#anyway if you do this to anyone but especially a rape survivor doing therapy then fuck yourself

[angorwhosebabyisthis]

i feel like i should add: all of these are good and important points to discuss, but in both this case and in general, i keep seeing people say variations of 'NTA for ending the friendship, but.....'

scorching hot take here, but if you would abandon a rape survivor for engaging in bog-standard therapy that in no way involves you you are a piece of fucking shit and should be censured for it. end of.

like on the one hand it's awful to do to anyone, and i don't want to give ground to the idea that trauma therapy is The Only Valid Reason Someone Would Like Dark Fiction. but that's what it comes down to. if you'd YTA someone into the sun for the bizarre, petty cruelty of doing this to a so-called friend who does breathing exercises to cope with flashbacks to their rape, rip people a new fucking asshole for doing this.

I (26, NB) dropped a long-term friend (23, not disclosing gender, I'll call them X) for being a proshipper, and now they're trying to get in the way of my other friendships.

A little more than a month ago, an old friend from when I was an itty bitty teen on the internet (we met when they were 12 and I was 15 or so) messaged me on twitter asking if we could share discord since they're more active on that platform, and they missed hanging out. Ok, no prob!! I missed talking to X and life was going kinda icky for me at the time. We exchanged discords and started talking more frequently, before we would talk through twitter dms maybe one day every few months, and we went from almost no contact to talking every single day. It was like being a teenager again; we still shared similar interests and we really fast clicked over old and new fandoms we were in. We talked about college and how they're starting to get the hang of their new job but needed support, talked about our family lives, etc., and in general I felt really comfortable and happy to be chatting again with someone I've known for so long. We were inseparable for weeks.

However... of course, as adults, and having known each other for YEARS, we started talking about fandom ships and fics we enjoyed. We didn't have the same taste in pairings, but that was okay. Until it wasn't anymore.

I shared my NSFW twitter with them, and they followed me. A few minutes later X told me, "I see you have "proship DNI in your bio, I just want to let you know that I am a pro-ship and enjoy some things in fandom that you might think is gross. I hope that's okay."

I was kind of weirded out, and told them that as long as they didn't like anything that would be criminal in real life, that's fine. They told me they *did* enjoy things in fiction that they "wouldn't condone in reality" and even though they "don't talk about it publicly" they still wanted me to know. For some reason. ?? Even though they KNOW that I have an irl history of abuse as a kid, they still told me this.

I was so fucking uncomfortable and really, really sad, and honestly I felt betrayed? I stepped away from my account for like, an hour before messaging them back and saying I didn't want to continue talking to them anymore. That I didn't know they were that kind of person and I'm not comfortable being their friend. I didn't read their response to me because I soft-blocked them.

While I was getting over that and trying to move on, a few days later I was talking to another mutual friend of ours when they asked if I was still friends with X. I got chills remembering how I broke off with them, and said no, we weren't talking anymore. That they were the kind of person that made me really uneasy and uncomfortable to be around. The mutual friend, I'll call R, said that X was "feeling kind of down about losing a friend recently" and talked about it in a discord server they share. X didn't mention my name but R wondered if it was me who dropped them since I was really touchy about boundaries online. I freaked out a little thinking about them talking about me, and asked what else they said, and R told me "not much, just that they felt sad but it was your choice in the end because you two were different" and I don't know why but it left a bad taste in my mouth. Were they trying to make people seem like I was the bad guy or something?? Idk.

I told R the reason why I stopped talking to X, and that X is a proshipper who likes things like inc*st and rape, and R wasn't as supportive as I thought he would be, saying that he understood how I felt but if X was being honest and open about their interests, it probably meant they trusted me and didn't want to "lie" to me. I don't understand how that's even relevant if X is a fucking proshipper. I don't want their trust in the first place if that's who they really are, and I felt betrayed that someone I knew for so long was hiding that for me until we were bonding again. R basically dropped it there and said "idk then" and I told him I was going to shut off my notifs for a bit. I really don't want to talk with him again right now especially since he didn't seem THAT bothered by X being a proshipper who's into really criminal shit.

Since then, friends of mine who are also friends with R (because he's a friend of X still, for some reason), haven't been replying to me as much anymore and I'm super sensitive to noticing these things, at first I told myself it was nothing, but there's an obvious decrease in our interactions. I can't help but think that X actually said bad stuff about me, and R didn't want me to know, or maybe X convinced R that I was a terrible person or something. I still haven't read X's reply to me because I genuinely do not want to interact with them ever again, but for the past few days I've been so angry and hurt by my other friend's actions that I can't help but want to blame them, since this all started when I left them.

AITA for dropping a friend because their interests made me SEVERELY uncomfortable? I don't know what to do.

What are these acronyms?

[royalydamned]

people are so hung up on JD’s r*pey and violent texts messages about AH but my sister and i have literally said things 10 times worse about our own r*pist/child m*lester. an eye for an eye is how i like to look at it. forgive me if i don’t find a fellow ab*se survivor’s ranting all that serious. it isn’t reprehensible in my eyes because if i did go after JD, i’d be a hypocrite for wishing a similar fate on my own s assailant.

behavior like that is very common and after years of growing up a lot of hate has left me tired but i still remember my early days of therapy well. JD’s reaction is very typical and psychiatrists know this. they’ll specifically tell you not to say things like that because what if that person you’re talking about ACTUALLY commits unalive? or what if that person ACTUALLY has all those detailed descriptions of t*rture or r*pe happen to them? and there’s proof of you saying those things? the court will immediately go after you. so i learned to keep my mouth shut and only talk with my own sister about things like that in the private of our own home, late into the night while having our typical living room sleepovers. too dark of a topic for a sleepover, i know.

basically my point is JD’s reaction to AH ab*se is typical and not worth batting an eye over. the double standard between men and women will forever piss me off. because i’m a woman, a young girl at the time i was saying those things, i won’t ever be blamed or seen differently for thinking that way. girls are weak and couldn’t actually accomplish any of it so why take me seriously right? but when a man says it he’s immediately condemned. yes, men are historically the ones with more power and have done a lot of awful things to women in the past. but that doesn’t mean every man, especially abuse victims, are more likely of acting out on their ab*se induced fits of vengeful anger. people have self control and also say the darkest shit. i hope my point was made clear.

Loud and clear anon. Thank you.

Haven't read into that post since it got attacked by AH apologists, but what it boils down to is

a) women don't wish on their male abusers rape, or as the very first AH stan said who reblogged it said, they haven't seen it, which, of course means it's not true because reality revolves around their perception. I actually did see a few instances where the opposite was the truth.

b) apparently when women talk about it, it doesn't count because they, now I don't remember exactly, either can't or won't really act on it while men most definetly will. which, wow, really. I can't even say whether that's misandry or mysogyny, probably both, holding hands. I don't know whether that was some attempt for feminism, but painting women as fragile, all innocent, can't do no wrong and really incompetent is the exact opposite.

c) I ignore the rapey part. You know, I just assumed people knew that in order to rape a corpse you have to kill that person, but also I put more focus on stuff people actually did, not only talked about. Because I said a lot of stupid things from killing and maiming to getting my life together and while that's very bold, literally did none of that. I do believe, correct me if I'm wrong, that very common things to say to patients with either intrusive thoughts of just these kind of thoughts in general is that your thoughts don't make you a bad person, your actions do.

And, I don't know how about them, but I actually think victims deserve to fight back and not go in complete passivity for the shit they went through. If we are only validating passive victims we might as well just ignore DV and abuse all together.

Anyway anon, you, Johnny, literally anyone, is no less of a victim for that. Hope your therapy is going well and your abuser died in a ditch.

[delusion-of-negation]

top 10 (ish) ridiculous or annoying FAQs:

(click at your own discretion)

1) "kids today rely on others to do everything"

ah yes, damn those participation trophies! if it wasn't for them my hands wouldn't be fucked, and I wouldn't need people to write for me. but seriously, stop reading boomer comics, and go outside to meet some actual young people.

2) "sus that a non-american says mom"

yeah, because it's clearly the superior version, and I'm not too patriotic to concede a defeat.

3) "sweaty, the victims of abuse by catholics are real people, stop appropriating their pain just because you want to hate catholics; plus teachers abuse people just as often anyway"

so firstly, I don't hate anybody. and secondly, regarding the fact that victims really do exist, [insert "of course I know him, he's me" meme here]; although I don't often talk much about the abuse I went through or what my religious beliefs are. but, more importantly, statements like "survivors are people" can be phrased like "some people are survivors", and when you're unable to act according to the latter (like when you don't even consider that somebody might be one) then you display a failure to recognise the former - you're projecting; a survivor can't be appropriating their own pain, but you can be appropriating it to silence one. and thirdly, teachers do abuse - the problem isn't and has never been purely religion, rather that abuse is often done by somebody in a position of trust, power, and familiarity; and that the lack of a global minimum enables totally legal abuse on top of the illegal stuff. people with access and respect have more opportunity to abuse than those without, and that goes for teachers too. but, once again, you can be appropriating the pain of survivors to deflect and silence people. please remember this before you say that shit.

4) "get help/therapy"

way ahead of you - years ahead of you. but it's not magic - people who say this often act as if you'll start behaving differently overnight. not only are some things simply beyond the ability of talking therapy to completely rectify, it also takes time and has to be selective. you've got to pick your priorities, and that's definitely not whatever ship or joke you're mad at me about today. therapy is a slow, arduous process that can't guarantee results - it isn't "anti-recovery" to recognise that, it's honesty. while I've been in therapy for a long time, it is not necessarily going to change whatever you don't like about me - whether that's because it can't, because my focus now is on more important or urgent things, or because I don't want to change that.

5a) "tell your family you ship incest, see how that goes; normal people find it disgusting"

actually, some know, and they're fine with it. in fact, one prefers sibling pairings in fiction to all other dynamics because, to paraphrase, "it's a deeper level of messed up co-dependence". so unfortunately for you, my remaining family (by which I mean those not dead or cut out of my life after abuse and so forth) actually are able to distinguish between fiction and reality. plus, my reasoning for caring if they find it gross or not pertains only to recommending books and such - their opinions do not dictate my tastes.

5b) "don't sexualise/appropriate incestuous abuse" and "I bet you enjoyed being raped" and other attempts to upset me over 5a

firstly, as I've already said here, survivors can't be appropriating ourselves. in addition, you're not owed people's history or trauma - it's not okay to require people's personal information, or else you'll send anon hate and accusations of appropriation. secondly, I'm not sexualising our abuse (not just because I write horror, and so a lot of my writing is intended to be creepy, not sexy); these stories aren't about us, they're not us at all. entire dynamics/people (fictional or otherwise) aren't all going to be applicable to us or identical to us, just because they have something in common with us; they're not us and they're not accountable to us. thirdly, the fact that people send this stuff (attempting to trigger people's trauma over ships) is so much more worrying to me than somebody making our communal imaginary friends kiss. you're trying to hurt people. and finally, to the "I bet you enjoyed it" crowd (if you're at all serious): do you think you'd enjoy being in a real zombie apocalypse, alone, afraid, and really at risk of being eaten alive? a fictional scenario does not feel remotely the same as a real one. this isn't rocket science - things that look like you aren't you; fiction isn't reality; don't send anon hate. (edit: comparable "just leave me alone, I'm not hurting anyone" sentiments for yandere stuff, and anything else you decide I'm naughty for.)

6) "you'll be sent off to do manual labour once your communist revolution happens"

while I don't know why people think that I'm a communist, a dictatorial regime probably isn't going to want me to do manual labour. they're more likely to just shoot me; I'm useless and a liability. call me crazy, but something tells me that "ah yes, we shall give ze deranged cripple ze power tools" isn't the communist position.

7a) "they/them can't be singular pronouns"

yes they can, and they're used as such in both shakespeare and the bible. but you don't have to say this - I'm also okay with he/him, so you could've just used those and chilled out. also, do I look like somebody who views the rules of grammar as fully immutable and imperative?

7b) "enbies/aros/pan/etc aren't valid"

do you really think that you're going to change any hearts or minds by putting that in my ask box or under my funny maymays? chill out, it's not worth the effort - you could be planning a party (in minecraft) and having fun instead. it isn't worth my time to rant at everybody who's saying something isn't valid, updating how I'm explaining it as my opinions grow and general discourse around it evolves; I'm just who I am, somebody else is who they are - why bicker in presumptuous ways about if that's enough? it ultimately is valid, in my opinion, but that isn't an invitation to keep demanding that I debate. (edit: old posts of mine probably don't phrase things incredibly, on this or anything... I tried.)

8) "what are your politics?"

my politics are informed first and foremost by the knowledge that I'm not cut out to be some kind of leader - I don't want to be the guy who tells everyone else what to do, I just offer what seem to me like valid criticisms of how we are doing things now, and general pointers on the values and ethics that I would prefer to move towards. things like individual freedom, taking the most pacifist route where possible, trying not to give excessive power to small groups of people (governments or corporations), helping those in need even when they're not palatable, and letting me suck loads of dicks. but please refrain from decreeing me something - there's not enough information in what I said, so you'll just be filling in the blanks with assumptions. (edit: workplace democracy seems cool to me; benefits are good; fair fines and taxes; and the "sperm makes you loopy" saga: 1, 2, 3, and 4.)

9) "you're a narcissist"

no, I don't meet the diagnostic criteria. joking on the internet that you're hot doesn't make a person a narcissist. the fact that I've chosen to keep my actual self-esteem issues to myself is not proof that they don't exist - you're just not entitled to that information about me. but it's also not narcissism to really like how you look. (edit: don't throw labels around carelessly too.)

10a) "kin list?"

the fabric of the universe, a zombie, dionysus, maned wolf/arctic fox hybrid, a comedian, big gay, big rock, ambiguously partial insincerity. (edit: kin list may or may not be incomplete.)

