who stood up and tried to fight, after being failed over and over by institutions; speaking up, trying to get their stories out, working to dethrone abusers from their political and social clout; doing what the police won’t do.

There are people already who are organizing against rapists, serial murderers, and child abusers in their communities IRL. I don’t know a lot about the current state of these efforts right now because this isn’t something you hear about much in official news, mainstream media. But from what I’ve read, some are thinking about these issues already. Survivor defense can include getting together with some friends to physically threaten one’s abuser should they start threatening you again. Getting armed (especially if marginalized); keeping an eye out during high-risk events (like what some are doing around queer gatherings right now); cop-watching (not as popular nowadays unfortunately); general deterrence. Friends helping rescue friends in dangerous situations. Calling out abuse and trying to pressure institutions/organizations/events/communities to drop an abuser using their platform to harm. Violence. Lots of options! But the key point is that these must be grassroots and autonomously managed; if law enforcement gets their hands on any of it, you can be sure that it’ll be co-opted and rendered useless or harmful. The point is to take back our control of our bodies and our lives—both from our abusers and from other cops.

#ask #iris-sunflower #ASPD #anti-ASPD saneism #saneism #ableism #antipsych #abuse #ACAB #prison abolition #anarchism #direct action #ok to rb

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aronarchy · 1 year

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@iris-sunflower I’ll respond to your reblog of my post here, since my OP was already very long and I don’t want its notes to be cluttered:

1) Children and everyone having a right to public, accessible education is such an important value for me. Is youthlib against the idea of funding public schools?

I’m not The Single Valid Youthlib Representative(tm). There are many different youth liberationists who don’t necessarily agree with each other on every single point. I can only give my own opinion, which I believe is the most accurate interpretation of the principle of youth liberation: Of course I agree, and I acknowledge that public schools are currently underfunded and should have more financial support. Gatekeeping from education is oppressive.

It would put all minors at a disadvantage, and we should be improving children’s education so they have a fairer prospect for their future. Being literate, understanding math especially finance, etc.

I agree it’s a problem that so many children are unable to access any education in the first place. But I would caution against taking the “less educated = less successful” at face value. The issue isn’t that being less educated automatically, inherently means one will become disadvantaged, but that capitalism creates these disadvantages for uneducated people. It’s unfair that people who haven’t had a chance to go to/remain in school are also gatekept from jobs, resources, and respect later in life. Resolving the issue (re classism and adultism) involves making it possible for children to be able to go to school instead of being unable to access it, but it also means fighting for justice for children & adults who didn’t get to go, instead of just leaving them behind in the dust now that it’s too late or whatever. It’s sad that if someone can’t understand the (overcomplicated, very bullshit, should-not-be-existing-in-the-first-place) financial system capitalism has forced onto us, then they’ll be disadvantaged in life.

And, some children/minors/adults just can’t understand math or finance or learn literacy well in the first place, regardless of how good their teachers/educational materials/settings are. It is unfair to expect that they should, or treat them as lesser, or refuse to accommodate them. Everyone, regardless of capability, should be able to expect a good future for themself, and to have the resources to live securely.

And, formal schools (both public and private) are extremely adultist and violent to children. Does that mean homeschooling is the solution? No, because family homes are also extremely adultist and violent to children. I’m frustrated at a lot of the discourse I’ve seen, where survivors of violence from schools or violence from the home have tried to discuss our traumas, only to be dismissed and told that we should just suck it up and deal with the flaws of the institution because the alternative would be “worse.” Many people have experienced immense abuse and trauma from both schools and our families. I want to think of solutions beyond just trying to pick the lesser of two evils.

(Official) schools (in their current form, at least) aren’t particularly good at teaching in the first place. They don’t teach how to really understand the concepts of “math” so much as rote memorization and computation, for example. The way subjects are taught in schools focuses more on trying to train them into good capitalist workers, not help them develop life skills for themselves or learn things they actually want to and choose to learn themselves. Meanwhile a lot of potential educational materials (paywalled academic texts, informative books in general, politically unpopular info/arguments like honest analyses about abuse dynamics/what to do in more difficult situations, niche things they don’t really care about because they’re not profitable) and sources of education (i.e. people, places from the outside) are withheld from children because of the formalized schooling system which narrows what and how they can learn, and meanwhile tries to force students to learn whatever they don’t want and don’t need to learn, and is especially hell for disabled children/minors being forced to attend and being overloaded with work when they can’t handle that, plus all the higher likelihood of bullying and abuse from authority figures they can’t escape from.

So I believe youth liberationists, and leftists in general, should be focused on both improving access to education and ensuring that people who had not been able to access education or just genuinely don’t want to or cannot are not being punished for being uneducated either. Right to learn things doesn’t mean also being okay with forcing children to learn things (which is also a major problem right now). And grassroots education outside of formal schooling hooked up to the state/capitalist systems / the nuclear family home should also be a priority. Though it would help, “reform & improve public schools” is still not a solution to the fundamental problem of enforcing a divide between “learning” and “the rest of life” / “place to learn” and “anywhere else” / monopolizing good (or as good as possible) education in the hands of authorities.

We should be making schools better for children not losing their right to an education.

(I prefer to frame children’s rights discussions as something which centers their input and their efforts; should not just be a thing “we” pass down onto “them” on their behalf instead of them being directly involved in the process.)

(Note that nowhere in the entire article I reposted was there any claim that children should “lose their right to an education.”)

2) Does losing parental rights make parental abuse obsolete as a legal protection? Confused here.

