https://www.tumblr.com/belovedofbede/800159440877830144/people-arent-invalidating-the-whole-thing-bc-of?source=share
Not the same anon here. I'm a RAMCOA/OEA programming survivor. This anon has sent this kind of thing to other survivors, so I'm suspicious of if this is really in good faith, along with anon getting upset that survivors themselves use programmed as an identifier. I do want to call attention to how anon doesn't suggest TBMC or DBMC. "Mind Control" is really just an alternative term for conditioning in RAMCOA contexts. The idea that it seems "too evil to be real" is so strange when you look at real history. The catholic church used to run laundries for indentured servitude and many children died and were buried in mass graves. There was a serial murderer in aparthied South Africa that we know was involved in at least 100 shootings and would openly talk about "hunting" black men, and the cops covered for him. We don't actually know how many victims he had, because many were in unmarked graves and the police were not interested in keeping records well enough to make it clear it was his every time. When something sounds "too evil to be real" to someone, that's a pretty clear sign that someone has been sheltered from the worst of history. That doesn't mean everything extremely upsetting is real, but defining what abuse is real or not based on someone's own comfort with reality and things "sounding real" ignores how frankly batshit a lot of historical things sound when documented and talked about as real. If some random person told me that Volkswagen as a company had at one point worked with the military dictatorship in Brazil at one point and involved themselves with slave labor in the country, I wouldn't have believed them without evidence since it sounds so absurd on the surface. (Behind the Bastards has good episodes on all three topics as a primer for research.)
The ISSTD isn't blameless. But also a lot of the people who claim that RAMCOA overall is a conspiracy theory or delegitimized by conspiracy theories existing that are about a cartoon supervillain version of real things actually end up spreading conspiracy theories of their own about "false memories" and professionals "implanting" fake memories or alters in patients. Those claims come from the FMSF and Grey Faction, both pseudoscientific political machines with interests in removing DID from the DSM and protecting abusers. The FMSF even had people on the board of the organization who had ties to groups that promoted the idea that children could consent to relationships with adults. If someone cannot criticize the ISSTD without recycling pseudoscience from smear campaigns designed to make survivors sound insane and not worthy of listening to about what they experience or believe they have experienced, they need to reconsider their entire basis first.
I do wish people would stop assuming all survivors 100% back the ISSTD or every word from every person in RAMCOA/OEA spaces. I underwent AIW programming. I read what Svali says about it, and it is not my experience with it. Some things overlap, but not other things. That overlap is largely due to the common script used. No, not all groups have access to many locations, many actors, and a ton of resources: it's probably more like you're dressing up with a child and traumatizing them into behaving as you want, using props and acting. It makes sense for a child to think they're seeing organs at the table if you know how to make prop food, for example. Some kids are actually exposed to seeing things like that via trafficking or abuse since mere exposure to that can be traumatizing itself.
TDLR: The idea that programming doesn't exist because of it being a conspiracy theory buys into the idea that the conspiracy theory (universal, interconnected organized abuse that can be applied to all victims with the same cues, trauma, etc) is actually what people are claiming. Conspiracies are real at times, they're just a lot more mundane in reality than people wish they were. (See: The conspiracy theory that the US government has alien technology largely comes from people not knowing about new technology that the military was developing, and not being able to recognize it since it wasn't public information then. And then the government did fuck with one guy and make him believe that he was communicating with aliens because the poor guy was a concerned citizen and reported data of their own secret testing flights to them as potential national security issues.) If something seems "too evil" or "too absurd" to be potentially real, crack open a history book. You'll see a lot of stuff that may sound like both options but did really happen.
Thanks so much for all of this. I'll be sure to do some more digging and get more viable info through these discussions as well.
The way you explained everything is on point and very understandable, and your trauma as a RAMCOA victim is entirely valid, from one myself. We're all proud of how far you've come, and the insane amount of information you're providing.
I can't currently discuss further into all of these points due to lateness (currently 1 AM basically), but if I ever feel the need to add on or look through these even deeper, I'll be sure to just say more in the comments.
I guess I'm saying my answer to this AMA is more like a reblog. Speechless, in a good way. Again, thanks for this information.
