Thread by @SaboCatLady

"For far too long have radicals considered abuse to be an unfortunate, but sadly inevitable, expression of individual pathology, rather than as the territory of political conflict and oppression that it is..."

https://twitter.com/butchanarchy/status/1645842625314914304

"I have challenged this myth about abuse... in previous essays, and so will instead focus this essay on expanding upon my call for radicals to apply the same logic and tactics we leverage against fascists to the intimate authoritarians we find afflicting our movements."
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"Most radicals dismiss and laugh off as liberal bullshit the idea that we should pour our energy into the reform and redemption of people who are organizing to steal our autonomy and our lives, and yet can turn to survivors of abuse with the same liberal demand...

...to prioritize saving the souls of our abusers at the expense of our safety and the effectiveness of our anti-abuse political project."

"Because Restorative Justice processes are largely designed with the intention of addressing the harm that springs from a single incident (a robbery, a singular physical assault, etc.) it is a process frequently unequipped to address abuse...

which is not the result of a singular incident of harm but of a broader context of entrapment and control over time and is an expression of the abuser’s core values system."

"What is required of us is to understand that the authoritarianism expressed by abusers is as dangerous and reactionary as authoritarianism expressed by fascists... [They] have their roots in the very same values system and work together as forces of oppression."

"With that understanding our goals in bashing back against abuse need to be informed by what tactics are most effective in establishing safety for survivors and in disrupting abusers’ ability to gain and maintain power."

"The context that entraps victims can and frequently does include a myriad of interpersonal tactics employed by the abuser that play off of communal and structural contexts that enforce that control...

Frequently, effective abusers have institutional or other forms of social power, are well liked and held to high esteem, have access and sway in many different spaces their victims are disempowered in...

Abusers who have any kind of significant social platform can and do leverage that platform to find new victims, to find allies, to maintain control, to silence survivors who would otherwise speak out, and to punish those who do attempt to challenge them."

"Abusers show their willingness to leverage what power they have to control & co-opt the autonomy of others; therefore, disarming them of that power can increase community safety, survivor autonomy, & establish anti-abuse social norms that puts every other abuser or potential...

abuser who witnesses it on notice.

...Alerting the community properly can result in a significant hit to the abuser’s ability to continue quietly collecting, abusing, and discarding victims...

As with fascists, it also communicates a strong message that being abusive results in a relentless attack on ones power and general peace of mind: a threat that — if consistently demonstrated to be true — depicts most abusers’ worst nightmare."

"...fascists who are unopposed and unafraid build power and do not stop building that power until they come up against a hard edge of resistance.

It is the same logic with abusers, even as some may balk at this suggestion..."

"Our fight is not unidirectional. It's against all forces that wish to constrict, co-opt & wipe out the autonomy of others. Our strength comes from our consistent rejection of those values & our willingness to meet them in battle on any front they may appear. Where they go we go"

"The conditions of abuse constrict & co-opt the autonomy of the survivor...They've been, or are still, entrapped in a situation where someone/ppl denied their needs as worthy of consideration & rejected their self-knowledge as silly, ridiculous, naive, or worthy of punishment...

...even when we have a toolbelt full of tactics to deploy against their abuser, we must follow the survivor’s lead, instead of being yet another person who denies them their agency."

"We live in a culture of abuse, & it is apparent to most survivors that many people are more content to flow along w/ the social status quo than to challenge abuse when it is inconvenient for them, no matter how many times they posted #believesurvivors during the MeToo movement."

"As a survivor of childhood and intimate partner abuse, I demand nothing less than that revolution. I demand upheaval...

I demand an anti-authoritarian movement in which all authoritarians — anyone who believes it is acceptable to restrict, co-opt, or destroy someone else’s autonomy for their own power and gain — are acknowledged as what they are: our political enemies."
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@RiotLinguist you're going to love this one I think!