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">https://twitter.com/Babblegum...

In his message to me, he talked a lot about having "discovering that he hurt people" and "working on healing from what he& #39;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& #39;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& #39;t get to co-opt languages of healing, and I don& #39;t get to be the judge of what rehabilitation is.

The blood on Ben& #39;s hands isn& #39;t mine, but I unequivocally stand with the people he& #39;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& #39;s very far from that.

I wrote this thread mainly for other people Ben might& #39;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& #39;s going on.