my current best understanding is, consciousness raising as a form of material analysis = self-honouring, radical observations and generalizations based on collectively acquired and re-examined, direct lived experiences. we cannot productively generalize from the outside in. our best source of insight into the circumstance and motivations of any group of uniquely antifeminist women (trans-identifying women, ultraconservative women, rape apologists, pro-forced-birth women, so on and so forth) are direct accounts from those among us that had embodied that political alignment before gaining radical feminist class consciousness.
that does not mean we do not get to engage with, argue with, criticize those women, and tear apart their politically fraught and dangerous arguments when we are presented with them. that does not mean we do not analyze and criticise their public statements, rationalizations, art, don't expose the logical and ideological inconsistencies within their rhetoric when they publicly articulate said rhetoric, don't observe and point out the apparent implications of it that are demonstrably regressive, oppressive and dangerous to female class interests. it does not mean we do not observe patterns of their thinking and behaviour from our direct interactions with them and our own lived experience whenever it has intersected with theirs
what it does mean is that the position of an ultra-conservative misogynistic woman, for example, is inherently different than the position of an ultra-conservative misogynistic man, and while their politics and arguments may be the same, their internal condition is fundamentally different. we can generalize and extrapolate about that internal condition to a degree, we even Must do that - but we must also resist the urge to over-simplify it in ways that overshadow the vital input we may get from their own self-reflection, when offered by women who have come to feminist consciousness following a period of a violently anti-feminist politic. because feminist action requires not only an ideological debate with the political opponent of indeterminate sex, but also a vested interest in and an intense curiosity about the genuine condition of all women worldwide.
obviously if the vocally violently anti-feminist women are the last group of women you want to spend your energy on understanding, that's completely fine. there are many more that need your help and the urgency of your care. but that also means that those of us naturally inclined to understand them more intimately, from our own direct lived experiences, conversations and viscerally informed generalizations, will think that you sound ignorant when you generalize about them without any evident sign of their genuine earnest input. i promise they have more interesting and much more intensely self-critical things to say than what you may come up with on your own
Backrooms movie thesis: men are in love with their own misery they wish to be enveloped in endlessly, and so they resent the world for pushing and hoping for them to break free, while women have to fight tooth and nail for a chance to walk in the sun
I’m going to say something that might sound crazy. Suicide and suicide attempts are sort of a societal alarm bell that says “something is very wrong with the environment this individual was in.” A living being choosing to take themselves out of existence is the most extreme act of distress there is. The state stepping in to silence this alarm bell by funneling suicidal people into a state sanctioned euthanasia program, normalizing this act through a socially accepted bureaucratic system, is not a good thing. It goes hand in hand with the state’s interest in maintaining the status quo at the expense of the population and the psychiatric industry’s interest in individualizing societal problems to extract profit and aid the existing system. It’s saying “there are no complaints here, just people with sick brains, carry on.”
Backrooms movie thesis: men are in love with their own misery they wish to be enveloped in endlessly, and so they resent the world for pushing and hoping for them to break free, while women have to fight tooth and nail for a chance to walk in the sun
'For example, the shape we call a heart - whose symmetry resembles the vulva far more than the asymmetry of the organ that shares its name - is probably a residual female genital symbol. It was reduced from power to romance by centuries of male dominance'
Gloria Steinem's foreword in Eve Ensler's The Vagina Monologues
adverse experiences are so stupid like the kind of neuroses they give you are so humanity 101 its like im a baby. "waaa waaaaa how do i rectify saying 'not raping and molesting and violating through objectification is extremely easy i do it every day' with my readiness to take accountability for any genuine harm i have perpetuated or might perpetuate" very easily its called living your stupid life and being a human being who is not a rapist. thank you mama for not birthing me with an ocd this is embarrassing enough already
obviously "everyone has the capacity for causing harm, including sexual harm" is incredibly important to internalize for purposes of personal accountability, self-inventory and community building, but it's also such like. a mindfuck to have to pretend this means there is no difference between me and a pedophilic man psychologically. and there is no way of articulating that that Doesn't kind of sound like i am complacent and secure in my capacity to avoid causing sexual harm, which would sound bad, but it's also incredibly embarrassing to even try and equate us. what a fucking trip. and then behind it all is the systemic force of male sexual sadism which makes it all even more of a joke. but I AM HUMAN AND HUMAN BEINGS HAVE THE CAPACITY TO CAUSE HARM ETC ETC but how fucking stupid to even try and talk about it. and what an embarrassment to women who have survived sexual harm to have to grapple with slivers of possibility of perpetrating it ourselves. while men do fuck all. but we need to do better if we want communities. good fucking lord
