#abuse discourse

[barbiedreamdyke]

I searched “lesbian discourse” and you were the first blog to show lol, so I’ll ask you - have you ever dealt with the argument people make that lesbians have higher rates of domestic abuse? How do you respond? It keeps getting brought up by anti catra/dora people, saying that’s why we like the ship, and I don’t know what to say other than I personally can’t fathom abusing anyone I love and it’s not why I like the ship. I don’t know how true or flawed these supposed studies are

I’m glad I make an impression lol. I try to stay out of fandom discourse but I do stan catra and catradora so let’s dive in!

1) first off, the catradora story is about breaking the cycle of abuse. that’s the whole arc. adora gets out early but catra falls victim to the vicious cycle by becoming the abuser. this is common and can happen to anyone who grew up in an abusive household. it took work for adora to unlearn her abuse and it took work, love, and MOST IMPORTANTLY, a concious choice and effort on catra’s part for her to unlearn her abuse and make her amends. also, seeing as catradora was written by a lesbian......... I don’t trust ppl who are anti catradora or whatever when they claim it’s abusive. but the more important question:

2) the study everyone usually cites about wlw domestic violence was done in the 90s (which doesn’t discredit those facts!) and has some flaws: mainly the fact that it was self-reported and nonrandom, which creates a bias in studies. It’s very hard to gauge abuse in gay relationships scientifically because so much of that is reliant on self-reporting, which is inherently biased and will give you a skewed result. there have been studies saying we experience domestic violence at higher rates, lower rates, and the same rates as straight ppl — when there’s that kind of discrepancy with numbers, none of them can be trusted as accurate fact. if anyone quotes it against you you can use this quote from the encyclopedia of victimology and crime prevention: For several methodological reasons – nonrandom sampling procedures and self-selection factors, among others – it is not possible to assess the extent of same-sex domestic violence. Studies on abuse between gay male or lesbian partners usually rely on small convenience samples such as lesbian or gay male members of an association. It illustrates the points really well and explains succinctly why a lot of domestic violence studies done on wlw specifically aren’t very reliable. it’s a serious issue that has almost certainly gone underreported because of homophobia, the studies out there are just unreliable. this isn’t to say that lesbians can’t be abusers, anyone can be an abuser, but putting these studies out as facts is just wrong and incorrect.

TLDR: catradora isn’t abusive, their entire plot line is about breaking cycles of abuse, and studies saying lesbians definitively experience domestic violence more often than straight couples are flawed and unreliable.

[vulnerablea]

-- from a post on instagram by clementine morrigan. the caption is as follows:

These are the agreements I use in my relationships for expressing anger safely and responsibly. These are also my boundaries for receiving expressions of anger. In my current relationships these things go without saying because I have secure, safe relationships in my life today. But I’ve had experiences in the past where people express their anger in unsafe ways, therefore it’s important for me to know what my boundaries are and stick to them. 🖤🖤🖤

ugh i hate this post honestly. i feel like it idealizes a very particular (and very white/western) kind of nonviolent communication, while also opening the door for disposability politics / punitive “justice” should any of these agreements be crossed. it also privileges / idealizes / romanticizes an idea of safety that is a) often just not possible in this world, and b) is ideologically suspect anyway.

i’ve liked some posts by clementine morrigan, i think? but this is shitty

i mean yeah some of these things make “sense” ... but i also think that relationships that always have to adhere to “sense,” which are about rules (lol i mean “agreements”), have serious limitations (for actual nuanced relationality) especially in a violent world

i don’t know. i think it’s valid to not want to, like, have things thrown at you. to not want to be treated violently. but this post also treats a lot of things like they’re on the same level, when really name-calling or raising your voice are not at all the same as throwing objects at people. i really think degree matters

i’m much more interested in trying to work through harm rather than set up these bourgeois “agreements” to begin with

it’s not wrong to have boundaries or need to leave if people hurt you. it’s not wrong to call it out, per se. but i think there’s a difference between calling it out in context vs. making these generalized posts about relationship agreements/rules

and i think that’s where i really see the damage in posts like these: they “educate” whole “communities” of people on how to dispose of each other rather than actually helping people to understand why violent behaviour arises and what can be done about it

or rather, the answer to “what can be done about it” is always “leave / have more boundaries / let someone else or some other structure deal with it” which i think can be damaging as a generalized PSA response

also.... not all of these things are abuse or violent

name-calling isn’t always violent. yelling isn’t always violent. “boundary crossing” is a really vague phrase that can easily be appropriated by / subsumed into liberal boundaries discourse. “demeaning and humiliating behaviour” and “threats” really need to be qualified

without context and clarifications, these “agreements” are just more tools for people to decide that abuse is happening in order to serve their own interests rather than actually pay attention to material realities

i’m just tired of this kind of non-nuanced PSA-style bullshit

let’s try to attend to the contradictions of behaviour and relationships & try to figure out what a loving relationship looks like for different people. we can still discuss violence while attending to context, i’m not arguing for extreme relativity either

i also find it very ironic that she frames this post in her caption as if she’s talking about specifically her needs, but the actual post is so clearly, obviously intended as a public PSA / for public distribution.... at least be honest about what you’re doing

