Refusing revenge

On rage, retribution, and the fight response

It’s a Sunday morning, I’m in the den of the communal home I share with 20 other people, and over breakfast I’m telling two of them about the dream I had last night. My father was in it, which is common enough, and it was scary, but I won’t pour over the gory details just yet. As I tell my housemates about the dream, haunted by ghosts of my past, I take in my present surroundings: a cozy den full of blankets, sturdy wood furniture, a full bookshelf, homemade art scattering the walls, sun beaming through two wide-open doors, and one wandering neighborhood cat jumping on our dining table, interrupting my friend’s pancake breakfast ritual in the best possible way. It’s a stunning scene. It’s hard to believe sometimes—that this is where I’ve landed, smack dab in the middle of a 19-bedroom home from the 19th century, surrounded by safe and loving people, the closest to family I’ve ever come.

The contrast between my waking life and the scenes of my dreams is staggering. It makes me ever more grateful I wake up each morning to so many safe arms to hold me—and to hold my dreams, even. As I finish sharing this one, my housemates escort me out of the dreamworld and into the present. I tell them that I’m afraid. I’m afraid because my father, a serial child rapist, is still alive, in good health, a free man, and a rich man, even—he is a full-time slumlord who makes all of his income charging overpriced rent on the nine houses he owns. I tell them it disturbs me to know I still live on the same planet as this man, and I confess I’d have a lot more peace of mind if he were dead. “I’d kill him if I could,” I say to the room, but as the words come out, I’m not sure how much I mean it. My housemate asks me, “How would you do it?” and I take a minute to entertain the question, scanning my brain for possible scenarios. Nothing in particular appeals to me. I don’t answer the question.

I realize that maybe, just maybe, the murderous rage is gone. I’m not sure where it went, when I lost it, or just how long it’s been missing. I let the possibilities simmer.

After breakfast and dream sharing, I head upstairs to my bedroom, open my email, and see a new essay by Clementine Morrigan called “The dignity of all exploited creatures”, titled after a phrase I wrote in a letter to her. Woah. I had written the phrase without too much thought in an attempt to inclusively reference all who are systemically dominated and subjected to violence. When I think of exploited creatures, I specifically think of incarceration—which includes childhood, in that individual family units function as sites of state detention until children eventually age into legal personhood and freedom. Incarceration sets the scene for exploitation. But what did I mean by dignity? What is it, where does it come from, and who gets to have it? I start to read the essay, and in it she outlines a universal definition of dignity, while emphasizing the need to protect those whose personhood is most often denied recognition. She concludes with:

There is no one whose dignity does not matter. There is no one who we are entitled to treat without dignity. There is nothing that entitles us to violate another person’s dignity, including if that person has violated someone else’s dignity.

I found the essay brilliant. The underlying logic of her philosophy is structurally sound, clear-headed, and fiercely hopeful—it is an optimistic philosophy of non-violence. I agreed with each and every sentence. And yet I still found one hard to swallow: “There is nothing that entitles us to violate another person’s dignity, including if that person has violated someone else’s dignity.”

My dignity was violated before I learned the word dignity. My personhood was entirely denied. My autonomy was stolen by constant violence. My body never belonged to me. I flinched at the personal implication: nothing entitles anyone to violate my father’s dignity—not even his status as a serial child rapist. Though he violated our dignities, those who survived him may not violate his. Though he was never entitled to violating mine, he did so anyway; even so, that will never be enough to entitle me to his in return.

“I’d kill him if I could,” I said aloud to my housemates only 20 minutes prior.

In attempting to outline a philosophy of freedom, autonomy, and dignity, where do we draw the line? Mapping out this warring territory has been the work of those engaged in transformative justice and cancel culture alike, and the question never seems to rest. Where is the line on our maps separating accountability from revenge, or self-defense from violence repetition? How can we effectively respond to violence and meet the needs of those harmed by it while still recognizing the humanity of perpetrators—and resisting the instinct to violate their dignity in return?

