There are some unhelpful habits people have adopted whenever we talk about abuse.
It is often that we fall back on insults and jokes that decry the IMAGE of the abuser (or oppressor), rather than the SUBSTANCE of the abusive and coercive behaviors.
People fixate on their physical appearance (fatness or ugliness or physical ability).
They focus on harmless quirks that they have (speech patterns, dress, or stimming-adjacent idiosyncrasies). ➡️
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People need to recognize that you don't have to be physically unattractive, homeless, addicted, disabled, or have some kind of mental condition, in order to be abusive.
The problem of an abuser is that they are ABUSING SOMEONE.
There are plenty of people who are attractive, who abuse others.
There are plenty of people who "act normal", who abuse others.
There are plenty of people who are not narcissists, who abuse others.
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There are people with npd, bpd, bipolar, or narcissistic behaviors, who have difficult lives, or whatever; who put in the work to be very careful to treat people well...or at LEAST to leave them alone and let them live.
Please, please, please. 🙏🏾 Please focus on the *behaviors* of these people. Not their aesthetic.
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If you focus on mental issues, appearance, or whatever deprivation they struggle with, you not only paint every single person in that demographic with the same brush, but you provide an easily applied smokescreen for the abusers whose minds, lives, and mental structures are considered perfectly "respectable" and "normal".
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TheLindenPapers