Lamu Island, Kenya. Photo Sandy B

Hsiao Chin (蕭勤) — Radiation (The Projection)  [acrylic on canvas, 1965]

Jorrit Tornquist [Austria + Italy] (1938) ~ ‘OP. 288’, 1970. Acrylic on canvas (80 x 80 cm).

and yknow what i also don’t like the idea that abusers are these like. horrible monsters and there’s something ~wrong with them~ cuz no “normal” person could ever do such a thing like. my abusers are normal people. not even particularly bad people, really, aside from… well, yknow. there’s not some special ingredient that makes abusers abusers. they’re just people, doing fucked up things. you wouldn’t know it from looking at them, there’s no one specific reason they do what they do. it’s weird to try and like… explain it all away like that.

and actually yknow what i’ve always hated the dehumanization of abusers or bad people or whatever cuz like. no! they aren’t monsters, they’re people! this is what humans have the capacity to do! there’s nothing special about it! don’t try to distance ‘nice, normal folks’ from ‘monsters’ cuz we’re the same goddamn thing; we all have free will and the ability to choose how we act and some people choose fucked up stuff and that’s human, unfortunately

Saying that abusers are less than human or that there is some inherent pathology to them makes the world less safe. Because if abusers are less than human, you can’t acknowledge that your beloved best friend is neglecting his children. You can’t acknowledge that your mother emotionally abused you. You can’t take the accusation of domestic violence against your role model seriously. You can’t acknowledge that your girlfriend is financially abusing you. Because they are human, and you know them, so they can’t be unhuman abusers. And they aren’t unhuman. But they are abusers.

A woman with no mental illness can come home and hit her children. A man with a perfectly healthy childhood can manipulate his employees into working overtime with no pay. A woman who is respected in her community can commit a rape. A man who treats most patients perfectly can be medically abusive to others.

Abuse is not a pathology. It is not a function of inhumanity. It is not inevitable. If it was any of those things, it would be morally neutral in the way that a hurricane is, something that you just have to get potential victims out of the way of. Instead, abuse is an action or set of actions that the person chooses to take, and could have chosen not to take. That’s the whole reason that abuse is a moral wrong: that abusers could have chosen otherwise.

Most importantly?

There is nothing separating you, the person reading this, from being an abuser, except for the choice to be careful and kind to others. Not if you were abused. Not if you have little societal power. Not if you just really don’t want to be one. There is no immutable fact about you that makes you immune to abusing others. There are only the choices that you make in how you interact with other human beings.

Anyone can choose to be an abuser. Anyone can choose not to be one.

Thinking of abusers as inhuman also supports the prison system, and in turn perpetuates white supremacist, anti-Black capitalist patriarchy. This kind of thinking creates disposability of people because it feeds into the western societal binaries of good and bad/who "deserves" to not be caged and who doesn't etc. which has never done anything but further the marginalization and domination of Black, Native and other bodies of culture. We CANNOT throw people away. Also, this kind of thinking is the cop in our heads. When we say ACAB/FTP, we include that one too.

I’m sorry you all had to watch your father steal the light from your mother.

— Franz Kafka, from a diary entry wr. c. February 1917 featured in “Diaries,”

no mal de ojo 🧿

A picture from Algeria 

“Dear brother. if you don’t have money don’t be shy; don’t leave your family without food,please take what you need for your children from the offered greens since My provision and your Provision is from Allah”

‎وَلَا تَهِنُوا وَلَا تَحْزَنُو

Do not lose hope, nor be sad.

— — Rosebud Ben-Oni, from “Poet Wrestling With the Poetics of Unsolvable Physics,” If This Is the Age We End Discovery

How time lives in fear of you. My origins grow indifferent to my deaths. & just as nebulous.

Did I ever mean anything? Say, why

{in the what of you}

are all my neurons like a plague, swarming you, in great numbers,

&. Vanish. Loving you means I’ll never bear. Witness.

— Rosebud Ben-Oni, from “{to Zero, With Strange Love},” If This Is the Age We End Discovery

George Wesley Bellows (American, 1882-1925) - Tumble of Waters, 1913

On our mothers’ dirt roads we know

how dangerous someone who wants to save you can become.

Compassion is not the same as repair.

— Hafizah Geter, from “Visiting Prophets,” Un-American

My Popsicle had three sticks and a terrifying message.

Why would you…… rip my strands right from my scalp like this

Salat al Janazah