“Angry kid, go away!
No negativity today!”
- Good Clean Fun

Thanks to M and X, i realized shortly after publishing “some wounds resist” that my words were not chosen in the most conscious manner. I spoke somewhat generally about a topic that was very specific. Not just in that it was my experience, but also that it was about a very specific experience in my life. But i don’t want to just leave it at that. First, let me say what i didn’t mean to imply.

I didn’t mean to imply that “radical forgiveness” or the concept of forgiveness at all is in any way more radical than, say, castrating a rapist. I can think of a number of examples when i would support physical damage to someone or their property for acts that they have committed. And my primary objective is always to support survivors and whatever it is they need to get by. I know that we all have different coping mechanisms. If a friend says they feel the need to slash their rapist’s car tires to let off a little steam, let me know how i can help and let’s go!

I don’t think that not forgiving is “less compassionate” or “less empathetic”. I think the most compassionate thing a survivor can do is take care of themselves… however that needs to be achieved for that individual. I don’t think i chose to forgive because i wanted to be some crystal worshiping enlightened being. Its just what made sense to me in this situation. On that note, i certainly don’t think that survivors need to “work in solidarity” with assaulters. Fuck that. If anything its the assaulters who need to work in solidarity. The only responsiblity the survivor should have is to themself, in my opinion.

While i enjoy posi-core music, i don’t think that angry kids need to go away. Hell, i am an angry kid. Its anger that often motivates me to action. But what i’m working on is not allowing that anger to dominante my actions and decisions. I’m learning to recognize that, for me, hope can be as powerful as anger. But to paraphrase Audre Lorde, i’m not giving up my anger until i find something as powerful to replace it.

As far as what i was trying to say in the post, i was trying to make the point that we are all living within the confines of a violent culture. Certainly from time to time we are able to resist that culture and to create new cultures, but the violence still dominates our lives, our thinking, our perspectives. And until that culture of violence no longer dominates, none of us are ‘innocent’. We all are programmed into the same constructs of domination and violence.

I recognize that within the culture of violence each of us comes away with slightly different lessons. For example, in “some wounds resist” i talk about my assaulter as an influential teacher. The lessons i learned were complicated. But as i got older, what i learned was that i could dominate younger people. I could dominate sexual partners. I could dominate others who were deemed lower in the social hierarchy. This doesn’t mean that i went out and started raping little kids or even people my own age. Instead, this domination played out in thousands of other more subtle ways (not that subtle ways are any less damaging). Sometimes it didn’t necessarily manifest outside of thoughts i had.

Someone else could have had the exact same experience and depending on their situation, their background, their status in the social hierarchy, they could have learned another lesson. Not one of how to dominate, but how to be dominated/submissive. We each read lessons differently depending on life’s circumstances.

But what we can’t escape, regardless of circumstances, is having to learn lessons within the culture of violence. Somewhere in each of us is the dominator/oppressor and the dominated/oppressed. My original post was trying to point out that when we recognize this, we can no longer seperate ourselves from the culture of violence. We can no longer view ourselves as above it or beyond it. While many of us work to live more and more outside of it, we continue to keep one foot inside. Why? Its what we know. Its what’s comfortable.

So if we can no longer seperate ourselves from the violence, then it is difficult to justify finger pointing in terms of oversimplifications such as “sex workers are to blame for perpetuating sexism.” Sexism, to stick with the example, is programmed in all of us. Oppressor/oppressed relationships are programmed in all of us. In my opinion, the real work is not in trying to place blame on who needs to work on their shit. As teachers like to say, “when you point a finger at someone else, there’s a thumb pointing back at you.” I think more focus needs to be paid on where the thumb is pointing. Looking internally at how oppressor mentality carries itself out in our own persynal lives. I think its important that we get with others and have such conversations.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not advocating apathy of any sort. There are an uncountable number of injustices in this world that need to be corrected, and action is the way to do that. I’m just saying that we (specifically activists/academics) need to step off of our homemade pedastals and work within the world, not above it.

I apologize to anyone, especially M, who may have read the original post and felt that i was denying or devaluing your persynal needs and experience. That was certainly not my intention. I also apologize that I go back and forth between ‘i’ as activst and ‘i’ as survivor. I know it may seem a little confusing, but the two are inseperable in my experience.