10b) "kin isn't valid/that's just being insane"

haven't we established that I'm deranged, and that sending stuff like this on anon is simply a waste of your precious time? besides, I do not care if it's invalid or insane - it's fun, I'm happy. (edit: see 7b for my opinion on sending me yet another ask with "that's invalid" in it; I'm not in the mood to discuss the nature of validity.)

bonus: "it gets better" and "trigger list?"

as I've said before, things just don't always get better for everyone - sometimes things can't be cured or even treated, sometimes they kill you; in some cases it could get better if not for a blockade or lack of time. the world is messy. it needs to be more normalised to reassure or comfort people without relying on saying that their issue will get better or be cured. it does suck to be this ill, but it also sucks to be made out to be a lazy pessimist, just because I have the audacity to not play along. and as for the trigger list, I don't like providing people with an easily accessed list of ways to hurt my feelings or harm me - upsetting me is supposed to be challenging, and thus rewarding. if you want a cheat sheet then you're out of luck, I'm afraid.

bonus #2: "FAQ stands for frequently asked questions, it doesn't need that s at the end!"

yeah, I know, I just enjoy chaos and disarray.

bonus #3 (edit): "what are your disabilities and how exactly are they incurable and/or deadly?"

again, I don't tell the internet everything about me, especially when it poses a risk, especially not as an easily accessible list for you to refer back to whenever you feel inclined to hurt my feelings. that is understandably a sore subject. (edit: that includes physical health issues btw.)

bonus #4 (edit): "so we shouldn't be critical?"

if it wasn't clear from my answer about politics or my post in general, you can have opinions about things, and you can voice that. it's just not realistic to exist at extremes: to think that you alone should dictate what exists in fiction, or to think that people shouldn't be expressing disdain or criticism of any calibur. say how you feel about things, that's fine, but it's also fine if people find that they don't value your input. plus we're all flawed, we can all be hypocritical from time to time, we all get bitchy, and we all make mistakes, or even knowingly fuck things up. that's important to keep in mind, whether we're talking about the one being criticised or the one doing the criticising - poor choices of words, imperfect tone, or contradictory ideas are inevitably going to happen occasionally.

congrats on reaching the end! if you have, at any point, said one of these to me, you owe a hug to your nearest loved one (once it's safe).

edit: might add more links/bonus points in the future when I think of things, but it's late now. (sorry for links where prior notes in the thread have my old url, that may get a tad confusing; also, not all links are my blog or my op, since it is to illustrate points/vibes, not to self-promo.)

[antis-delete-your-blogs-pls-thx]

Hi! Sorry to be bothering you, but I just want answers. So, I’m an anti, however recently I have begun to question anti ideology (especially considering how disgusting anti’s can be to pro-shippers), so I was wondering if you would be willing to explain why dark fiction is okay to consume? It’s alright if you don’t want to ^^

I'm always willing to explain! I'll try not to make this so long that you'll want to throw your device out the window, but chances are that's what's going to happen.

First off, thinking dark fiction is gross is okay and not what I'm against. I really don't like bloodplay, for example, and if someone asked me what I thought of that kink I'd say "bleh gross nty". It's the making judgements on people for not also finding it gross that I have an issue with. So if you "switched sides", so to speak, anyone who would expect you to magically like problematic shit is misunderstanding the point.

Anyway. To the real stuff! Psychology is a relatively new field, I admit, so there haven't been hundreds of years of official studies run on the effects of dark fiction on the human brain. But so far they show a correlation in increased aggressive behaviour in some people. So, definitely some people will not do well with it. However, this discounts some important other factors. Let's get into those:

Aggressive behaviour ≠ violent behaviour in psychological terms. There isn't any proof that aggressive behaviour transfers over to violent behaviour automatically, and in most cases we can safely assume it doesn't, because other things correlated with increased aggression (sleep deprivation, high temperatures, etc) happen often without violence. This makes a very small sliver of the population vulnerable to this risk factor. Good news! Risk factors can be mitigated with protective factors. This includes education, especially programs (called primary prevention programs) designed to promote communication, problem solving, and anger management. The basics of education are really up to parents and school faculty, not fanfiction authors. But tagging and trigger warnings are a good way to bridge that gap as much as we can, as labeling behaviour specifically with a "this is abuse" sticker in bold letters teaches people to recognise what abusive behaviour looks like. You can frame it romantically, but if you read the warning labels, which you always should, you can see through the romantic framing and into the true nature of the actions. For example, a Bakudeku fic labeled "unhealthy relationship", "abusive behaviour", "Bakugou has issues to work through", etc, acknowledges the nature of Bakugou's bullying. If there's fluff, it's still in a sense overwritten by the warning labels. And real life abusive relationships can have fluffy moments, too. Mine did. That's part of what makes them insidious, because you get used to the black and white "if they do bad things they can't also be shown to do good things, so if my abuser does good things, is that really a bad relationship?" kind of mentality that's common here. It is a bad relationship. Fluff doesn't discount abuse.

Next of course is that violent people can be attracted to violent media. So when antis draw causation from the correlation of aggression and media violence, they're not viewing the whole picture, which is vital in all statistical analyses.

Okay, you say. Right. But if we encourage problematic stuff, that means all fanfic will be problematic stuff, and that will normalise these awful things. Well, no. Not really. Underage tagged works (a tag that also includes teenager/teenager relationships) on AO3 are something like 1 percent of all works. That implies it's not going to be written about too often, and also shows that it doesn't have a great reach. The most popular fic of all time has, what, 600k hits? 600k people is a lot of people, but it's still not enough to normalise something as horrific as child abuse or rape. That's a societal moral. Changing something like that is a top-down process that requires A LOT of reach. And frankly, for the average person with the average moral compass, normalising that would be very, very difficult. People can definitely experience deindividuation and a sudden disregard for morals, but it doesn't usually come from the media they consume. It's usually a sense of freedom from reprimand and encouragement by a higher authority. And take again that it's only 1 percent of the fics on AO3, and therefore has halved traffic. It's not a significant threat.

Okay, but why would you want to write it in the first place? If it could be used to hurt someone else why even bother? A lot of things can be used to hurt someone else. It's about proportions. How much hurt vs how much good. Most predators are going to be using some other tool instead, so banning those fics and art that's disgusting doesn't make a significant dent in predation, and also limits the good effects that can happen (which include freedom from censorship, which is hugely important in maintaining a democracy). Another good effect is cope shipping and catharsis. Sure, this isn't always going to work. Hell, a lot of therepuetic techniques themselves don't work on everyone. But it's a legitimate method that, using the principles of exposure therapy, doesn't automatically mean retraumatisation. Whether the technique is helpful to a particular survivor should be up to them and their therapist. A random stranger on the internet doesn't know them well enough to make that kind of judgement.

And finally, even the most repulsive of fictional content doesn't depict things that have directly happened IRL. You can make fictional characters suffer and nobody IRL suffers instead. This is good for exploring things that can't be explored IRL. It can help curb impulses. When antis compare the suffering of fictional characters to real people, they're implying real people and fictional characters have equal rights. Real people always matter more than fictional ones. Fictional characters aren't people in the first place. No real person suffers as a direct result of dark fiction being written. Implying that the suffering they cause is equal trivialises the true gravity of real abuse. Real abuse always harms someone as a direct result. Always.

Anyway. Those are the most common discourse points. Hope that helped. Sorry it was long.

[noxstellacaelum]

S4 Veronica Mars (and Clary and Jace Still Deserved Better).

I know.  I’m using Tumblr to post -- anonymously -- about guilty pleasure TV.  It’s silly.�� But these posts are, in the end, for me:  a way to enjoy certain genres and characters, and to process my frustration over certain Hollywood tropes.  That’s why I wrote about the god-awful memory wipe in the Shadowhunters finale first.  As I said, I still can’t believe that anyone thought it was a good idea to undo three seasons of character development, and leave Clary, the protagonist of a SIX BOOK series, wandering alone on the streets of NYC in a skimpy party dress in November with no money, no I.D., no apartment, no money, no memories, no best friend, no mother, no father figure, and no love of her life.  Or, why it made sense to leave Clary’s love Jace distraught and suicidal while everyone in his life either failed to notice, failed to care, or told him to suck it up and move on.  Nope, not over it.

But on to my second-most-frustrating TV viewing experience of 2019 -- Veronica Mars.  WARNING:  Spoilers and discussions of Veronica’s character arc -- including her experiences as a survivor of sexual violence -- follow.

In the land of WB/CW teen-oriented dramas on air during the show’s original run, Veronica stood out -- she was smart, snarky, tenacious, and self-aware.  While there was ship drama -- WB/CW, after all -- Veronica always existed as a distinct person apart from her romantic relationships.  She was the protagonist, not just arm candy for boys’ stories.  Her most important relationship with a male was with her father.  She had friends who mattered to her.  And she was aware of the class and race dynamics of Neptune:  Though she was never wealthy, she was able to “pass” as an O9-er before her best friend’s murder upended her social circle b/c she was blonde, pretty, and dating a rich white boy.  She knew that others -- Eli/ Weevil -- never could pass.   To be sure, Veronica was not perfect -- where’s the fun in that?  And, Rob Thomas (the creator) always had some blind spots -- who doesn’t?  But even with sometimes cringe-worthy stories, characters, the first two seasons, especially, were sharp, bracing, and like nothing else on TV at the time in teen drama space.

When the show was cancelled after three seasons, the show’s fans -- “marshmallows” -- ended up funding a movie kickstarter campaign.  The movie was fine -- a fair amount of fan service, and a Veronica who understood that Neptune wasn’t necessary good for her, but who stayed anyway, b/c Logan.  But fine enough.  At least Veronica had managed to get a psych degree from Stanford and a JD from Columbia in the time between the end of the show and the timeline of the movie.

Then, Hulu greenlit a S4.  The series dropped in the summer of 2019 in conjunction with star Kristen Bell’s visit to SD Comicon.  Rob Thomas (and Kristen Bell) have described S4 Veronica Mars as not the Veronica Mars that fans want, but the Veronica that fans need.  I guess that’s true, if what you need is a now wholly dysfunctional, self-sabotaging Veronica who seems to have regressed since high school:  She’s less smart and less self-aware than her high school self, she’s riven by self-loathing, and she’s clueless and often cruel to the people in her life, including those who love her.    (And don’t forget casually racist — hello shitty treatment of characters of color, esp Latino characters.)

(Caution -- spoilers) (Caution -- discussion of character’s experience with sexual violence).

For example, S4 Veronica questions whether Logan’s therapy for PTSD (military service) is making him boring and less interesting sexually:  An odd choice, perhaps, for a Stanford psych major.  She gets high with random strangers without a second thought, after spending much of the time in the early days of the show dealing with the aftereffects of being roofied and assaulted at a party during high school and seeing her best friend Lily (who is shown as being a promiscuous risk taker) murdered by (as she figures out) her boyfriend’s abusive father.  She’s basically the worst friend and lover around.  So of course she misses who is really behind the crimes at issue in S4 until it’s too late.  

TO BE CLEAR:  Veronica does not have to perfect.  Smart people make  “bad,” self-destructive choices all the time.  And, trauma (perhaps especially trauma associated with sexual violence) is not easy to process.  I get that  a story about Veronica’s perfect life in seaside Neptune, with her perfect hot boyfriend and her loving father would not make for great TV.  (After all, Murder She Wrote’s been done. :-)). 

But what irritates me is that S4 Veronica is uniquely “stuck” and going backwards in S4:  She’s swallowed up by her trauma and her self-loathing, without even a glimmer of self-awareness, until it is too late.  Really??  Smart, tenacious Veronica can’t see real-time that she’s falling into the abyss??   She can’t see what’s she’s doing to the people in her life?  She can’t see any of it, until it’s too late?  Why is S4 Veronica less intelligent, self-aware in her mid-30s (S4 age - thank you @amillioninprizes for the correction, see below)) than she was at 18?  Even after getting a degree from Stanford and a JD from Columbia?  Even after resuming her relationship with the now-military-officer-therapy-going Logan?  Really?  Was making her self-destructive, incompetent, and blinded by self-loathing that the only way to move the character and the story forward?  Was digging in on all of the shitty tropes/ Rob Thomas-always-there shitty tendencies really the way to go (VM’s rape is basically the only plot advancement device; most of the women are weak, flawed; Veronica is shitty to other women and to people of color)?

At the end of the day, characters need to have an emotional logic/ emotional core.  Veronica’s emotional core -- for me -- was her intelligence, her self-awareness, her unflinching eye for the truth.  S4 Veronica could have had a messy, imperfect life -- as most of us do, I suspect -- and still maintained, at her center, her intelligence, her self-awareness, and her gritty belief in the truth.  I think Rob Thomas lost that center in S4.  Consequently, I think the story lost its emotional logic.  And, S1-S2 Veronica would have called that shit out.    

[bigskydreaming]

So, okay. The posts about how psychodrama and exposure therapy have been used effectively to treat PTSD. Sigh. Oh boy. Okay, see, because the thing is they’re not wrong, on a technical level. But they’ve been so completely stripped of context ie the specific HOW and in WHAT WAYS those are ACTUALLY deemed helpful rather than perpetuating self-harm - as to be quite misleading, IMO.

Disclaimer that I am not a licensed therapist, and I do not claim to be. I am just a survivor whose done a crapton of coping in various ways in my life, and researched just about every school of thought there is on these subjects, as well as interacted with a plethora of other survivors of all types in a variety of settings like support groups, one on one conversations, etc. Do with the following whatever you want. I’m not sourcing this because none of it stems from a singular source other than the accumulation of all the reading and talking with professionals and other survivors and own experiences and whatnot. Evaluate what I’ve put in this posts on its own merits, take away what seems worth following up on, even if just as a starting place for your own research, dismiss it entirely because of my lack of a PhD, whatever. Entirely up to you. I’m merely writing it down because its in my head either way. I’m happy to discuss what I have to say here, but I’m not gonna engage with potshots at my credibility that are largely focused on semantics or just my lack of credentials. I don’t have the time or the patience for that, so don’t be surprised if I just ignore that shit. Anyway. Moving on: 

There are many, many different types of trauma, and even trauma stemming from abuse or rape can be so different in so many key respects, that what is helpful for one person can absolutely be the exact opposite for another. This is why I generally stay away from “I write dark smut because its my coping mechanism” arguments - I have enough trouble getting people to argue my actual points when there’s barely any room for misinterpretation....I have a migraine already at the thought of how people will spin my stance on this out of context.

But the thing is....given the varying degrees and types and contexts and dynamics and effects different instances of abuse and rape have on individuals....I’ve never and I never will argue that there is zero validity to the idea that anyone has ever been helped to work through their traumas by writing certain things. There’s just no way I, or anyone, is qualified to make that claim. BUT, the flip side of that coin is it is equally unilaterally impossible AND IRRESPONSIBLE, IMO, to blithely trot out the idea that writing and reading dark fiction as a coping mechanism is universally harmless and most likely to result in positive growth rather than negative stagnation or even backsliding into more active states of trauma.

