#/ abuse

[support]

Everything ok?

If you or someone you know is a victim of abuse, please contact:

The National Domestic Violence Hotline or 1-800-799-SAFE (7233)

Rape Abuse & Incest National Network or 1-800-656-HOPE (4673)

Trained advocates are available 24/7 to take your call.

For international resources, please try IASP.

For more resources, please visit our Counseling & Prevention Resources page for a list of services that may be able to help.

[hellyeahscarleteen]

"Are you in a relationship or partnership which you suspect may be emotionally unsafe or unhealthy for you or others?

Give yourself a checkup. Are you:

Suffering from anxiety, stress or depression, or having unusual physical symptoms, such as stomach aches, insomnia, changes in energy levels or appetite, a sudden drastic increase or decrease in sexual drive, or other physical symptoms that are not caused by an existing condition, outside situation or illness?

Putting other important relationships or goals of yours at risk because of your relationship?

Finding yourself often trying to rationalize that sacrificing other things which are important to you for the relationship is okay or worth it?

Taking risks which put you and yours in a position of sexual, physical or high emotional risk, or feeling you must make many sacrifices to have or maintain the relationship?

Feeling isolated from everyone BUT your partner, or having trouble thinking of others outside yourself and your partner(s)? Feeling like you have no one left to reach out to but your partner? Discovering that other important parts of your life are taking a backseat to your relationship or really suffering (your grades, your job, your family, etc.)?

Feeling sad, frustrated or upset with sexual relationships or encounters far more than you find yourself feeling happy?

Clinging to those happy times even though you know they're rare, or focusing more often on the relationship you had at the start than the one you're really in now?

Feeling you must keep sexual activity, tension or emotional issues high and escalating to maintain the relationship, using sexual activity or other behavior to avoid or diffuse relationship conflicts, "zoning out" during sexual activity, or feeling either predominately passive or dominating during sex with your partner?

Becoming unable to be autonomous and have a life and sense of self independent of your partner or a sexual relationship?

Feeling bad about yourself in general, or specifically in regard to your sexual relationship or behavior?

Find yourself agreeing with your partner when they put you down? Feeling scared to be yourself with your partner?

Doing things you really don't want to do and feel you have to because of your partner?

Having trouble discussing, making or enforcing limits and boundaries (sexual or otherwise) or respecting those of your partner?

Feeling like you're always walking on eggshells?

Making a lot of excuses for yourself or a partner?

Finding you're the only one in your life rooting for your relationship, or that you're often trying to defend it to others who care about you and who are concerned?"

Heather Corinna, Blinders Off: Getting a Good Look at Abuse and Assault

[gameguy20100]

Stella.

Fuck you. fuck you, fuck you fuck you in every possible way you vile, abusive, petty piece of shit! You are a cruel, vile, evil person and if you spent the rest of your life getting fisted by the almighty father himself, it'd still be a light punishment!

Why am I getting so angry you ask? Let me explain.

"Sorry sweetie, no talking to that deadbeat."

FUCK YOU!!!!

How dare you?! How dare you use your daughter like this you irredeemable monster?!

Octavia is not to blame for what Stolas did, I don't care what he did you never use children as a tool against someone in a divorce!

FFS!! Look at that face. Octavia is horrified and you're grinning about it?!

I want this cunt dead!

[akajustmerry]

Wait who has brad pitt buried or launched an agenda against?

brad pitt has been trying to cover up his abuse of Angelina Jolie in the press since she filed for divorce in 2016. she filed for divorce after an incident during which he abused her and their children so badly that the FBI got involved. Pitt has launched several countersuits against her that are ongoing as we speak and is refusing to let the divorce happen. He's using the same PR that Harvey Weinstein and Johnny Depp used. Here's another good article about it:

[cadavercorvus]

Hi, I've been trying to avoid going to tumblr, but I need all the help I can get.

Trump got elected and my transphobic father decided he could kick me out. He's been massively abusive towards me, and I've been struggling living with him for quite some time. I need to find a way to leave, and get a new living situation. I'm currently not financially stable enough to find a place myself.

I tried to live with my mother, but she's equally as abusive. I'm seriously at a loss here. Thank you all.

