I’m watching a video on the philosophy of prison abolition and these two guys (one white. One black) are talking about how people really do want to see people punished for wrongdoing but no one admits to it
And I may well be biased but it’s feeling smug to me, like thevye caught people out having Bad Thoughts and are above it all
And I just… ok Mr Harvard professor, so what do YOU want to see happen to Donald Trump, then?
It got better.
I really do think there’s a gaping hole in a lot of the rhetoric though, where people really do just assume everyone who commits crimes is lower-class or poor, when there’s a hell of a lot of crime that society’s MOST powerful people engage in.
Maybe prison isn’t great for fixing them either! But we really do need to talk and think about how to stop them. We have the opposite problem with them (or at least I personally have the opposite question): Are we doing enough? Do we show them unwarranted leniency? Is that a miscarriage of justice too?
The reason I don’t like “no one should be motivated by retribution” is that part of the reason the powerful do bad things may well be “no one stops me, so it’s fine.”
To me that indicates that we’re never going to be able to completely get rid of “You did the thing, and we now are imposing upon you a consequence we think you’ll find highly unpleasant.”
I also suspect that whether or not we ever succeed at ending incarceration, we will most likely have to retain some form of “this person needs to be kept away from that person,” such as in cases of stalking and other forms of sexual predation.
It seems to me that the only way to fully believe in abolition is to have faith that everyone is reachable through kindness. I wish I thought that was true, but I’ve been awfully nice to people I know preyed on others, and it didn’t stop them.
I’m concerned about us putting the same burden on bright eyed young social workers and getting the same result.
I think what you’re missing here is that the vast majority of abolitionists are not rallying that there should be no imprisonment for anyone ever. What we largely believe is that, while prisons will need to exist for some, and long term or life imprisonment may be necessary for some, there is no way to fully reform a system that was built on slave catching and the punishment of minorities, and absolutely no way to meaningfully reform a for-profit prison system.
Abolition is about starting over with something new that can be focused on rehabilitation and serving the community, from the ground up.
Serving the community means some of the worst offenders, those who cannot be rehabilitated, will need to be imprisoned for everyone’s safety. But we can rethink what that looks like in a modern society. We have the power to imagine a better system for everyone.
Thats not something I disagree with.
But that’s also not what I’d call abolishing prison.
If you’re IMPRISONING anyone you HAVE A PRISON in which to put them. The verb and the noun are intimately connected.
“We should imprison far fewer people” is the part reformers and abolitionists agree on.
Whether that number is zero or greater than zero is the part we don’t.
Look, don’t name your movement ‘no-one should be imprisoned ever’ if what you want is for some prison, actually. Answer the fuckin’ question: If we abolish prisons, what do we do with murderers and rapists?
IF WE ABOLISH PRISONS then we don’t HAVE prisons to imprison anyone in.
“We should put people who do really bad things in prison! We should just call it schmison, because the p one is pretty racist.”
—what these people sound like to me
Either that or a worse thing:
“Don’t put people in prison!”
“What about recidivist offending pedophiles?”
“Put recidivist offending pedophiles in prison!”
“Okay, hang on one second. I need to check something real fast.”
“……?”
“Yep! Just got the results back, and it looks like those are people.”
It’s okay if you are grieving because of your disability and what it costs you. It’s okay if you celebrate your disability and the way it makes you unique. It’s okay if you feel ambivalent, confused, or conflicted about your disability. It’s okay if you feel a mixture or go back and forth. Your experience is valid.
I’m watching a video on the philosophy of prison abolition and these two guys (one white. One black) are talking about how people really do want to see people punished for wrongdoing but no one admits to it
And I may well be biased but it’s feeling smug to me, like thevye caught people out having Bad Thoughts and are above it all
And I just… ok Mr Harvard professor, so what do YOU want to see happen to Donald Trump, then?
It got better.
