Racing Turtles

me: it's wrong to assign children stigmatizing labels due to antisocial behavior implying they were born with some sort of evil condition when in reality these behaviors result from abuse, neglect, peer influence, or a combination and can be best resolved with proper support before the child reaches adulthood. instead these children are isolated and punished at school and have trouble seeking help later in life.

someone: op this is a lie I literally know a 5 year old who is actually a sociopathic narcissist

I actually love hearing about reformed people's stories. I love hearing about people who were in toxic communities or people who used to objectively be dickheads talking about how they got out of that. How they made themselves better.

I hate how most people's initial reaction to stories like that are things like:

"How could you have ever done those things?!" "Oh my god, you believed those things?!" "Well it doesn't un-do the harm you did!"

People incessantly advocate for change but then refuse to allow people who have changed the grace of being acknowledged and given opportunities and chances.

I love hearing about ex-antis talking about how they don't spend their days being angry and sending death threats anymore.

I love hearing about ex-homophobes who realized there's no magic law about what is "natural."

I love reformed bullies talking about how they made amends with their victims and spend their days being considerate of others.

You can't scream about wanting people to change but then expect them to spend the rest of their lives stuck in the past and on who they used to be. You can't expect people to spend the entire rest of their lives grovelling and apologizing and demeaning themselves.

Instead of clinging to who they were, latch onto who they are.

Ask how they got out of it. Commend them on changing. Enjoy that there's one less cause of harm in the world.

You will get farther in one week paying close, nonjudgmental attention to the unmet needs underlying your "bad" behavior than you will in a year of punishing yourself and demanding you become a different person. I'm right shut up.

oh so they’re just saying the quiet part out loud? Good to know they’re just out and open now

That’s not the quiet part.

There’s something else, something they might not even be fully aware of themselves. The real quiet part is that if it was *their* child or *their* ectopic pregnancy they’d pull out all the stops to save their life or get their grandchild aborted. Planned Parenthood sees reactionaries and regressives all the time, and they are every bit the nightmare patients you’d imagine them to be. But the one thing all those patients have in common is that *their* abortion is *justified*, and the next week they’ll be outside the clinic again, rejoining the protestors for “killing their baby”.

It’d be one thing to have ghoulish principles, but the far-right have none at all.

When I was younger and had more time to waste on the internet, and spent a lot of time in various online forums getting into arguments -- on purpose -- I made up a game I called Six Degrees of Slut.

The game (which is a variation on the well known Six Degrees of Bacon) was very simple. In any discussion of abortion, see whether you could get the other side to articulate, within six back-and-forth exchanges, some variation of The Filthy Sluts Must Be Punished. Regardless of where their argument started, the goal of the game was to get them to admit that.

I never once lost a game of Six Degrees of Slut. On a few occasions the match was inconclusive - the other person left off arguing before we reached round six - but I never lost; I never once reached six rounds of debate with a prolifer without them expressing some variation on this sentiment. But what was really remarkable to me was, a lot of times, that there was no effort involved at all -- they would blurt it out themselves, with effectively no provocation.

Scratch a prolifer, and you'll find right under the surface the conviction that The Filthy Sluts Must Be Punished. I have never once yet found an exception. Sometimes you don't even have to scratch.

"One 10yo a year" as if the VAST majority of child sex abuse isn't being done in families, by older relatives. Conservatives are The Worst.

“When I first heard it, from a dog trainer who knew her behavioral science, it was a stunning moment. I remember where I was standing, what block of Brooklyn’s streets. It was like holding a piece of polished obsidian in the hand, feeling its weight and irreducibility. And its fathomless blackness. Punishment is reinforcing to the punisher. Of course. It fit the science, and it also fit the hidden memories stored in a deeply buried, rusty lockbox inside me. The people who walked down the street arbitrarily compressing their dogs’ tracheas, to which the poor beasts could only submit in uncomprehending misery; the parents who slapped their crying toddlers for the crime of being tired or hungry: These were not aberrantly malevolent villains. They were not doing what they did because they thought it was right, or even because it worked very well. They were simply caught in the same feedback loop in which all behavior is made. Their spasms of delivering small torments relieved their frustration and gave the impression of momentum toward a solution. Most potently, it immediately stopped the behavior. No matter that the effect probably won’t last: the reinforcer—the silence or the cessation of the annoyance—was exquisitely timed. Now. Boy does that feel good.”

— Melissa Holbrook Pierson, The Secret History of Kindness (2015)

Too real, I see this all the time. Joking about how certain people in prison should be taken care of or molested. Two wrongs doesn’t make a right

this is not argue with you just adding opnions /gen

i wholehearted agree with you except for crimes against children then by all means let them rot not death but rotting in prison, death is too good for them

@fall-ofachilles, this post is about you. If crimes against children receive extra-special punishment, then the State is directly incentivized to find an angle by which to define the people it doesn't like as having committed crimes against children.

Y'know, such as defining Existing While Queer as a sex-crime against children. For an extremely non-hypothetical, entirely real world example.

I find this response unsatisfying.

Op says "A lot of people purport to believe fully in rehabilitation but really only apply it to crimes they consider forgivable."

