I posted a note earlier about not forgiving people who voted for Donald Trump, and I’ve been encouraged to “reframe” that lack of forgiveness.

So I want to say something about that very clearly:

Not forgiving people who have contributed to unforgivable harm is not rigidity.

It is also not bitterness or a personal failing.

It is a grounded boundary.

Ignorance of harm being caused does not diminish accountability.

Harm is still harm, whether the person who caused it feels informed, misled, fully supportive of it or completely oblivious.

Impact is impact.

Calling it ignorance doesn’t lessen the damage.

It just “sanitises” responsibility for the people who caused it.

Forgiveness is not a moral duty or obligation.

No one, anywhere, is owed absolution from the people harmed by their choices.

Refusing to forgive does not mean someone is hard-hearted, inadequate, or trapped emotionally.

It can mean they see the harm clearly, take it seriously, and refuse to participate in the sanitising of it.

What is manipulative is the pressure to forgive, and framing non-forgiveness as a defect in the harmed person rather than a legitimate response to real damage.

It is manipulative to request or demand emotional generosity from people while bypassing the scale of the harm that was enabled.

I do not agree that people are morally required to forgive those who help unleash profound harm on others.

Some things are not made right by calling for empathy for the people who created or enabled that harm.

In my opinion, some things remain unforgivable because the harm was real, the consequences were real, and accountability for that harm matters.

Forgiveness does not always free those harmed. Sometimes it binds them to betraying themselves.

Feeling this way isn’t cruelty or hard-heartedness.

I think it’s actually moral clarity.