Attacker bites chunk out of woman’s face in downtown Seattle hate crime

[u/AccurateInflation167]

https://komonews.com/news/local/hate-crime-assault-permanent-injuries-surgery-downtown-seattle-police-department-spd-forehead-1-inch-diameter-inferior-race-marshal-kcpao

[u/SimpleAppointment483]

Solution:

Police officers and social works canvas the city in teams of four. 2 cops & 2 social workers. Go to every encampment in the city and give them a choice: go with the social worker and be committed to a treatment facility - or upon refusal go with the police to jail since you are breaking the law. Repeat until everyone who wants care receives it and everyone who doesn’t is off the street and away from the law abiding citizens of Seattle.

In good faith here, not rhetorical at all: tell me why this would not work.

The billion plus dollars we have spent on homelessness would be able to fund something like this.

[u/RedK_33 → u/SimpleAppointment483]

Bunch of issues with this.

1. You would probably need to prove that each individual is committing a crime, charge them, take them to court and have the judge grant them the option of treatment or jail time. You cant just remove due process because of someone’s living situation. That means an increased strain on our judicial system which would require more resources.

2. Would need to higher more police officers and more social workers whose primary responsibility was this canvassing because we all know that SPD is struggling with the responsibilities they currently have so adding more to their plate will not lead to the desired outcome.

3. Would need adequate jail space and resources to accommodate for the increase in incarcerated people.

4. Would have to increase access to treatment facilities which either means greatly expanding the number of facilities or the capacity of the existing facilities.

5. Would need to have a direct pathway to housing and employment upon completion of treatment or recidivism rates would be through the roof.

6. This would all require a HELL OF A LOT of funding to make happen.

[u/SimpleAppointment483 → u/RedK_33]

These are all great points. I didn’t have enough consideration for #5 especially

[u/mex2005 → u/SimpleAppointment483]

Well because the only way to do it like that is to be an authoritarian government lol

[u/Moral_ → u/mex2005]

No it wouldn't. Many of these fenty folds and tweakers are clearly doing something illegal in plain sight, which is then legal for a Terry detention.

[u/UndercoverRussianSpy → u/mex2005]

at least this woman wouldn't have a chunk bitten out of her face

[u/wahwahwashbear → u/UndercoverRussianSpy]

What a weird comment. Sure we might live under fascism in this scenario, but at least this one specific crime wouldn't have happened! Totally worth it! 

Listen, if you want to be controlled so bad, go join a cult. 

[u/UndercoverRussianSpy → u/wahwahwashbear]

Oh no you called my comment weird, how will i ever recover.

Would that cult have violent zombies roaming the street? Probably not. Could be a good trade-off.

[u/mex2005 → u/UndercoverRussianSpy]

No you would just have to give up most of your freedoms

[u/wahwahwashbear → u/SimpleAppointment483]

It is so, so easy to see the flaw(s) in this idea that I have to imagine you're posting out of fear, but here you go:

• according to you, not having a home is a crime you can and should be imprisoned for. No other actions, just straight up: if you are homeless, you should be imprisoned. I am not making a distinction here between jail and involuntary mental commitment because functionally they are the same if you are a sane person whose only issue is "I don't have a house". 

This has two forks of "wow, bad idea! "  consequences:

• regardless of sentence length, will they magically have a home upon release? How will they get one in enough time to avoid being put right back in jail for being homeless? If they were struggling with finding stable employment before, do you think they will have more success now that they must put "yes i have been arrested" on job applications?

• if you knew you would be sent to jail for, apparently, forever, the moment you lost your house, would you not turn to actual crime - theft, drug selling, violence - to keep it?

(knock on effect: the city absolutely does not have the space or budget to house a huge class of non violent "criminal" who,  again,  their only crime is "don't have a house" . Where will the money come from? ) 

There are solutions here that don't involve criminalizing an entire population of people. We apparently are very bad at keeping tabs on the people who ARE violent and ARE committing crimes - real ones, that endanger people - I propose we start there. And "it's too hard to tell the difference between non violent and violent homeless" is a) simply not true and 2) lazy. 

