It is hard for me to think about men when I am mired in terrible memories of what men have put me through, and it's made me short-sighted. It was a man I admire very much who made me realize it. A friend of his on Facebook had told him it was male privilege when male sexual assault victims stayed quiet while women shared their pain on the #metoo hashtag. He said this to my friend, not knowing he was talking to someone whose first time had been as awful as mine had.
Thank you. I like to know about American politics but a lot of the mainstream news sites are waaaaaay too sensational or fear-driven. The humour here makes it palatable. <3 Thank you for the warm welcome.
They also do lots of explainery stuff! And if you have questions, the Wonkers here know a TON. We have lawyers, political peoples, woodworkers, the mechanically apt, chefs, etc. I bring pretty much all of my problems here for advice from people I can trust not to troll me. Glad you like it!
"So, I was replying to a friend's post, and many other friends comments on it, about Dylann Roof's conviction and the death penalty and punishment for rapists and sexual abusers of children, and this just kind of fell out. I think it might have been too much for the thread. But I feel I could go on forever...
I feel liked this is what has made me incapable of loving well enough for love to stay. ...
I have very real and painful experience with sexual abuse. I can understand the desire to visit terrible punishment upon them. It doesn't, can't and won't give peace or healing to their victims. That said, very often the perpetrators of these crimes cannot stop and therefore need to be isolated from the community, often for the rest of their lives. They are often victims of childhood, sexual abuse themselves.
My uncle abused me for many years when I was very young. It only stopped because he was in a catastrophic car accident that caused severe brain damage. He has no short term memory but can tell you stories about his life up to the point of the accident. He was never very smart, likely borderline mentally disabled. Afterwards he was less mentally capable. So, somewhere in there he remembers what he has done but I doubt he can process and understand it.
I struggled for decades to remember and deal with these memories. I was not the only victim. Then, as fate would have it, I returned home from NYC broken by love and a city filled with ferocious beauty and just ferocity. I ended up moving to my grandmother's farm where she took care of my uncle. My father lived on the farm as well. Soon after coming home my grandmother was diagnosed with leukemia and I helped care for her as she died. Taking care of her meant taking care of him. This included bathing him. As you might imagine, this was not easy. But in those months I came to a point of forgiveness and grace. His karma was immediate and total.
I think my grandmother knew. She made my father tear down the house where most of it happened. There is a trailer they had moved into that I will someday take implements of destruction to.
I have no idea if my father knows. I can't tell him for several reasons. First of all, he is the type who would walk into the home my uncle is in and shoot him. Secondly, he might not believe me. Or he might have known and done nothing. This shit runs in families.
I told my mother. She was bereft.
So, believe me, I get it. But your solutions are not solutions. The only way out is through for the victims. And, on the deepest level that I have been able to delve, the only way through is forgiveness and compassion. Not for the sake of the perpetrator but to free oneself from the thrall that such violation holds one in. It is a prison of memory and anguish and fear.It makes trust on any level nearly impossible.
Society's only recourse cannot be the repayment of violence with violence. It is undeniably true that in a world of an eye for an eye, we all end up blind. Let us move forward, eyes open, innocents protected, perpetrators studied until they are understood and segregated from the community....
This is a very interesting read. Hearing voices would be a little strong to describe my inner landscape. But this strikes many chords in the crowded environs of my cranium. My years of terrible sexual abuse took away every sensory perception of my inner life. I can't close my eyes and see anything. I can't think about Miles and hear his laugh in my head. I can't taste my great grandmother's peanut butter cookies. I can't smell the lilacs in her backyard. I have no access to that type of interior experience.
I am 100% certain that this arises out of my dissociative survival mechanism. I possess extremely detailed memories of a dizzying array of past events(good and bad) but everything is reduced to words. There are no sensual contexts. I am still triggered by sights, songs, smells, tastes and textures but it is all mediated through language.
Money quote for me:"And we are all fragmented. There is no unitary self. We are all in pieces, struggling to create the illusion of a coherent ‘me’ from moment to moment. We are all more or less dissociated. Our selves are constantly constructed and reconstructed in ways that often work well, but often break down. Stuff happens, and the centre cannot hold. "http://www.bbc.com/future/s...
…………………..
Hard to watch. I miss Robin Williams so much. And despite years of work and struggle, I am still carrying that young man's guilt with me every day. Sexual abuse is the gift that never, ever stops giving. It doesn't have to control your life but you can't ever fully escape."
here is the problem, this latest bit is quite like the bit during the campaign, though for less tangible goals. it's part of a motivated professional feminist agenda. I agree with men speaking out, just not to serve, or be accused of undermining an agenda they are not part of, just to show i am not sexist i believe women should tell their stories, just not when they serve an ulterior power agenda.