[thepeacefulgarden]

And remember, they don't have to hit you in order to qualify as an abuser. Do they...

Say mean and/or creepy things and then try to walk it back as "just a joke?"

Tell you that you're "too sensitive" when you call out their words or behavior?

Use the Bible, the Quran, the Torah, the Vedas, or any other religious text to justify mistreating you?

Treat you badly, apologize, promise never to do it again, and proceed to do it again?

Try to control where you go, how you dress, who you see and talk to, what and how much you eat, etc.?

Snoop through your phone, emails, belongings, or other private stuff without your OK? Or manipulate you into "letting" them do so?

Track your menstrual cycle (if you have one) without your OK? Or manipulate you into "letting" them do so?

Try to make you keep a pregnancy you don't want (or terminate one you do)? Or try to dictate what (if any) birth control you use?

Threaten to hurt themselves or other people if you leave, or "step out of line?"

Break or throw things when they're upset?

Punch holes in walls, doors, etc.?

Make you (or try to make you) engage in sexual acts you don't enjoy, don't feel ready for, don't feel comfortable with, or just plain aren't in the mood for?

Try to make you feel like a bad person for saying "no" to sex?

Try to distance you from your friends and family?

Actively try to turn your friends and family against you? Or you against them?

Get mad when you say no or try to set a boundary?

Call you degrading names?

Use your insecurities against you?

"Neg" or "should" you into conforming to their preferences?

Try to get you to quit your job, or get you fired?

Use drugs, alcohol, a bad day at work, or whatever their deal is as an excuse for their behavior? If so, you need to get out. Now. Make a plan. I promise, it doesn't get better as long as you are in this relationship. You cannot love the red flags out of people. Even if they don't hit you now, there's a good chance they'll start sooner or later; abuse has a nasty tendency to escalate.

[feathery-dreamer]

I understand the joke, but hear me out (as someone who's in no way an expert in history); also there's some personal stuff in the last part of this rant.

The bloodline thing was maybe valid for royal and noble families, for whom having no heir meant the lands would go to someone they hated and/or the family name would actually end.

But since infant mortality has been reduced, family names have branched out more and more. There are maybe thousands and thousands of people with the same family name in a single, average-sized country. Even here in France, we've had instances of hearing or reading our (Turkish) surname in other people, even the same full name once.

Our genetic line? all of my cousins are in straight marriages, no risk of extinction there. Our family name? see above, they're everywhere including foreign countries. I absolutely have 0 reason to worry about either of those things.

Nowadays, the reason you hear often is your parents "want grandchildren" and; well frankly, my marital choice is none of their business nor concern.

We no longer live in Medieval times when it was normal to marry your kid off to whomever you picked, or try to convince a more powerful person (lord, count, prince...) to marry your child, for socioeconomic improvement. We live in a time and place where your child chooses if, when, whom, why they marry - which includes socioeconomic betterment, but for the person in question and not for their parents.

If you, my parent or grandparent, only "love" me in hopes that I would one day "repay the debt" by giving you (great-)grandchildren? Then I'm sorry, but you do NOT love me at all. You love a presumed image of me that you have, your own planned future with grandchildren. That is NOT love, it's using your offspring as a tool for your own personal agenda.

It's as manipulative and awful as my mother when she claimed I could talk to her, but then kept cutting me off five words in. One time (just one) I pointed out she always interrupted me, and she instantly hit me with the "because you talk too slowly". What does this mean? "I will support you but won't provide the energy to adapt to your need, you must supply extra energy in the midst of your struggling to speak faster." Also, "it's not on me to make an effort to listen (as I said I would), it's on you to catch my attention and make me listen."

Conditional "support" doesn't count. Conditional "love" doesn't count. Conditional "care" or "attention" or "nurturing" doesn't count.

You, the parent, are the one who DECIDED to have a child - it's on YOU to adapt to whatever you end up with. The kid never signed up for this, they don't owe you jack shit for something you chose to do.

The older generation's fixation on forcing you to have kids is something they absolutely refuse to unlearn. You can give the calmest and most reasonable explanation for not having kids and the only thing they can think to say is, "But what of the heir to the lands?" "Who will inherit the throne?" "Please sire upon your barren death there will be a parochial schism that will soak our soils with brother-blood." They literally hate to see you happy with just a cat.