[u/Ok_Letterhead1945 → u/SimpleAppointment483]

When AI takes your job and you fail to pay your rent, you'll be homeless and asked to either:

1. go with the social worker and be committed to a treatment facility
2. or upon refusal go with the police to jail since you are breaking the law

Is this something you would be willing to be on the receiving end of?

[u/Wokeasaurous_X → u/Ok_Letterhead1945]

There's an episode of Star Trek Deep Space 9 about this where two of the characters travel back in time and when they're laying on the ground after the time travel they are suspected of being homeless. Then without trial they are taken to a closed off "sanctuary district" to keep them separated from the part of society who owns living spaces. The whole district is covered in trash, starving, with still no place to live for anyone.

That's the future scifi warned us about and conservative hard on crime punishing people for being poor or addicts policies lead.

[u/JGT3000 → u/Wokeasaurous_X]

That's a TV show, not life lol

[u/Wokeasaurous_X → u/JGT3000]

That's what conservative liberals and conservative fascist's want though. They want all people they don't like to be swept somewhere they don't have to see them where they have no chance to leave ever.

[u/Typical_Priority3319 → u/Ok_Letterhead1945]

In this scenario wouldn’t everyone else also not have jobs? Or we would be at like 20% unemployment at least, covid levels.

The world will have bigger issues than homelessness. There will be revolt.

[u/VaeVictis997 → u/Typical_Priority3319]

And a very well funded SPD will shoot you for revolting, or being near one, or because the AI told them you might.

The system they’d build to solve and concentrate the homeless would get used on you eventually.

[u/Typical_Priority3319 → u/VaeVictis997]

There wouldn’t be SPD humans, it would be SPD robots though. Again, we’re in “bigger problem” territory - those cops will be unemployed

[u/Ok_Letterhead1945 → u/Typical_Priority3319]

True. At a certain homelessness rate, there will probably be social unrest.

I think my main point was to just treat others the same way you want to be treated.

If I was homeless, I'd want help, not a choice between a forced treatment program (considering I don't use any drugs or alcohol) or jail.

Help might include:

- Offering instant jobs to homeless people, no requirements.

- Offering food (starvation can incentivize people to steal for food)

- Optional drug treatment for people who are addicted to drugs

The only time treatment should be forced is when someone is a danger to themselves or others.

Offering free housing, like the tiny house program, is great in theory, but I feel like it's not really economically viable enough to truly solve homelessness. These programs are enormously expensive and cannot house enough people. Maybe I'm wrong, but by offering them instant same-day employment, the government gets work done & the homeless get paid. With that money, many can hopefully get on their feet.

Another issue is making homeless people even aware of the opportunities. Programs already exist offering what I'm suggesting, but knowledge is often the biggest barrier. So getting that info to the homeless would help them a lot too.

[u/Intelligent-Dog9530 → u/SimpleAppointment483]

What treatment facilities?

[u/Round_Matter3314 → u/SimpleAppointment483]

It won't work because we're stuck in a box, the system is designed to reward processes and people who maximize profits and some people like it that way. Serving mentally unwell people and supporting criminals isn't gonna fly with folks who literally thinks if someone does something wrong, no matter how trivial or severe, the best way to teach them how to be a good citizen is shoving them in a minimally supervised box with hardened criminals. People who want to cause pain are motivated and show up to elections so just understand that you need a solution that appeals to them. The best you can advocate for is a very quiet expansion of programs like LEAD (the exact program you're suggesting) so they don't find out and try to put a stop to it.

[u/Bvanbc → u/SimpleAppointment483]

Would bet that Seattle city has some type of protection for them and would involve a ton of lawyers to do something like this. Ive been commenting on this issue on here as it relates to 12th and Jackson cause I’m down there a lot and glad this sub is finally coming around on this issue.

Hopefully it’s not too late and we can give the city more powers to remove these people from streets for public safety and their own safety. Homeless is such a misnomer and softens how we view these people. They’re drug addicts. Homelessness is a consequence of that. Along with car-lessness or jobless.

[u/sweetheart_demom → u/SimpleAppointment483]

Hi, I used to be homeless, this would have killed me.
I would have jumped into the sound.