I really do think there’s a gaping hole in a lot of the rhetoric though, where people really do just assume everyone who commits crimes is lower-class or poor, when there’s a hell of a lot of crime that society’s MOST powerful people engage in.
Maybe prison isn’t great for fixing them either! But we really do need to talk and think about how to stop them. We have the opposite problem with them (or at least I personally have the opposite question): Are we doing enough? Do we show them unwarranted leniency? Is that a miscarriage of justice too?
The reason I don’t like “no one should be motivated by retribution” is that part of the reason the powerful do bad things may well be “no one stops me, so it’s fine.”
To me that indicates that we’re never going to be able to completely get rid of “You did the thing, and we now are imposing upon you a consequence we think you’ll find highly unpleasant.”
I also suspect that whether or not we ever succeed at ending incarceration, we will most likely have to retain some form of “this person needs to be kept away from that person,” such as in cases of stalking and other forms of sexual predation.
It seems to me that the only way to fully believe in abolition is to have faith that everyone is reachable through kindness. I wish I thought that was true, but I’ve been awfully nice to people I know preyed on others, and it didn’t stop them.
I’m concerned about us putting the same burden on bright eyed young social workers and getting the same result.
I think what you’re missing here is that the vast majority of abolitionists are not rallying that there should be no imprisonment for anyone ever. What we largely believe is that, while prisons will need to exist for some, and long term or life imprisonment may be necessary for some, there is no way to fully reform a system that was built on slave catching and the punishment of minorities, and absolutely no way to meaningfully reform a for-profit prison system.
Abolition is about starting over with something new that can be focused on rehabilitation and serving the community, from the ground up.
Serving the community means some of the worst offenders, those who cannot be rehabilitated, will need to be imprisoned for everyone’s safety. But we can rethink what that looks like in a modern society. We have the power to imagine a better system for everyone.
Thats not something I disagree with.
But that’s also not what I’d call abolishing prison.
If you’re IMPRISONING anyone you HAVE A PRISON in which to put them. The verb and the noun are intimately connected.
“We should imprison far fewer people” is the part reformers and abolitionists agree on.
Whether that number is zero or greater than zero is the part we don’t.
Look, don’t name your movement ‘no-one should be imprisoned ever’ if what you want is for some prison, actually. Answer the fuckin’ question: If we abolish prisons, what do we do with murderers and rapists?
IF WE ABOLISH PRISONS then we don’t HAVE prisons to imprison anyone in.
“We should put people who do really bad things in prison! We should just call it schmison, because the p one is pretty racist.”
“biblical angels” you do realise there are angels in the old testament that are literally just regular looking guys, right? you do know that the hallucinogenic incoherent descriptions are in like. two books. and the rest of the time angels are just guys. you know that, right?
and I’m not saying don’t have fun with weird angels. I’m saying, either the eldritch forms are for special occasions, or the society of the angels is Many-Eyed-Many-Winged-Interlocking-Circles, Four-Faces-Six-Wings, and Mike.
Literally Raphael is just a normal person!
this is what the heavenly breakroom is like
Oh no now I love the water cooler angel
May Aguael, Bringer of Hydration, bless us all this day
Also, if the highest elected position can be held by a felon, then felons should have a say in who is elected
Allow felons the right to vote!
All of this.
If Trump was a decent person who happened to commit a weird little felony that his enemies were hunting for to find a way to hurt him, he would be saying all of this.
He’s not. That means he thinks the law applies to everyone but him, and other felons are bad hombres but not him.
I mean I suspect everyone who reads this post knows that but just in case some people who like him see it…
…stuff like this is why we look at him and see a crook, not a persecuted man.