[uncanny-tranny]

Honestly, there is a certain type of fetishizing of violence that occurs when you are the victim of abuse - wherein people talk directly to you about how much they fantasize about your abuser/s dying and being killed - "all abusers must be killed!" they say.

As a victim of prolonged abuse, I never felt cared for when people indulged that information to me. It often feels like my abuse is being exploited for others to enact their own violent fantasies and secret desires - my abuse means nothing to them in the same way that I didn't matter to my abusers. It's not support - it's just another cycle of violence.

I'm begging people to care more about victims and survivors than they do about retribution of abusers. Nowhere along the way should your focus on the abuser outweigh the people affected by their abuse. If you truly want to support abuse victims and survivors, start with us

[kaijuposting]

"Saw traps for people with moral OCD" is a phrase that has embedded myself into my brain because, well, Saw traps for people with moral OCD are everywhere.

Stuff that basically amounts to...

"You have to listen to my opinions on [issue], or else you don't care about [issue]. (Constantly talks about how people like you are the absolute worst.)"

Anything that's functionally like, "you have to let me tear you down over things you can't control or you're a bad person."

Anything that's functionally like, "you have to let me vent to you whenever and however I want or else you're a bad person."

"If you enjoy X media/trope, you just hate Y people."

"Everyone knows that X thing is harmful/hateful; if you engaged in it, it's just because you were fine with perpetuating hate/harm."

"You should have just known better/should know this already!"

This thread over here talks about the inherent issues of putting this kind of stuff out there. The TL;DR is that it really only works on people who are mentally unwell and have poor boundaries, while just pissing off everyone else. It really doesn't matter if you're technically correct; you're still attacking people, and that means they're not wrong to block you.

I think that many of these Saw traps are created when people effectively write posts directed toward people who don't want to help, rather than the ones who do. Like, if you catch yourself writing an angry, shame-laden post, ask yourself: who are you writing it for and what are the odds you're going to change their minds? If your mental image is some smug fuck or angry reactionary, you're writing for the wrong person. Write for the person who's curious, who's willing to learn.

Also? Work on figuring out how to transmute negative feelings into positive, encouraging rhetoric. EG:

"Why is there no X positivity?" -> "Let's hear it for X!"

"No one cares about Y problem!" -> "Hey, we need more recognition of Y problem" or "I haven't seen many people talking about Y problem, so here's some info on what's up."

"If you don't reblog this, you don't care about [group]" -> "Please reblog this, it would mean a lot for us [group]."

And if you're really super duper frustrated and want to vent with a lot of nasty words and sentiments? Consider taking it to a private vent channel or a journal or somewhere that a stranger with moral OCD/scrupulosity isn't likely to run across it.

Remember, most people don't want to hurt anyone. More people are ignorant than malicious. People naturally want to do the right thing, so if you feel like you have to guilt them or shame them into it, there's probably a fundamental communication issue somewhere, or they simply lack the context to understand why what you're saying is so important.

[thatdiabolicalfeminist]

No one is doomed to abuse people. There isn't an "abuser gene" or "evil chromosome". There aren't "cursed bloodlines".

There's a culture that frequently enables, romanticizes and eroticizes abuse, and individual human beings who choose to take advantage of that, or not.

Even someone who has abused others in the past has a decision about whether or not to continue that harm. Further abuse isn't inevitable, it's a choice.

The idea that abusers can't help it just further enables abuse culture. If someone is abusive, they are making a choice.

[theawkwarddeadgirl]

To those of you kids and teens thinking "that might be true of other people but My Person is different," no they aren't. They fucking aren't and I am begging you to see that. There is so much pressure - in media, in friend groups, in some fucked up families - saying that dating an older person is cool or fun or sexy or just normal. I get it. I really, really do. There's something about being a kid and finding care and affection in an adult and feeling wanted, especially when you aren't feeling wanted by other people, but there is no adult person who should look at you when you are still a teenager and think it's okay to date you, to flirt with you, to do anything of the sort with you. I'm sorry, but they don't love you. To reiterate what the person above me said - run away. Your life and wellbeing is way more important than momentary affection.

reminder to all 14-19 year olds girls. that grown man does not like you. you are a victim

[amaditalks]

Gaslighting isn’t the same as lying.

