Oh, I don’t believe that there are no moral failures.

Oh, I don’t believe that there are no moral failures. I want to believe that, but I’ve seen enough repeatedly, unrepentantly destructive human behavior that I’m a little too jaded to have hope in every person. But I do believe that no matter how vile a person’s actions, there are contextual explanations for it. That doesn’t make it okay — I have written previously about hating my abusive ex so wholly that I would rather he be dead, for example. I think there is very little possibility of him being redeemed as a person. But I also believe there are reasons for his behavior beyond being evil. I think people who ship incest definitely have reasons for it (that doesn’t make the behavior okay) — sometimes people eroticize their own past trauma, for example. It doesn’t mean any behavior is acceptable. It does mean that if we want to prevent damaging behavior, we have to look at its systemic causes and treat those first.