Thank you. I like it for a lot of reasons, but the most significant one is that it draws sharp lines around expectations and burdens. “Reasonable,” already a subjective concept, is very hard to understand here because of the way we have learned to handle racism. That plays out often as a White person taking great offense when I insist we aren’t both deserving of caretaking, don’t both belong on the dias, shouldn’t share ownership of the problem.

I understand how doing all of these things came about. But I also understand that’s why racism is so difficult to put behind us. The catalyst does not feel much pressure or responsibility here. Re-establishing those things feels like a personal attack. We all get stuck and walk away.

The abuse model makes the lunacy of, for example, having both the abused and the abuser co-own the burden or be entitled to an equal voice or demand an effigy or homage, and so on fairly obvious and helps to avoid a “what about me” tug of war. Surreal bonus — I’ve not yet encountered anyone who reacts to being classed as abuser/abusive with anything even close to the outrage of being classed as racist / purveyor of racism. Go figure.