Post No. 2,996 - Recovering from human rights abuses

The topic of recovering from human rights abuses is something that has been foremost in my awareness of late: I have complex trauma and PTSD from the abuses I underwent in various workplaces - especially from transphobes, too often aided and abetted by HR departments that were, frankly, either amathiac and/or incompetent and/or transphobic themselves (and one of the reasons I became so involved in workplace DEI was to overcome, reverse, and prevent the continuation of the hate that HR departments and transphobes were enacting ... but others were exemplary and admirable examples of how to be supportive, affirming, and human rights enabling).

So from personal experience, I know that recovering from human rights abuses is not easy. 

I recently wrote a poem about this, including the need for past abusers to apologise for their acts of evil. 

Unfortunately, that isn’t going to happen, but their refusal to acknowledge is going to hurt them far more than it will hurt me - and the amathiac nonsense about “having” to forgive abusers is just human rights abusing nonsense: it enables further abuses, making those advocating for it abusers themselves (their acts of evil in such instances go way beyond just being accessories).

The Truth and Reconciliation Commissions of South Africa after the end of apartheid were different: there forgiveness was restricted only to those who showed genuine contrition (this news report refers to the six officers who likely committed four particularly notorious murders not being granted amnesty, for instance), which of essential necessity includes an understanding of the wrongs that were done and why they were wrong ... but the healing there was largely societal: the benefits for victims was present, but more is needed. (See here, here, here, here, here, and here.)

To illustrate that with an analogy, if an attacker stabs someone in a street and then is forced to stop, the active perpetuation of harm is stopped, but at that instant the attacker has not shown any contrition (they did not stop of their own volition, they were forced to stop in this example), and the victim is still bleeding and in need of medical attention.

Those who insist on toxic forgiveness - I’ll call them “forgiveneks” - could be compared to people who come in at that point and get the people and evidence off the street so traffic can flow as it was before: the attacker has still not shown any contrition, and the victim is still bleeding and in need of medical attention, and the forgiveneks are making the victim’s suffering worse by invalidating the victim’s experiences.

The next level up is those who arrange for healing of the physical wounds of the victim, but refuse to accept the existence of trauma/PTSD - especially trauma/PTSD that results in the victim acting (or “acting out”) in ways that are considered unusual, abnormal, or unacceptable. 

Those amathiac refuseniks are incompetent at being human, and should be shut out of all healing processes for the sake of the victims of those incompetent amathiac refuseniks - who are the victims of other attacks that the incompetent amathiac refuseniks wrongly think they are “healing”. 

Above those are the people who do acknowledge the trauma/PTSD, and seek to address that by healing the victim. 

The problem with this as a sole or predominant focus is the denial of the need for broader changes to prevent such attacks occurring in the first place (which, when it comes to human rights abuses - including misogyny and other gendered violence, such as domestic violence [including murder] and transphobia [including murder] - can ONLY occur if abusers change themselves as human beings), possibly because those victim “healers” (pseudo-healers) have found a way to help that gives the victim “healers” (pseudo-healers) satisfaction/fulfillment, and they do not wish to support anything that could possibly reduce their ability to continue doing something that they really really liiike doing - a LOT 😉. 

Which is similar to   those corporate people who refuse to cut back on unnecessary travel because they really really liiike being able to travel - a LOT 😉,   and   the electrical engineers who attack (which I have written about previously) anyone who advocates for local solar panel solutions (such attacks including denying that there is any evidence of people buying solar panels for any reason other than money ... which is climate change denialism) because they really really liiike being able to design large scale electrical systems - a LOT 😉. 

All three examples of victim “healers” (pseudo-healers) are acts of obstructionist/denialist/retrograde evil. 

Slightly above the victim “healers” (pseudo-healers), and off to one side a bit, are those who do recognise the need to address the causes of the attack (which might also include, in this example, managing access to bladed weapons, addressing whatever motivated the attacker in the first place, etc - but does NOT involve telling the victim to change their life to be less vulnerable, such as those authority figures who tell women to not dress “provocatively” or not go out without a male protector and other such viciously misogynistic, paternalistic, patriarchal rubbish), people such as activists and human rights lawyers and what are now termed human rights defenders. 

My experience is that many, if not most, of these people who do recognise the need to address the causes of the attack also acknowledge the need for individual healing - which tends to be an inherent outcome of taking a broader perspective (and leads to, in the case of the example above, support for adequate health care including emergency services), but I have also come across a few who fail to understand the need to address healing as a specific issue in its own right, as justice is a key part of healing, but not ALL of healing. 

The only acceptable approach is to address all the needs and causes that apply - including the personal inadequacies/character flaws of the attacker, and their need to change as a human being. 

And those who can address such matters on nonphysical  levels of reality need to do so for those who cannot. 

And all of this is just starting in Gaza, and has yet to be able to be started in places like Sudan, Yemen, the DRC, the rest of the Occupied Palestinian Territories, etc. 

As a personal note, the lead up to this post involved around a couple of weeks of a personal hell of flashbacks and similar problems. Hopefully my efforts to manage those will now be successful. 

PS - something I have chosen to try is writing a Statutory Declaration about what happened to me in the workplace, beginning with a statement that the Declaration is not for legal action, it is for healing, and then have my GP witness it and scan it onto my medical record.

If you appreciated this post, please consider promoting it - there are some links below, and there’s also Instagram. 

Note that I am cutting back on aspects of my posts - see here. 

(Gnwmythr is pronounced new-MYTH-ear)  

Remember: we generally need to be more human being rather than human doing, to mind our Mӕgan, and to acknowledge that all misgendering is an act of active transphobia/transmisia that puts trans+ lives at risk & accept that all insistence on the use of “trans” as a descriptor comes with commensurate use of “cis” as a descriptor to prevent “othering” (just as binary gendered [men’s and women’s] sporting teams are either both given the gender descriptor, or neither).

#PsychicABetterWorld   and   

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