Defending the dignity of my rapist—the man who, for years on end, stripped me of dignity, dehumanized me, and claimed my body as his own—instinctively feels akin to risking a resignation of my hard-earned self worth, or risking a retreat to the fawn response I know so well, or risking a descent back into the realm of unreality where incest thrives. The thought of taking even a moment to meditate on my rapist’s inherent dignity, complexity, preciousness, and irreplaceable worth, I worried, might pose the risk of inviting in too much empathy. Too much empathy, I worried, might risk forgetting the severity of harm, and forgetting the severity of harm might risk forgetting my own boundaries. Forgetting my own boundaries might risk connectedness. Thus, musing on his dignity might threaten my need for complete and total separateness. Separateness is all I trust to ensure my safety—my “never again”. Too much empathy might pose a risk to my “never again”. And I need “never again” to be guaranteed.

In a way, the sentiment driving our punishment-obsessed culture, cancel culture included, encapsulates a lack of inherent self-trust in our own boundaries of self-protection—one that births the need for external protection, enforced both relationally and structurally. So too is this instinct for protection biological—lacking trust in my body’s ability to protect me from danger because I was consistently unable to in the past, my body rightfully anticipates that I will not be able to in the future. In absence of faith in our own bodies, or in something Higher, the need to separate, defend against, cancel, or even destroy steps in. It’s the innocent need for a “never again”—one that is promised, one that is at last in our control.

In hope of getting our “never again”s guaranteed, we separate ourselves from perceived threats. We create boundaries. We draw maps and build borders. We shut down empathy to prevent the risk of future connection. Sometimes we go even further, stripping others of dignity in a twisted effort to defend our own. And in our fight responses gone absolutely haywire, we lock people up, launch attacks on populations, and run cancellation campaigns. We think this will protect us. We innocently think this will guarantee our “never again”. Or perhaps it’s not always innocent, and some people just find pleasure in the cruelty; I know my father did. Raping children was never an innocent search for safety. Some people reach a point where cruelty becomes the entire point, or perhaps cruelty becomes their new safety, a life raft of sadism to keep from drowning in the ocean of true emotional vulnerability. Perhaps even cruelty is an “innocent” cope. Or perhaps innocence is an outdated concept to begin with, one that obscures the complexity of our bodies and ecosystems, sugarcoating histories of domination and resistance with fairytales of good and evil. I wouldn’t know for sure.

What I do know is that being raped, dehumanized, and denied autonomy left me carrying the lethal rage of a decade-long repressed fight response, an embodied “never again”, burrowed deep beneath my skin like a leech. It left me, too, with a yearning for justice; they call it righteous rage. And with this rage, I was determined to reclaim my dignity and personhood by any means necessary. I was determined to ensure this would never happen again—not to me, and not to anyone. It was a lofty goal, to be sure, but my rage was fit for the task. And maybe one day, if I was lucky enough, I might even get revenge on the man.

Did I even want revenge? Or did I want justice? How are the two distinct? And these wants—which of them belongs to me, and which belongs to my rage, a rage which once belonged to him? Who is doing the wanting here? Me? Or my body, possessed by something that was never mine but his, his cruelty transforming into the fight response I must now call my own? A deal I never wanted to make, something living inside me that I never agreed to, now shaping “my” fantasies. His own cruelty begging me to strike back. His violence a squatter in my home, trying to claim ownership. And if it had no plans on leaving, it was only natural for me to let it breathe, to let it dream of revenge if it needed to—the only reasonable shape I would ever think of allowing it to take, the only expression “I” would dare to consider while it lived in “me".

I’d like to think the highest version of “me” only longs for justice, while the primal instincts of this flesh sack can’t help but want to fight back with greater force, my stifled self-protection response still yet to find completion. In searching for a way to complete it, I travelled to a “rage room” every single week for an entire year of my life—to scream, cry, smash dishware, and let my body respond in all the ways it was never free to respond in the wake of the violence. I needed an outlet to regularly discharge my fight response. That was the severity of what his violence left living inside of me, and a story I hope to elaborate on in the future. I outline this example because I know from personal experience that it is absolutely possible to hold true to your own morals in the midst of an activated fight response, and that having violence inside of you does not make you to blame for it, nor does it create the inevitability of enacting it through cruelty. You can choose what to do with your rage. Revenge is something you choose or refuse.