So take something like roleplaying and psychodrama as tools for helping a survivor deal with their trauma....absolutely there’s a place for that. BUT whether or not it will likely be to a person’s benefit and healing rather than counter-productively reinforcing negative mindsets or behaviors - depends almost ENTIRELY on WHAT a therapist’s aims are in using psychodrama as one of their tools. What explicitly they think it has to contribute towards a patient’s specific situation and issues.

Because the thing is, psychodrama is essentially a tool for INSIGHT. Nothing more, nothing less. It essentially has a patient roleplay either themselves in a recreation of a past traumatic event or time period, but in a controlled setting and with someone to guide them through it....or in other instances, has the patient roleplay themselves in the role of their abuser or attacker. 

Its ultimately a way of putting someone in their own shoes during a prior event, or the shoes of someone else present for it or involved in it....and viewing the event with fresh eyes, from new angles, given that they now have the distance and the awareness of its lack of ��realness’ to focus not just on their fear or panic of the time, but going through the motions of the event while now able to spare attention and focus for what was happening OUTSIDE their tunnel-visioned panic of the time, or what might have been going through the heads of the other people involved.

So again, as a tool for insight and information gathering or paradigm-breaking, it has a wide range of potential applications. It absolutely can and does help a number of people heal in a number of ways. Using psychodrama and roleplaying recreations of past events and their aftermath can help someone understand why they reacted in certain ways, why they developed certain behaviors or tendencies in its aftermath or in their attempts to recover. It can be used to help demonstrate to a survivor that they’re being too hard on themselves, expose the lie of ‘if only I’d done this instead, everything could have gone differently’ that many survivors use to punish themselves. 

It can be used with survivors who are struggling to understand why and how someone could do this to them, or especially with survivors of abuse who worry about the possibility of becoming just like their abuser, continuing a cycle of abuse and harm because of how they’ve internalized what was done to them, or attempted to justify it over the years. 

Using these techniques and methodologies can help put a survivor in the driver’s seat of a recreation, essentially, have them roleplay their own attacker, with an impartial professional available to act as a soundingboard and fact checker for their own decision-making process throughout the recreation - ie periodically asking “now are you saying you’d do that next because its what YOU want to do in that role, or because its what you assume your abuser would want to do there?” And thus it can help reassure an abuse survivor that ultimately, they just don’t think the way their abuser likely did, and despite their fears, their thought processes do not lend themselves towards the chain of actions and reactions that would likely result in perpetrating certain abusive behaviors themselves.

HOWEVER.

The caveat that I pretty much never see in posts citing the use of these techniques in healing from trauma, is that for every potential application, there’s another instance or way in which these techniques have no value, and in fact can cause harm. For instance, not every survivor struggles with why someone would do to them what they did, what they must have been thinking to hurt them in this way. Some survivors have simply no desire to wonder what was going through their attacker’s head...it means nothing to them, and offers nothing to help them with what’s in their own heads. So as a tool for information gathering or discovering new angles to a past trauma, its meaningless at best.

Similarly, these kinds of ideas or techniques attempted without an experienced and impartial observer present for the recreations can do just as much harm as they have potential to help. For instance, if someone has struggled with self-blame ever since a traumatic event, convinced themselves that it might be their own fault, because they did or didn’t do certain things....these kinds of recreations and roleplaying present a very tricky tightrope to walk. 

If the survivor ISN’T able to fully make the distinction between their panic, adrenaline fueled thoughts and reactions of the time, and their own more capable and clinical view of the recreated scene due to the safety and comfort of their current danger-free environment...then its entirely possible, and likely, to come up with ideas or alternative actions or choices that theoretically could have allowed them to manipulate the situation towards a less traumatizing conclusion, or perhaps allowed them to avoid it happening at all. 

Thus, by coming to these ‘conclusions’ via the psychodrama role-playing, a survivor has actually given their brains MORE ammunition to use against them when thinking that its their own fault their trauma happened, because they did x instead of these now clearly defined alternative choices they’ve thought up....and failed to healthily internalize as things they could not reasonably expect themselves to have thought of at the time.

See what I mean?

Similarly, exposure therapy is....oof. Yikes. I have a lot of thoughts about its validity as a tool for helping with PTSD and associated trauma responses and aftermath. I’m perfectly aware that they’ve had enormous success with using virtual reality type programs to treat soldiers’ PTSD in a variety of ways.

The thing is though, prior to the viability of such technology, exposure therapy has almost unilaterally been used to treat ANXIETY disorders, specifically. Such as with people who experience various phobias.

Because....anxiety is largely irrational/instinctive in these types of things. They’re a person undergoing a panic response to varying degrees, in response to a threat or danger that’s largely imagined....based either on memories triggered by a similarity in their environs to the setting of a past trauma, or by hypothetical extrapolations off of various stimuli, or sometimes, just completely irrational lines of thinking.

So essentially, the varying applications of exposure therapy as a method of treatment for anxiety disorders specifically....is that by inducing an encounter with the root fear of the patient, but in a controlled environment where they’re in no possible danger, a therapist can theoretically enhance a patient’s awareness of the irrationality of their fears. They can empirically guide a patient through an understanding of how their mind is playing tricks on them and imagining or embellishing threats that objectively are not a possibility at the moment. And from there, help a patient build a mental toolbox of thoughts and thought processes they can pull out and use as tools when their anxieties threaten to overwhelm them...and they need a way to establish an anchor to objective reality and separate imagined threat from real surroundings....to detect and affirm when something is just their mind playing tricks on them again.

The problem here lies in the fact that this is largely only useful in helping ground people in the reality of things not usually being the threat or danger they imagine them to be. But what exposure therapy can NOT do, is ‘expose’ a survivor to a reconstruction of the conditions of their past trauma, or a ‘scene’ that plays out similarly to the way their trauma did....and reassure them there’s nothing to be afraid of there, because their fears and anxiety in the scene being recreated....WERE VERY MUCH REAL AND VALID.

Now, one possible use of exposure therapy in terms of singular event-born PTSD....is in helping survivors deal with specific TRIGGERS. Using exposure therapy techniques in controlled settings and with professionals to guide survivors through a session of this.....therapists can expose survivors to various stimuli-based triggers, and much as with phobias, a patient can be walked through a more objective awareness and understanding of the fact that although their triggers based on this specific trauma are completely understandable and valid....they are statistically unlikely to act as a forewarning or precursor to ANOTHER instance of their root trauma, and thus do not present a rational fear that a survivor needs the fight or flight response they’ve conditioned themselves to have upon experiencing these triggers. As with phobias, this allows patients to assemble a variety of tools to use to counter the psychological and physiological effects of encountering these specific triggers.

But this isn’t the same thing as treating the fears and anxieties born of worrying something like their trauma might ever happen again, period. Because those fears are categorically...with merit. Survivors are just as vulnerable to abuse and sexual assault as non-survivors, and statistically speaking are more likely to be prone to greater likelihoods of revictimization than non-survivors are of being victimized initially. For a variety of reasons. But basically...exposure therapy can’t help a survivor be reassured there’s nothing to be afraid of....when it can’t guarantee that. Nobody can.

Now, like I said, there’s been considerable success with treating the PTSD of soldiers with VR-based exposure therapy. But again, context is hugely important here. Because war is in and of itself, a viable setting. Soldiers who get PTSD as a result of battlefield trauma, and then go home....well, some of the most common symptoms in their case tend to be flashbacks and an inability to distinguish past from present...essentially, many often find themselves feeling like they’re right back there in the heat of battle where they were initially traumatized. 

So in their cases, in terms of THIS specific manifestation of PTSD....VR exposure therapy has a lot of merit, as using it, therapists can guide their patients back and forth between grounded, objective reality, and virtual reality environments that have been programmed to simulate the wartime environments their PTSD episodes transport them to. In doing so, therapists can help anchor their patients’ awareness in the reality that they are no longer in that wartime environment. That its not real, that future encounters with it are the product of artificial constructs their brains have produced. They can establish clear boundaries between real, and not real, and as described previously, help them assemble tools for objectively breaking down the false reality their PTSD creates for them in the future, break through to the present time and place underneath.

But see how this technique fundamentally can’t work to help anchor triggered survivors through PTSD episodes, more generally speaking, and not just in terms of coping with specific triggerings? A soldier can be made empirically aware that he is not experiencing his root trauma again here and now, because it relies on him being in that wartime environment, and empirically, he is no longer in that wartime environment. A rape survivor, in contrast, can not be made empirically aware they can’t be experiencing another rape or threat of another rape here and now....because there is no empirical proof that what happened once can’t and won’t happen in similar settings possessing the triggers they’re reacting to, or just in any future settings at all.

Which brings me to exposure therapy relying on recreations of past traumas via written fictional scenes.

In theory, all the ingredients are there. A controlled, safe environment - wherever the survivor reading or writing the scene is. The ability to end the scene whenever it gets to be too much - via simply putting down the story or stepping away from writing it. Everything needed to reassure a survivor, while experiencing a simulation of their trauma that might very well still feel viscerally real at times, due to how well or intensely its written....nevertheless, all the ingredients are here for the survivor to ultimately put the necessary distance between the recreation and themselves, and from that distance, more impartially observe that its not real, it can’t hurt them, their trauma is in the past and its behind them.

The problem here is that ironically, there’s TOO MUCH distance between survivors and the recreations. Because of the very nature of fiction as a medium.

See, the thing that can’t be stressed enough, is no matter how well or accurately or in as much detail as you recreate or simulate the environment and conditions of a rape or setting of an abusive event.....rape and abuse, at the end of the day, are not inherently about specific events, interactions, causes and effects.

Rape and abuse are DYNAMICS.

The trauma isn’t born of the physical acts being recreated. The trauma is born of the aggressor having taken something ephemeral from the victim, as well as the physical effects of their actions.

Basically, the problem with using fiction as a recreation of say, someone’s rape.....is that the essential, fundamental element of the rape that MAKES it a rape....is the sexual agency or autonomy the rapist strips their victim of, takes from them. Because rape ultimately isn’t about sex, its about power. Sex is merely the medium by which a rapist TAKES that power. But the crime, the heart of the trauma, the thing that makes it linger long past any physical injuries...is the rapist having used sex to exert power over their victim, make them feel lesser in that moment, and in recollections of that moment.

And this element CAN NOT EXIST in fiction. By virtue of them being fictional characters. They’re not real. There is no power for the fictional rapist to take from their fictional victim....ONLY THE SIMULATION OF IT.

Because when I said fictional recreations ironically have too much distance.....I meant because EVERY consumption of fictional scenes by their very nature....have a degree of distance between the reader or viewer and the fiction. There’s an implicit awareness of this EVERY TIME SOMEONE SITS DOWN TO WATCH TV OR READ A BOOK. These are little rituals we each have done too many times for them to NOT be ingrained on some primal, fundamental level, deep in our lizard brains where the knowledge and awareness that these things can NEVER hurt us, that we are ALWAYS in a safe and controlled environment wholly separate from the things that we might be afraid of.

There is a REASON that military vets treated this way use VR technology for their recreations. That the theory had to wait for the technology to catch up to it before it could be viable in specific respects at all. That its not enough to sit soldiers down in a room and just play war movies over and over until the therapist shuts off the TV and reestablishes the ‘real world.’

Because ultimately, we simply are not capable of willfully divorcing ourselves from reality and fully immersing in a fictional recreation that exists just on TV or on the page. There is always a part of us that remains firmly anchored in reality and cognizant of that...

And as a result, there is only so far we can ever project ourselves into a fictional recreation....which means ultimately, we always are going to hit a wall there. No matter how much we identify with one of the characters, project ourselves into their shoes, there is always a basic awareness that we are not them, and we are not facing the danger they are. 

Which means no matter HOW good or detailed or accurate or emotionally resonant the words on the page are, as they describe each moment of the interaction between aggressor and victim that seems to the reader or writer to otherwise be a perfect recreation of what happened to them....there is simply NO WAY to recreate the one explicitly essential element of that specific trauma....the taking of power, from the one character by the other. Because between the two fictional characters, there is no actual power dynamic, and no actual exchange of power taking place.

Only the APPEARANCE of it.

And as a result, a survivor might very well FEEL helped via this particular coping mechanism, with them handling exposure to such a recreation much better than they did the first handful of times. But is this actually healing, or could it just as easily be termed desensitization? Because the thing they’re taking in, internalizing is NOT a perfect transportation to the circumstances of their rape and the successful emergence out the other side with newfound awareness of having been safe from harm the whole time.

Without any way to even pretend that the dynamic being witnessed from a distance has actually resulted in a theft of agency rather than merely the appearance of it.....what’s left? What actually sits there, described so vividly on the page?

Sex.

Because just like rape isn’t really sex so much as its the taking or asserting of power VIA sex...the image or description of one person raping another without the actual taking or assertion of power....basically just looks a lot like sex.

Which incidentally, IMO, might have a fucking LOT to do with how fucking bad our society is at noting the difference between sex and rape, and the fact that they’re not interchangeable or one and the same. And why rape survivors so often face slut-shaming and victim-blaming and are accused of actually wanting it.

Because when you’ve been conditioned by a lifetime of fictional media consumption to equate rape with the sex you SEE or READ about, as being basically the entirety of it and the intangible elements of it just abstract to you.....its very easy to look at a survivor and see not someone who had something intangible but very much REAL stolen from them via sex....but just a person who had bad sex they didn’t like.

And THIS, more than anything else, is what I personally view as the greatest ramification of widespread rape fantasies and noncon fics in fandom: that there is ultimately a ceiling on how much it can help any or every survivor cope or heal from their trauma - even while acknowledging that there are surely some specific contexts or combinations of elements in some individuals’ traumas that allow for fictional recreations to still largely serve the function those survivors aim to get out of them - but again, in terms of a coping mechanism that’s universally applicable or viable for all survivors of all scenarios? 

Nuh uh. No way. There’s no possible chance of making that claim in all honesty, and without making that claim, even the argument of it being a successful coping mechanism for SOME survivors in some specific ways, does not validate the ease with which its trotted out as a truism for all survivors to take heed of and all nonsurvivors to respect.

But MEANWHILE, at the same time, an equally inevitable end result of these fics.....is the continued desensitization of readers en masse, to the reality of rape as a theft of something intangible, impossible to fully recreate or depict as an experience, except in reality or potentially, some day in virtual reality. 

