#I don't know if I am a full on prison abolitionist | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

rejectedfables · 2 years ago

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At the risk of making a long post longer, I've got a couple followup thoughts for @kuntya and also want this filial piety meta framed on my wall, thank you @thepurplewombat, that is so well worded and also educational. I don't think I'd even realized the full extent of it

Firstly: We're coming at this issue with two different expectations. My initial post was "isn't it sad, isn't it painful, I'm rolling around in feels because I find this character interesting and compelling" and your tags and followup are more about whether he's morally defendable or not. Like, I do believe that he is for most of his actions (not all), but that is neither the point of my posts nor is it something I care about. He is a little fiction man full of relatable "trapped in bad situation, sometimes handle it well, sometimes not, always try, always stressed" feelings. I don't care if he's morally pure-- or rather, I'd prefer that he not be, because being morally pure is not relatable or fun.

2) as mentioned by others, his "moral obligation" is dictated by the society HE lives in, not the one you do. Jin Guangyao is not subject to modern sensibilities or morals or laws, he is subject to those from his own time and setting.

3) They call it "the cultivation world" but like... its not wholly separate from normies or whatever. It's interconnected. If he tried to escape the cultivation world by becoming an ink merchant, like... who do you think the cultivators get their ink from? This is like saying a celebrity could escape the public eye by getting a job in retail-- enough people are still gonna know who he is to defeat the point, because after a certain point he's FAMOUS. He WON THE WAR, and he's the notorious bastard whoreson of Jin Guangshan, like... if people want him found he will be found.

4) I am not arguing that the murders were "worth it" I'm arguing that they were understandable (and in the original post i was arguing that a couple of them weren't even murders he committed). In a setting where nearly every other character has killed many many people, some for much less, I'm arguing that condemning THIS GUY for THOSE CRIMES is weird and sus, Nie Mingjue.

5) cool, I AM a prison abolitionist, because most crime is the result of systemic inequality and maybe we should fix society instead of punishing people who suffer from living in a broken one-- and also because it's been proven that compassion works better than punishment for criminal reform. And perhaps that's part of why I find it compelling to look at characters like JGY and see how society failed them, rather than blaming them for responding imperfectly.

6) Since the setting is fantasy fiction with necromancy and war and death as major themes, the stakes are weirder and different than reality. JGY killing people who've threatened his life is relatable not because the audience has done or wants to do the same, but because the audience relates to feeling unsafe, and everything that does to a person. It's not about real murder, it's not about characters being condemnable or pure, its just about what you get out of it. I got a funky lil guy with anxiety and a silly hat. For me this is a victory. You may also enjoy him, however works for you

7) I love talking about my Lil Guys so this whole convo is a win for me, but I also am not gonna spend my time arguing about em. Chatting is fun, but the second it's a pointless debate I'm gonna dip. This is not a criticism or an observation, just a heads up in case anybody is ever expecting a reply from me to shredding my blorbos and does not get one

@kuntya tags on this post

I FEEL like you’re trying to wrap your head around the post, rather than flat out disagreeing with it. Here’s my recommended thinking points to help you out:

“He doesn’t have to obey his father or stay with the Jin Sect”

Jin Guangyao lives in a society wherein filial piety and filial respect/devotion is paramount. He is expected to be devoted to his parents and do as they say, and he will be publicly reviled if he doesn’t. Could he have simply never connected with his father? Sure, but he had no way of knowing how bad it would go, and once he DID connect it was too late to back out. (I’ll elaborate on this point later)

Jin Guangyao loved his mother, and her living AND dying wish was for him to be recognized by his father. Devotion to his mother’s wishes drives his devotion to his father.

Jin Guangyao lives in a society that HATES HIM because of his mother’s profession, no matter what he does. If they hate him when he’s doing everything “appropriately” they would treat him even worse if he openly broke the rules of society.

Jin Guangyao spends his entire life feeling (and BEING) unsafe because of how people view him due to his mother’s profession. His actions, which would have been understood as necessary and good were any member of the gentry to have performed them, are questioned and condemned because they were his.

When I say he spent his whole life being unsafe, I mean it. He went from the absolute bottom of society to the absolute top, and was NEVER safe. The entire society turned on him and he was literally killed WHILE he was holding the highest position in society. He feels unsafe, AND HE’S NOT WRONG.