[lastoneout]

As much as I understand the need for more narratives where abuse victims aren’t expected to forgive their abusers, I think we need to acknowledge that not all redemption narratives are equal, and not all victims are going to feel liberated by a narrative where an abuser is killed or otherwise harmed.

I recall a post that was going around a while ago that basically said we need less stories where abusers are forgiven and more stories where abusers are killed, and I get the sentiment behind that, but I cannot agree. Yes, we do need stories where people who are abused move on and cut their abusers out of their lives forever, or where abusers face punishment for what they did and are never forgiven by their families, but as an abuse victim I don’t think it’s wrong for some of us to crave stories, as unrealistic as they might be, where abusers do put in the work to become better people and are only forgiven when they have changed. 

And as I said before I understand that not all abuse narratives are equal. I also hate stories where the abuser makes no effort and is instantly forgiven the second they do one good thing. But the thing about those is that they are badly written. That isn’t how forgiveness does or should work. It is complicated and messy and we as victims are def under no obligation to forgive those who have hurt us, and good stories involving abuse reflect that. So yes, I want less cheap redemption that isn’t earned and stories where people forgive their parents because “it’s the right thing to do”, but I want more stories that reflect the realities of redemption and the process of becoming a better person and the often contradictory nature of forgiveness. 

(And I also do feel that we often confuse “bad parenting” with “abuse” and the two often overlap but aren’t always the same thing. Someone can be a bad parent without being abusive, and that truth def puts me off of posts that treat them as one in the same.)

Because, in my experience, abuse is tricky. Both of my parents have done really shitty abusive things to me, be them intentional or not, and the current fandom mentality seems to say that what I should do is cut them out of my lives forever. But that’s not always how real life works. Sometimes your parents and other family members suck but you can see past that and begin to understand why and you just decide to forgive because it’s better for you and deep down you still love them. That isn’t a harmful narrative, it’s a truth of life.

And I do get that mostly this concern is aimed at children’s media because teaching kids that they have to love their family even if their family is terrible and abusive is def harmful, but I cannot condone what tumblr has decided the alternative is. I think that telling an honest story about how redemption is hard and you don’t have to forgive but if you want to you can is much better than telling them that their parents are horrible evil people who deserve to die and will never change so all they can do is suffer until they are old enough to move out. 

(And before anyone comes at me once again, there is a difference between shitty parenting, abuse, and inhuman abuse. I choose to forgive my dad. I will never forgive the man who sexually abused me. Both are valid.) 

I’m starting to lose my train of thought but I do have to say, as a victim of everything from sexual abuse to regular abuse to just straight up shitty parenting, the trend of “all abusers deserve to die and any narrative that condones redemption is evil” is starting to make me super uncomfortable. 

I love redemption arcs when done well, and it isn’t in spite of my abuse, it’s because of it. I want to imagine a world where everyone who ever did something wrong can become a better person. I want people to change, and I want stories where people change. Because we have all done bad things in our lives, some worse than others, but I would much rather live in a world where people are given a chance to become better than a world where doing something bad means you deserve to die. I know of a lot of abuse victims who feel the same, and we are not harming other people by desiring escapist stories where people like our parents learned to change and apologized. Stop acting like we are.

[toukaisbetterthanyou]

What's mods' take on abuse survivors who think touken is kinda abusive? They don't really hate on touken, they generally ignore it since it's a trigger to them but to call touken abuse is weird coming from abuse survivors, isn't it? Just because they're abuse survivors, don't mean they fully understand what abuse means.

Mod K:

I don’t mind sharing this, but I was abused growing up.

And like -- what I feel like people need to understand is that even if you’ve been abused, you cannot force people to coddle your triggers for you. It’s up to you to do that. Blacklisting and trigger warning exist for a reason, and if you see something that can potentially trigger you, then it’s up to YOU to scroll past it and take care of yourself. You can’t stop someone from shipping something fictional because it makes you uncomfortable because of your past.

Rape and non-con triggers me, so I don’t engage in things that I view was having that kind of content.