It inevitably serves to perpetuate the unspoken and perhaps sometimes even unconscious view, that rape is ultimately just sex of a certain kind. And so more and more, it becomes viewed as something that has the capacity to titillate and arouse....the same as any other form of sex, obviously. Because why wouldn’t it....if ultimately, that’s all its treated as being? 

[bellamyblinkingrapidly]

I prob should not have an opinion on this but I didn’t like the thank u next Sansan scene

So disclaimer: I have not been raped. I’ve been sexually assaulted but not raped. So I don’t claim to fully understand or to have that much of a valid opinion on this subject matter or anything.

I’ve seen some people saying they hated the Sandor/Sansa scene & some people said they liked the writing. Both sides there’s opinions from people who have been through similar trauma and from people who haven’t.

But I guess one thing I think we can all agree on is that the writing and scene could have been better! (Or just not existed....)

It’s hard to please everyone, but I just don’t believe that was the best that could be done - to have lots of people online really negatively affected by that conversation. To have people feeling like Sansa’s rape was categorized as character development. Which is just shitty.

I personally don’t feel like the scene was necessary at all and that makes it worse.

I already know Sansa’s changed. I’ve seen it. The biggest proof of that was her killing LF. Jon knows. Arya knows. Tyrion knows. Several characters have commented on it. Daenerys even later in the episode says Sansa’s changed and while I didn’t love that either, it was better than the Sansa scene we got.

I guess there might be something nice about Sansa claiming her own new identity and liking who she is now. It’s nice that she’s not looking back at the past and wondering what could have been because that’s really toxic for anyone to do. You can’t change the past only the future.

But again, WRITE IT BETTER THEN bc that’s not what we got. It didn’t feel like accepting the past. It felt like almost a thank you to abusers for her not being her “stupid little bird” self anymore. Which is really self-loathing jargon that a therapist would not approve of.

(I just think of Devon from Ladylikes recent video about her assault and how she emphasized how mean she was to 23 year old Devon for so long & that she wishes she wouldn’t have been so mean to herself. I also after my sexual assault very hardcore blamed myself for it. So it’s not totally unreasonable that a Sansa who is still coping would hate on the younger Sansa... but they made it seem like it was a good thing for her to do?? It’s super not & they aren’t showing young women reasonable and realistic ways of coping and dealing with trauma like that)

Again about the writing...

Bottom-line GOT claims to be a cinematic show, and the writing this season is weakening that claim. TV tells and tells and tells. But the cardinal rule in film is SHOW don’t tell.

They showed us Sansa killing Ramsay. They showed us Sansa killing LF. They’ve shown us Sansa being stoic and smart and strong. They’ve shown us her character growth. And they’ve shown us a confident Sansa lately, which leads you to believe she’s found a way to be happy with who she is despite what she’s been through.

We’ve also had dialogue from Sansa herself about how she learned from Cersei. About how she finally learned from LF.

Those scenes were powerful, I think, and well done.

But they gave us a Sansan scene where he was extremely rude and insensitive & she still opened up to him for no reason. And it was basically like a thank u next moment of her saying she’s almost glad it happened to her because she’s “better” now.

I get the general sentiment.

We as a culture do this with heartbreak and pain a lot. Try to say it made us stronger or better to give it meaning and to make us feel better

But abuse and rape (and honestly other suffering as well) should not be glorified into something that will make you stronger. It shouldn’t be something that almost looks like “oh well she’s better off for it.” In this light it almost seems desirable for something terrible to happen to you so you can become a badass... (Dany kinda perpetuates this as well. They just don’t do the best Job In GOT of making the distinction between being strong DESPITE those things that happened - not that they made her stronger..) And That’s the dumbest shit ever. Like that’s how the scene kinda played out in my opinion & that sucks.

Like really bad.

...

So as someone who was sexually assaulted I did try at first to explain it away and spin it as a good thing. Like I wanted this. Or it wasn’t that bad. Or it wasn’t sexual assault. Or we’ll be together now. Or later - I’ll grow from this. Etc. I didn’t want to be a victim.

I don’t think Sansa does either, so if she’s doing this kind of deflecting thing... well I can understand. But the show doesn’t seem to be leaning into that - we never really get to see how she copes and deal with all that has happened to her. It’s got to be a shit ton of PTSD & I’m guessing she doesn’t get to go to therapy or anything. It’s a lot to deal with on your own and we don’t get to see her crying at night or depressed or anxious really. So for them to show us her in a state of dealing with it, even in this way, would be unusual.

I think this scene was trying to tell us she’s “over it” and if so that’s just laughably bad writing. And clearly they needed consultants at least when writing.

Anyway... this post has been all over the place & I’m nervous to even voice my opinion bc I don’t want to hurt anyone or cause any hate or anything. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, especially rape survivors on this issue!! I just hope that there could be less fighting and more just realizing..

The simple fact

(In my humble opinion)

Is that we absolutely just

Did not need this scene one bit because it didn’t do anything for the story.

[athetos]

under a read more for sensitive content (somewhat detailed rape/abuse mention), basically im looking for advice in a situation

does anyone know how to like... tell your parents you have ptsd? i’ve been wanting to tell them about the abusive relationship i was in for a while now (its been a solid 5 years since the relationship started, 3 since it ended) but it took me literally a year after it ended just to open up about it in therapy for the first time because i had so much guilt and blamed myself for it, cuz gaslighting is one hell of a fucking time

my mom was in an abusive relationship with my dad for 20 years and my stepdad is a rape survivor, so i know that they won’t judge me or anything like that, and i feel like they deserve to know, it’s just that i don’t want to burden them or anything. they both have ocd (my stepdad is diagnosed and we’re pretty sure my mom has it so she’s going to therapy soon probably) and i know my mom’s ocd in particular has a lot to do with protecting me + my brother and stuff from harm, so im really worried she’ll wrongly blame herself for what i went through, cuz my ocd is the same way.  they both knew my ex when we were dating and although my mom kind of... disproved of her (probably cuz she’s used to noticing red flags at this point) none of them knew what was happening behind the scenes and damn i feel guilty again now for not opening up to them i gotta stop blaming myself for this shit but

i just really don’t know how to tell either of them especially since my stepdad and mom basically told me that they kind of suspected that i might have been a rape survivor, but they think that the event happened when i was a kid, and not from my ex.  cuz they know i have a lot of anxiety n stuff and speak out about rape probably more passionately than a non-survivor would and they both are concerned im hiding something from them, plus a lot of people have that dumb myth in their head that lesbians were previously abused by men or whatever, even tho my abuser was a woman.  they’ve told me many times i can tell them anything but i just really don’t know how to go about telling them this without it changing the way they look at me or anything.  i’ve already lied and told them our breakup was mutual because my mom was furious at my ex to begin with and for real i’m kind of scared one of them might even approach my ex cuz her family house is only like 10 minutes away n shit and i dont know i think im getting super worried over nothing i dont think they’d intentionally cause drama.

yeah idk if u have any idea on how to like. bring up this conversation with them pls let me know. nobody irl really knows because if my ex finds out i’ve said these things about her she has enough dirt on me she could very easily ruin my life so outside of therapy i’ve never talked face to face about it. anyways thank u for reading all of this

[rapeculturerealities]

This is about people you love. They need you. How can you be there for them when they’re in the midst of searing pain? I have some ideas for you. My biggest theme? Follow their lead, no matter where it goes or how hard it may be. Showing up and maybe saying or doing the wrong thing is far better than not showing up at all.

Things that are up to survivors, this month and every month:

Whether or not to disclose their story to you. If they tell you that they were assaulted and/or disclose any details of their story to you, they trust you deeply. They also trust you not to tell anyone unless they explicitly ask you to.

Whether to use the term “victim” or “survivor” when describing themselves.“Victim” tends to be a legal term, whereas “survivor” tends to be a term that people move toward throughout their healing processes. I personally prefer the word “survivor”, so I will be using it throughout this post, but that does not mean that people who prefer the term “victim” have less valid narratives.

Whether or not to report to the police. We live in a society that shames people for not reporting, but oftentimes, rape culture is alive and well within the legal system itself. Police officers often do not have appropriate training for the sensitive issue of sexual assault, and can have a bias against survivors, even though the rate of false reports is only 2%– the same as any other crime. In addition, reporting is not always the safest option, especially for domestic violence victims. It has to be up to the survivor.

Whether or not to get a rape kit done. Similar reasons to above. Some survivors just want to heal with the help of a therapist or trusted friend/family members and not ever get involved with the reporting process in any shape or form.

What their healing path will look like. Everyone is unique. In the same sense, so will be their healing path. There is no set timeline and no point at which a survivor’s feelings no longer matter because “it was so long ago.” PTSDis common, occurring in nearly one third of survivors. There are certain best practices for healing, including therapy, but again, everyone is unique. There is no wrong way to react to being assaulted.

Things that are not up to others:

Whether the assault could have been prevented. No one ever “asks for it.” Period. End of story. Sexual assault doesn’t discriminate. People of all different gender expressions, races, ages, sexual orientations, physical ability, religions, and appearances are assaulted every day.

Whether the survivor should forgive the assailant. Forgiveness of the assailant is not ever required, though it has over 100 benefitsto physical, emotional, and spiritual health. No one can or should ever pressure someone to forgive. That can damage the process, even if the survivor wanted to do it anyway. Every time we make decisions for survivors, we disempower them.

Whether the survivor’s assault was “serious” enough to merit the hard feelings they experience after. Not all assaults fit the narrative we expect. In fact, most of them don’t.

Things to do/say if someone discloses to you that they were assaulted:

“I’m deeply sorry that this happened to you. I know that my words can’t take your pain away, but I want you to know that I care about you and will be here to support you.”

“Your story is safe with me.”

“You didn’t deserve that. No one does.” Survivors often blame themselves for what happened because our rape culture society teaches people that if you wear outfits that aren’t revealing, protect yourself well enough with common sense and martial arts, and stay away from people who seem dangerous, you won’t be assaulted. These are rape myths that we have been conditioned to believe, and we have to unlearn them. Support your friend through that difficult process.

“Please let me know how I can support you best during this hard time.”

Understand that their relationship with physical touch has been altered. Ask before hugging or kissing them or anything else, even if you are their significant other.

Do not ask for any more details than they are willing to give. They will tell you what they need to tell you.

Do not ask who the person was.If they do happen to tell you, do not say anything like, “Really? John/Jane Doe seems like such a lovely person!” Assaulters masquerade as completely typical people who you can trust and be open with. It’s an act. Do not fall for it and discount what the survivor says happened to them.

Love them unconditionally and know that they may be or act inherently different from who they were before. That doesn’t mean that they’re broken. It does mean that they need your support now more than ever.

How to show up for survivors on a societal level:

Humanize women. Don’t just stand up for survivors because they’re “someone’s daughter, sister, or mother.” They’re people in their own right. Talk about them like that.

Avoid victim-blamingor slut-shaming Learn about things you should never ask a survivor.

Learn about consentand how to be an active participant rather than a bystander in dangerous moments.

Learn about rape culture, an aspect of an unjust society as well as a particular form of bullying, and fight it.

Stop people who are making rape jokes.

Don’t spread false notions of accusers being liars. It does not have a higher percentage of false reporting than that seen with any other crime.

Learn why someone might choose not to report sexual assault.

Believe survivors unequivocally and tell them you do.

Share resources such as self-care after rape masterposts

Volunteer, donate, and protest. Loudly. Some good organizations include:

Your local domestic violence shelter or rape crisis center

The Rape Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN)

Futures Without Violence

Polaris Project

V-Day

Children’s Defense Fund

Distributing Dignity

Just Detention International (JDI)

The Network for Victim Recovery of DC (NVRDC), which helped me personally and I owe them

[winterywitch]

anyway heres a summary of my discourse beliefves:

cishet aces/aros do not belong in gay spaces, bi spaces, lesbian spaces or trans spaces

for me my whole life the LGBT community has been more than that. my perspective is not that of some sad brainwashed child, forced into being more ~tolerant~ than i should be. i genuinely believe and have always believed the LGBT community is more than that, and im not just gonna drop that anytime soon, because i dont think the right to only consider the LGBT community as for “SGA and trans” people is liberation.

therefore cishet aces/aros belong in ace/aro spaces, which for me, count as LGBT.

but not gay, bi, lesbian or trans spaces.

there will be overlap because they are LGBT. but no, cishet aces/aros should have no claim to anything specifically for the L, G, B or T of the community.

for me the community is

Lesbians

Gay men

Bisexuals [SGA or not - as an SGA bi person, i get to speak on this.