Being Jin Guangshan’s son DID give him a modicum of protection that he didn’t otherwise have. It put him in a position to be abused by Madam Jin, and be reviled by people who knew his background, but it also offered him SOME protections he didn’t otherwise have. He is ONLY afforded these protections while following his father’s orders and displaying appropriate filial devotion. By the time he has been recognized as his father’s son, it is too late to escape the dangerous parts of this, but any wrong move would have revoked the protections.

“He could just go be Lan Xichen’s live in boyfriend”

Even if you just mean “he could have just joined the Lan sect and Lan Xichen would have taken care of him”, please revisit the filial piety points, and additionally consider that after a certain point, Jin Guangyao knew damning secrets about Jin Guangshan. JGS would have reasonably considered JGY going to the Lan sect to be a threat, and might have retaliated against either JGY or even the Lan sect itself.

Jin Guangyao grew up watching sex workers be mistreated by the people they relied on, and was then repeatedly mistreated by people HE relied on (his superior officers, his father, his father’s wife, etc.). Relying on others for safety does not feel safe to Jin Guangyao, because historically it has not been.

And if you DO mean literally being with Lan Xichen romantically/sexually: Jin Guangyao lives in a society that is broadly homophobic, so even if he WANTED to be a “stay at home boyfriend” that would have probably messed up Lan Xichen’s life/position AS WELL as his own, and Lan Xichen’s happiness matters a lot to him.

Jin Guangyao was trapped in a traumatizing marriage – he WANTED to marry her right up until learning The Bad Information, but at that point if he’d backed out he’d have been condemning her to his own mother’s fate of being an unwed mother reviled by society AT BEST, so he just never told anyone or touched her again and swallowed how awful the situation was. He took that all on himself and told NO ONE. But he also loathed his father’s infidelity, and therefore may have resisted seeking his own happiness because it would have been unfair to both his wife (none of it was her fault) and any potential lover he might take.

Also having an affair with Lan Xichen would potentially cause the same “JGS sees this as a threat” situation mentioned above, while he lived.

The heads of two sects being romantically entangled can cause Political Problems. JGY already has so much trouble having anything he suggests or supports be taken seriously, and LXC is one of his best allies – that would no longer be true if people could just say “Well, LXC is only agreeing with you because you’re fucking” as an easy way to dismiss anything they agree on.

Also, like… the guy has ambitions? He doesn’t WANT to be a house husband, he wants to IMPROVE SOCIETY, and that’s very cool and sexy of him actually?

Saying essentially “Why didn’t he just settle for being a secret boytoy for a sect leader” is giving me extremely “Why didn’t he just become his mom? Why would he ever think he had any right to his father’s power? How dare he try to better his own life or anyone else’s” vibes. Please ponder this.

“Nie Mingjue is a cop and that makes him a moral authority” (yikes)

If laws are inconsistently enforced, then they are not about fairness or justice, they’re about enforcing classism. Also all cops are bastards, etc. so jot that down

I’m being a tad facetious, yes, but also like… cops are NOT inherently morally upstanding, cops enforce oppression and cause terror, and if you are using them in a moral debate as pinnacles of virtue or beacons of morality then you are standing on a platform of crumbling sand.

Calling Nie Mingjue a cop IS big brained though, you’re absolutely right about that, he absolutely IS a cop, and Baxia is a metaphorical gun, welcome to my ted talk–

Nie Mingjue truly believes that his own actions are righteous while Jin Guangyao’s are criminal. This despite Jin Guangyao’s “crimes” being 1) calculated self defense after extensive mistreatment and 2) being a spy in a way that allowed him to win the war for everyone.

(in the novel, by the way, he kills Wen Rouhan TO SAVE Nie Mingjue, and NMJ still manages to climb on a high horse about it because he doesn’t seem to understand how “being undercover” works. So chew on that.)

