fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #6211 ]

[ SECRET POST #6211 ]

⌈ Secret Post #6211 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.

__________________________________________________

02.

__________________________________________________

03.

__________________________________________________

04.

__________________________________________________

05.

__________________________________________________

06.

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 31 secrets from Secret Submission Post #888.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

06. https://i.imgur.com/mBnjLz5.png

oh god for a moment I thought that was Emma Watson in that photo and got confused.

We have these arguments all over the Internet, and they always end up at cross purposes to each other, because one side keeps saying “doesn’t” and meaning “shouldn’t.”

Like that recent stink where that one person said OCD doesn’t make you think about pedophilia, you’re just a bad person. People responded that their OCD does make them think about pedophilia, because that is in fact a thing OCD can do. But what the first person really meant was “you shouldn’t think about pedophilia, and you’re a bad person whether it’s because of OCD or not.”

Or that controversial review of My Pancreas Broke, But My Life Got Better. The reviewer kept coming back to the idea that mental illness doesn’t make you ruin your own life, so the author is just a fuck-up. But people with mental illness chimed in about all the ways mental illness ruined their lives. What the reviewer really meant is that when you fuck up your life, you don’t deserve help, whether or not you’re mentally ill.

If these people still believe that people in prison deserve rehabilitation, then I think regular people that have never been imprisoned deserve a second chance and help more so than convicts.

That's the crazy thing, right? A lot of people are on board with the idea that if you break the law, even in truly egregious ways (e.g. violent assault), you should not be subject to cruel or eternal punishment. You should still be treated like a human being and be given the opportunity to reform.

But many of the same people see nothing wrong with permanently destroying the lives those who say or do the wrong things, or whose behavior falls into the "asshole" range but doesn't rise to the level of criminality. It betrays an inconsistent, unprincipled worldview. What is it about? Is it distance from the subject: they've personally known assholes (who hasn't), but they haven't known actual criminals? Is it status: they gain clout from piling on and denouncing certain people? Is it pleasure: they enjoy piling on, and launder that enjoyment through the profession of certain socially acceptable values? Is it a combination of all three?

ok but "doesn't get to be a famous genre author" is not equivalent to "subjected to the full horrors of an abusive carceral system"

prison abolition isn't important because no one should be held accountable things they do, it's important because prison is an atrocity and a keystone of power structures that conduct other atrocities

Yeah, "prisons and what they do to prisoners are horrible and even from a pragmatic standpoint often make for worse outcomes than rehabilitation" =/= "no consequences for shitty behavior ever."

If tons of people were saying she should be jailed for this that would be one thing, but "publisher and agent dropped her like a hot rock" =/= prison time.

That isn't the issue.

The issue is believing that it's possible for criminals to be rehabilitated, but that people who say or do the wrong thing should be permanently denied the chance to reform. It's eternal consequence that's the problem, here, not the notion of consequences in general.

Except that you’re the only one talking about eternal damnation here, particularly in a case where the current span of eternity has been a few weeks.

Sorry but... that sounds all fine and dandy but where do prison abolitionists want violent rapists and murderers to go? Just let them off with community service?

From what I understand, they want them held in custody but not "prison" and dealt with on a case by case basis, because in their ideal world prisonless world, the amount of people who commit those crimes would be low enough for that to be possible. (I don't disagree with them in the long run, but we're talking probably several generations in which a massive societal reform takes place and happens to go perfectly, and I'm not sure what we're supposed to do in the meantime.)

What makes people think that "societal reform" will get rid of all violent people? Are they planning on breeding those impulses out of the species?

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2024-01-08 13:16 (UTC) - Expand

But the notion at issue here isn't, "if you're against prison, then you must be against accountability." It's, "if you believe that prison-bound criminals can and should be rehabilitated, then it doesn't make sense to think that non-criminals should be permanently denied the chance to reform."

The older I get, the more I wonder if large swaths of the internet even want to give people a chance to do and be better. Internet mob behavior is still mob behavior, and I think it's easy to forget how such behavior can make positive change impossible on an individual level.

In general, probably not. We humans have been this unforgiving since humans existed. We tend to struggle in this area when others have behaved badly, even when the offender is serious about repenting and/or changing.

Not a judgment or anything, just something I've observed over the years.

What she did was disgusting and she’s rightly facing the consequences.

But you’re 100% wrong about substance abuse and mental health. You clearly have no idea what they can make people do. Altered reasoning, confused morals, distorted perceptions, impulsiveness, anxiety, and compulsive tendencies are all common issues with mental health. It doesn’t typically excuse actions, and certainly not in this case, but it is often the reason.

Yeah, people really, really don't want to acknowledge that mental illness can underlie all sorts of problematic behaviors. It's a kind of irony that all this work has been done to "destigmatize" it, but what that really means is that its most socially palatable manifestations have been amplified and made into the "face" of it, so the most severe and detrimental kinds are almost taken less seriously, and people are less understanding of them.

(And by "understanding," I want to make sure that I don't mean "excusing." I mean it in the sense that it's possible to grasp that someone acting shitty may genuinely not be fully in control of those actions)

Yes! You’ve explained this perfectly. Some symptoms and diagnoses are socially acceptable and even championed, but the rest have been swept further under the carpet than ever before.

Especially those you can't turn into instagrammable/tiktokable "teehee look how quirky my mental illness is" content.

Exactly.

She can learn and be better, whether the internet lets her or not. The internet also doesn’t have much to say on whether she gets to become a published author in the future. Mainstream agents and publishers aren’t going to touch her for a good long time — on the basis of what other publishers and authors will think of them, not on what internet randos think.

She’ll have a much easier time if she decides to find a racist troll publisher that likes her writing.

You're talking like "the internet" and "authors" are two separate populations.

“Authors” also don’t have much say on whether or not she gets published, but the two populations are a Venn diagram, not a circle.

I figured she could just self-publish and be done with publishers altogether.

I had to think about this overnight, but here’s my take, fwiw. I am most upset about her lack of awareness of her mental health issues and how they affected her actions, and that she let herself get to the point where she thought that what she did was reasonable. She needs a lot of help.

The consequences of her actions, where she lost everything and is being shunned, may be harsh but I personally think they’re justified. I hope she gets help, I hope she comes to terms with her own racism, and in the future I hope she can get published under a pseudonym.

But for right now, I think what happened was appropriate. I do say this as a person that has had their own mental health issues for the past 25 years and continues to work on them, if that means anything.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only