Reminder: Western culture instills in us a lot of sympathy for the Redemption Arc.
If someone wants to redeem themselves, that's great.
You're under no obligation to help them with it or to forget about the past behavior they're trying to make up for.
Justice
@noelle I don't care about redemption arcs, but I do care about the damage wrought at scale when people are denied a chance at atonement. We know jails create repeat offenders. We know that branding people who commit crimes as "criminals" hurts their chances of reintegrating into society. How is refusing to recognize people's sincere efforts to make amends not the same thing in microcosm? If we don't let people redeem themselves, can we be surprised if they don't get better?
Justice
@noelle I said quite explicitly that nobody's obligated to embrace people who've wronged them. I think one necessary step of redemption is the understanding that forgiveness is earned, not demanded. Expecting forgiveness is a good sign that it isn't warranted and I'm not out to blame the victim either. Nothing says you have to let people who hurt you off the hook. I'm not out to disarm those who've been wronged. I want to stop bad actions from breeding cycles of violence.
Justice
@literorrery Then I'm not sure why we're having this conversation, since you're talking about something completely different than my original post.
Justice
@noelle I don't think we are -- if I did, I wouldn't have spoken up in the first place -- but if you don't see it that way, pursuing this will help no-one.
Justice
@noelle To be sure, nobody gets to claim whether they're redeemed for themselves, and the path to truly making amends for wrongdoing is hard. People are allowed to be as skeptical as they feel they need to be of others' efforts at reformation. I don't expect those who've been hurt to forgive easily or forget. But if we make redemption impossible -- if we don't permit the possibility of transformative justice -- we encourage small transgressions to compound into big ones.
Justice
@literorrery I didn't say a word about making redemption impossible. I said that we shouldn't feel obliged by cultural values to accept any given "redemption arc", especially when the person doing the redeeming has hurt us personally.
Again, if your redemption can be undone by something as simple as the person you hurt not forgiving you, you're not really redeeming yourself.
Justice
@literorrery That was harsher than I meant it to be. But at the same time, I want you to really, really think about the consequences of saying "if you don't forgive someone, it's your fault if they keep hurting people" and of saying "what about people who are only redeeming themselves to get cookies from the people they hurt?".