Abuse survivors are not a monolith -- we don’t all view things the same way. And honestly, if touka hitting Kaneki makes you uncomfortable because of your past, that is perfectly fine. That does not mean it is abuse, imo. Abuse is a pervasive pattern that often changes the way that a person interacts with the world or others. With the person who abused me, I was overly cautious around that person and did everything that I could avoid it. I changed the way that I spoke around them and would clam up instantly. It’s like walking on eggshells constantly since you don’t know when that person will get set off.

Does Kaneki in canon do any of these things around Touka? Is he currently afraid of her? Does he change his behavior to suit her needs? No, he doesn’t.

I think it’s ridiculous to watch/read anime and be unable to take slapstick humor. You don’t have to like it, but it’s apart of the medium and if you like anime you have to deal with it. It’s not abuse, though. Not all violence equals abuse since abuse is a pattern.

And honestly? When Ishida Sui wants to portray abuse he does -- the tone is totally different from the way the portrays touken.

[thataspdfeel-blog]

ive been kinda thinkin bout this, but those edgy kids who excuse their shitty abusive behaviour by self-dx themselves with aspd makes me just,, roll my eyes a lil cuz its almost like they're helping to fuel the stigma that antisocials are inherently abusive,,

fucking amen tho

those who, like me, have been diagnosed or whatever and happened to do shitty things like. we understand that aspd’s symptoms, when not kept in check, can have you doing some shitty, awful abusive things. but abuse =/= aspd

like, honestly, the no empathy and general blatant disregard and incapability to process others’ feelings led me to abuse a classmate when i was in high school. i had no idea the things i was doing were hurting him. like it didnt even cross my mind, honestly. but when called to my attention, i fucking apologized and stopped doing what i was doing. now, at 22, we’re both friends, interestingly enough

however, these other assholes just want a label to cover up their shitty behavior and its so fucking irritating. like im not inherently abusive. i did shitty things and they turned out to be abusive and i was like 17. i had no fucking clue what i was doing was even what was really happening. like basically i didnt like this guy because i thought he was gross and repulsive and because i happened to be popular, the school started isolating him and it was one of those things where shit i was doing was affecting someone else and i just had no fucking clue

but yeah its just so fucking irritating. like be a goddamn adult and own up to being a shithead instead of throwing the rest of us under the fucking bus

[venndaai]

yuusaris replied to your post “Please reassure me liking Jaspis at one point in my life doesn’t make...”

It doesn't make you an apologist - I've heard that it's common for abuse survivors to engage with ships or ideas of this because it gives them control over the situation. And that control is a way of coping and a way or re-establishing control within oneself. It happens, and you're okay.

I don’t want to think of it that way- I don’t want what happened to be a card that ‘lets’ me ship something. I didn’t see it as abusive just toxic and that doesn’t make me an abuse apologist the writing was a mess and the whole thing was ambiguous and having a different interpretation of fiction doesn’t mean I would excuse abuse in real life. That entire circle was so concerned with having pure healthy ships and the proper opinions and interpretations of a children’s cartoon and it didn’t help them recognize what was going on right in front of them. 

[venndaai]

slashmarks replied to your post “yuusaris replied to your post “Please reassure me liking Jaspis at...”

That's ONE reason for liking ships with "problematic" dynamics. I think it's really common for all people to experiment with it through fiction, though, because our whole society is so caught up with power dynamics and controlling behavior, and conflicting ideas about acceptable behavior in relationships, etc. Trying out thoughts is how we decide how to feel about them and become comfortable handling them, and fiction is one way of doing that that's safe.

And for some people, trying out certain kinds of thoughts in a safe setting is fun, and becomes a hobby; that doesn't mean you're ever going to REALIZE those ideas aka actually become abusive

yes exactly. and that’s why I don’t want to have a card allowing me to like a ship. Even if I didn’t have that ‘excuse’ it still would have been incredibly fucked up to treat me the way I was treated over a ship, to treat anyone that way. 

everyone should be allowed to explore unhealthy dynamics if it helps them in any way, that’s what fiction is for, that’s what Hannibal and Wuthering Heights and The Picture of Dorian Gray are for. It’s a human thing.

[venndaai]

God I’m so sorry to keep harping on this and feel free to blacklist any of my tags but another thing I really hate. Is the “you’re horrible even for shipping this ‘to cope’” thing. Like you’re saying that even if you convince someone their ship is evil and have them post their fanfic under a wall where you have to say you’re 18+ to click through and add a million disclaimers about how this ship is Bad and you’re just writing it to deal with something painful that happened to you, you’re still responsible for hypothetical children reading this thing marked “Really bad do not try at home” and thinking “this sounds fun and healthy” like what kind of next level victim blaming