CW: Abuse

Ben reached out to me to apologize a few days ago, despite us not having talked in a literal half year. It was a tactic to control the narrative around what he did, by softening the blow and preemptively demonstrate "growth" https://twitter.com/BabblegumSam/status/1279120969013985280

In his message to me, he talked a lot about having "discovering that he hurt people" and "working on healing from what he's done". These are both predatory tactics. These are both ways to reframe the conversation.

It was, all in all, a well-written apology, sent to someone who has no connection to the situation. But an apology is a request for forgiveness, and that is not my place nor something I want to do. This was his way of softening the news.

Abusers don't get to heal. Healing is for their victims. Abusers get to learn how to be sober from an addiction to power, and I think abusers can be rehabilitated, but they don't get to co-opt languages of healing, and I don't get to be the judge of what rehabilitation is.

The blood on Ben's hands isn't mine, but I unequivocally stand with the people he's hurt, just as I stand with everyone who has been abused and assaulted. I hope for the sake of the people in his life that he tries to do better. But he's very far from that.

I wrote this thread mainly for other people Ben might've reached out to (I know of at least a few) and I wanted to set an example of how to respond to something like that and how to refuse to allow abusers to define what's going on.