Fall says "I agree except for class A of crime, which I consider unforgivable."

Frustrated says "But what if they included crimes you consider forgivable in class A?"

And Frustrated is right, people HAVE been including crimes that Fall considers forgivable in class A. But Frustrated still has not addressed the core disagreement that Fall failed to see between itself and op, which is that there should be NO crimes on the "rot in prison" list. Frustrated saying "but what if they put the wrong crimes on the rot in prison list" does nothing to affirm the original post. Frustrated has not challenged Fall's view that certain crimes merit rotting in prison.

I mean a valid reason to be against a kind of punishment is "the state cannot be trusted with the power to do this to people." Some people have different reasons. But they can both be against that kind of punishment together.

sure, but that's not "believing in rehabilitative justice", which is what this post is supposed to be about. Like, there's someone in the reblogs straight up saying "You shouldn't oppose the death penalty because pedophiles don't deserve to be punished, you should oppose the death penalty because it won't be the actual pedophiles who are punished." They don't believe in rehabilitative justice at all, they just don't think pursuing carceral justice is the best course of action right now.

I'm tired of my philosophical opponents thinking they agree with me just because they're my political allies.

I almost agree with this, and everyone here makes great philosophical points and also many factual political observations.

Except I wholly believe that pedophiles do not deserve rehabilitation and absolutely SHOULD be skinned alive. Slowly.

So you're saying:

AKA you do not believe in rehabilitative justice.

#weird take: if pedophiles were humanely reformed so as NOT TO DO THAT ANYMORE instead of destroyed utterly#it would probably be easier to get POWERFUL AND WELL LIKED CHILD PREDATORS to stop doing that#if your only options are 'deny that the guy is a pedophile because he's a good dude who#doesn't deserve being skinned alive'#or 'skin everyone's favorite pastor alive because yeah he definitely did touch those kids'#you're going to have to contend with people protecting their friends and relatives and colleagues in every single fuckin trial#if there was an actual functional rehab we could shove these guys through#MORE GUYS WOULD BE SHOVED THROUGH EVEN BY FRIENDS AND FAMILY#and less kids would be harmed#please note: in the last ten years of hysterical online pedophile witchhunts#i have not seen one child predator be discovered or put through any kind of criminal justice system#ive seen an awful lot of queer artists get the skinned alive treatment tho(via@roach-works)

^^^Lots of Truth in This^^^

Too real, I see this all the time. Joking about how certain people in prison should be taken care of or molested. Two wrongs doesn’t make a right

this is not argue with you just adding opnions /gen

i wholehearted agree with you except for crimes against children then by all means let them rot not death but rotting in prison, death is too good for them

@fall-ofachilles, this post is about you. If crimes against children receive extra-special punishment, then the State is directly incentivized to find an angle by which to define the people it doesn't like as having committed crimes against children.

Y'know, such as defining Existing While Queer as a sex-crime against children. For an extremely non-hypothetical, entirely real world example.

i was more referring to convicted child predators i.e pedophiles

You're not listening to me. If "Pedophiles" are uniquely punished under the law, guess what will immediately happen to the definition of the word "Pedophile?" It will be broadened and broadened until it contains everyone the State does not like.

This is in no way hypothetical; there are a great many american states which are actively pushing legislation to define "being trans" as a form of pedophilia.

Spending $150 MILLION to chase down $104K is a wicked level of class warfare.

Just letting fare jumpers go would save hundreds of millions. #ACAB

#so much of the way the government - including the police - engages with poor people is about punishment#they don't care that it would save them money to not harass everyone on the subway#they don't care that it would save them money not to make everyone who needs to claim benefits - especially disability benefits -#jump through so many hoops it's practically a circus act#they don't care that UBI and housing as a human right would solve so many problems - they would rather punish you for existing(via@hydrangea-blues)

— Melissa Holbrook Pierson, The Secret History of Kindness (2015)

The thing is, until you get past the mindset of "justice=punishment" you will never be able to create lasting change. We have actual proof that punitive justice creates more crime and makes criminals more violent. We have actual proof that rehabilitation reduces crime and recidivism. But some of y'all are so stuck on this idea that the wrongdoer must be punished for justice to be done that you will choose sating your need for revenge over actually moving toward a better world every time. And that's sad!

Everyone in the notes saying punishment doesn't undo the bad thing: exactly! Punishment does not create or preserve healing, prevention, protection, fairness, or goodness. The only thing punishment does is satisfy a sadistic public desire for revenge and give us the illusion of control.

Honestly!!! This is just psychological trauma in the making

These are the solutions we need to policing right now. Remember: the problem cannot be solved by technocratic solutions (i.e. body cams, further trainings, etc.) The problem is policing itself.

This is the sort of shit I am talking about when I say we need to only talk about getting rid of police but also about what sort of actual safety could replace it.

And no, it is not enough for this to exist ‘next to the police’. The harm is in the fact that circumstances of personal and interpersonal harm are viewed through the lens of law and punishment. 

The moment we take the concept of laws & punishment completely off the table and start thinking in needs and how to provide them, we become capable of seeing what is needed to achieve actual safety.