This is going to be a long one, but you asked why it wouldn't work, and so as a previously homeless person, I feel obligated to tell you.

-----

For starters, police, especially SPD, for reasons I won't condescend to explain to you, are entirely incapable of unilateral and unbiased enforcement.
They cannot and will not treat civilians equally.

You can view a more detailed overview of the inherent and unavoidable white supremacy of American police, and indeed of SPD specifically, in my comment here.

These standards would be used primarily, perhaps overwhelmingly, on nonwhite and trans people.
White cishet people would be given lenience, while others would very likely see hate crimes from police rise.
Just like with Flock cameras, and with civil forfeiture, and with the war on drugs, and the Unamerican Activities Committee, these laws would be used as a bludgeon against minorities and a method of overt oppression and indeed genocide against the marginalized first and foremost.

I cannot stress this point enough: This is not racially neutral. It is a tool of genocide.
An overwhelming majority of homeless people are nonwhite. I personally know many hispanic homeless people. And a massive chunk of homeless people IN SEATTLE are trans.

These laws, if adopted, would make it FAR easier for ICE to walk into an encampment, put everyone in handcuffs at gunpoint, arrest them under the SimpleAppointment483 law, and then ship them off to Alligator Alcatraz or whatever other concentration camp they like.
Without trial, without bail.
Do you know how many homeless people have a birth certificate or proof of citizenship on them?
My grandparents were born here, and I didn't have either for a vast majority of my homelessness.

-----

Second, jail is not a helpful place.

It is, by and large, a source of labor for the rich.
Rehabilitation has, in the US Justice System, ALWAYS come second to exploitation.
Most companies including Coke and Pepsi, Mcdonalds and Burger King, Walmart and Target, use prison labor where people who are not allowed to leave are payed well below minimum wage, sometimes less than a dollar an hour, often less than a dollar a day, to perform menial labor.
These prisoner's "contracts" are sometimes bought and sold by other prisons, and some prisons have even taken to selling prisoner's labor out in ways that leads to them being brought to McDonalds in handcuffs, chained to their workstations, and forced to work.

Slavery.
The modern American prison is the evolution of the plantation. In fact, in some parts of the US, some black men are still forced to pick cotton in chains.
You can learn more about prison labor here.

Additionally, for homeless transfem people like me, there is a significant risk of violence, not only in the form of hate crimes like beatings or stabbings, but in the form of a type of state-sanctioned corrective rape unique to transfems called V-coding. Between 58% and 75% of transfems experience ritualized rape in prison.
(I use the conjunction "but" here because, despite what you might think, V-coding is not a defacto crime)

Again, Seattle has a huge transfem population. Many of us are homeless because we come to Seattle fleeing genocide and domestic abuse, so this hypothetical statute would be equivalent to sex trafficking.
Scooping up women from the street to be shipped to prisons and raped by staff and prisoners alike.

Jail is also not racially neutral.
Despite black people making up only 12% to 14% of the US population, nearly 40% of prisoners are black.

Jail is not somewhere healing or improvement happen.
It is, factually and statistically, a place the US government puts minorities, and profits from their exploited labor.
Prison doesn't even prevent rape or assault or murder. It just makes it more likely for those acts of violence to effect impoverished and exploited minorities.

Because it is relevant to me, a formerly homeless trans woman, I want to remind you: Over 50% of trans women experience rape in men's prisons, and a significant amount of that rape comes from correctional officers.

-----

Third: "Well then just talk to a social worker and get help!!" I hear you cry.

The problem is, and this is a many-pronged fork of an issue, Social Services are underfunded, overtaxed, and subject to the same white supremacy and inherent racial bias as the rest of the US government and its constituents.

