I *also* wrote about Aaron Coleman. It was very difficult to do as a lady writer who goes off 'intuition' and her 'gut,' as Ryan Grim recently said of me, but I think I did ok thecut.com/2020/08/why-we…
one of the things that really bothered me about the 'debate' over Coleman: do you all really think that left-wing women are new to these questions about restorative justice? that we haven't asked ourselves the same questions about our own attackers over and over again?
and yet so many people (mostly men! I hate hacky performative misandry, but this was really the dynamic here!) spoke to us if we are idiots. as if they were the only people on earth who had ever contemplated these 'thorny questions'
Unless I missed something dramatic, nobody was arguing that he belonged in jail. Or that he should have been incarcerated as a troubled child. Only that he had not done the work necessary to hold a position of influence over people's lives
And to throw around 'restorative justice' like that, like you'd really thought of something clever! Like it just means that Coleman can release a statement and give an interview and that's it, process complete, give that boy his second chance