I knew this but rarely think about it as something that can happen to any man, any time because men are stronger than women, by nature. ...but this is true and this happens and boys are not stronger than women and prisoners have little choice and men are laughed at if they ever say they have been victims, too. They are supposed to dig it.
Personally, I don't think I know any free, non imprisoned grown men who have felt sexually victimized by women, as grown men. ...but they could be just not speaking about it. ...and I do know men who were raped as boys and men who were raped in prison and jail. ....and I do believe that it happens to grown men.
Men are not my enemy. I have never felt they are. ....but when speaking of rape I would be angry if a man jumped into the conversation telling me about his abuse and I shouldn't be angry. More women are sexually assaulted than men but on an individual basis, that is not comforting to the ones who have suffered assault. Being helpless and assaulted is horrid, regardless of your sex. There is not much worse.
Thank-you, brave Wonkette, for speaking about this. I needed to read this.
It is strange, too, with my psychiatric history of hospitalization, I have known many men who were tormented and beaten, so badly, they were driven insane and I could sympathize and cry and be sorry and yet, they were not allowed into the conversation when it turned to rape. You have changed that now.
The heterosexual....important to point that out, I think.... feminist, Germaine Greer, once said that before any man is allowed to have sex with a woman he should first have to be raped with a broom handle. Wow. Maybe she was wrong.
Now I am arguing with a friend about this. She did bring up a valid point.
Raping a woman is not seen as aberrant behavior in the same way the rape of a man is...
Raping a woman is seen as a bad bad BUT SOMEWHAT NORMAL, behavior. The rape of a man is seen as... "OMG!! What kind of freak would..."
This is irrelevant when dealing with individual victims. Compassion has to apply regardless of the sex of the victim but when dealing with the misogyny deeply ingrained in our society, I am not sure it is irrelevant.
An aside, in prisons the victims are often feminized because there is no bad in the world as bad as being a woman and THAT is misogyny.
You've really messed up my day, Wonkette. J/K but this article has people all over Facebook, arguing and hopefully, thinking.
Me too. This is a beautiful, thoughtful post.
Same here.
So many new stories as well. I wish they didn't have them but I'm glad this place is here for them to tell.
I seriously want to hug everybody here. So much sorrow.
Thank you. I like to know about American politics but a lot of the mainstream news sites are waaaaaay too sensational or fear-driven. The humour here makes it palatable. <3 Thank you for the warm welcome.
They also do lots of explainery stuff! And if you have questions, the Wonkers here know a TON. We have lawyers, political peoples, woodworkers, the mechanically apt, chefs, etc. I bring pretty much all of my problems here for advice from people I can trust not to troll me. Glad you like it!
*hugs*
Phenomenal words.
Much appreciated...
From a conversation a year or so ago:
"So, I was replying to a friend's post, and many other friends comments on it, about Dylann Roof's conviction and the death penalty and punishment for rapists and sexual abusers of children, and this just kind of fell out. I think it might have been too much for the thread. But I feel I could go on forever...
I feel liked this is what has made me incapable of loving well enough for love to stay. ...
I have very real and painful experience with sexual abuse. I can understand the desire to visit terrible punishment upon them. It doesn't, can't and won't give peace or healing to their victims. That said, very often the perpetrators of these crimes cannot stop and therefore need to be isolated from the community, often for the rest of their lives. They are often victims of childhood, sexual abuse themselves.
My uncle abused me for many years when I was very young. It only stopped because he was in a catastrophic car accident that caused severe brain damage. He has no short term memory but can tell you stories about his life up to the point of the accident. He was never very smart, likely borderline mentally disabled. Afterwards he was less mentally capable. So, somewhere in there he remembers what he has done but I doubt he can process and understand it.
I struggled for decades to remember and deal with these memories. I was not the only victim. Then, as fate would have it, I returned home from NYC broken by love and a city filled with ferocious beauty and just ferocity. I ended up moving to my grandmother's farm where she took care of my uncle. My father lived on the farm as well. Soon after coming home my grandmother was diagnosed with leukemia and I helped care for her as she died. Taking care of her meant taking care of him. This included bathing him. As you might imagine, this was not easy. But in those months I came to a point of forgiveness and grace. His karma was immediate and total.
I think my grandmother knew. She made my father tear down the house where most of it happened. There is a trailer they had moved into that I will someday take implements of destruction to.
