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morls.bsky.social
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@morls.bsky.social
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employment discrimination lawyer and the daughter of west Asian immigrants so ya I think about gender a lot
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morls.bsky.social
A text I sent literally two minutes ago
April 1, 2025 at 7:13 PM
morls.bsky.social
This was all excellent, but this passage in particular really hit
Not every apology from an abusive man needs to be understood as a cynical manipulation. But nor should a reluctance to forgive by abuse victims or their allies be understood as selfish, cruel, embittered or withholding. It is seemingly always women and other marginalized groups who are told of the virtues of forgiveness—and it is always their anger and resentment that creates the greatest discomfort for those in power. In a culture where sexual violence has rarely been understood as real violence—regarded instead as a private prerogative of manhood, on the one hand, or as a triviality exaggerated by overwrought women, on the other—a refusal to forgive can be understood instead as a persistent insistence on the wrongness of sexual abuse. Forgiveness allows both the perpetrator and the surrounding community to return to the status quo ante, something they are often very eager to do. But non-forgiveness, grudge holding, and unyielding expressions of anger or hurt refuse this forgetting. In that sense, non-forgiveness can be, indeed, a signal of the victim’s defiant self-respect; of her refusal to allow the wrong done to her to be treated as if it—as if she—does not matter.
March 11, 2025 at 4:33 PM