Empirically, Quinney et al. offer “proof of concept” that refusing to forgive can empower victims and bolster value integrity. Philosophically, I argue that in contexts of ongoing or structural injustice, such refusal is not only adaptive, but ethically necessary.

Even in this new study, forgiveness stays the normative centre: refusal is rehabilitated as sometimes beneficial, but still judged by the same wellbeing metrics. My theory of a-forgiveness asks a different question: when is refusing forgiveness ethically required?

The article quietly admits what survivors know: there are “coercive social pressures to forgive”. Refusing can be an authentic, value-consistent “no”. My work pushes this further, showing how those pressures function as moral surveillance and biopolitics.

Quinney et al. distinguish “unforgiveness” (negative affect, rumination) from the communicative act of refusing to forgive, drawing on Boon, Stackhouse & Lozano (2025). That distinction comes straight from our conceptual work on unforgiveness.