#abuse by proxy

[surviving-trauma-day-by-day]

A weird strategy of people who support abusers is to point out (actual or made-up) mistakes the victim made. As if the victim making mistakes (or the abuser claiming the victim made mistakes) made the abuse somehow less bad/ the victim's fault/ irrelevant.

[unwelcome-ozian]

[anthroxlove]

[surviving-trauma-day-by-day]

A letter to someone who didn't understand:

I sat there and I finally talked about everything: all my symptoms, how this trauma destroyed my life and took everything from me. All my pain and suffering.

And you started to cry.

And I thought: "She understands. She understands how bad it is."

And after I finished, you opened your mouth and the only thing you talked about was how you were feeling because I asked you to stay away from my rapist. And then you talked about my rapist. How hard it was for him, how I couldn't expect him to focus on his guilt and deal with his crime all the time.

That was when I screamed at you. When I screamed that I am dealing with it all the fucking time.

Should I feel sorry for yelling? I'll be honest: I am not.

I screamed at you and I don't regret it.

[surviving-trauma-day-by-day]

Last night I dreamed I met my rapist's best friend and her girlfriend and they told me I was lying about my rape.

It wasn't exactly a nightmare but definitely a bad dream because it felt very painful to hear someone devalidate my trauma like that.

And it was painful because it was them. Those are people I believed to be my friends. I liked the best friend and her girlfriend and I were really close. So when they supported my rapist and turned against me it hurt much more than when other people did it. I think this betrayal made my PTSD even worse.

[surviving-trauma-day-by-day]

People who knowingly date or are friends with an abuser are either other victims of the abuser or abusers themselves.

[surviving-trauma-day-by-day]

A person contacted the queer center because she wants to do do volunteer work there. But she also said my rapist's girlfriend used to be her roommate. And that she doesn't have "much" contact with my rapist and his girlfriend. And she called my rape "sexual harassment".

I'm extremely triggered and anxious since my friend told me about this. I feel like people who support my rapist are everywhere and people I've never met know stuff about the most painful moments of my life. I feel so fucking unsafe!

[surviving-trauma-day-by-day]

Women who date rapists are the worst enemies of feminism. They silence victims. They say we're lying. They say it wasn't that bad. They force victims to leave spaces. They keep the patriarchy alive. They keep rape culture alive. They are almost as bad as rapists themselves.