Another essay on guilt

In defense of something or someone

I demand to be dismissed as a silly lady saying this: though I agree abuse of power can be a serious offense, rape can fuck ya up, racism and nazism is not great (neither when in institutional nor in personal, or constitutional, forms), I think we need to reckon more with nuance and moral complexity in discourse on scandals, such as those that may occur in social, professional, or sexual or other relations.

A lot of those people we surround ourselves with and consider respectful, upstanding and normal citizens, must, at some point in their lives, have said or done something sufficiently foolish that (at least in a certain light) they, as a person, thus seem potentially cancellable. While many of us may cringe at our past selves, I have yet to hear a convincing argument for how or why, for society, there is ever an outcome where, with witch hunts that go on to become continuous and long-lasting public slander affairs, or how an attempt to cram any and all hurt caused, seen or felt, any offense, can harm our criminal justice systems, those which we, at least at times, claim to uphold as valuable or important, and this is good.

Something about Bell Hooks and love, and something about Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, would both go here, in an essay - if men are gonna “get better” from whatever we claim ails them, they've gotta love themselves out of feelings such as fear and shame, and be supported through the process, and out of it, too. Personally I'm so helplessly Norwegian that, as someone who has had disabling PTSD and agoraphobia from abuse and rape, I believe more in us as a society doing our best to help people into better functioning and out of recidivism (criminal or casual), than I do in publicly ending careers and social lives, or in imprisoning any and every man/person who makes a mistake.

It has been important to me, as a woman, to not let myself be harassed, raped, or whatever, into submitting or giving up, or out of my dream career, or what ever it is I have at times wanted to pursue.

Because, not in spite of, the fact that I have been through experiences such as these, the need for some alternatives to rituals of mud-dragging and publicly fucking each other over seems clearer to me with every instance of a possibly half-accidental or genuinely organic sexual relation that blows up in the media. It is not that I pity the men more than the women, those that figure in these sorts of massive public blowouts; it is more, I think, that I do often think it takes two to tango. Unless whatever happened was genuinely non-consensual, in which case, someone forces someone else’s hands. If this is the case, then someone had a motive.