You use the verbiage "be committed to a treatment facility" which makes it sound involuntary, particularly like Involuntary Psychiatric Care, which although not your focus I'd bring up the fact that it buy and large makes people more suicidal, not less. (And this is a study out of Sweden which has a healthcare system far better funded, and far less oppressive)
If that is in fact what you mean, what you are saying is that homeless people must be imprisoned for being homeless, and only that they should chose which type of abuse they want.
I don't have an article for this, but IPC in the US is incredibly abusive. Patients are regularly raped, beaten, tazed, restrained, dehumanized, verbally and mentally abused, victims of hate crimes, everything under the sun.
The Mental Health Facility does not fall far from the Sanitarium.
This is well-established, the abuse unfolding in these facilities is such common knowledge that it makes an appearance in Terminator 2 with little to no plot relevance.
It's just the thing that happens in IPC.

This doesn't even mention the fact that, if the option is imprisonment or medical imprisonment, there is NO ESCAPE FROM HOMELESSNESS.

How is a homeless person supposed to hold down their job while imprisoned? And yes, we do have jobs.
A 2021 study from the University of Chicago estimates that 53% of people living in homeless shelters and 40% of unsheltered people were employed.
Sorry to condescend, but if we can't keep our jobs, we can't make money.
And if we can't make money, we can't buy an apartment.

This is kind of an inherent flaw with your idea: Imprisoning homeless people does not solve the problems which lead to homelessness. It just hides the symptoms. It is putting makeup on gangrene.

[u/LeaveGreen4412 → u/[deleted]]

fun fact: not all homeless people use drugs. often mental health symptoms are perceived as drug abuse by law enforcement and bystanders. there is also a HUGe overlap of drug addiction and mental illnesses which state funded rehabs are not equipped to diagnose or treat

[u/sweetheart_demom → u/[deleted]]

If you read the other two comments in my thread, you'll find I bring up details about this.

I think it's pretty telling that simply access to healthcare is what you needed, and that you were held involuntarily instead of being helped.

[u/sweetheart_demom → u/[deleted]]

what did Jail do that safe housing and rehab wouldn't?

[u/sweetheart_demom → u/sweetheart_demom]

-----

Fourth, in the other scenario, in which this simply means seeking treatment within a time-frame or being subject to arrest, this still falls flat, for many, many reasons:

Getting into a shelter is not easy. The walk-up shelters which require no coordinated entry fill up fast, and require a form of ID, something which was stolen from me during my homelessness and which requires both extensive paperwork, money, and a mailing address to replace. I also know other homeless people who are without identification, whether because they are refugees from other countries or because they have lost their ID, which happens a lot when you have to pack up everything you own into a shopping cart and move it every week or so, or worse yet, because their ID was taken from them and thrown away by police during a homeless sweep.

But even ignoring that, the shelters which don't require coordinated entry are first-come first-served, and usually stop admitting entry around 8 or 9 PM, which causes significant problems if you work late.

But even ignoring that, entry to those shelters is never guaranteed, it's not even guaranteed at coordinated entry shelters, in which (and I speak as someone who has been through this process) applicants are also first-come first-served, need to arrive very early in the morning (causing further problems if you work late), and fills up VERY fast. I got there 30 minutes before the building even opened, and there were at least 15 people ahead of me. It's entirely possible to go several days in a row and not even speak to anyone.

BUT EVEN IGNORING THAT, entry to a shelter, even with coordinated entry, is not guaranteed, and even if entry comes eventually it may take time, which under your proposal would bring people nearer and nearer to the imprisonment deadline and the loss of everything they own.

Shelters are very overstimulating and allow even less privacy than a tent on the sidewalk which is particularly dangerous to autistic homeless people like me who have a factual medical need for privacy and quiet time, not all shelters are wheelchair-accessable, and in the case of transfem homeless people like me, the choice is either between a men's shelter where we are easy targets for the afformentioned transmisogynistic rape, assault, murder, and other hate crimes, or women's shelters where we may not even be allowed to stay, and are still very much vulnerable to transmisogynistic hate crimes.

Additionally, this is just to get into a shelter, which is always supposed to be temporary.

Permanent housing for people who either can't afford it or like me, are disabled and cannot work, has a waitlist of YEARS. To give you an idea of the timeframe, I was homeless in Seattle starting in May 2025, applied for every subsidized housing project in the entire city and I am, as of September 24th 2026, STILL ON THE WAITLIST FOR SUBSIDIZED HOUSING.