What we term “revenge” exists as one of the more socially endorsed means of discharging your fight response in the wake of real or perceived domination. In resisting those who we believe have violated our dignity, we set out to violate theirs in return—only now, we can call it justice. The reason revenge feels so sweet is because it answers directly to our bodies begging us for relief from that restless, buzzing, electric charge of fight energy, waiting for us to let it out. And letting it out feels like we’re giving our bodies exactly what they need from us. Justice isn't something we can feed our bodies quite as easily. Justice is structural, situated within complex political context, sprawling systems beyond our spheres of individual control, while revenge offers a release-valve we have unlimited access to. Daring to fantasize about real, lasting justice exposes revenge as a cheap knock-off, an offensive plagiary, but one that feels oh so gratifying in the moment. Our bodies want to find safety now. Our primal forms weren’t quite built for the long game.

Is true justice ever measurable by the standards of our flesh, on a case by case basis, so long as we live within larger systems of domination? Or is finding relative safety in the present—whatever feels like “justice” to our bodies—all we can anchor ourselves to? Having lost faith in the bureaucracy of a corrupt justice system, must our yearnings for internal resolution be sought through vigilante avenues like revenge? Or could we get more creative? On a personal and political scale, when does what we call the preservation of our own safety, or justice-seeking, veer into the territory of senseless revenge—of violence reenacted, subterranean rage and an instinct to destroy masked by heroic ideals?

Revenge, like cancel culture and incarceration, teases us with a fleeting sensation of safety through retribution. Revenge is a dangling carrot; I may have lost faith in eradicating child sexual abuse, but maybe, just maybe, if I succeeded in my vigilante fantasies, if I let my murderous rage take the wheel, I might get a taste of justice. Just one little taste. And maybe, just maybe, I’ll finally feel safe.

I circle back to the dream I shared with my housemates:

I was in a big house with my father and sister. It looked like a resort, or a hotel, or a doll house. I was stuck with him again, as if parental custody was up for debate again, and I got dropped right back into a weekend visitation. And I was his again. He could do whatever he wanted to me. He was grabbing me and throwing me all over the place like a toy doll. And I freaked out. Holy hell. Yeah, it was severe, so fucking severe. And I, uh-- oh my God. God, I was like, “I’m not going to accept this.” And I began attacking him. I found a way to push him away from me, and then I found something to poke into his mouth and eyes. He started losing it, flailing around like a rabid animal, getting really weak. And I threw him to the ground and, like, started stabbing something into his mouth that completely cut up his tongue. And I saw pieces of his tongue on the floor, and I was, like, happy about it. I was really happy. And I felt this, like, pleasure in the violence. Because that's what happens when someone rapes you, dehumanizes you, treats you like a thing. You have to fight back. And I found pleasure in the violence. But then I did some weird sort of witchcraft to, like, turn him into a puppy dog. A little doggy. And I was like, “This is perfect.” Suddenly, he was just so sweet and loving—and innocent—just jumping around, trying to lick me. But as soon as I turned him into a dog, I was like, “I don't know how long this spell is going to last. So, we need to send him off into, like, a kennel, or a doggy vacation, to make sure he's very, very far away from us when the spell wears off. Because if not, he's gonna retaliate and try to kill me.” And that’s what I did. Who knows what happened to him next. It didn’t matter, because he was far, far away. And he could never touch me again.

It was a dream about refusing revenge.

