packbat:

amydentata:

dazzledfirestar:

fromonesurvivortoanother:

snakegay:

also dont call the perpetrators of hate crimes ‘sociopaths’, ‘psychopaths’, ‘lacking empathy’, etc. it may not be your intention, but that language implies that hate crimes were committed as a result of mental illness rather than bigotry and systematic violence.

people who commit these acts of violence do so because of a system that enables and encourages it, and this language diverts the blame from this system and the perpetrator themself, and instead places it on easy to swallow ableist stereotypes.

neurodivergent and mentally ill people are also more likely to be the *victims* of violence than the perpetrators!

It’s also used as a way for healthy folks and neurotypical folks to distance themselves from their own bigotry. Because “crazy people” do all this violent shit and they’re not “crazy” so their homophobia or racism or ableism or misogyny isn’t the problem.

Which is, of course, absolute bullshit.

Violence is most likely to be committed by neurotypical people who 1) have been taught horrible values and 2) have the power to get away with it.

Aeon Magazine published an essay about violence last year by a post-doc studying the phenomenon. To pull out a few key sentences:

Across practices, across cultures, and throughout historical periods, when people support and engage in violence, their primary motivations are moral. By ‘moral’, I mean that people are violent because they feel they must be; because they feel that their violence is obligatory. They know that they are harming fully human beings. Nonetheless, they believe they should. Violence does not stem from a psychopathic lack of morality. Quite the reverse: it comes from the exercise of perceived moral rights and obligations. […] The general pattern we found was that the violence was intended to regulate social relationships.

[…]

Individuals and cultures certainly vary in the ways they do this and the contexts in which they think violence is an acceptable means of making things right, but the goal is the same. The purpose of violence is to sustain a moral order.

It’s not mental illness. It’s not rational self-interest. It’s not lack of willpower. Violence stems from belief that the targets deserve it. Belief that LGBTQ people or PoC or disabled people or women or whoever they target are somehow violating the rules of society.

paper-storm:

Australian comedian Jim Jefferies points out the ridiculousness of American pro-gun arguments. x x

*at the time of this performance, the Port Arthur massacre that resulted in 35 killed and 23 wounded was the worst mass shooting in history.

thecheshiresmiles:

everytime I hear about children of the corn I think about the guy I met at comic con who actually lived in the town they filmed that movie at, and on the farm where they filmed in the corn.
he was a teenager at the time and him and his friends would get drunk on moonshine and rustle the corn and let the air out of the tires of the production team’s trailers and shit.
and now there’s Wikipedia pages about how the children of the corn set was haunted and they thought they angered god but it was really just drunk hillbillies