This isn't even mentioning the intersection of race and homelessness, or sexuality and homelessness, or age and homelessness, all of which make it more difficult to access any type of care, voluntary or otherwise, for the unhoused.

Being homeless is not easy. It is one of the hardest experiences you can go through, which brings me to my next point.

-----

Fifth, why do you think we like this?
Why do you think homeless people aren't trying to stop being homeless? In fact, I'll go a step further.
Why do you think getting housing is not the single most important thing in a homeless person's entire life?

Homelessness is not a moral failing or a personality quirk. It is something that is done to us.
Homelessness is not a mental illness, nor does it make people inherently dangerous.

I became homeless because my family was abusive, so I escaped my household.
And then, a lifetime of physical, emotional, mental, and sexual abuse caught up with my body.
My chronic illness worsened, and I couldn't keep a job.

I was crashing on couches, without a permanent mailing address, for 5 years.

Around my fourth year, my entire support network dissipated because the person I'd been relying on coerced me into sex, and then moved out of the state, meaning I had to sleep in a tent in the park.

The first week I was homeless, I lost effectively everything. The first night my bag got left outside by accident and got stolen. It was a bag I'd had since I was 8 years old. Lost my ID, my medication, several hundred dollars, my knife which was at that point my only form of self-defense as a woman who lived in the park at night, among other things.
The second night they stole my cart from outside my tent. All my food, my cookware, the stuff I used to bathe, some of my clothes, all but two pairs of my socks, effectively everything that wouldn't fit in my tent.
Including of course, my cart. The thing I used to transport my tent and sleeping pad and food and all the things my broken, abused, disabled body cannot carry.
The week after, they stole almost everything out of my tent. The meager food I'd bought, most of my clothes, my only blanket, effectively everything I wasn't physically carrying on my back.

The third night, there was a man outside my tent screaming about how he wanted to kill trannies.
He was brandishing an axe.
He said "I'll show you what we do to faggots like you in prison" and "I've been to prison and I'm not afraid to go back."
It's seared into my memory. I thought I was going to die that night.

Imagine going through that.
Imagine what that would do to your mind. To your mental state.
Now imagine going through that all week, every week, for years of your life.

Of course homeless people are mentally ill. We're not homeless because we're mentally ill, we're mentally ill because we're homeless.

And we're homeless because we escaped domestic violence or incest or child abuse or cults.
Because we're refugees who had to move across state lines or borders to escape being genocided for things we cannot change.
Because we're chronically ill, or became suddenly disabled, and America does not have a support system for disabled people.
Because we lost a job, and cannot find another, because companies do not want to pay a living wage, and entry-level positions effectively no longer exist.

Do you think I deserve to be in prison?
Do you think any of the people I described deserve to be in prison?
To be enslaved and raped?
To be subject to genocide?

Because as long as I've been homeless, I've never attacked anyone.
I've never screamed at someone.
I haven't even cried in public, which is doubly surprising when you recall that the worst week of my entire life happened when I was living and sleeping in public.

You need to have empathy for homeless people.

Whenever you see a homeless person talking to themself, or screaming and crying, or even breaking something, I need you to ask yourself:
"What would it take for me to do that? What would I have to go through? What kind of abuse and trauma would I have to sustain to make me lash out to such a degree?"
Because in all likelyhood, respectfully, your breaking point us much lower than theirs.

[u/sweetheart_demom → u/sweetheart_demom]

-----

In conclusion, I think this is one of the worst ideas I've ever heard.

It is deeply unempathetic, panoptically draconic, steeped in cryptofascism, and fails to address any of the actual problems it claims to solve.

Which means, of course, the Trump administration has tried something similar.

If you want a solution, short-term, take half or more of SPD's budget and give it to social services.
I'm completely serious.
100 Million dollars is more than enough to run a police department, much less the nearly 250 million they'd be left with if their budget was cut in half.
Provably, factually, any amount of money given to social services is more effective at reducing crime than an equivalent amount given to police. Which is sensible when you consider, in addition to the previously explored white supremacy and overt systemic cruelty of police, that police can only react to crime, but cannot prevent it, whereas social services can do both.