NMJ says “killing enemies on the battlefield doesn’t count” and JGY says “why not” and NMJ says “because I said so” because he’s a COP (again, being facetious, but the whole point is, they just have different perspectives on morality but only NMJ’s is given any credibility by society because society loves his cop ass, and hates JGY no matter what he does)

There’s something really interesting to explore about how NMJ’s WHOLE ISSUE is not really “you committed crimes” but rather “I have been faced with the reality that I CANNOT TELL when you’re being genuine vs duplicitous, and therefore I HAVE to ALWAYS assume that you are lying, because I will never know for sure, and what if I’m wrong–” and therefore THERE IS NOTHING Jin Guangyao can do that will EVER make ANYTHING right with NMJ. And that has nothing to do with his actual actions being criminal.

Nie Mingjue gets to commit as many crimes and/or kill as many people as he wants, and he will always see it as justifiable because he understands why he did it, and that makes it okay. He doesn’t understand why Jin Guangyao does what he does, and that makes JGY’s actions unjustifiable to NMJ.

The things NMJ condemns JGY for were 1) killing his superior officer, who NMJ sent him to against his wishes and who was mistreating him and repeatedly sending him on suicide missions. JGY did this as calculated self defense. 2) being SNEAKY about killing that guy and not TURNING HIMSELF IN after. Calculated self defense would be dumb if you get executed right after. NMJ wouldn’t have been executed for this crime so he doesn’t get it, but JGY absolutely would have and knows it. 3) killing soldiers on Wen Rouhan’s orders while undercover. 4) Saying mean shit about NMJ’s dad while undercover. 5) Encouraging Huaisang to pursue art when NMJ only wanted him AT THE GUN RANGE at saber training. 6) Not letting NMJ kill Xue Yang, which would have been against JGS’s orders (and therefore would have BEEN a crime).

3,4 5, and 6 are, um. Legal? Like, those are all understandable even legally.

1 and 2 are understandable morally, if you’re not a privileged classist cop.

Additional Thoughts

The reason the audience is biased towards Nie Mingjue’s perspective is because Wei Wuxian is biased towards Nie Mingjue’s perspective. We see everything that happened through a spell called EMPATHY, which 1) we’re told in canon is a risky and overwhelming spell that is not recommended. and 2) Whenever Wei Wuxian does uses Empathy, he ends up 10000% agreeing with the person he has EMPATHIZED with. We are shown Nie Mingjue’s perspective, which IS BIASED, via the spell that might as well be called BIAS. But even GIVEN that, by the end of the book Wei Wuxian himself thinks “Oh wow, what’s happening to Jin Guangyao right now (being turned into a villain for other’s moral convenience, then dying for it) is exactly what happened to me, this sucks”

Also: yes, Nie Mingjue is absolutely abusing him. In the Villainous Friends extra it’s implied that Jin Guangyao often has bruises, and the two culprits are Madam Jin and Nie Mingjue. Nie Mingjue is CONSTANTLY threatening his life, AND kicks him down a very long flight of stairs. These are not government approved punishments for convicted crimes (a situation that may or may not be morally right but would at least be legal), they’re one sworn brother violently taking out his anger and distrust on another in a longstanding abusive relationship. Jin Guangyao WAS NOT arrested. He was not “arrested by a cop” he was just being abused by someone who felt morally righteous in performing said abuse. Nie Mingjue ABSOLUTELY IS “~abusing~” him, as well as ABUSING him (no ~~s necessary).

If a cop spends YEARS threatening to murder an ex undercover agent, in private while off duty, because he doesn’t like what said undercover agent had to do while undercover, routinely physically assaulting him, and no one does anything to protect said undercover agent despite everyone knowing what’s going on– at some point self defense DOES become appropriate. I’d personally say Jin Guanyao waited LONGER than he needed to to reach that point.

Hope this helps, ACAB, also I love your icon. Fuck yeah psyduck

#mo dao zu shi #Mdzs #And now I sleep #Hopefully

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spiderfreedom · 1 year ago

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I am going to be frank - I have spent a significant amount of time today responding to you and to lostelvenqueen. I want to respond your points individually, since you have shown me a tremendous amount of grace in talking to me, and I believe we likely have more in common than different. But right now, I am out of time.

I understand what you're talking about. That is, in part, why I want to make a policy position post at one point. There's no other way to not be misrepresented, because my tagging posts 'radfem' and following people from this subculture are, naturally, going to be interpreted as total agreement with what they say.

