Thread by @Delafina777

Okay, for a moment I'd like to leave the realm of dreary, "I'll take what I can get" corporate handling of harassers and talk about what corporate accountability would actually look like.

Because there's a lot of "they can't do the right thing because they might get sued" -- I've been saying it a ton -- but I want to take a step back for a moment and say yes, doing the right thing might get a company sued, and that's not actually a reason not to do it.

Genuine apologies from public figures and companies are extraordinarily rare, because genuine apologies include admission of wrongdoing, and acknowledgment of harm, and admitting those things could make you legally liable for them.

And look, our justice system is labyrinthine and complicated and not actually all that good at real justice, so I get it. But ultimately, the point of lawsuits even being a thing we can do is to address harm and make reparation for it.

And yes, people sue sometimes when there wasn't actual harm done to them, or exaggerate it. But far more people have real harm done to them, and never sue, because they can't afford to (in money, time, or emotional and mental energy).

It's a symptom of how sick our culture is, in terms of corporate power, that any attempt at apologizing is mediated and filtered through the lens of "how do we avoid getting sued?"

Let's take a moment to back out of all the twists and turns of corporate and legal money-above-all culture, framing-wise, and go back to simple human interactions:

If you recognize that you caused substantive harm to another, and are genuinely sorry, the prospect of making reparations isn't something that you avoid--it's something you seek out.

In a world not poisoned the way ours is, that would be proactively reaching out, with resources, opportunities, etc. to pay down the deficit caused by the company's previous actions.

But at the very LEAST, it would be not attempting to avoid any redressing of the wrong by refusing to fully do the right thing because you might get sued.

Yes. You might get sued. You might be compelled by the legal system to make actual financial reparations to people you have harmed. If you were genuinely sorry, that wouldn't be something you were desperate to avoid.

Because setting aside for the moment that suffering itself is real, that weathering years of harassment takes a measurable physical and emotional toll on people, the harm done is also much more prosaic. It suffocates or destroys careers.

People were genuinely afraid to put their work out there. They were afraid to network. They were afraid to apply for jobs. And they were exhausted, which hampers the ability to do any of these things.

So, in a just world, companies that have profited off abusers would be reaching out to victims saying, "We're sorry, and we're sorry not just with our words, but with our power. We are going to help you find opportunities. We're going to promote your work."

"We're going to give you at least what we gave him."

And look, sometimes this does go on, quietly. I know of plenty of companies who admit internally that they screwed up and actually do seek to give opportunities to people they were ignoring/excluding/etc. I've seen it, I've participated in it, and I've been the recipient.

But in a just world, it wouldn't be quiet. And part of being sorry would be willingness to take the risk that people you hurt might sue you, not letting that risk prevent you from truly apologizing.

I don't expect to ever see that happen, but I feel like it's important to take that step back and think about what things SHOULD look like, rather than just what they CAN look like.