Pansexuals

Trans people

Nonbinary people [counting agender, genderfluid, genderqueer, etc. non-cis, non-binary identities]

Intersex people (of course should they want to - the point of this list isn't YOU HAVE TO BE LGBT it's You Can Be Included)

Queer people [anyone who isn't cis or isn't het, including aroace people. non sga bi people im a little iffy on re: them 'reclaiming' queer]

Allies [i think this is important for people in the closet, as long as we dont let cishets get too big for their britches]

Aroaces

and hell, here’s a + to include anything i might have forgotten

aroaces are not functionally cishet.

straight privilege is straight privilege. it isnt not-homophobia privilege. to experience straight privilege you must be straight.

they definitely benefit from not experiencing homophobia. they can be absolute dumbasses abt homophobia for that exact reason.

but they dont experience straight privilege, because they’re not straight. that is all straight privilege has ever meant for me in my LGBT community.

cishet aces are cishet, and also aces. this means they benefit from cis privilege and straight privilege, but aphobia weighs down that straight privilege because they dont perform straightness in the Right way. i dont believe this necessarily makes them systemically oppressed the same way we are. but i dont believe aro or ace identities are privileged either.

there is no coherent Ace Community boogieman that is unanimously a bunch of homophobic, transphobic, racist jackasses, and if you believe that, you are a complete dumbass

yeah, the ace community is comprised of white cishets but, im gonna wager even more commonly, its comprised of literally every LGBT identity and race you can imagine. the ace community is not the white cishet community. it’s the community of everyone who IDs as ace or aro. this is not white cishets as a rule, as a majority, or even half the time.

that being said, inclusionists can say some stupid, shortsighted shit sometimes that is completely ignorant of LGBT history/oppression. i dont agree with the implications that i dont stand for every single thing they say and will not be held accountable for every single thing they say.

similarly, unless you wanna be held accountable for every single thing your side says/does before being allowed to call us out, uh, dont expect the same of us. the onus for this is on exclusionists, i have been around long enough to know you guys started this one. it is up to you guys to start being decent on that one, and then we’ll follow suit. those of us who dont are jackasses.

you are never at liberty EVER to explain to an ace person why their abuse or rape took place. that is called gaslighting, and no, you don’t get to throw a fit when someone calls this what it is. when you call a rape/abuse survivor an annoying disgusting freak for daring to talk about why their rape/abuse happened (since they factually know why it happened and you dont) and then proceed to insist that your headcanon of their trauma is the correct interpretation and theirs is not because theyre a filthy cishet ace (which they rarely are), that is quite literally the definition of gaslighting. and hey, don’t do it.

you are never at liberty EVER to explain to an ace person why their parents forced them into Therapy Specifically Designed To Convert Them Away From Asexuality (which may have a more efficient, shorter name). you dont know how that therapy worked or how the therapist worked because you werent there. you dont know that it was only because of homophobia so therefore this person has no right to claim their own trauma.

not everyone you hate is a cishet ace. don’t call people cishet aces unless you know for a fact they are cishet aces. i imagine you wouldnt want to call a trans lesbian a cishet, which exclusionists have done too many times for me to count. your platform should not be “you said something stupid and harmful, youre a cishet ace,” it should be “you said something stupid and harmful, end of statement.”

for some reason this is a controversial point in some discourse circles, but no one owes you sex. your partners don’t owe you sex. relationships do not equal sex. relationships do not even equal romantic love. relationships are a decision between multiple people on closer emotional intimacy.

if romantic and sexual aspects of a relationship are necessary for you, that’s understandable and okay! but you aren’t OWED that. people don’t need to out themselves as aro or ace for you. people dont need to feel pressured to give you anything they dont want to give. and you dont need to stay in relationships that dont make you happy.

allosexual privilege is not real. no one but white cishet men are 100% celebrated and privileged for experiencing sexual attraction. even white cishet women are oppressed for their attraction in many ways, and repressed from early childhood - so you can imagine how absolutely horrific sex-based oppression is for the LGBT community. we are not celebrated for sexual attraction, we are treated like we are dirty, and we are sexual predators.

WITHIN THE COMMUNITY, yeah, sometimes we are definitely, blatantly favored over aces, and people run around saying asexuality is unnatural, and sexual attraction is what makes us human. this is harmful and damaging, and it shouldn’t happen. i dont consider it systemic oppression and it definitely does not make allosexual privilege a thing.

calling people allosexuals is not something i condone. its not comparable to “cis” as a label, because cis people are an actual oppressor class towards trans people - non-ace LGBP folks are not towards ace people.

intracommunity bigotry is real and it is traumatic. people devalue it constantly and pretend it’s just a slap on the wrist, but it is an absolutely traumatic thing to have to face every day of your life. but it isnt the same as OPPRESSION, and we dont have to conflate the two concepts for intracommunity bigotry to be treated with the seriousness it deserves.

similarly, dont call people REGs unless they are not only aphobes but also truscum or TERFs. i also personally dont really believe in equating aphobes with truscum/TERFs but i dont believe in silencing trans people who openly talk about the similarities, either.

dont call people AERFs unless youre a trans woman holy shit

as someone who was directly affected by the truscum discourse when it happened [not debatable, by the way], this is pretty much recycled truscum discourse in my eyes. you dont need to lecture me on how its not.

just because someone on the “other side” called something you did ableist, misogynist, homophobic, transphobic, racist, etc., does not mean you get to shut your eyes and plug your ears. ESPECIALLY if you are part of a privileged class relevant to that accusation. for example as a white exclusionist you dont get to ignore the concerns of inclusionists of color or lecture them on the racism of the ace community. for example as a cis inclusionist [or honestly, even just a non-trans-woman inclusionist] you dont get to ignore the concerns of trans exclusionist women or lecture them on the similarities between TERFs and exclusionists.

“aspec” is not exclusively for the autistic community and i have NEVER seen claims that it was until ace discourse started. thats transparent as fuck to me and youre not fooling anyone. dont just make shit up lmfao

jokes about how Oh Lol Cringe aces inherently are, arent funny especially considering how many of these Jokes are steeped in anti-autistic ableism

idk when this happened but recently ableist jokes are the new Hot Topic of Comedy and thats like, mind-numbingly bad

i dont care what side youre on, IF YOU ARE USING THINGS LIKE FICTIONAL CP/PEDOPHILIC SHIPS/INCEST/RAPE CONTENT TO COPE WITH YOUR TRAUMA, YOU BETTER BE DOING THAT SHIT IN PRIVATE, ONLY SHARING IT WITH LIKE-MINDED, ADULT SURVIVORS, AND NEVER LETTING THAT CONTENT CIRCULATE OUTSIDE OF THAT GROUP. end of story. no ifs, ands or buts about it. speaking as a survivor who uses stuff like this to cope, being a survivor does not give you a free pass to, inadvertently or not, contribute to the pedophilia and circulation of grooming material on the internet. it is your RESPONSIBILITY as a survivor to not continue that cycle. if you avoid that responsibility, you have no right to play victim or pull the “im a survivor ;-;” card when people call you out on this.

educating kids on asexuality is not pedophilia, grooming or sexual abuse. jesus christ lmfao you dont have to assume people word it in a way thats inappropriate or predatory just because theyre pro-ace. kids NEED label/identity options, they are discovering who they are and without a label that fits for them, theyll likely feel like shit. let them have their labels. knowing about asexuality might greatly improve their life if it fits them!

for this reason, stop being weird about mogai labels/trying to “ban” them from everyone’s vocabulary/trying to turn them into some Cringe Joke that is only about Cishets Trying To Be Special. they didn’t fuck over EVERYONE.

inclusionists, in advising kids and questioning people who ask you for answers, be more open-ended. the insistence of “oh youre not a lesbian you’re a quioromantic demi-homosexual!” without also making it ok to just be a lesbian is what hurt and confused so many people on their journey to discovering their identity and its why they resent the whole mogai thing, fairly so. make it okay to just be a lesbian, or just be gay, or just be bi, or just be trans, while letting people know their other, more specific options.

asexuality is not an NSFW or TMI orientation

ace headcanons arent INHERENTLY homophobic, racist or ableist. they absolutely can be and ive seen that shit with my Own Two Eyes [pure innocent baby ace autistic papyrus headcanons back in the undertale fandom (shudders)], but they are not INHERENTLY so.

headcanons for characters with marginalized identity labels that arent identical to the ones you headcanon that character with are not oppression. and you dont get to police this shit as if its factually wrong

absolutely zero sexual interactions with minors ever, thanks!

trying to Bother The Pure Aceys by talking about sex is unacceptable

posting bullshit in ace positivity tags is unacceptable

stop calling people doing nothing but talking about their experiences “freaks”???

dont engage in the whole Oh There Are Valid Identities And There Are Special Snowflake Identities thing its not a very good look

biphobia is its own thing independent of homophobia

biphobia perpetuated within the community isnt necessarily systemic oppression but its traumatic and wrong and shouldnt be treated like some Lol Cringe Joke

you cant just say UM THAT LITERALLY NEVER HAPPENS???? when someone calls your side out on shit lgfkhghgfh especially when it literally does, all the damn time

ace [IRL person, whether or a celebrity or god forbid a flat out bigot] moodboards arent funny

you shouldnt agree to sex that you as an ace person dont want in a situation that you can control if the sex happens or not, but the pressure to provide sex to a non-ace partner is very real. stop blaming ace ppl for that pressure lol speaking as a victim of coercive sexual abuse, you cannot blame the one who didnt want it, even if they COULD have spoken up.

you’re not a bad person for wanting sex if your ace partner doesn’t. there is nothing immoral about not being ace. you just dont get to have sex anyway and you arent owed it if you are set on this committed, monogamous relationship - if sex is a big deal to you, you need to leave that relationship or work out an open situation.

laughing off peoples’ experiences as The Discourse is completely unacceptable, it encourages people to shut up and never analyze themselves and their identities

its not cute in your ace ship headcanons if the ace character is an asshole that rolls their eyes @ or judges their non-ace partner

similarly its not cute in your ace ship headcanons if the non-ace partner is an asshole that rolls their eyes @ or judges their ace partner

you dont get to tell people “ok you identify as heteroflexible but ACTUALLY you’re [insert identity]” literally ever, i understand the concern with people using “safe” identity labels to avoid facing their LGBT identities but acting on that concern in that way is not concern, its concern-trolling and its not fuckin okay.

legitimizing your own identity by delegitimizing the identities of others is bad

DO NOT, AND I REPEAT, DO NOT, BLANKET-TERM PEOPLE AS QUEER, LITERALLY EVER. DONT DO IT

DONT FUCKIN DO IT!!!!! NOT EVERYONE HAS RECLAIMED THAT SLUR, AND IT IS 100% A SLUR ON TOP OF BEING A CULTURE WITHIN THE COMMUNITY

JESUSS CHRIST DONT FUCKIGN DO IT!!!! WHEN YOU REFERENCE THE QUEER COMMUNITY YOU BETTER ONLY MEAN PPL WHO CALL THEMSELVES QUEER AND HAVE RECLAIMED IT/ARE PART OF THAT SUBCULTURE

we need more nonsexual, non-alcoholic spaces for LGBT folk that are safe for minors, trauma survivors and ace people, but thats not our fault, the prevalence of sexual and alcoholic spaces exists because we were literally not allowed to exist anywhere else until very, VERY recently, and even now it’s a Barely thing

you cant tell someone their experiences didnt happen like my god

we think ace discourse is about more than cishets because exclusionists make it about asexuality as a whole. you guys cant make it about more than cishets and then be like But Ok It’s Just About Cishets You IRrational Crazies?? :/

yes self harm through exposing oneself to the discourse tag is possible, no it’s not funny, no it’s not just ~cishets~doing that, triggers are not exclusive to PTSD survivors, shut the actual fuck up

you dont have any room to comment on the validity of quasiplatonic relationships if you’re not in one, most of the time you guys complaining about them and saying theyre Special Snowflake Things dont actually know what they are. mind your own business lol let people live

if youre not intersex, you dont get to tell people that the intersex community doesnt wanna consider itself LGBT, so they are wrong for saying intersex people are allowed to consider themselves LGBT. youre not being a good ally. sit down, shut up and let intersex people talk amongst themselves.

[to be added to at some point im sure]

asexuals STOLE dragons from CHILDREN to make themselves seem PURE AND INNOCENT, the MONSTERS

[eliniei]

Those Hard Days - Epilogue I

Summary: Rae’s brother always made sure she was tough as nails. But when her father flips her world upside down, will she find that there’s a limit on how strong she can be?

Warnings: Rape/Non-con (non-graphic, fade-to-black), child abuse, underage drinking, underage smoking, drug use, violence, major character death

AO3: here Fanfiction.net: here

Masterlist

Previous Chapter |  Next Chapter

So, there. That’s the whole story. 

It was...longer than I thought it was. I guess our hour’s almost up.

Yeah, the funeral was a couple weeks ago. It really was beautiful. The casket was a deep red cherry wood… We got him a nice headstone, too. 

It was what my brother deserved. He wasn’t just some punk, although he’d like ya to think he was. He was...a whole lot more than that, especially to me and my friends. I think...I think he deserved more than the end he got, even if he didn’t think so. Heh. Who knows what he could’ve gone on to do.

It’s...it’s gonna stick with me my whole life, isn’t it? 

Darry said as much.

Survivor’s guilt, huh? I’m not surprised. I think...I think the Curtises felt as much, too, when their parents passed away, but they didn’t have court-ordered therapy sessions to help. 

Oh-okay.

Yeah, sure.

Yeah, I’m real glad they let Curly out for it. I don’t think...I don’t think I coulda done it without him at my side. Sure I had my friends but...he’s...special.

I sure miss him now, though. I think he’s still got somethin’ like 4 months left in that reformatory.

Oh, yeah. Johnny Cade.

N-no, I didn’t forget about him. I’ve just been so...overwhelmed. 

Tim ended up fronting the money for Johnny’s funeral, too. For all his parent’s hated his friends, they were sure happy letting us plan and pay to put their son in the ground. Lucky we were able to find a plot near Dally’s.

In the end, those bastards didn’t even show up.

It’s the way he’d want it anyway. We were his real family, right? 

Oh, the nightmares? Yeah...they’re…gettin’ bad. 

Sure. They always start in the same place. Right when we get to the park. I see him on the hill, under the streetlights. Then it all slows down and I hear the gunshots and watch him fall to the ground…

He looks at me, then, and everythin’ turns red and I wake up wanting to scream his name, rewind time...anythin’ just to get him back.

And I...can’t...

Sorry. Thanks for the tissue. 

Sleepin’ in Two-Bit’s room seems to help. Makes me feel...I dunno, a little safer, maybe? Calmer?

Yeah, when Dally and I were kids we slept in the same bed a lot. It was definitely a comfort thing- do ya think this has anythin’ to do with that?

Right. Okay.

Yeah...I get...It makes me...real nervous...when I ain’t got one of the boys close. I dunno, I can’t really explain it well.

Sep...Separation what?

Sorry, I dunno what that means. 

Okay, sounds good.

I got a question for ya, though, doc.

Is it bad that I visit Dally’s...grave? Like I said before, Pony’s been comin’ too and usually we do our homework there but-

I-I dunno. I guess we been out there three or four times? 

I just...I don’t wanna worry anyone. It’s not like I’m goin’ down there to cry. I just wanna feel close to him.

Okay. Thanks. That’s good to know.

No, no. I ain’t drinkin’ like that anymore. Tim told the boys what happened- even Two-Bit got rid of his beer just so I wouldn’t get into it. Sometimes I still visit Angel and we smoke some...well, you know.

Nah, it don’t make me forget. But it keeps me calm when I’m havin’ a bad day. 

I...I’m tryin’ real hard, here. I know that drinkin’ ain’t gonna get rid of the hole in my heart. It don’t get rid of the sadness and anger I’m feelin’. 

Ya...ya think so? I guess I never thought about takin’ martial arts classes. 

Yeah, I’ll-I’ll talk to Barb about it. I know we ain’t got a lot of money, but maybe-

Oh, they do? We’ll...we’ll look into it, then. 

...Thank you.