I don't agree with radfems who want to prevent any people from transitioning, or basically to limit any sort of legal possibility of transgender people existing. I've circled radfem and 'gender critical' communities for years, but I've always been kept out by some of the evil, hateful language I've seen people use. I say this constantly, but seeing someone on Ovarit say it was okay for a transfem prostitute to die at the hands of a john was one of my core memories. I cannot fathom such evilness. I don't tag any of my posts 'gender critical' for that reason, because I know many are just conservatives with a radical hat. I am against all of the right-wing attacks on pediatric transition in the US, even though I am sceptical of the way in which pediatric transition is being carried out, because I know it will only cause more harm for trans people, and it will only make research harder. I am also against attempts to illegalize adult transition.

But I will also be honest - I have found no home in intersectional feminist spaces, either. Let's stop talking in abstractions and talk policy. One of the things that frightened me was reading about a sexual relationship between a trans woman in prison and a cis woman in prison that resulted in pregnancy. The article said the relationship was consensual, but it got me thinking. We all know rape happens in prison, because prisons are horrible places that allow for people's worst sides to come through. Cis women rape cis women. Possibly some cis women will rape trans women. But a trans woman raping a cis woman in prison has the possibility of getting her pregnant. This is not a thought experiment, it has already happened. Women in prison do not have freedom over who they are housed with.

I understand the argument for housing trans women in women's prisons. I know they are extremely likely to face rape, assault and death in a man's prison. I know it is likely also extremely shocking to have spent one's life living with and among women, and to suddenly be shoved in with men on the basis of one's sex. I don't want a single trans woman to die, be assaulted, or be raped in male prisons. That is not an acceptable outcome to me.

But I also do not want a single cis woman impregnated against her will in women's prison. That is not acceptable either. And I have found that when I try to bring this up with my 'intersectional feminist' friends, they either deny the possibility of pregnancy-by-rape happening (even though it has already happened), or they say it is acceptable 'collateral damage' because it is worse for trans women to be housed in male prisons. They are not open to the possibility of special housing for trans women who are able to impregnate women, because they say it is 'stigmatizing.'

I don't know how to proceed in a case like this. I want trans women in prison to be safe from male violence and I also want cis women to not have to fear pregnancy in prison, from other prisoners or from guards. None of my friends care about the latter case. I feel alone and crazy.

I don't know what your thought on this is. I know it's a complicated issue, since even women's prisons are already full to capacity. Perhaps you are a prison abolitionist. I'm not asking for a policy statement from you. But I bring this up, because I am not talking about abstractions, or individual bigotries of people. I find that I am unable to have discussions about difficult policy situations like this, where both groups involved (trans women and cis women) clearly both have a lot to lose, and we must proceed with care and creativity to find solutions that can accommodate both. And I can't live like that, I can't live with people who don't care about these problems and call any of it 'collateral damage.'

If there's a name for people who want to consider policy questions like this in a way that considers the needs of all parties involved, then I would love to know. I imagine many radfems will likely unfollow once they see that I am even considering housing trans women away from men, and that is fine, because I only want to talk to people who are serious about policy and about solving problems.

And there are other issues like this, which is why I made this blog. It's a few days old, so I don't have much written yet. Most of what I've written myself is about women in music, or observations on radical feminist spaces. I want to write more, specifically about policy and feminist theory. The only people I've found who have been willing to listen to me about policy are either radical feminists or gender critical people - I have challenged a lot of "gender critical" people on another forum about their mistaken beliefs about trans people, and to my surprise they have actually changed some of their beliefs when presented with evidence. And that's the sort of thing I want to do - talk evidence, policy, change minds, change my own mind.

I may be able to talk to you in depth later, when I am on lunch break. I'm sure that we have many beliefs in common, including about justice for trans people. I imagine that you may still distrust me. That is understandable and I cannot fault you for it. I'm sure you may still not understand why I want to blog in the radfem hashtag. Simply put, if they do not want to talk to me, it's just another group of people who have decided they don't want to deal with complicated policy questions, hardly the first time it's happened to me. I just want, for once in my life, to experience what it's like to be among people who center women's issues and policy questions and don't call it 'collateral damage.' I didn't find it when talking to the intersectional feminists and definitely not the socialists/Marxists. Maybe I'll have better luck here. Maybe not.