I just want you all to know, that if and when this site does experience a real exodus and/or get sunsetted for good, even if we don’t keep in touch I’ll remember you so fondly. You’re the online equivalent of the other kid on the beach where we built sandcastles together; the girl at the campsite where we explored the trees. You’re the drunk person who shared kind words in the bathroom at the club, you’re the talented artists at the life drawing class or the poetry night in a city where I don’t live anymore. It makes me sad that maybe in the future our paths won’t cross so easily, but even when we leave this little shared piece of cyberspace, carried away on our briefly intersecting trajectories, just know I still love you
My prescription would be for a calibration session. Rate each hit 1-10. Daddy gives you a spank. Just one. You tell him how hard YOU feel that hit was based on your personal feelings. He hits you a little harder. You tell him how hard YOU feel that hit was based on your personal feelings. On and on you go until you both have an understanding of how hard you like to get hit and what is good pain vs. bad pain in your spankings.
I’ll add a little additional note that I don’t think all dominants are necessarily made to deliver impact. Some people just may never be up for it. There are pure dominant caregivers out there that have no interest in getting involved in the impact game. So if this is to work, you both have to be on the same page about wanting it to work.
I hope this helps.
How much of a fun game are you going for here? For me, if someone is obviously having fun, I’m fine with hitting harder. If they’re not I start to worry, unless there’s already an understanding between us of what they get out of it that isn’t going to show up on their face.
Some people really like the idea that the dom is straight up being mean or angry, that it’s something close to “real” punishment. If I’m hitting someone it’s because that turns me on. I’m the opposite of mad at them.
Not sure how much this helps, but felt like pointing it out because sometimes there’s truly a mismatch going on.
A message from a few of the trans staff at Tumblr & Automattic:
We want trans people, and LGBTQ+ people broadly, to feel welcome on Tumblr, in part because we as trans people at Tumblr and Automattic want it to be a space where we ourselves feel included. We want to feel like this is a platform that supports us and fights for our safety. Tumblr is made brighter and more vibrant by your presence, and the LGBTQ+ folks who help run it are fighting all the time for this, for you, internally.
A few days ago, Matt Mullenweg (the CEO of Automattic, Tumblr’s parent company) responded to a user’s ask about an account suspension in a way that negatively affected Tumblr’s LGBTQ+ community. We believe that Matt’s response to this ask and his continued commentary has been unwarranted and harmful. Tumblr staff do not comment on moderation decisions as a matter of policy for a variety of reasons—including the privacy of those involved, and the practicalities of moderating thousands of reports a day. The downside of this policy is that it is very easy for rumors and incorrect information about actions taken by our Trust & Safety team to spread unchecked. Given this, we want to clarify a few different pieces of this situation:
The reality of predstrogen’s suspension was not accurately conveyed, and made it seem like we were reaching for opportunities to ban trans feminine people on the platform. This is not the case. The example comment shared in the post linked above does not meet our definition of a realistic threat of violence, and was not the deciding factor in the account suspension.
Matt thereafter failed to recognize the harm to the community as a result of this suspension. Matt does not speak on behalf of the LGBTQ+ people who help run Tumblr or Automattic, and we were not consulted in the construction of a response to these events.
Last year, the “mature” and “sexual themes” community labels were erroneously applied to some users’ posts. An outside team of contractors tasked with applying community labels to posts were responsible for this larger trend of mislabeling trans-related content. When our Trust & Safety team discovered this issue (thanks largely to reports from the community), we removed the contracted team’s ability to apply community labels and added more oversight to ensure it does not happen again. In the Staff post about this, LGBTQ+ staff pushed to be more transparent but were overruled by leadership. The termination of a contractor mentioned in the original ask response was for an unrelated incident which was incorrectly attributed to this case. We regret that the mislabeling ever happened, and the negative impact it has had on the trans community on Tumblr.
Transition timelines are not against our community guidelines, and weren’t a factor considered by the moderation team when discussing suspensions and subsequent appeals. We do not take action against content that is related to transitioning or trans bodies unless it includes violations of the Community Guidelines.
When it comes to the experience of trans folks on Tumblr encountering transphobic content, and interacting with bigoted users, we understand and share your frustrations. Tumblr’s policies, and Automattic’s policies, are written to ensure freedom of speech and expression. We prohibit harassment as defined in our Community Guidelines, but we know that this policy falls short of protecting users from the wider scope of harmful speech often used against LGBTQ+ and other marginalized people.
