One more post on consent, because it has been an explosive topic here right now.
With Lux and I being so close to a lot of the issues right now, we've been discussing a lot of the things going on.
A few days ago, we were discussing how many of these people aren't malicious in their abuse. They aren't purposeful predators, and that while they need to acknowledge the things they do, leaving them completely abandoned doesn't do anything to help that. We also discussed how every circle, and at any time in my life has been full of abusers, and rapists, and complete assholes.
It made me bring up how often people would excuse away abusive behaviors years ago. Sweep them under the rug in order to not make it a big deal. Doing this was so normal, that we allowed minor toxic behaviors, and made everyone think these were perfectly ok. And then those behaviors became acceptable, only to slowly roll along, with more and more of these things occuring, in different forms for different reasons.
And then we have a movement where people are encouraged to speak up and not stand for anything, when this baseline for what we previously acceptable, it actually nowhere near healthy behavior.
And to be honest, we're all to blame.
But the answer isn't just to shove these people away. Much like when you put a child in time out, you teach a kid that when something happens they don't like to just ignore it. When you suddenly take an abusive person and push them from a community, they just move onto another.
What we need to do is continue to call people out on behaviors, and follow up with healthy conversation to encourage us all to grow and become better.
With Lux and I being so close to a lot of the issues right now, we've been discussing a lot of the things going on.
A few days ago, we were discussing how many of these people aren't malicious in their abuse. They aren't purposeful predators, and that while they need to acknowledge the things they do, leaving them completely abandoned doesn't do anything to help that. We also discussed how every circle, and at any time in my life has been full of abusers, and rapists, and complete assholes.
It made me bring up how often people would excuse away abusive behaviors years ago. Sweep them under the rug in order to not make it a big deal. Doing this was so normal, that we allowed minor toxic behaviors, and made everyone think these were perfectly ok. And then those behaviors became acceptable, only to slowly roll along, with more and more of these things occuring, in different forms for different reasons.
And then we have a movement where people are encouraged to speak up and not stand for anything, when this baseline for what we previously acceptable, it actually nowhere near healthy behavior.
And to be honest, we're all to blame.
But the answer isn't just to shove these people away. Much like when you put a child in time out, you teach a kid that when something happens they don't like to just ignore it. When you suddenly take an abusive person and push them from a community, they just move onto another.
What we need to do is continue to call people out on behaviors, and follow up with healthy conversation to encourage us all to grow and become better.
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