Overlap between the radical feminist and rationalist world today.

If you don't know what Rationalists are, it's a Silicon Valley-centric subculture/ideology about trying to be more rational, in theory. In practice, it means you've read either everything posted by Eliezer Yudkowsky on LessWrong, or (more commonly today) everything posted by Scott Alexander on SlateStarCodex/AstralCodexTen.

Scott Alexander is well known for his, uh, interesting ideas on feminism and women. He is a proponent of the idea that women are just naturally not inclined towards STEM fields and that this is a better explanation for their underrepresentation. He is especially famous for having written 'Untitled', where he argues that pop feminists who talk about nerd entitlement are cruel character assassins and that hating fedoras is a dogwhistle for hating Jewish men.

You may think a subculture like this would be primed for sceptical, non-mainstream thinking about transition science, at least, but Rationalism has a very high rate of trans women (MTFs) participating in it, and a very high rate of defending the interpretation that the 'best thing we can do' is to just go along with the idea that trans {gender} are {gender}, in a sort of utilitarian "it causes the least harm" sort of way.

(There are some people in the subculture strongly against this, including sex dysphoric men, but they are a small minority.)

With all this in mind, I think of this part as exemplary:

Scott: This is going to sound insensitive, but as far as “bad US medical policies” go, 2,500 children having their lives low-key ruined is nothing. I can think of a dozen US medical policies that are much worse than that!

It is certainly the case that the actual, objective number of kids going on puberty blockers or youth transition is pretty small. Even as doctors try to make these treatments accessible, there simply aren't enough treatment centers to meet what they see as rising demand.

Now if you want to say "I'd rather focus my energies on an issue that objectively affects more people," I get that. But I don't trust Scott on this issue, for the reason that he is a noted anti-feminist (as in, he thinks feminists and feminist activism is untrustworthy) and a noted apologist for current levels of female representation in fields (it's 'inherent interest' after all).

For me, I see the misuse of youth transition as a way to turn gender non-conforming kids and gay kids into gender conforming straight kids who are more attractive. (The end goal of making youth transitioners into more sexually attractive partners is stated everywhere.) I also see that the ideology behind youth transition is used to pathologize gender non-conforming and gay kids into thinking that there is something horribly wrong with them and that they are "really" the opposite gender. Even if only a small number of kids actually get to take the puberty blockers, the ideology supporting the puberty blockers - that gender non-conforming behavior and dissatisfaction with one's birth body are incontrovertible signs of permanent cross-gender identity - is harmful and pathologizing to gnc/gay kids. This ideology has effects beyond the number of kids with access to clinics and "supportive" parents, and I'm seeing it in how every slightly gender non-conforming teenage girl I meet is calling herself non-binary or transmasc. The erasure of gnc women is a tragedy and a false salvation to the pains of misogyny.

I don't expect any of this to matter to Scott, though, because he has shown multiple times on his blog that he is really not that interested in women or outcomes for women. He thinks if someone is distressed and wants to transition and shows signs that transition would help, then they should be medicalized. I doubt he cares about what this means for gender non-conforming women or gay women. It is possible he thinks gender non-conforming women are on some spectrum of transness anyway, and that we'd have been happier transitioned than not.

I'm mostly just surprised at the lack of curiosity. One of the things I like about Rationalists is the sense of curiosity. It's a group that really attracts strange people who like to think very deeply. Scott is a psychiatrist. He suspects something weird is going on with youth transition, yet he's utterly uncurious about what it is, or why. Is he afraid of seeming 'obsessed' with gender? Does he think that gnc girls being medicalized and pathologized at a young age is no big loss, because they can just rebuild identities as 'trans men', so it's not worth spending time on?

Having read the accounts of detransitioners, I know that they are constantly minimized and silenced on account of being a 'small number.' I also know that detransitioners, whether youth or adult, have valuable things to add to the conversation. Even if it's a small population that we're helping, I want to help them, because I know most people's response will probably be like Scott's - "oh, there's so few of them, that's not a big deal." It is a big deal to the people affected, and it's a big deal to everyone who is told in some way that something is wrong with them because they are gnc/gay/autistic females.

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