Beyond Survival: Strategies and Stories from the Transformative Justice Movement

by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

When one has been abusive, the very first—and one of the most difficult—skills of holding oneself accountable is learning to simply listen to the person or people whom one has harmed: Listening without becoming defensive. Listening without trying to equivocate or make excuses. Listening without minimizing or denying the extent of the harm. Listening without trying to make oneself the center of the story being told. When someone, particularly a partner or loved one, tells you that you have hurt or abused them, it can be easy to understand this as an accusation or attack. Very often, this is our first assumption—that we are being attacked. This is why so many perpetrators of abuse respond to survivors who confront them by saying something along the lines of, “I’m not abusing you. You are abusing me, right now, with this accusation!” But this is the cycle of violence talking. This is the script that rape culture has built for us: a script in which there must be a hero and a villain, a right and a wrong, an accuser and an accused. What if we understood being confronted about perpetuating abuse as an act of courage—even a gift—on the part of the survivor? What if, instead of reacting immediately in our own defense, we instead took the time to listen, to really try to understand the harm we might have done to another person? When we think of accountability in terms of listening and love instead of accusation and punishment, everything changes. Listening without becoming defensiv...