[whyareyouyellingatme]

A post I deleted in the end

Here's one of the most personal/long things I've ever posted, and if you hate me you'll probably have a field day laughing at this one. I don't know how long it'll take before I maybe...delete it. I don't want anyone to respond with likes or comments. If you have something to say you can pm me, but I don't enjoy talking about it outside of one ong rant. I rant like this so I can jot it all down for records / evidence I'm not irrational, and then move on.

Here's the TL;DR: Rick Ranquist - 40+ years old, lives in Utah possibly Michael Aigner - mid 20's, probably lives in Bellingham by the pool Cooper Texeira - My age, lives in Seattle and goes to my school

All these men are white sexual offenders that did not get a punishment for their crimes.

When I was seven my 20+ year old babysitter did stuff with me that I did not understand, and I don't properly remember a lot of it. I thought it was a game, but it was actually doing sexual favors for a pedophile. I read a line in "The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe" about a man trying so hard to forget something unpleasant that he eventually succeeds in forgetting it. I tried to do that with the memory, and it sort of worked until I heard his name, Ricky. My brother said, "Remember when Ricky----" and that's all I heard before I started dissociating and everything was like someone was smothering me with a pillow.

His sister called me a liar when I said "your brother does weird stuff with me and plays games I don't understand". I decided if she didn't believe me, nobody would, because she was my neighbor and my friend. She still doesn't know today I was telling the truth.

I got raped when I was 19 by a 23 year old that had been grooming me since I was 16. I tried reporting it to the police and they laughed at me, nearly hanging up on me. I went to the ER, got a cervical exam while a doctor ogled my vagina with awe (because my relatively young genitals excited him, how professional). The taxi driver saw me crying and said "you put him on a list! Get him on a list!" and nope, he didn't get put on any kind of list. That fucked me up for a long time. I was numb for a long time. I just watched non stop television and didn't think. I can remember the exact outfit I put in a brown paper evidence bag, and I can remember the exact outfit I wore for days afterwards. I really changed as a person after that. Being isolated from all your friends and spending 3 years dedicating all your time to a shitty abusive man that made you think everything was your fault. Not fun.

Weirdly enough, a man who's in my family pushed me not to report the rape or try pushing for anything else from the police, because he thought it would traumatize me further. I gave up. I didn't want to see Michael, he made me sick. I was partially relieved I got out of the cycle of abuse, but I held on to a rage for a while . I still feel it if I think too much about it. I get really angry but it helps nothing because what can I do ? I'd imagine scenarios where I got to kill him as revenge.

It looked really cute on the surface! It looked like I was having a good time. But I was having panic attacks every week trying to make him happy, despite the beatings, despite the yelling (bc that's normal in my household so I thought it was normal in relationships) until the day that he went way too far.

I really thought it was my fault and that I deserved it for being stupid or not good enough. I was too focused on a very heavy school schedule and an eating disorder/self harm problem to realize I could do better for myself. Of course all of his friends saw me as a "crazy bitch" as he was beating me, real nice. His family was really racist and he broadcasted all of our arguments to them. His sister threatened to hit me with a wrench, not knowing/caring that her brother was already beating me. All of them just kind of watched whenever I broke down crying in front of them. His dad said "women get like this", I'm not...a woman. Not for someone like you dude.

Michael showed up at my house a couple days after it happened too. He stalked me for a while. I still get freaked out being alone sometimes. I have a knife collection and pepper spray, and even guns, but none of them make me feel as safe as a genuine friend does. I'm easily startled and for a while I had really horrible nightmares and panic attacks in public. It got a little better with time, but I still have really bad days. It's still difficult going anywhere near medical centers or dealing with cervical exams.

(I tried speaking with a nurse about the possibility that I have PTSD from that event, and she brushed me off with a "Women used to get raped all the time and they would have to just deal with it. You should lose some weight." Which started up my eating disorder again...horribly enough, people have been so cruel to me but I still care so much what they think.)

I tried faking confidence and happiness in college. I don't have a supportive healthy family, I just have me and whoever decides to be my friend. I made a friend group and went to parties with them. That was fun until a person I trusted grabbed at me when I was incredibly drunk. He led me to his room where I passed out. I wasn't sober enough to understand what was going on or even walk properly, and he texted people things from my phone saying that I was okay. It was all just kind of stupid honestly.

I woke up the next day in my room, on the floor, feeling kind of gross and even more gross as I try to figure out what happened the night before. He shows up at my work wanting me to serve him ice cream. I go in to report him because he did end up grabbing me without consent.

I lost my friend group. And after describing him grabbing my chest and ass in a disgusting amount of detail to a man that said "I remember being a young man and partying in college" with a cheerful nostalgia, I lost the case too. He didn't get anything. At this point I was kind of used to being treated like a piece of meat, so I was just mad he didn't learn anything. In fact, he has been checking up on me online to find dirt on me and report ME to the school for talking shit. His girlfriend has been doing the same, angry because she thinks he was trying to cheat with me. Cheating is consensual.

People just don't learn sometimes. I'm not a thing. I'm an nb lesbian though, and the guy that tried stuff with me when I was drunk knew that. He thought he could convert me.

I've been going through all of this without therapy, trying to just go to school. I tried telling a counselor about my situation and he said "those are long term problems that the university cannot handle".

Maybe I seem quiet and aloof, maybe I'm annoying to you, maybe you think I'm a liar or something stupid like that. But god damn it, I am a human being. I've been through some gross shit. I'm tired of people touching me and trying to invade my space. I'm tired of creepy ass college professors comparing me to their girlfriends and saying shit like "things aren't going so well with her". It's never a compliment you're just fuckin weird dude.

I'm super disconnected from reality even now (sometimes) because I don't like thinking about any of this. I stayed silent about it for quite a while because of all the people who probably wouldn't believe me. But uhhhh fuck you guys I know who I am.

This is a really personal story, especially very personal to be posting on facebook. It makes me feel super vulnerable, but not as much as having the memories bouncing around in my head nonstop makes me feel. I have a girlfriend now and I'm living in a pretty safe place at the moment. There's a lot of other shit happening in my life, my PTSD dog (one of my only sources of comfort in a bad time) got hit by a car and died. :( You all probs know about that, I just miss her when I think about the past. So I've just been trying to figure out how to help myself, you know?

This post got really fucking long and I don't feel like editing it. If you ever think I'm quiet, it's because I'm tired of explaining myself. I want to be my usual joke-y self but sometimes that feel really fake. I don't like thinking about all of this, but I think someone should know.

I wanted to write this post when I was sure I could finish it without crying. It has been a while since something super bad has happened to me, and that distance between the event and reality really helps muffle the emotional response.

Cheers to the survivors that aren't "good" survivors that react a specific way. Cheers to those of you that aren't comfortable sharing your story because it's really not anybody's business unless you want to say something.

I don't know, I still try and have fun, pretending nothing happened. I hate this crap. I hate the emotional baggage. Wish I could chuck it, but my brain has a different plan.

Like, all of this shit happened on TOP of me living in an extremely abusive home so you can imagine I tried to kill myself.

I'm a human being. Stop treating me like shit. I'm tired of it. I'm also not as mean as I look, I don't bite. I'm here for you as a friend if you need it. I just couldn't sleep tonight because of all this crap.

Please don't react to this I'm just babbling. I don't want to deal with people that have no empathy for my long ass story just because it's long / badly written. I'm just tired. I'm soooooo fucking tired.

Edit: I'm trying to reread this just once, but I can't even do it. Like not because it's hard, I literally just look at the words and they mean nothing. My brain basically put up a firewall against upsetting shit so I lose touch with reality whenever I get near it for too long. It's hard describing dissociation but if you would like to know more u should google it. A weird time. Anyway gn I'm alright I just needed to fucking let it out.

[hearthehowling]

hi there! i really like you and your posts and i really hope this question doesn't offend you, but how do you feel about the idea that ace people don't really fit in lgbt spaces? because they aren't really discriminated against so harshly. like yes, they face erasure, but i dont think they are really despised by a large section of society. like for example, i, as a transgender lesbian woman, definitely feel like i am genuinely hated by a lot of people.

Yikes.

Okay, for the sake of education and the opportunity to make even one person a little more accepting and loving of people, I’ll entertain this and set aside how offended I am. Hopefully by the end, you’ll understand why receiving this message– especially with how naive and good-intentioned it sounds, hurts me so very much. I’m going to try to organize this.

Aces, like other sexualities of the LGBT+ acronym, face corrective rape.

A survivor of this myself, I want you to know that it happens much, much more often than anyone gives it credit for. There are few resources for asexuals, and many resign themselves to engaging in sex or have it forced upon them because they are not aware there are others like them. Their place in the acronym raises awareness and allows many access to resources they would not have previously had. People may argue here due to the existence of asexuals who are not sex-repulsed. I’ll address that later.

Aces, like other LGBT+ identities, face conversion therapy.

Upon coming out to my mom, her first response was that we should get me a therapist and “fix” that. Or, that maybe I could be prescribed something? After a long moment of silence, she just said, “I just feel sorry for you.”

I have a somewhat unique position. I’ve come out gay and I’ve come out ace. The parallels are painfully visible to me. From people telling me I’m “missing out” because I literally am just not attracted to someone, be it one gender or anyone at all, to telling me that I could be fixed or that we could work on it. See above.

I have a knot in my stomach remembering looking through local therapists and seeing LGBT friendly ones listed and wondering if they would decide that my asexuality is some sort of subconscious internalized homophobia that keeps me from being a “real” lesbian.

God I wish I felt like that anxiety was unsubstantial. I have a particular gay male friend who does everything he can to let me know he doesn’t think I’m a “real” lesbian unless I’ve had sex with a girl which leads me to my next point…

Gatekeeping in the LGBT+ community is inherently contradictory to what that community stands for.

This was gonna be one of the later points but damn I transitioned into it so well. Listen, kids. Literally every part of the acronym has faced the same shit. So much so that people debate where that shit ends. Is it LGBT? LGBTQ?? LGBTQIA?? +???? Nothing is forever, the acronym will change and adapt, so can we stop arguing about marginalized groups like they’re some competition or exclusive club? Privilege is not the defining factor of an LGBTQIA+ identity. This is something that the entire community needs to get through its thick skull. Especially because deciding whether someone faces descrimination on just your own assumptions takes all agency from the group. This, again, has been repeated history.

One of the most common biphobic arguments is that they have some sort of “heterosexual passing privilege”, that they could just “choose to be het if they want”. Just denying it’s a part of who you are was expected of homosexuals from homophobes, then it was expected of bisexuals by homophobes and homosexuals alike, and it’s expected of asexuals. You could just have sex anyways, so it doesn’t count as LGBT. They’re basically straight. Hey another solid transition–

Identity is not measured by privilege, nor is it measured by hatred.

Look. There are aces that have had harder lives than some gays because of their sexuality. There have been some trans people who’ve had easier times than bisexuals. At the end of the day, we all face different levels of marginalization. Separating it into some hierarchy is counter intuitive to the intent of the LGBTQIA+ acronym (which, in case you have forgotten, is about support). If you fall out of the cis heterosexual category, you ain’t cishet. Sorry I don’t make the rules.

———

Just another little note. I felt so sad after receiving this ask. Not really because of its content so much. Just. Do you only ask my opinion because I’m also gay? If I were heteroromantic ace, would you have cared for my input?

I didn’t proofread much of this so I hope it ends up making sense. There are many, many more reasons than these, but these are the first that came to mind. I hope that this helps you understand. I guess it’s… very difficult for me to understand the concept of gatekeeping a community based in inclusion and support. Does that make sense?

As a homoromantic ace, those are my thoughts.

[snarktheater]

Could you not say qu**r so often, please? Or at least tag it? Alternatives could be SGA or trans (depending on which part you're referring to) or LGBT? It's uncomfortable to quite a lot of people if it's used as an umbrella term too. Thank you

While I’m not interested in delving into that discourse on this blog…well, I guess it was gonna happen sooner or later. 

So just to be clear, before I say anything else, let me preface this post by saying that I’m going to state my position on this, but I will not admit any further discussion on the subject on this blog. You’re free to talk to me @talysalankil​ if you feel like having further discussion, but this blog isn’t the right place to do so. Also I’m going to use links from my personal blog because it’s just easier. But frankly if you want better sources on the subject, they’re out there.

Warning for massive wall of text. I tried to structure it, but there you go.

“Queer” has been reclaimed for decades. Many people who are much more knowledgeable than myself have pointed out that it’s been used at least as long as LGBT as an umbrella term (and that it was reclaimed before SGA was even invented), and it has the benefit of being inclusionary. The fact that is a historical slur cannot and should not be ignored, but the thing is, there is literally not a single word in use to refer to people who aren’t cis and straight that hasn’t been used as a slur at one point or another. Fuck’s sake, people still use “gay” today as a derogatory term, even when discussing things that have nothing to do with sexuality.

Meanwhile, SGA is an acronym that takes its root from conversion therapy (yes, really; SGA discoursers have claimed otherwise but survivors of conversion therapy attest to it), so I’m pretty sure it is equally trigger or even more triggering that queer to people.

SGL (same-gender loving) is a less historically charged acronym that I feel less strongly about for that reason, but it also comes from AAVE and I feel like there’s an element of cultural appropriation for me to use it as a white person, just like I wouldn’t use two-spirits because it’s a native american term. 

But that’s not my only issue with either acronym. See, the issue I have with SGA/SGL are multiple, and I’m going to put a cut here because this is getting out of hand:

It is an inherently binarist concept. Meaning, it either excludes nonbinary people entirely, since for many of them, the concept of “same gender” is compeltely irrelevant; or it partially erases nonbinary identities by grouping them together as “male-aligned” or “female-aligned”, i.e. implying they’re “basically a man” or “basically a woman”. Which, even if that is something some nonbinary people do identify with, is not something anyone should be entitled to force on people. Plus, you know, I guess people who aren’t on the male/female spectrum or agender people don’t exist at all and/or don’t belong in the community according to those people?

Bisexuality and polysexuality does not necessarily include “SGA”, even for cis male/female people. Implying that a bi person is straight if they experience attraction for the opposite binary gender and for nonbinary people is, once again, erasing those nonbinary people’s identities.

Because of these two points, the concept of SGA is inherently transphobic, since you cannot use it without assuming people’s gender.

This also adds a shade of exclusion of intersex people, whose status with regards to the community has always been complicated. Some intersex people don’t want to be included, some do. But “SGA and trans” doesn’t leave room for those who do, but don’t identify as trans (and those people exist), to join the community, even though they deserve a place.