I have no idea if my father knows. I can't tell him for several reasons. First of all, he is the type who would walk into the home my uncle is in and shoot him. Secondly, he might not believe me. Or he might have known and done nothing. This shit runs in families.
I told my mother. She was bereft.
So, believe me, I get it. But your solutions are not solutions. The only way out is through for the victims. And, on the deepest level that I have been able to delve, the only way through is forgiveness and compassion. Not for the sake of the perpetrator but to free oneself from the thrall that such violation holds one in. It is a prison of memory and anguish and fear.It makes trust on any level nearly impossible.
Society's only recourse cannot be the repayment of violence with violence. It is undeniably true that in a world of an eye for an eye, we all end up blind. Let us move forward, eyes open, innocents protected, perpetrators studied until they are understood and segregated from the community....
This is a very interesting read. Hearing voices would be a little strong to describe my inner landscape. But this strikes many chords in the crowded environs of my cranium. My years of terrible sexual abuse took away every sensory perception of my inner life. I can't close my eyes and see anything. I can't think about Miles and hear his laugh in my head. I can't taste my great grandmother's peanut butter cookies. I can't smell the lilacs in her backyard. I have no access to that type of interior experience.
I am 100% certain that this arises out of my dissociative survival mechanism. I possess extremely detailed memories of a dizzying array of past events(good and bad) but everything is reduced to words. There are no sensual contexts. I am still triggered by sights, songs, smells, tastes and textures but it is all mediated through language.
Money quote for me:"And we are all fragmented. There is no unitary self. We are all in pieces, struggling to create the illusion of a coherent ‘me’ from moment to moment. We are all more or less dissociated. Our selves are constantly constructed and reconstructed in ways that often work well, but often break down. Stuff happens, and the centre cannot hold. "http://www.bbc.com/future/s...
…………………..
Hard to watch. I miss Robin Williams so much. And despite years of work and struggle, I am still carrying that young man's guilt with me every day. Sexual abuse is the gift that never, ever stops giving. It doesn't have to control your life but you can't ever fully escape."
https://youtu.be/UYa6gbDcx18
here is the problem, this latest bit is quite like the bit during the campaign, though for less tangible goals. it's part of a motivated professional feminist agenda. I agree with men speaking out, just not to serve, or be accused of undermining an agenda they are not part of, just to show i am not sexist i believe women should tell their stories, just not when they serve an ulterior power agenda.
And even more that's going unsaid. I guess that's business as usual, isn't it, where rape is concerned?
I knew this but rarely think about it as something that can happen to any man, any time because men are stronger than women, by nature. ...but this is true and this happens and boys are not stronger than women and prisoners have little choice and men are laughed at if they ever say they have been victims, too. They are supposed to dig it.
Personally, I don't think I know any free, non imprisoned grown men who have felt sexually victimized by women, as grown men. ...but they could be just not speaking about it. ...and I do know men who were raped as boys and men who were raped in prison and jail. ....and I do believe that it happens to grown men.
Men are not my enemy. I have never felt they are. ....but when speaking of rape I would be angry if a man jumped into the conversation telling me about his abuse and I shouldn't be angry. More women are sexually assaulted than men but on an individual basis, that is not comforting to the ones who have suffered assault. Being helpless and assaulted is horrid, regardless of your sex. There is not much worse.
Thank-you, brave Wonkette, for speaking about this. I needed to read this.
It is strange, too, with my psychiatric history of hospitalization, I have known many men who were tormented and beaten, so badly, they were driven insane and I could sympathize and cry and be sorry and yet, they were not allowed into the conversation when it turned to rape. You have changed that now.
The heterosexual....important to point that out, I think.... feminist, Germaine Greer, once said that before any man is allowed to have sex with a woman he should first have to be raped with a broom handle. Wow. Maybe she was wrong.
Lastly... I promise...
Now I am arguing with a friend about this. She did bring up a valid point.
Raping a woman is not seen as aberrant behavior in the same way the rape of a man is...
Raping a woman is seen as a bad bad BUT SOMEWHAT NORMAL, behavior. The rape of a man is seen as... "OMG!! What kind of freak would..."
This is irrelevant when dealing with individual victims. Compassion has to apply regardless of the sex of the victim but when dealing with the misogyny deeply ingrained in our society, I am not sure it is irrelevant.
An aside, in prisons the victims are often feminized because there is no bad in the world as bad as being a woman and THAT is misogyny.
You've really messed up my day, Wonkette. J/K but this article has people all over Facebook, arguing and hopefully, thinking.
Are you a comedian? Link, please!