It was a dream I very cautiously shared with my housemates over breakfast, knowing that cutting up tongues isn’t quite the ideal conversation you want to be having as you cut up your pancakes. It was a dream that reflected back to me where exactly this “murderous rage” came from—my natural fight response, responding appropriately to protect me from an extreme threat. I dreamed of self-defense. I dreamed of saving myself. I dreamed of reclaiming my dignity. And in the process, as I stared down at his mutilated tongue, for just a moment, I dreamed of violating his. But was I really violating his dignity? Or was I defending myself? It felt like a fair response; he raped me. He shoved that disgusting, slimy tongue all over my mouth, stole my first “kiss”, and called it “kissing lessons”. And in the dream, he would’ve done it all over again. In the wake of him treating me like an object once again, I responded how I should have been able to all those years ago: I cut up his tongue.

It was not an act of revenge. His tongue was his weapon, and I disarmed him. It was self-defense. And yet, it was also pleasurable. Why was it so pleasurable? I’m not sadistic, and I’ve never taken pleasure in watching others suffer. Perhaps it was not his mutilation that I found pleasurable, but rather my own power. I took pleasure in my ability to successfully defend my own dignity for the first time in my life. This act of self-defense, affirming to me that my life mattered enough to fight for it, was pleasurable. Saving myself was pleasurable. I found my power, and I found it pleasurable. It could have easily looked like revenge on the outside. In actuality, I never let my fight response veer into the territory of revenge. I stopped as soon as I disarmed him. I could have killed him. I could have killed him, and I didn’t.

“I’d kill him if I could,” I told my housemates—and yet, I could have, and even in dreams, I chose not to.

As I said it aloud, I knew it wasn’t true. I never wanted to kill him. I never even wanted revenge. I wanted protection. I wanted safety. I wanted justice. I wanted love. I wanted to heal. I wanted him to heal. I could have killed him. He was dehumanizing me, turning me into his toy, like he had always done. To defend myself, I de-humanized him right back—by turning him into a dog. And yet I refused to objectify him, as he had done to me. I did not deny him dignity in his new form. Instead, I cast a spell to transform him. To heal him. To break him out of his own violence. I turned him into a puppy dog—one still worthy of love, dignity, and a safe home, still deserving of a fresh start. And in doing so, I gifted him a return to innocence.

As a dog, he got his tongue back. Only now, he wasn’t using it for violence. He was sweet, loving, and innocent—he tried licking me, and now I welcomed it. But I still knew better than to get too comfortable. The spell could wear off any minute, I registered, and I had more than enough evidence to know I still needed a guaranteed “never again”. My next task was to find a safe home for him, far enough away to ensure our paths would never again cross. I would send him on a “doggy vacation”. I would give him a chance at a new beginning, one that would guarantee his safety and my own, all at the same time.

I refused revenge.

I don’t believe my dream is an idealistic vision. I believe it’s possible. As I said previously, it is absolutely possible to hold true to your own morals in the midst of an activated fight response, and having violence inside of you does not make you to blame for it, nor does it create the inevitability of enacting it through cruelty. In nature, the fight response is not designed exclusively to kill. It is designed to survive a threat. This does not always require killing; sometimes maiming the threat is all that is necessary to safely escape. In fact, sometimes the extra effort spent trying to kill becomes wasted time and energy—overkill, so to speak—and this unwise expenditure might become the very force sabotaging your escape. Obliterating the threat is not always the best option for survival. Trying to kill might get you killed. Senseless revenge might come back to haunt you. The cancellers might get cancelled in the end.

My body might continue telling me to fight back. Various histories, too, might continue whispering this sentiment throughout the world. Sometimes borders, personal boundaries, or even fierce fight responses are necessary for survival. It’s a natural instinct to want protection from that which you find threatening. The problem lies in our misattribution of danger, our predominant belief that threats must be destroyed rather than worked with creatively. It’s a shame we live in a world of revenge, incarceration, and capital punishment—violence queued on repeat—rather than doggy vacations. I dreamed of skillfully using violence for not a moment longer than what was necessary to deescalate the violence. I wielded power in a manner that allowed for us both to maintain our dignity.

I circle back to the sentence I was reluctant to swallow: “There is nothing that entitles us to violate another person’s dignity, including if that person has violated someone else’s dignity.” And I agree now. I know it. I dream it.