Bisexual and polysexual people are constantly erased, and reducing their right to belong to the community as their attraction to their own gender is harmful rhetoric even for those who do experience that attraction (such as myself). It is the kind of thinking that leads to saying they’re “basically gay and using bisexual to ease into it” or that they’re “basically straight and just experimenting/lying” (the latter is particularly directed at women, especially if they are in a committed relationship with men, while the former is particularly directed at men, including myself). I am not “basically gay” and I don’t want to use an umbrella term for my community that reduces me to that in all but name.

More biphobia: it assumes that there’s such a thing as “straight passing privilege” and that anyone who’s not presently dating someone from their own gender is benefitting from that. That line of thought literally started off as biphobic rhetoric. Oh, and, you know, “straight passing privilege” is just being in the closet. Kind of like how TERFS say that trans women experience male privilege instead of being trans women in the closet. Apparently the closet only applies to you if you’re gay.

The unifying experience of the community is not homophobia. I mean, the fact that you have to use “SGA and/or trans” should be proof enough that you’re already adding trans people as an afterthought. But beyond that, biphobia is a different beast from homophobia, as is transphobia, as is aphobia. They stem from a similar form of societal bigotry, and there is intersection (a bi person dating someone of the same gender will probably experience similar issues as a gay couple, corrective rape which lesbians and ace people are both targeted by), but there are also differences of specificities (I already mentioned bi erasure; ace/aro people are targeted for being “mentally ill”; and I don’t think I have to explain the specificities of transphobia in a world where “bathroom bills” is a phrase that exists)

As others have pointed out, the phrasing makes it sound like the community started with “SGA people” and then was gracious enough to include trans people, which is historical revisionism.

The queer label offers grey areas for people who need time to figure out their own identity or just cannot place their identity on the existing, mainstream labels. SGA does the exact opposite of that by forcing people to place themselves on one side or another of a pretty ill-defined line.

Even if it weren’t for any of these points, the term has now been claimed as the rallying cry for exclusionary LGBT+ people, particularly to target ace and aro people. And by that I mean it started of as that, but let’s pretend it was already around and was claimed by those people.  Well, I will not stand for that, just like I’m not standing by TERF rhetorics. Interestingly enough, “queer is a slur” only emerged as discourse at the same time (and usually from the same people) who tried to enforce that exclusion.

LGBT+ aphobes have time and again shown that they were recycling biphobic and transphobic rhetorics (as I’ve shown myself earlier in this list), and in many cases, have proven to be the same people who used biphobic and transphobic rhetorics a few years ago, and that they haven’t given up on those views, merely grown more careful about where and how they advertise them.

If you want more I suggest you run a search for “SGA” on my main blog. It’ll be a lot of the same idea as what I just summarized here, just with more details.

So…yeah. If anything, I do not want to be included under the SGA umbrella, even though I am a bisexual man who so far has only ever dated other men. Well, one other man, but my dating history is kind of irrelevant anyway. Point is, I’m not using that umbrella. And I have every right to reclaim queer since…well, I just said I’m a bi man, which I’m pretty sure that should be enough.

I don’t have as many issues with LGBT, but at the same time, the acronym has also been pushed as “it’s LGBT and only LGBT therefore anyone who’s not lesbian, gay, bi or trans doesn’t belong” by the same people, enough that it feels sour in my mouth. I still use it liberally, although I try to use LGBT+ or other variations, such as LGBTQ, LGBTQIA, LGBTQIA+, LGBTQIAP+, etc, but ultimately, queer is just easier and has the benefit of being more inclusive than any of the above.

I understand that it’ll make some people uncomfortable, but until someone comes up with a word that makes no one uncomfortable (which, again, does not exist yet—the closest we got was MOGAI, but that one was targeted by a smear campaign from, you guessed it, exclusionists who didn’t like that it included ace/aro or trans people and now people can’t use it without starting a similar debate as this), I’m gonna have to settle for one, and I’ll pick the one that makes me the most comfortable, because I am a member of this community too and I have the right to do that. Just like you have the right to use SGA and it’ll make me uncomfortable, but I won’t come to your blog sending you an anon message asking you to stop, because I understand that no umbrella exists that satisfies everyone at the moment, and I have more pressing issues to deal with.

If that’s an issue, feel free to unfollow or whatever else it is you feel like doing. But I will not budge on this.

[survivorsforcannabis-blog]

Three Perspectives on Dating Plus Sex After Trauma

PTSDude hosted a discussion with Survivors for Cannabis to share the experiences of a transgender Mexican man, a biological Lakota man and a cis Armenian woman. We answered the questions of how PTSD and sexual trauma has affected our attraction to others, our ability to approach potential partners, our relationships and sex lives. Read the transcript:

[technical hiccups & awkward staring from @ptsdude.health]

P: Welcome to Dating and Sex After Trauma—it’s about relationships, it’s about physical intimacy. I’m with [@survivorsforcannabis]—are you also on the bottom in your screen? I dunno, like—

S: Yeah, I’m on the bottom.

P: We’re gonna jump into this—Frank Waln is not live with us, I interviewed him earlier this week, he’s a busy dude, and I have all his responses to the same questions we’re gonna talk about. So we have a couple different perspectives. One of the things we dug into was attraction, first and foremost. I know Mel has a lot more experience to speak on this than me or Frank does, so if you wanna get into it, bro. Go ahead.

S: Okay, it’s important to note that I’ve had different periods and types of trauma at different times in my life, which affected me differently at different points. So, as far as my trauma has affected who I’m attracted to—

Before I started getting raped in my 20s, I had traumas from childhood and adolescence, which made me learn how to be very independent and—emotionally independent and numb. So I never really looked for a relationship, so I was always just attracted to dudes who were also not looking for relationships. Which often meant guys who had their own issues.

Also, especially because of where I live in the world, trauma is like a fact of life, it’s not like a medical diagnosis, it’s just something people live with every day and accept as normal. So the men that I’ve been with lately are pretty traumatized as well. I’m trying to learn to not be like, too sympathetic to that because I’m like, obviously aware and trauma-informed and understanding of how it affects people but I’m trying to learn to not let that hurt me.

P: See there you go, that’s awesome, thank you. I learned so much shit right now. ‘Cause I’m a traumatized dude so I’m like, I’m that guy and I’m hearing this shit for the first time. So that’s pretty dope. Um, and so talking about attraction: for the most part me and Frank had a similar response, where you’re feel romantic and physical attraction, but you can’t really feel like a sexual attraction. You can’t really picture yourself having sex with someone unless you’re like actually already having sex with them, y’know what I mean? I think you just block out that whole thing altogether.

And so kinda like, with that it affects—as a dude, like as a heterosexual guy approaching women, y’know, you’re supposed to have the confidence to do that. We had pretty similar responses on that also: that you just like, you lose that ability to comprehend that somebody’s actually attracted to you, that someone’s genuinely interested in you and not just trying to use you for something. That’s gone, like that confidence is gone and I don’t know how it can come back or if it can come back. But it’s just really something that I know is distinctly missing now.

And I know me personally, since cutting out my abuser, there’s like this voice in my head all the time that’s like “ALL MEN WANT TO USE YOU FOR SEX, ALL WOMEN WANT YOU TO SHUT UP AND GO AWAY” and it’s just constant and it’s constant and it’s constant. So I smoke, a lot. CBD kinda silences that a little bit. Before sexual trauma I was actually extremely social and I had no problem speaking to strangers, speaking to anybody, forming friendships, forming relationships. Not really any issues with that. And trying to force that confidence back on, it’s brought a lot of like self-worth questions, made me suicidal, definitely brought relapse a few times just from trying to push that self-worth back on—and I know it’s affected you in a very different way of approaching people, so—

S: Yeah, when I was young I was shy, largely because of sexual and emotional abuse as a child. But as I grew up I got pretty confident, honestly because I had the looks and charm to get what I wanted, if I was attracted to someone. And I was confident about that, especially in my more hypersexual stages, and I wasn’t ashamed of it. But if I thought I might like someone more than that then I just wouldn’t know how to do it or how to approach them because I don’t know what that looks like. I know now, but I never had a healthy, loving relationship modeled to me, so even if I wanted to properly date and have meaningful sex that just wasn’t a thing I would know how to do. It’s a very foreign concept to me. I learned it was easier to meet guys at a bar, or through drugs or on Tinder because people there expect less from me; they don’t expect anything emotional from me and that’s what I needed.

P: On relationships, me and Frank had pretty different answers, y’know we’ve had different experiences after trauma. So, he had a pattern of relationships where it would be super intense for couple weeks or months like very quick very immediate a lot of affection a lot of closeness and then it’s too close, and then you gotta cut it, and he would ghost. Because his has a lot of dealing with people that are close to you, and not being able to trust people that are close to you. So as soon as somebody gets within that zone of being too close, too trusting, you know too much about me—then it’s like, “I need to dip, I need to get outta here.”

So for mine, actually before and during my sexual trauma and experience in sex work, I was in a romantic relationship for six years, and didn’t realize til much later that I was gaslighted for six years. I didn’t put a word to it. But I was not able to trust my gut after that, to trust my intuition, to trust anything. So just because of that I’ve completely avoided dating, because there’s this paranoid voice in my head that screams that someone’s lying to you, that it’s not genuine. So I don’t think its fair to put somebody through that, because I’m not gonna expect them like, to quiet that voice down, y’know, that’s the voice in my head. So I’ve pretty much avoided dating for a lotta years just because of that.

And to transition into how this shit affects your sex life, pretty briefly. For me it’s like, I’ve been lucky enough to attract some beautiful and confident women who know I’m totally oblivious to everything, and pretty much just like make the first move on me, give me a very obvious greenlight and I’m like, “Oh okay! That’s awesome!” But that’s like the only way I’ve been able to actually have a sex life. I never assume it’s coming, ever, no assumption that anyone is attracted to me.

The reason I consulted Frank is because I’m transgender and Frank is biologically male, so I wanted to get the whole male perspective. So, apparently—as transmen we are very lucky we don’t have to deal with this issue—but I know all the biological men out there gotta deal with Whiskey Dick, have to deal with Cocaine Dick, and apparently there’s something called Depression Dick that happens too—doesn’t let it happen, doesn’t let it fly. So that is something that hinders sex. It’s not you, you’re not crazy, you’re not screwed up. It’s your body’s reactions to the experiences you’ve gone through. That’s what it is.

S: So, relationships for me—I’ve never been in a serious committed relationship because I learned how not to depend on anyone for anything. And as I said, even if I wanted to, I just wouldn’t even know what that would look like. I never desired a partner honestly, I put my energy into other things. When I was young I had like one uncommitted thing, he was emotionally abusive, but to this day I’ve never been in a committed relationship.

After my more violent traumas, I became even more numb and like a slutty fuckboy which was fun in some ways but has caused me to be an asshole in other ways. Out of protecting myself, but it’s still no excuse—You end up doing things you’re not proud of and you hurt people. Staying emotionally numb was easier than being vulnerable. But I really took pride in the fact that as a woman I could fuck around without feeling, though at the time I didn’t realize it’s because I was so completely numb and had no feelings in the first place.

Also, I’ve developed a very serious fear of touch. I was never a very touchy person but after my more violent traumas, any touch just became a trigger—especially soft touch, really anything, and it still is. Like I just freeze. There’s been some good times but cuddling is not an option for me. It’s very uncomfortable. I just don’t do it. I could have sex but not any emotional, cuddling kind of thing. I can be sitting next to someone and wanting to touch them really badly or like lying in a bed with someone and I just can’t do it. And I get triggered when people try to touch me and I’m just waiting to see like, what they’ll do next. It’s not that I don’t want people to touch me but it’s just automatic, where my mind goes. Sometimes I have some good weed and a good person around that helps with this but often times I don’t have either of those available to me. And I know CBD could be a game changer in this.

To be honest, I think I also need professional touch therapy, bodywork. I’ve tried it once but it’s very expensive—which is why I’ve only tried it once. But like, I need a professional person to help me learn how to be okay with being touched again because I don’t want to put other people though this shit any more. It’s not fair to other people. Lately, I’ve started to be attracted to nicer guys who want to put up with it but they don’t know what they’re getting into—

P: (laughs)

S: Like, it’s not fun for them. They think they can fix me, or like, help me, hold me—

P: Yeah, too many guys wanna play hero anyway.

S: Yeah, it just doesn’t work. So that’s where I am now. I know need to heal a lot more physically and mentally and be in a better place before I can possibly think of being in a committed relationship. There’s not enough space in my brain right now for another person on top of my own stuff.

[nothingman]

Laurie Penny | Longreads | October 2017 | 13 minutes (3,709 words)

We’re through the looking glass now. As women all over the world come forward to talk about their experiences of sexual violence, all our old certainties about what was and was not normal are peeling away like dead skin.

It’s not just Hollywood and it’s not just Silicon Valley. It’s not just the White House or Fox News.

It’s everywhere.

It’s happening in the art world and in mainstream political parties. It’s happening in the London radical left and in the Bay Area burner community. It’s happening in academia and in the media and in the legal profession. I recently heard that it was happening in the goddamn Lindy Hop dance scene, which I didn’t even know was a thing. Men with influence and status who have spent years or decades treating their community like an all-you-can-grope sexual-harassment buffet are suddenly being presented with the bill. Names are being named. A lot of women have realized that they were never crazy, that even if they were crazy they were also right all along, and — how shall I put this? — they (we) are pissed.

“It’s like finding out aliens exist,” said a friend of mine last night. He was two gins in and trying to process why he never spoke up, over a twenty-year period, about a mutual friend who is facing public allegations of sexual violence. “Back in the day we’d all heard stories about it, but… well, the people telling them were all a bit crazy. You know, messed up. So nobody believed them.”

I took a sip of tea to calm down, and suggested that perhaps the reason these people were messed up — if they were messed up — was because they had been, you know, sexually assaulted. I reminded him that some of us had always known. I knew. But then, what did I know? I’m just some crazy girl.

* * *

The process we are going through in our friendship group and in our culture as a whole is something akin to first contact. Abusers, like little green men in flying saucers, have a habit of revealing their true selves to people nobody’s going to find credible — to women who are vulnerable, or women who are marginalized, or who are just, you know, women. But abusers don’t come from any planet but this. We grew up with them. We’ve worked with them. Admired them. Loved them. Trusted them. And now we have to deal with the fact that our reality is not what it seemed.

