Messy thought incoming:
Our community spaces are so deeply tied to Twitter (with all its many flaws, algorithmic and otherwise) that just bringing up the topic of community justice (restorative or otherwise) is perilous, inviting attention and opinions from the wrong people and for the wrong reasons.
We have to be careful when we pick words, when we commit them to the river of discourse, that we don’t choose the ones that grant safe harbor to liars and murderers, that we don’t snuff out the lights for the wounded to find us.
Because if I say “can we talk about how we’re dealing with the perpetrators of abuse” that might sound like an invitation to forgive harmful people immediately, before they have had a chance to fully face what they’ve done.
It might sound like a call to stop the accountability in progress. The wrong people are emboldened, the wrong people kept silent.

But if I wait to speak until there isn’t a recent abuse that’s been revealed, I can wait forever and never speak.
I don’t know what community justice looks like. I don’t think that’s what we do here. I don’t think we’ve figured out how to do it. I don’t know that we’ve realized it’s something we want to do.

It’s not “cancel culture”. It’s warnings and road signs. “Abuser Ahead.”
And I wonder...I wonder if our warnings have gotten only more angry, more determined, because there are no systems for finding justice. So all we have left is letting people know, and hoping they do the right thing, and knowing they probably won’t, and waiting.
Like...I don’t want Wizards of the Coast rehabilitated. I don’t think they can be restored. I want people to avoid the company, to end their existing relationships with it.

I shout because I know that, in most cases? They will do nothing.
When I say “boycott DnD”, I don’t mean “withhold support until they make this right”, because my stance is that they can’t. Fundamentally, the harm they’ve done is irreparable.

But on a community level, that stance is still just a road sign. “Warning: Stair Missing.”
I’m using WotC as the example here because they’re extreme, because the harm is irreparable, and because it is easy for me to say “this thing needs to no longer exist.”
There are other examples of abuse that are maybe less...mountainous in their scope. But even a small dead end road needs a sign so that travelers don’t wander down it by mistake. Even if the bridge that’s out can be repaired, we need to know it’s not safe to travel on.
But we don’t yet have the tools, resources, or systems we need to begin the conversation of whether and how we might fix that bridge—and if we do, do we remove the “Bridge Out” sign, or replace it with “Bridge Recently Repaired—Tread Lightly And Watch Your Step.”
So...end of thread? I guess? It’s frayed and awful and messy and full of mixed metaphors, but we do this every month/week/day, and aside from “noted, I’ll avoid that road from now on” we don’t seem to know how to move forward.
I’m gonna say don’t retweet this, mainly because it feels messy in my head and because (see the part about inviting the wrong sort of attention).

I might change my mind tomorrow, but for now, if it’s hitting you...sit with it, and think about what you want if you haven’t yet.
You can follow @DeePennyway.
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