🪡: Victims of domestic violence do not follow one strict set of behaviours. This is as likely a response and a conversation with an abuser as any other. There is no one way to respond to emotional and physical trauma.

🪡: If you can question the behavior of a woman that you KNOW is being beaten, how would you treat women who come forward whose stories you didn’t witness?

Would you even bother to look at their evidence or would you make your decision based on whether or not they smiled once?

🪡: I think this highlights just how deeply people have been brainwashed to not believe women. There is no mystery in In Ends With Us. You WATCH what happened to her and you are STILL questioning her. I know it’s fictional — but sit with that for a minute.

🪡: So to sit here and say “no victims don’t act like that” is effectively saying that you can WATCH a woman be beaten but if she doesn’t act right, she’s somehow still not a victim.

Within the internal logic of the story, this is how Lily — a victim who you know is a victim — acts. Period.

🪡: I know this is FICTION and not a great representation overall, but that said, criticism of victim behaviour is just victim blaming.

Within the narrative of the story, you KNOW that Lily Bloom is a victim of abuse, you see the abuse in the movie. You read the abuse in the book.

🪡: Second, this scene, here, in the book is also nearly identical to the movie so I also don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about.

But now let’s get into the problem.

🪡: First, The overall representation of domestic abuse written by Colleen Hoover is problematic, because how she writes ABUSERS is problematic. Ryle, as a character, makes no sense.

I can do an analysis of Ryle & why that is, but that isn’t the point of this thread — it’s just with mentioning.

if Brianna is sincere about being sorry than she will recognise that saying she was wrong, & is sorry, doesn’t “settle” anything.

Admitting you made a mistake & asking for forgiveness starts the conversation, it doesn’t end it. Neither followers nor the trust of your peers returns overnight.

It reminds me quite a bit of the Kelly Cadigan story. A young trans woman who tried to be a right wing grifter and than realized her mistake:
youtu.be/zFxTdT1Upqk

And the thing is — other trans women told her that this won’t work, because TERFs want trans women dead. They want them eradicated. They hate them — it’s never been about safety or fairness or protecting children: it’s hatred and bigotry.

it’s that sense of a lack of sincerity that makes it feel like she doesn’t actually regret her choice: she regrets that it didn’t turn out the way she wanted it to.

1) Sincerity

I think it shows a lack of sincerity in the admission that she was wrong when, only hours later, she’s complaining the toxicity in the trans community is why she “left” in the 1st place — bc Brianna isn’t the victim of her own choices here.

She chose to court acceptance with TERFs.

💖

At the end of the day misinformation that makes people angry has become more valuable than the truth. That’s why these companies don’t take it down. That’s why we are where we are.

But at the end of the day it’s still women & women’s suffering being exploited for the capital gains of people they don’t even know.

Look at all the videos disparaging Amber Heard or Blake Lively. It’s about making money off the content. It’s not about genuine beliefs or ideas or motivations or the TRUTH, it’s about bank accounts. Misogyny pays. And given the size of Taylor’s fanbase, mocking her PAYS.

Now people are understandably angry at her. But hey, at least she admitted it. Half the internet these days is fuelled by AI and the other half swims in monetised rage bait.

And that is what interests me more than this incident itself. Because it’s really bad.

We’ve all got to keep trying harder.