I'd like this momentum to continue, this unified front, this collective mentality, when we recognize we are protective of each other, we care about each other, and we won't take shit from some basket case crashing out in our house. I want to remember why this feels different. Why this feels correct.

But to see it used effectively against someone who has every capability of being nasty and harmful and annoying, has no place in our community, has every intent to gentrify, colonize, be this white savior missionary... fuck around find out. When we unite we are strong and it feels good.

My essays so far have been lamenting how we misuse these tools against our own community, against vulnerable people, used without due diligence, used for personal beef, or otherwise just unproductive matters. It's a powerful tool that shouldn't be misused or underestimated

Literally same

I want a different word than forgiveness. I want letting go, I want healing, I want moving on. I want "the opposite of love isn't hate, it's apathy." I don't want hope. I don't want the benefit of the doubt. I want less tolerance for mistreatment and disrespect. I want relentless protection.

Forgiveness is pitched as this concept of letting go of the hurt they've done to you, but warps into this allowance for that person to continue to have access to you

Regardless, we're still in the punitive justice machine and the end of this will be an exchange of money and likely no real healing. My tinfoil hat thinks maybe nothing is real and this is all just a stunt. But I'm sick of seeing "see, she was smiling!" used as "proof" that she wasn't abused.

It expects a "perfect victim" out of Lively and uses anything it can to turn the public sour against her, but it's not evidence. Add black & white thinking, and we can't accept the possibility of contradiction, nuance, or flexibility. None of this abt the case is surprising or unique either.

Imo that's not the behavior of someone having a genuine misunderstanding, that's just dirty. It takes advantage of the bias against women, adds the anchoring bias, and I'm sure the halo effect around Baldoni, just as in the Depp case. "He's hot, he couldn't have done something wrong!"

And once you add the element of "dark PR" of Baldoni's team to try to make Lively look bad--here enters "anchoring bias." If people see more negative info about her sooner, it will stick in people's minds and make it harder to contradict with future information.

What I think is important is, it's possible one of them is lying. But it's just as possible that neither are lying. Just because their stories or interpretations of an event are different doesn't prove someone is lying. But it's the responsibility of Baldoni to fucking be professional.

It's also v poss then that Baldoni did not receive signals from Lively in the moment that she was upset. It's v common for the fawn response to pop up in situations of harassment to keep us safe. We may not process what's happening in the moment because fight, flight, freeze *or fawn* takes over.

Baldoni's evidence is garbage imo because having good interactions doesn't negate the possibility of bad interactions. Plus, it's v poss that Lively is trying to stay professional, esp within a power dynamic as Baldoni was the director.

Evidence is necessary to participate in the legal system, but so difficult to produce in cases like these, not only because there's rarely physical evidence, but also witnesses are subject to deep biases due to social hierarchy and relationship to trauma. So it'll be "he said she said."