That’s not what “right” means. A right you have is something you can do, not something you have to do. “Parental rights over their children” doesn’t mean parents are being made to care for or be nonabusive to their children; “parental rights” are the mechanisms which allow parents to abuse their children because their children are viewed as their property, or to force invasive medical procedures onto/withhold needed medical care from their children because they’re viewed as having a right to make their children’s decisions for them regardless of what the children themselves feel, or to decide what their child’s future must look like because of their “right to control” them. “Parental rights” means that outsiders are barred from housing an abused/neglected child because only the parents may choose where “their” children live.

On the other hand, parental obligations (or responsibilities, or duties) are a rather different concept. For example, every person has an obligation (or responsibility) to not abuse or otherwise violate other sentient beings. Everyone also has an obligation to not hoard essential resources they won’t use themselves while others are in desperate need but can’t access them—for example, (IMO) very rich people with control over their finances are obligated to redistribute their wealth downwards ASAP, and are committing ethical violations when they do not. As for obligations specific to parents: if they have children under their care who cannot leave/acquire that care elsewhere, they have a responsibility to feed, clothe, house, and otherwise provide for their children wrt essential resources to the best of their physical and financial capability.

Parents should face consequences for abusing children, which unfortunately will happen sometimes regardless of efforts to prevent crime. Some parents are just cruel.

I like to think of this question a bit differently. The issue here is that right now, if a parent has cruel beliefs/intentions, then abuse will happen, because they have near-unchallenged power to enact their will for cruelty. Consequences for abuse which has happened are important, of course, but I’m also interested in preventing abuse from happening in the first place, instead of just keeping up the system where kids have to roll the dice and if they land on a cruel parent then that’s just what they get and having a good parents just depends on their luck. I want to work towards a world where regardless of an ideological bigot/authoritarian’s personal desire for cruelty, they will be unable to act out the abuse they want, because they no longer have the power to do so unresisted. This is also why general social justice organizing (if it’s good) doesn’t focus primarily on reforming bigots, getting them to change their beliefs/intentions, but on reclaiming power and autonomy so that despite what the bigots might still believe, they can no longer make those beliefs matter to us as easily.

Leftists and anarchists in general are often told that we are too utopian and need to understand that “violence will always happen no matter how much you make social changes.” I dislike this framing; first of all, I’m not a doomer, and I do not want to say there certainly will always be violence, because I don’t think it is possible to guess that with 100% accuracy, and I like to leave room for a little hope in the world; second of all, it’s not really a relevant objection, because we’re not about gambling on the possibility of there being no abuse, but about taking steps to reduce abuse as much as we can and make it as hard as possible for abuse to happen.

But if parents aren’t “legally responsible,” are they not also going to be found liable for abusing their children?

I’m thinking about a certain Reddit post I read a few months ago. A woman was raising an infant with her (boyfriend? husband? not exactly sure which it was). She hadn’t wanted the child, and he had. She was slowly realizing that she just couldn’t bring herself to love the kid, and the childcare work was annoying and frustrating and exhausting her. Her bf/husband really liked the kid and was enthusiastic about taking care of them and nurturing them. A lot of commenters on that thread told her that she should leave them, because she’s not suited to be a parent for the child, as they grow up they’ll be able to tell that she’s just faking her emotions and actually dislikes them/doesn’t love them, so she should halt the toxic dynamic as early as possible. That stuck with me a lot—it would’ve been so helpful to a lot of kids if it was normalized for parents who don’t like a kid to be able to give them to better-suited, more loving caretakers who do want to have a kid, because many parents are just incompatible, just aren’t fit to parent, personality-wise or otherwise. Expanding the options for everyone to have healthy relationships and get the love and nurturing they need does not mean that neglectful parents of children stuck in their abusive household are not culpable for their harms (i.e. specifically withholding resources when they were needed). And, in general, abuse is wrong when done by anybody to anyone, legal parent or not. This doesn’t change that. And, I don’t really care about the legal system much in the first place because even with laws forbidding extended kinship networks they still don’t actually do a lot about parental neglect or abuse. I’m interested in more concrete questions like “how do we help neglected children acquire the resources/care they’ve been deprived of” or “how do we get abuse victims out; how do we minimize unwanted relationships and maximize wanted relationships; which cultural norms do we need to change to facilitate this.”

3) How would we ensure that children, particularly very young, are being well cared for - diapers, feedings, etc? Currently parents are completely abandoned by the social systems in place. I actually think a reformed/socialist service like cps (unsure of a better word) should be freely provided to all parents. Social workers or volunteers can make sure a child isn’t being ISOLATED which is the biggest factor for abuse. Neighbors may not even know abusive parents have a child and that’s terrifying.

Agreed, though I’d like to point out that this isn’t just something that can only be done by a specially appointed or paid professional group; this is something anyone can do, and especially people already close by. Like, checking up on your friends if it seems like something abusive is going on. Being that person for them if they’re stuck in an abusive home. Normalizing being more attentive to children near you socially, paying more attention to people around you in general, and lending a hand, and creating more interconnected communities which make it harder to isolate someone. It’s kind of hard to imagine given our current atomized hellscape but there are & have been societies in which families weren’t just sorted into single-unit disconnected households, and it was a lot easier to notice if something was off/hold each other accountable; also people fighting for this right now—whether children/minors using the Internet to finally befriend outsiders when they never could before, or having electronic devices they hide from their abusers, or meeting/talking to a friend in secret; or the teachers, healthcare workers, classmates, anyone else seeing them and opening the pathway for questions, help where there were no other options before, etc. & preventing isolation and exploitation wholesale means targeting the root of the problem (the nuclear family’s isolation, thru various political/economic forces)—which is exactly what the article was talking about.

#re #iris-sunflower #child abuse #youthlib

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