Gaslighting also isn’t lying a lot, or lying and deflecting the lying by shaming the victim for not believing the lie.

Gaslighting is a long con. It is a practice of ongoing emotional/mental abuse, that doesn’t just involve lying, but manipulating or altering someone’s reality in order to make them question both the truth, and more importantly, question their own mental and cognitive wellbeing.

The reason that it’s called gaslighting is because the tactic was demonstrated in a 1944 film called “Gaslight” starring Ingrid Bergman. In the film, Bergman‘s character’s husband tries to make her have a mental breakdown.

He tells her that she is having blackouts (she’s not) and doing things that she didn’t do.

He steals things from her, and tells her that she lost them herself.

He makes noises in the attic of the house, then tells her that he wasn’t in the house at all.

He steals things from other people, puts them where she will find them, and then tells her that she stole them.

He puts his pocket watch in her purse and tells her that she stole it from him.

He isolates her from the world by telling her that her behavior is too erratic to be safe near others.

He encourages their housemaid to be cruel to her and to repeat his lies about her behavior.

And, to apply the title, he repeatedly causes the gas lighting (it’s set in 1875) in her bedroom to go dim, then comes into the room, and when she says that the lighting is dim, he says, no, it’s perfectly fine.

It goes well beyond just lying. Gaslighting is a setup to make the victim so confused that they’re unable to trust themselves and their own perceptions of the world around them or even themselves.

It’s beyond time to stop calling run of the mill dishonesty gaslighting.

[creature-wizard]

Hey folks. You know how that myth that abusers are all people who don't care about their victims at all keeps people stuck in abusive situations, because the person they're being abused by doesn't match the description of the complete monster they're told an abuser is?

Okay. Now I need you to understand that saying "X shitty religious group doesn't actually care about people, it only wants to control them" is harmful for the exact same reason. This kind of thinking will keep people trapped in harmful forms of spirituality longer because they won't recognize that just because their spiritual leaders and mentors genuinely care, doesn't mean they aren't also behaving abusively or harmfully.

[thedailylifeofdamianwayne]

My right hand isn’t as strong as it used to be so I’ve been having to take a lot of breaks more frequently lately so my comic making process is a lot slower 😞

Please take this little drawing of Bruce and Talia as I rest my hand. They were at a dinner party.

[lindentea]

nothing pissed my abuser off more than when i stopped Reacting to his attempts to provoke me. i employed the "grey rock" tactic: respond to questions coolly and only with facts (and ONLY if it's something they actually need to know). state what you plan on doing ONLY if it's relevant and give the bare minimum amount of info needed (i.e. "i'm picking up the kids tomorrow at 9:15"). leave it at that. don't respond to accusations or insults. don't provide any other information. don't give them anything they can use against you (and oh, they will try to use whatever scraps they can find as ammo, and make shit up, but the less they have to work with, the better).

abusers haaaaaaaate when they can't use DARVO or reactive abuse against you any more. that is not to say that your internal feelings about what they do aren't valid or real, and you can and should still process those. just... not where your abuser can see or hear, if you can help it.

yeah, it feels unfair, like rolling over and showing your throat, like giving in. it sucks. i wanted so badly to fight back, to say "that's such bullshit" to his face, but i had to force myself to stop playing his game. it was the only way i escaped.

I think one of the hardest parts of breaking cycles of violence, be they individual or community is that at some point someone has to accept one last hit without retaliating, and that is so hard to do. Especially since that non-retaliation often leads to escalation as the other party tries harder and harder to get a rise out of you. A lot of us are taught as kids that it's virtuous to "turn the other cheek" but this isn't that. White-knuckled seething screaming still resisting the urge to hit back is a skill and it sucks and you will be hated for it and that sucks worse and I don't know what my point is anymore but life is hard and I'm angry and there's no void in this universe big enough to hold my screams.

[love-me-love-my-weirdness]

Shout out to the people who never had a safe place. Who didn’t have a before trauma. Who were loved but not protected. Who were collateral damage in someone else’s breakdown. Who got fucked up so young that they’ll never know who they could have been.

Shout out to people who’ve never felt safe. I hope you do someday.