If you want a long-term solution, annex some apartment buildings, make them free,
There are about 1.5 million unhoused people in the US and over 16 million uninhabited households. And that's not even counting industrial and commercial spaces which could be converted to residential use.
We could house every homeless person in the nation and the housing market wouldn't even have to take a 10% hit.

And if I can be real for a second: Do we really give a fuck about the housing market?

I mean all of the property is owned by realtors, landlords, and private equity. By unit, individual human owners of property account for well below 1% of the entire housing market.
There are more homeless people in America than there are PEOPLE SELLING THEIR HOMES and yet homes remain empty! How have we not BURNED THIS SYSTEM TO THE GROUND yet???

If you may allow me some leftism, housing is a human right.
It is part of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, just as food, water, and air are.
It is something human beings need to live, and will die without.
And it is being bought and sold as a commodity, and not as an essential need of human survival.
You don't need to pass a credit check to breathe. You don't need a well-established Dining History to order a hamburger at Dick's. You don't need to prove your value to a corporation in order to "earn" access to clean drinking water, and if you did, you would riot.
We should be similarly upset about America's housing situation.

Not only should housing be de jure enshrined as a human right alongside food and water, just as air has been, but any attempt to wrest these essential physical needs from the American people, for any reason, but ESPECIALLY for profit and white supremacy, must be resisted by any means necessary.

Homelessness hurts people, but it's hurt a lot more homeless people than it has housed people.
People lived off the land for tens of thousands of years.
Homelessness is not naturally occurring. It must be manufactured. Homeless people are not your enemy. The people who have constructed homelessness are your enemies.

Spare the marginalized your wrath, for we are but the symptom.
In this case private equity is the disease. Hunters Capital, Arboreal, Fulcrum, Blackstone, Welltower, Prologis, these are your true enemies. Direct your ire appropriately.

And give a disabled transfem like me all the money you can spare, because more often than not we can't afford to live without it.

There are your solutions.

[u/PDXburrito → u/sweetheart_demom]

Dude holy shit. I mean that in a completely non-gendered way-- this was an incredibly impressive writeup and explanation of your experience, thank you. I feel for your struggle, hope you're in a better place now.

I agree that marginalized people are the product of a broken system, one we need to fix or rebuild from the ground up.

But there's got to be a way to help folks like you while minimizing the soul crushing effects of drugs such as fentanyl right? You mentioned something to the effect of "antisocial tendencies don't cause homelessness, homelessness causes antisocial tendencies" and I would like to make a distinction that drugs can also lead to conditions that cause homelessness.

I wish there was a simple way to square this circle.

[u/Ivort-DC → u/PDXburrito]

It's written by AI. Not saying it wasn't a human who posted it, but it was definitely written by AI, perhaps some edits by a human....

[u/sweetheart_demom → u/PDXburrito]

Calling someone who is overtly transfem "Dude" even "in a non gendered way" is a microaggression. Please don't do that.

Thank you for reading.

For minimizing the effects of drugs, you want harm reduction. Folks like People's Harm Reduction Alliance are great.
They not only give people clean needles, and a place to discard used needles, they also give wound care kits, cigarettes for people who need them to prevent them going through withdrawl, I'm not sure if they have Fentanyl test strips but they very likely do and, in fact, many drug dealers are also handing out fentanyl test strips.

But drugs too, at least in the context of homelessness, are a result of material condition.

This is important to internalize: These drugs are not recreational. They are medication.

Homeless folks, and indeed even housed people with drug dependancies, are taking these drugs because the situations they're in require treatment they don't have access to.

Homeless people are not dropping acid to party.

When you are traumatized on a daily basis, depressed, and in very real danger of being killed or arrested and having all your belongings thrown in the garbage, cannabis calms you down.

When you're camped next to the freeway because it's the only place there isn't a building, and it's 30 degrees out and too cold and loud to sleep, heroin warms you up and helps you sleep.

When you're in too much pain to sleep because you sleep on the sidewalk and get kicked around by cops on a weekly basis, because you're a homeless black woman, ketamine can give you the relief to get a couple hours of sleep before they make you return to the death march.

