a soldier could come out and say “I hate brown people and joined the military to kill them” in so many words and you shitheads on this site would still be like “don’t be so quick to criticise, think about how hard joining an imperialist invasion campaign and slaughtering civilians and children must be on them! and what if that racist murderer wanted to go to college?”
Only self-aware insects do, because they realize they’re bugs and bugs are objectively terrible so really the pain they feel is more existential than physical.
As I kid I bought
into it, I was convinced that it’s okay for me to endure pain because it would
make me stronger, it would make me tough, it was for my own good, to make me
more enduring, I wanted to be strong. But even then, as a 7 year old, I would
not have allowed for anyone else to be hurt in front of me because I understood
that being hurt and helpless to stop it does
damage and really hurts. It was never on my mind to call someone pathetic
or weak if they weren’t able to endure the amount of pain I could, for me it
was like a choice, I wanted to be tough! (It was not really a choice tho, I was just trying to pretend there was something positive in abuse when there wasn’t. It destroyed me, and didn’t make me strong.) But even then I could understand that
others would rather not be hurt, rather stay safe from pain. I didn’t go after
others in order to “make them stronger”.
So if me, a 7
year old, could understand this much, there is no excuse for any grown ass
adult who pretends that causing pain to a child would make them stronger, or is
for child’s “own good”. This is a pathetic and worthless lie. They’re
not stupider than a 7 year old, they understand they’re hurting and damaging a
child against child’s will, they understand perfectly well they’re not making
the child tough or strong, they understand they’re doing it for their own sick
satisfaction and convenience. It’s for their own good, not the child’s. They figured
out if they can pretend to be stupid they can get away with it. We should let
them know we lose all respect of them as people after they hurt a child, no
matter what kind of excuse they present. They should be punished for having the
nerve to lie like that. It’s been enough of lies. It’s been enough of
forgiveness. Abusive parents should pay for what they’ve done to their
children.
As a society we
need to stop extending our empathy to abusers and predators. It is absolutely
not necessary in order for being a good person, to extend your understanding
and compassion to those who would hurt and torture you. It’s in our basic
survival instincts to regard those who would harm us as a threat, to block any
kind of empathy towards them and only think about how to get the hell away from
them and be protected from them. No sheep will stop running and consider how
the wolf feels, and try to make him feel better while risking her own life
doing it, so why would we? It’s against our basic survival interest. No victim
of abuse needs to consider the perspective of abuser for even one second, for
the victim the abuser is a threat, a predator, something to get the hell away
from or destroy for the sake of saving her own life.
We’re encouraged
to look at every situation from all perspectives but once we’re faced with
abuse, considering abuser’s perspective means we no longer care about
ourselves. We’re looking at ourselves thru abuser’s eyes and what we see is that
we are not human to them, we are objects, resources, things to use and throw
away as if worthless. We are forced to see ourselves dehumanized, reduced to a thing, and then accept that as one side of the story, as if that doesn’t destroy our perception of ourselves! Once both we and the abuser look from abuser’s
perspective, there is nobody left in the world who will consider our point of
view, who will defend our humanity, our life. It means abandoning ourselves
completely.
There is no need to look at ourselves thru abuser’s eyes because
their perspective is not any kind of truth, it’s not going to help us
understand anything, it’s a self-serving delusion. Just because predators don’t
think of us as humans, it doesn’t change the fact that we are! They can’t
change who we are. But if we are lured into looking at ourselves thru their
eyes, they can convince us that we’re what they think of us. And we need to
refuse to. We can assume they know we’re human, and are doing this to us
anyway. We can assume they’re not as deluded as they pretend to be. They’re
aiming at our empathy and compassion to humanize themselves by dehumanizing us,
and it’s been enough of that. No more self hatred for the sake of abusers being
justified in hurting us. Abusers don’t deserve compassion or empathy from their
victims.
Every time when I
as a kid protested against my parents as unfair and cruel they simply reassured
me that I just have to wait until I get old and then I could do the same thing
to my own children, as if i’d ever want to be so gross and disgusting. How the fuck
is it okay to answer at a protest for unfairness with “you’ll get to be
gross and unfair too”? They seriously thought my desire for justice would
be satisfied with more cruelty and unfairness, what I wanted was justice for
myself, not injustice for someone else.
What I can say
about it now is that they were reassuring themselves even then that I’m just
like them, that I would take pleasure in torturing my children too, so there
was no reason to feel sorry for me, or to be nicer to me. They had to convince
themselves that I was the same piece of shit, and tried to convince me that
abuse of children is something a person gains right to as they age and form a
family. It’s infuriating to think anyone believes that humans below a certain
age don’t have human rights, and after certain age and experiences, they have
the right to torture those younger than them. I can tell you right now that
each human being, no matter what age has the exact same rights to fairness,
justice and safety, and no human of any age, profession or title has the right
to torture another.