Going forward, Tumblr is taking the following actions:
Prioritizing anti-harassment features that will empower users to more effectively protect themselves from harassment.
Building more internal tooling for us as Staff to proactively identify and mitigate instances of harassment.
Reviewing which of the tags frequently used by the trans community are blocked, and working to make them available next week.
We’re sorry for how this all transpired, and we’re actively fighting to make our voices heard more and prevent something like this from happening again in the future. We know firsthand that having to deal with situations like this as a Tumblr user is difficult, particularly as a member of an already frequently targeted and harassed community. We know it will take time to regain your trust, and we’re going to put in the work to rebuild it.
We appreciate the space we have been given to express our concerns and dissent, and we are thankful that Matt’s (and Automattic’s) strong commitment to freedom of expression has facilitated it.
We will continue to fight to make Tumblr safe for us all.
— This statement was authored by multiple trans employees of Tumblr and Automattic.
i think most of the negative commenters here have no idea how to read corpo-speak when the employees actually care but their bosses are making dumbass decisions. people are acting like the staff who wrote this are oppressors when they’re literally saying they are having to fight internally to be heard by the people making decisions.
this basically says, “sorry our CEO is being a dipshit, we really don’t like it and we were overruled on decisions that made things worse. now that he’s blown this up we can finally do the things higher-ups didn’t let us do earlier.”
the note about being thankful for “matt’s strong commitment to freedom of expression”, i’m not sure how sincere it is, but it reads to me like “thanks for not firing us for making this post, and thanks for listening (or being strong-armed into listening) to us when we told you that you’re fucking things up and you should let us fix it.”
my heart goes out to y'all for dealing with this bullshit, both internally and externally, and i hope you get the changes that you want and deserve to make tumblr a better workplace and a better posting zone. a lot of ppl really don’t understand how hard it is to be in a company whose work you believe in when leadership is doing things you disagree with and you have to thread the needle of communicating that while being professional (i.e. compliant with corporate communication guidelines).
Corpo speak professional here. I’m the lawyer that corpo consults when they want to make a corpo speak apology or do some PR management.
In all my career, I have never seen a corporation issue a public statement written by line employees like the post above on an official account. A corporation will always issue an apology or something like this from the highest level - the CEO itself or speaking on behalf of the corporation as a whole, written by their lawyers and/or PR team.
For Tumblr to allow and issue a statement written by employees speaking on behalf of themselves is incredibly rare and frankly shows tumblrs commitment to it’s queer staff and users.
That in and of itself should make this be a positive sign
Reblogging this because I want to make sure that Staff knows we haven’t forgotten.
>i sit on a throne and people come up to me one by one displaying different items
>with each item i yell out “yonic” or “phallic” and then wave them away to a door to the left or right of me (depending on whether its yonic or phallic)
>guy comes up with an item thats too difficult to label as yonic or phalic
>i pull a lever to the right of me that opens a trap door under his feet sending him to fall miles down to his death as we are in my floating cloud castle
woke up this morning, rolled over, and very confidently tried to blow out my alarm clock like a candle. absolutely no precedent for that.
Ebeneezer in 1742 wakes with a start as for some reason he has put out his guttering candle by slapping atop it ith the palm of his hand. His hand is burned and his nightgown and cap are spattered with hot wax.
The thing I’m going to say is that lying to vulnerable people and saying that not just one but both of the two parties in the most powerful countries in the world hates them, when the reality is that blue state America is without exaggeration the best place in the world to be gay or trans - that’s not ratfucky, that is objectively dangerous. If you gleefully tell someone there’s no hope and they’re stupid and counterrevolutionary for choosing what looks like the better option (because it is the better option), you get people killed. Telling suicidal teenagers no one at all is looking out for them is how you get dead teenagers.