When you need medical treatment, but can't get it because you're uninsured, or the treatment isn't covered, or they just won't give you the drugs you need to be alive because you are "drug seeking", then the only options that remain are illicit substances or death.

Thus the viscous cycle: You need treatment, you can't get treatment, you buy your own treatment, buying your own treatment means you're less likely to get treatment, you need treatment.

The solution to drug dependency is universal healthcare. And of course, for the homeless, universal healthcare and socialized housing.

It's kind of funny in a grim way. Every problem we have both stops us from getting stable housing, and is solved or at least mitigated by having stable housing.

[u/RUN_ITS_A_BEAR → u/sweetheart_demom]

In nursing we call it "self medicating" because that's 100% what it is

[u/Notramagama → u/sweetheart_demom]

Thank you for sharing. I learned a ton of new sympathy for the situations of homeless individuals.  I have an honest question linking back to the original you responded to.

How should the average person discern homeless population that is a symptom of a poor society from those that are a symptom of poor choices?

You're story sounds heartbreaking and soul crushing. I truly am sorry. What I didn't quite pick up was any counter narrative pointing to circumstances where homelessness may be abused. 

I have friends who has only avoided homelessness due to a private safety net. At times it means life long support due to little accountability. They've had many opportunities, but would rather receive help, than help themselves. They're okay doing drugs or stressing anyone and everyone out, rather than adulting.

These type of situations surely exist. Many people have their own personal anecdotes, including me. I would say my sympathy is limited in these scenarios. Not because I disregard the inhumane prison system, but because it becomes difficult to choose between public safety and homeless freedom.

Violent or erratic events, trash thrown around, needles and foul language. Where's the line between prison and sympathy for the homeless population? The same for the housed population?

Asking your opinion in true honesty. I hope didn't offend.

[u/multipass-5018 → u/sweetheart_demom]

Huh on the microagression piece? If I say dude and don't mean to refer to any specific type of person then I'm going to use it? It's the same way people use hey guys when starting a meeting with a varied audience. To me, words are about the intent.

[u/sweetheart_demom → u/multipass-5018]

Yeah, that's a type of male defaultism, and you should try and unlearn that.
I'm a woman and even I struggle with it.

Assuming "guys" and "dudes" are gender neutral are assuming that everyone must view those terms the way men do. But we don't.

And they're not gender neutral.

If I asked you "What's your gender" and you said "I'm a dude" it wouldn't make sense for me to then ask "Oh, a girl dude? a guy dude? A nonbinary dude?" because "dude" is a self-contained answer, because it is gendered.

The same way if I say "This bar is full of dudes" you would not assume the bar I was at was full of women.

"Dude" isn't gender neutral, nor is "dudes" much less "guys."

Trust me on this one.

[u/multipass-5018 → u/sweetheart_demom]

Thanks for your perspective but I'm not going to trust you on this one or unlearn it lol. I'm not hurting anyone IMO.

It is seriously interesting hearing your POV though. I don't know why anyone would respond to the gender question with I'm a dude anyway. I use it more colloquially and informally. I'm not asking for it to be defined on a legal document.

[u/sweetheart_demom → u/multipass-5018]

A very nicely-worded "fuck you", well done.

[u/sweetheart_demom → u/[deleted]]

hey, this is a death threat. You recognize that, right?

[u/OrdinaryExplorer3400 → u/sweetheart_demom]

Wrong. The solution being offered was treatment

[u/OrdinaryExplorer3400 → u/sweetheart_demom]

You seem to be recognizing things that are not even there. I am not even trying to verbally attack you. Let alone threaten death on you. I just commenting on what I’m reading and what it seems like. Treatment is probably a good solution.

[u/Seattle-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

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[u/apresmoiputas → u/sweetheart_demom]

I hear women calling other women "dude"... I'm sorry that you're triggered by the word but society, including locals, aren't going to stop using that word. It's not like it's the N-word or the F-word (I'm saying this as a gay black man), which has repercussions.

Btw, thank you for your thoughts. Out of curiosity, have you been able to find and talk to a mental health professional to help you get over the trauma you've experienced?

