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I've been writing about the idea that you can't forgive someone until they're sorry.  Obviously, this isn't a rule, it's just something that can be really hard to do and, I think, damaging to require.  I was reading some comments on a post about a parent who tried to murder her disabled child; obviously there were endless calls for compassion, and the commenters who wanted to focus on the crime were being told that they should focus on compassion for the criminal instead.  To me it's a similar thing.

The focus on dealing with any kind of abuse or violence cannot be that we should be nicer to the people who commit it.  It just can't be.

That doesn't mean that murderers, rapists, etc. aren't human, or that their behavior may not have partially come from something bad happening to them, or that maybe if someone had been a little nicer to them or made things easier they wouldn't have committed the crime.  Those things might be true in some cases but it's not an appropriate thing to focus on and in some contexts, it's downright terrifying.

It's terrifying because it implies that non-perpetrators should be walking on eggshells in dealing with perpetrators.

Maybe if people provided more help or compassion to this parent, the parent would not have committed a murder.  (There's also the fact, rarely said but undeniable, that if the victim hadn't needed so much help we wouldn't be having this conversation.)

Maybe if people dressed differently, drank less, or expressed themselves more clearly, someone would not have sexually assaulted them.

Maybe if people were more nice/open/compassionate to someone, that person would not have behaved abusively.

No.  Wrong.  This frames things so what happened is the fault of either the victim, or people who were not involved, instead of the person who actually perpetrated what happened.  People do a lot of bad things to each other and the way to address that is not to focus on how other people should be nicer or more understanding to people who do bad things.

For one thing, if the perpetrator is not sorry and plans to keep doing similar things, then being compassionate just makes it easy for them to keep on doing those things.  For another, if there's a big focus on how victims or other people should have behaved differently, then the perpetrator can use those things to get away with their behavior or even to control their victims.

I'm not against being kind or compassionate to people, even people who have committed violence or abuse, but there's a difference between personally feeling compassionate, and trying to tell other people that they're wrong if they're not compassionate for people who have done bad things.  They are not required to be.

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There's something I think about when I see parents of disabled kids fussing about how disabled people should be more tolerant of murder or whatever other crappy things parents want to do. What I think about it is not going to change the mind of that kind of person, but it's still something I think about.

I am never going to be able to spend a single second of my life away from a disabled person and I am never going to be able to spend a second not thinking about how to manage my disability. I didn't get to spend the first few decades of my life without a disability. I don't get to walk out of the room away from the disabled person who I am the only caregiver for. I don't get to send the person to respite so I can get a break.

Yes of course it can still be tough and a lot of work to take care of someone, even if you can walk out of the room and take a break for a few hours or even for months or a year. But I don't need to put myself in a parent's shoes, because I've been doing it longer and harder.

trigger warning

tw: recent mass murder and various discussion of other kinds

Nobody liked my original title/premise for this post so it isn't happening. Can I just point out something though about "I Am Adam Lanza's Mother," which is a boring viral post by a lady about how her son, who has autism or some kind of behavioral problem or PTSD, threatens suicide and murder-suicide a lot. I don't even remember the post that well, but I don't know how much more you need to know about it than someone publishing pictures of her 14-year-old on the Internet and saying that he is the same as someone who killed 26 people. I don't even care what her point about mental health services was supposed to be (the impression I get from her blog is that she likes guns, so she is trying to suggest "mental illness" is the cause of mass murders and the main policy issue that people should be thinking about in the wake of them).

Anyway, I'll say it again, I just really don't think it is cool to post pictures of an innocent child calling him a mass murderer just because he said he was going to kill his mom and himself when he was mad at his mom.

I don't think it's a GOOD thing when people with mental health problems regularly talk about killing themselves or other people, but it's just disingenuous as hell to act like people who do this are the same as mass murderers or even have much to do with any kind of murder at all. I don't think I have said stuff about other people but I've gone through a lot of periods where I would bring up killing myself in response to various small frustrations. It's not healthy but I think it is probably normal for people who are having really extreme emotional states and it means more that they need help with those emotional states than that they are going to carry out a premeditated crime.

I'd also like to point out that parents of kids with disabilities talk about murder, suicide, and murder-suicide all the time! I don't like for people to demonize Alison Singer because she did apologize, but she is a famous example of a person who talked about wanting to kill herself and her kid, and basically told her kid about that desire, and was praised for it. I can think of lots of other parents who have been praised for talking about this. No one compares them to mass murderers.

(PS I think it is interesting how much people seem to hate Andrea Yates, when if her kids had psych disabilities instead of her, they would probably feel sorry for her.)

I am feeling a little faint right now and this isn't the most well composed post in my whole blog (maybe I will have to delete it because this is a pretty risky thing to write about when I'm not at 100% cylinders), but these are just some thoughts about how people respond to threats based on whether the person making them can be categorized as disabled.

Benjamin McLatchie

I'm too tired and can't write about this in much depth, but yesterday a guy shot his 22-year-old son and then shot himself.

It seems like usually when a person kills their son (or, you know, anyone), every article about them isn't bending over backwards to try to excuse away what happened. Unfortunately for Benjamin McLatchie, he was a person with autism, so he doesn't get to be written about as a guy who had something terrible happen to him. Instead all the articles are about how hard it is to be the parent of someone with autism, and they quote parents of people with autism talking about what a hard time Benjamin's father probably had.

I'm sure Benjamin's father did have a hard time. I feel sorry for him like I feel sorry for Andrea Yates and anyone else who experiences the kind of mental illness that would lead them to do something so horrible. But he did something bad to Benjamin. Something bad didn't happen to them. Autism didn't do this. It's unfair to Benjamin to imply that this naturally happens to people like him, as if he somehow deserved it.