So who’s the crazy one now? To be the victim of sexual assault is to fall down a rabbit hole into a reality shaped by collective delusion: specifically, the delusion that powerful or popular or ordinary-seeming men who do good work in the world cannot also be abusers or predators. To suggest otherwise is to appear insane. You question yourself. Even before anyone calls you a liar — which they will — you’re wondering if you’ve overreacted. Surely he couldn’t be like that. Not him. Anyway, it would be insanity to go against someone with so much clout. The girls who do that are sick in the head. At least, that was what we used to think.

Something important has changed. Suddenly women are speaking up and speaking out in numbers too big to shove aside. The public narrative around abuse and sexual entitlement and the common consensus around who is to be believed are changing so fast you can see the seams between one paradigm and the next, the hasty stitching where one version of reality becomes another. Now, instead of victims and survivors of rape and assault being written off as mentally ill, it’s the abusers who need help.

The public narrative around abuse and sexual entitlement and the common consensus around who is to be believed are changing so fast you can see the seams between one paradigm and the next, the hasty stitching where one version of reality becomes another.

“I’m hanging on in there,” said Harvey Weinstein, in the wake of revelations about a pattern of abuse that has upended the entertainment industry, tipping all its secrets out. “I’m not doing OK, but I’m trying. I’ve got to get help. You know what — we all make mistakes.”

Days earlier, Weinstein emailed other Hollywood higher-ups frantic not to be fired, asking for their assistance convincing The Weinstein Company board to keep him, begging to be sent to therapy as an alternative. The same pleas for mercy on the grounds of mental illness have been issued on behalf of powerful predators in the tech industry. Here’s 500 Startups’ statement on the actions of its founder, Dave McClure: “He recognizes he has made mistakes and has been going through counseling to work on addressing changes in his previous unacceptable behavior.”

The social definition of sanity is the capacity to accept the consensus of how the world ought to work, including between men and women. Anyone who questions or challenges that consensus is by definition unhinged. It is only when the abuse becomes impossible to deny, when patterns emerge, when photographs and videos are available and are enough to lead to conviction — then we start hearing the pleas for mercy. It was just twenty minutes of action. He’s got such a bright future. Think of his mother. Think of his wife. He couldn’t help himself. 

These excuses are never just about the abuser and his reputation. They are desperate attempts to bargain with a rapidly changing reality. They are justifications for continuing, collectively, to deny systemic abuse. Suddenly, it’s Weinstein, not the women calling him a rapist and a pig, who gets to be the one with “demons.” He needs to see a therapist, not a judge. He’s a very unhappy and very sick man. And so is Bill Cosby. And so is Woody Allen. And so was Cyril Smith. And so is that guy in your industry everyone respects so much, the one with the big smile and all those crazy ex-girlfriends.

What’s the word for what happens when a lot of people are very sick all at the same time? It’s an epidemic. I’m not sure what started this one, but there’s a lot of bullshit in the water.

* * *

The language of mental illness is also a shorthand for the articulation of truths that are outside the realm of political consensus. Anyone who challenges that consensus is deemed mad by default, including women who dare to suggest that predators in positions of power might have to be accountable for their actions.

There’s a long, grim history behind the idea that women lie about systemic sexual abuse because they’re mentally unwell. Freud was one of the first to look for a psychiatric explanation for the number of women patients he saw who told him they had been molested or raped. To report that such things were going on in polite society would have outraged Freud’s well-heeled and intellectual social circles. So in the course of his later writings, the father of modern psychoanalysis found alternative explanations: perhaps some of these girls were unconsciously obsessed with the erotic idea of the father figure, as opposed to an actual father figure who might have committed actual abuse. Or perhaps they were just hysterical. Either way, no reason to ruffle whiskers in the gentlemen’s club by giving too much credence to unhappy young women.

A century later, in absolutely every situation like this that I have ever encountered, the same rhetoric applies. Women are over-emotional. They cannot be trusted, because they are crazy, which is a word patriarchy uses to describe a woman who doesn’t know when to shut her pretty mouth. They are not to be believed, because they are unwell, which is a word patriarchy uses to describe women who are angry.

Well, of course they’re angry. Of course they are hurt. They have been traumatized, first by the abuse and then by their community’s response. They are not able to express righteous rage without consequence, because they are not men. If you had been assaulted, forcibly penetrated, treated like so much human meat; if you had sought justice or even just comfort and found instead rank upon rank of friends and colleagues closing together to call you a liar and a hysteric, telling you you’d better shut up — how would you feel? You’d be angry, but you’d better not show it. Angry women are not to be trusted, which suits abusers and their enablers just fine.

This is what we’re talking about when we talk about rape culture — not just the actions of lone sociopaths, but the social architecture that lets them get away with it, a routine of silencing, gaslighting, and selective ignorance that keeps the world at large from having to face realities they’d rather rationalize away. If everyone around you gets together to dismiss the inconvenient truth of your experience, it’s tempting to believe them, especially if you are very young.

More to the point, predators seek out victims who look vulnerable. Women and girls with raw sparking wires who nobody will believe because they’re already crazy.

Ten years ago, when I was raped and spoke out about it, I was told I was toxic, difficult, a compulsive liar. I was told that so consistently that eventually I came to accept it, and I moved away to heal in private while the man who had hurt me went on to hurt other people. In the intervening decade, every time women I know have spoken out about sexual abuse, they have been dismissed as mentally ill. And yes, some of them were mentally ill — at least one in four human beings will experience mental health problems in their lifetime, after all, and violence and trauma are contributing factors. More to the point, predators seek out victims who look vulnerable. Women and girls with raw sparking wires who nobody will believe because they’re already crazy.

The thing that is happening now is exactly the thing that the sanity and safety of unnamed thousands of women was once sacrificed to avoid: a giant flaming fuss. It is amazing what people will do to avoid a fuss. They will ostracize victims, gaslight survivors, and provide cover for predators; they will hire lawyers and hand out hundreds of thousands of dollars under the table and, if pressed, rearrange entire social paradigms to make it seem like anyone asking for basic justice is a screeching hysteric.

In decades gone by, women who made a scene, who made the mistake of confronting abusers or even just closing the door on them, were carted off to rot in the sort of hospitals that featured fewer rehabilitation spas and more hosing down with ice water to get you to stop screaming. Now it’s the abusers who are seeking asylum. Asking to be treated as sufferers of illness, rather than criminals.

The language of lunacy is the last resort when society at large cannot deny the evidence of structural violence. We hear the same thing in the wake of a mass shooting or a white supremacist terror attack. He was always such a nice boy. Something broke. We couldn’t have seen him coming. He was depressed and frustrated. We can’t pretend it didn’t happen, so instead we pretend that there’s no pattern here, just individual maladaption. A chemical imbalance in the brain, not a systemic injustice baked into our culture. Harvey Weinstein is not a rapist, he’s a “very sick guy” — at least according to Woody Allen (who may or may not have special insight, being famously interested in both psychoanalysis and recreational sexual harassment).

Woody Allen feels at least as sorry for Weinstein as he does for the forty-plus women and girls who, at the time of writing, have come forward to claim they were assaulted or raped by the movie mogul. We’re now supposed to feel pity for rapists because they’re messed up. Well, join the queue. All of us are messed up, and having low self-esteem and a dark obsession with sexually intimidating the women around you aren’t excuses for abuse. At best, they are explanations; at worst, they are attempts to derail the discussion just as we’ve started talking about women’s feelings as if they matter. In fact, according to researchers like Lundy Bancroft, who has spent decades working with abusive men, abusers are no more or less likely to be mentally ill than anyone else. “Abusiveness has little to do with psychological problems and everything to do with values and beliefs,” says Bancroft. “Abusers have a distorted sense of right and wrong. Their value system is unhealthy, not their psychology.”

At the end of the day, we’re now encouraged to ask, aren’t these men the real victims — victims of their own demons? Come off it. We’ve all got demons, and baggage, and all of the other euphemisms we use to talk about the existential omnishambles of modern life. The moment I meet someone who has arrived at something like adulthood psychologically unscathed by the nightmare fun-house of white supremacist capitalist patriarchy, I assume they’re hiding something, or on enough tranquilizers to fell a small elephant, or both. We’ve all got broken hearts and complicated childhoods, and survivors have spent too long being quietly directed to seek therapy rather than justice.

The abusers who are now being excused as mentally ill are not monsters, or aberrations. They were acting entirely within the unhealthy value system of a society which esteems the reputation and status of men above the safety of women. Many abusers, on some level, do not know that what they are doing is wrong. They believe that they are basically decent. Most men who prey on women have had that belief confirmed over the course of years or decades of abuse. They believe they’re basically decent, and a whole lot of other people believe they’re basically decent, too. They’re nice guys who just have a problem with women, or booze, or their mothers, or all three.

* * *

Pleas for mercy on the grounds of emotional distress are surprisingly effective when it’s men doing the pleading. Right now, all around me, I see women working to support men, as well as each other, through this difficult time. It’s not just because we’re nice and it’s not just because we’re suckers, although it’s probably a little bit of both.

It’s because we know how much this is going to hurt.

We should. We’ve carried it all for so long in private. We know how deep the damage goes, how much there is still unsaid. Even as we come together to demand an end to sexual violence, we worry that men are too weak to cope with the consequences of what they’ve done and allowed to be done to us.

I have for the past three months been nursing intermittent jags of panic at the knowledge of what was about to be revealed (and has now been revealed) about a person I once cared for deeply and, because I am a soft-hearted fool, still care about very much. A person who, it turns out, has hurt more women than any of us guessed when we started joining the puncture wounds in our pasts to make a picture. Panic because none of us want him to hurt himself. Panic because we worry that he might. We want him to be safe, even though none of us have been. Isn’t that just delicious? As more stories of private pain come out, it is still the men we’re supposed to worry about.

The threat of extreme self-harm is a classic last-resort tactic for abusers who suspect that they’re losing control, that their partner is about to leave them or tell someone, or both. It’s effective because it’s almost always plausible, and who wants to be the person who put their own freedom and safety ahead of another person’s life? Not a great many women, certainly, given the bone-deep knowledge drilled into us from birth that we were put on this earth to protect men from, among other things, the consequences of their actions. We’ve been raised to believe that men’s emotions are our responsibility. Even the men who hurt us.

We’ve been raised to believe that men’s emotions are our responsibility. Even the men who hurt us.

As the list of names grows longer, the plea for mercy on the grounds of mental illness is being deployed in exactly the same way. These guys are suffering, too. If you carry on calling for them to come clean and change their behavior, well, that might just push them over the edge. And you wouldn’t want that, would you? You’re a nice girl, aren’t you?

I’ve been told several times by controlling partners that if I left them, they might break down or even kill themselves. Each time, I stayed longer than I should have because I loved them and wanted them alive, and every time, when it finally became unbearable, they were absolutely fine. Not one of them made an attempt to carry out their threat. That doesn’t mean they didn’t mean it at the time. But the demand that even as we attempt to free ourselves from structural or specific violence, women prioritize the wellbeing of men over and above our own, is a tried-and-true way of keeping a rein on females who might just be about to stand up for ourselves. We are expected to show a level of concern for our abusers that it would never occur to them to show to us — if they’d been at all concerned about our well-being in the first place, we wouldn’t be where we are. And where we are is extremely dark, and very difficult, and it’ll get darker and more difficult before we’re done.

* * *

I’m worried about a lot of people right now. I’m worried about the several men I know who have hurt women in the past and who are now facing the consequences. I’m worried about the men who are analyzing their own behavior in horror, who stood aside and let it happen, and who are suddenly realizing their own complicity — and struggling to cope with the guilt, the shame of that knowledge. That’s allowed. Empathy is not being rationed here, and we can worry about whoever we like — as long as we worry about the survivors first. We were not liars, or hysterical. We were telling the truth. And if the men are a mess today because they finally have to reckon with that truth, we must not let that stop us from building a world where love and sexuality and gender hurt less, a world where this does not have to happen again as it has happened, in silence, for so many generations.

Reframing serial abuse as a mental health disorder stashes it conveniently on the high shelf marked “not a political issue.” The trouble is that sickness does not obviate social responsibility. It never has. Sickness might give a person the overwhelming urge to act in repulsive ways but sickness does not cover for them during business meetings or pay off their lawyers or make sure they get women dropped from films: it takes a village to protect a rapist.

I am perfectly willing to accept that toxic masculinity leaves a lot of broken men in its maw. That culture conspires to prevent men and boys from being able to handle their sexuality, their aggression, and their fear of rejection and loss of status in any adult way; that it is unbearable at times to exist inside a male body without constant validation. But very few men — very few people, period — grow up with wholly healthy attitudes towards their own gender. Not everyone with fucked-up ideas about women goes on to do fucked-up things to women. Toxic masculinity, as Bancroft observes, is a social illness before it is a psychological one.

So what about the rest of us? People say that they are shocked, and perhaps they are. But shock is very different from surprise. When was the last time you were really, truly surprised to hear a story like this? The truth is that a great many of those surrounding Weinstein did know. Just as the friends and associates of most sexual predators probably know — not everything, but enough to guess, if they cared to. The reason they didn’t say or do anything is simple and painful. The reason is that nobody had enough of a problem with what was going on to make a fuss. They thought that what was going on was morally acceptable. Polite society or whatever passed for it in their industry told them that this was all normal and par for the course, even if your heart told you otherwise. Polite society hates a fuss. Polite society can be a very dangerous place for a young girl to walk alone, and on this issue, most of us have been. Until now.

It is easier to cope with the idea of sick men than it is to face the reality of a sick society; we’ve waited far too long to deal with our symptoms because we didn’t want to hear the diagnosis. The prognosis is good, but the treatment is brutal. The people finally facing the consequences of having treated women and girls like faceless pieces of property may well be extremely unhappy about it. That’s understandable. I’m sure it’s not a lot of fun to be Harvey Weinstein right now, but sadly for the producer and those like him, the world is changing, and for once, cosseting the feelings of powerful men is not and cannot be our number-one priority. For once, the safety and sanity of survivors is not about to be sacrificed so that a few more unreconstructed bastards can sleep at night.

Previously: “The Horizon of Desire”

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Laurie Penny is an award-winning journalist, essayist, public speaker, writer, activist, internet nanocelebrity and author of six books. Her most recent book, Bitch Doctrine, was published by Bloomsbury in 2017. 

Editor: Michelle Weber

via Longreads