A friend told me about being held hostage by another friend's angry, abusive male partner. A relative told me about how a neighbour who was being abused would run to her house for shelter and the abuser would bang, bang, bang the door.

The thing is that being in community with someone who is facing violent abuse can put us directly in harm's way. So many have died this way. At the same time leaving our loved ones alone with abusers is impossible. So many have died this way.

Death is outside, death is inside and death is knocking at the door. Death is lurking in an alley and death is holding our hands. Death is our friend, death is a reprieve from the endless violence; death is the enemy, and we are in an eternal tornado of death, death, death.

This is why @obaa_boni said there are circumstances theory alone cannot cover. But I want to end with a story.

@obaa_boni One reason feminists have no choice but to begin and end with community is because abusers already have community. They have enablers, plural, both individual and systemic. They have ready narratives that help them evade accountability and avoid ever having to change.

@obaa_boni It is easy to become defeated and helpless when alone in an abusive situation - please remember the person being abused is ALONE. If you are overwhelmed trying to help them part time imagine how much more overwhelmed they are, and they are in that personalised hell fulltime.

@obaa_boni And so the one iota of hope I am holding onto is the origin story of the Gulabi Gang. What 1 woman could not do, 5 managed. We can do infinitely more together, and this includes sharing the very risk involved in fighting the very real monsters in our midst.

And so maybe the question we should be answering is not who is right and who is wrong. Maybe the question is how we go from being one to being two, being 3, being 4, and being 5. How we become hydra. How we become legion. /Zagadat

Rest in perfect peace, Elianne. My heart will ALWAYS break when I think about how brave you had to be, and how you were stolen from your family, from your friends, from this earth, long, long before your time. 💔💔💔💔💔

I am feeling the deep collective grief at all the friends who lost friends to abusive or problematic relationships. So many ugly words have been said, so many hearts have been broken. It is bloody out here. The collateral damage abusers do beyond their primary targets is infinite

Let me leave this thought on the timeline today. One of the things we can get caught up in in trying to live our best feminist values is being right. But this is not a situation where being right is useful. Many people already defined "right" in favour of abuse and abusers.

Think of the number of times abusers say "You deserve this" "Don't leave me or I will kill myself/the kids/your loved ones" "we will figure this out" "You made me do this" Etc etc etc. Personalised hells.

And the abuser is on the job fulltime. So you with your opinions and being "right", join the queue and good luck being heard over someone holding life,.reputation, and livelihoods ransom in their hands

Being right is not where to begin this resistance. Neither is being alone and we have seen that already. So we need new frames for this. We already know what does not work, so we work together to find the things that can. ❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥

Adding one more thing I learned from @Judicaelle_ yesterday. Judi said we forget that LUCK is a massive factor here and nobody is in control of that. Sometimes an exit from an abusive situation is balanced not on the survivor or the community, but also on luck.

@Judicaelle_ And so community/multiple possibilities increases the opportunities for luck. Just like in video games where the more health re-ups/gold/resources a character has, the more likely they are to finish the level. Not a guarantee, but higher chances. We can work with higher chances.

@Judicaelle_ Thank you @Judicaelle_ and @obaa_boni for thinking aloud and making these impossible situations clearer for me and for so many of us. 🌟 Aluta continua. 🕯️🕯️🕯️🕯️🕯️🕯️🕯️🕯️🕯️🕯️🕯️🕯️🕯️🕯️🕯️

@njokingumi I’ve been following that conversation and there’s a scary reality of how much the people that love/care about someone want to protect them but they don’t know how to reach out without either putting the person in more danger or souring their relationship forever

@justinewanda I don't think there are right answers and perfect methods and happy endings with situations like these. It is very Gotham city where there is a baseline of damage when Batman goes for the villain of the day. Explosions, car accidents, disruption... /1

@njokingumi Reading this thread is truly emotional. I wish there was more we could do to save victims of abuse. Like you mentioned, abusers always have a community which in itself is worrisome. There are also supposed educated people who should know better but have ties to abusera and stick…