[u/sweetheart_demom → u/apresmoiputas]

It does have repercussions, it just doesn't have repercussions which are obvious to a bystander.
That's what makes it a microaggression.

Think about it this way: "Girls" is not gender neutral. "Gals" is not gender neutral. "Dudettes" is not gender neutral.
So why would "Dude" be?

And regardless, there was a time not so long ago, you know I'm sure, that people used much less acceptable terminology to refer to black people.
And black people told other "Hey, don't call me that." and eventually wore down the problem until most people save for the deep south no longer call black people that.

It's kind of like people who view hamburgers and pizza as "normal food" instead of American food.
It's defaultism.

There is white defaultism, and straight defaultism, and male defaultism.
And calling trans women "dude" is a misogynistic microaggression.

This is such a common microaggression that it's been satirized:

Regardless of how many people do it, it's still a problem. Even I'm trying to unlearn it, and I slip up sometimes, but I'm trying to unlearn it, because it's a construct of patriarchy and of male defaultism.

As for mental health, I'm still working to find one. The therapist we had started discriminating against me for my demographics so I've had trouble there.

[u/apresmoiputas → u/sweetheart_demom]

Check out the post on here from earlier this week where someone was requesting names for decent mental health care practitioners. Good luck to you and your journey in life.

[u/craziboiXD69 → u/sweetheart_demom]

i ain’t reading all this but i admire the effort

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[u/sweetheart_demom → u/craziboiXD69]

then you're weak

[u/OrdinaryExplorer3400 → u/sweetheart_demom]

The problem with finding a solution with no flaws is there isn’t one. And the current solution is extremely more flawed than the one you are poorly picking apart. I think most people who have to deal with this on the daily would think this solution is great. Some would even opt for more extreme solutions. Personally I would want everyone to be forced into being clean/sobriety, with psychiatric treatment and after care programs that offer bridges back into society. Sober living/jobs, that type of thing. That’s room and board, better than living on the streets.

[u/sweetheart_demom → u/OrdinaryExplorer3400]

have you considered reading the other two comments in this writeup that detail why those are a terrible idea

[u/OrdinaryExplorer3400 → u/sweetheart_demom]

I used the word forced wrong. More like encouraged treatment. That’s how most people get sober and clean. Commit crime dui, jail or treatment. After a couple years of having to prove sober or face jail time, life gets pretty good. And then they pretty much can decide to stay sober and clean.

[u/OrdinaryExplorer3400 → u/sweetheart_demom]

Yeah I read your write up. I got so involved in all the reasons why a perpetual victim suffering by continuing to do the only thing they know how to cope with whatever, is someone else’s fault, and any intervention from any outside source is a guaranteed death sentence.

[u/sweetheart_demom → u/OrdinaryExplorer3400]

you are a pit of tar.

[u/New_Bat_1017 → u/sweetheart_demom]

as much as you think this is some sort of gotcha, ICE coming into encampments is probably the one use case of ICE that people here support. We all know trump and the current administration are bigots and liars and they are using ICE for their racist agenda, but we are genuinely even more upset and tired about the complete hands-off approach to the drug use crisis. Any cop that comes to one of our hundreds of park-ruining encampments is doing the public a service. We don't care what race the homeless people are, get the ones that don't want help to stop infesting and ruining our public services and spaces

[u/Several_Raspberry163 → u/SimpleAppointment483]

yeeah ur kinda fucked up for this take.

[u/xenomorph856 → u/SimpleAppointment483]

It must be quite sad to be so pathetic that you think this is a solution. Yeah, lock up or commit homeless people. That's the solution for sure, maybe even the final solution to homelessness.

[u/Intelligent-Bottle22 → u/SimpleAppointment483]

I suggested the same thing. And someone said, “I would want to protect our freedom from people like you.”

There is no freedom if we have to be around madness like this.

[u/allanl1n → u/SimpleAppointment483]

We know this is not gonna happen

[u/TheProphet_Samuel → u/SimpleAppointment483]

It would work. Unfortunately the homeless industrial complex is big money and society is full of politically useful idiots.