something else i've been waiting to articulate is that. it is perhaps a #skill issue on my end but i actually Do struggle to see sexual abusers as normal human beings. and that does not mean i imagine them as like. distinctly sinister in ways that your neighbour Average Joe is not, because i 100% will believe that any random average joe is a sex pest. and i 100% understand the importance of asserting that a rapist man or a child molester man can display any number of pro-social qualities / be funny and nice / be kind to animals / be a passionate activist / stand up for the weak one moment and abuse them the next. i agree! but i cannot see it as like... human of them, ultimately. as in i think pretty much everything about my father (his status his money his career his competence his humour his style his interests his beliefs his politics his daily life his house the car he drives the food he eats) in one way or another are like... an elaborate performance of humanity and normalcy and adequate human lifestyle that provides for his main mission in life, which is to be a pedophilic misogynistic sex pest. i don't think he himself has rectified the divide between 'humanity' and his actual actions internally, which is why chronic sexual abusers are also pathological liars. and it's because their sexual victimization of others is not an "equal" expression of their psyches alongside with like, what their favorite song is and whether they're great with dogs or kids or at parties. i think one takes precedence over the other and i think they have chosen to be sexually opportunistic and abusive (otherwise they would not abuse), and so everything else is the performance they construct to keep living a life in which people give them access to victims to abuse
this is an emotionally formed/informed mindset that is not perhaps the most politically productive (one of its greatest weaknesses is that i can rarely summon rage towards perpetrators of incomprehensible sexual harm, because to me they are black holes, voids, vacuums of humanity, they are cogs in a machine of existential horror, their existence is so incomprehensibly terrifying that my psyche refuses to see them as human, so it feels more 'productive' to be enraged with actual human beings that enable them; i am aware of it and i want to work towards challenging it, because i don't think this is entirely helpful and healthy); but at the same time it just genuinely feels like there is like. an ancient evil in them that they chose and harboured and nurtured, and it matters to them more than anything else does or could. i don't think they're incomprehensible unique monsters that can never be mistaken for a cool kind chill guy, but i think once they choose habitual sexual violence they aren't really 'normal human beings' anymore
I don't have much to say but this is just very interesting to me because I've always seen it as a very human behavior. I see most types of violence as very human. This could also be because I am a very violent person though (PHYSICALLY OBVIOUSLY NOT SEXUALLY) so like the act of hurting someone is something I know very well. I know personally just how human that is to do so I can extrapolate that to other types of violence.
I also think of humans not very differently than animals. I don't believe in anything spiritual or religious. We are just animals like any other and these forms of violence are in every species. Violence of all types is human because in all its forms it's part of what it means to be alive. The cycle of life is eat or be eaten. It is the horrible game between male and female animals evolving to have more power over the other sexually (think ducks).
The idea that the rest of their person is just a mask to get victims is very strange like idk I've never been able to see it like that. I cannot separate the humanity from what they did which is why it's so upsetting. You have to understand this is person in the same way you are. They have an equal amount of internal processing. You are just as much your violence and you are your kindness. I am both the time I concussed a kid and the time I gave a homeless friend a place to sleep. They are both me and neither of them are a mask. It's the same with every other person, including the ones who commit extreme acts of violence. You are just as capable of it as they are.
The man who tried to rape me was also my friend. He had a real love for certain game series we played together, he loved fashion and picking out outfits for our friends. He was my co captain and a wonderful leader to our team. Even the girls team, he even helped work with me to make it so the male team saw them as equals. He still tried to assault me when I got drunk around him. All those things are equal parts of his character. They don't exist without eachother. If he was not the person who loved fashion and video games then he wouldn't be the same person who felt the need to have power over me. It didn't even actually matter to him more than anything else, he loved other things so deeply. At the end of the day what he did to me was so extremely human in its horror. I knew him personally and I know what hurt me was deeply human.
Also like this gives you more insight on enablers I think. They do this because they can see the humanity in them, so because they see this humanity surely they must be someone who could be saved. The enablers believe like you do (or the ones I've talked to at least) to be a sexual abuser you have to give up your humanity. You are committing an inhuman act. So then they think well if I can see the humanity, surely he can't be a sexual abuser? If being sexually abusive is not human then you can't ever see it in the people you love because you know so deeply that they are.
it's a very psychological thing for me, so it's 100% understandable that we would have different perspectives and insights (this could also be affected with our respective relationships with the perpetrators; my relationship with my father was extremely hollow at the end of the day safe for his constant affection, and now that i can look at just about every part of that affection as sexually motivated, there isn't a part of our relationship that is salvageable at the end); but i do just want to clear a couple things up because i don't want to risk being misinterpreted with them:
- i absolutely want to emphasize that, at least in my experience and understanding of it, this is a mindset PROFOUNDLY DIFFERENT from enablers'; i do not think a normal human being with genuine normal emotions and pro-social qualities CANNOT be a genuine predator, predation just immediately instinctively CANCELS OUT every other quality in my psyche. i really really want to emphasize that. my mindset stil has serious flaws & i have acknowledged so much, but i want that very very explicitly understood, specifically because the enabler mindset has hurt me so personally: i have no issue rejecting any single person and holding them accountable, regardless of my affection for them and my previous experience with their humanity, at any suggestion of sexual harm. my not being able to rectify sexual harm with humanity much more so makes me numb to any expression of their humanity in the context of sexual harm. i understand this may still be too close to the enabler mindset, but if that is the case that is something i'd have to work through in private or in therapy and not on tumblr lol because genuinely the idea of being seen as enabler-adjacent is extremely upsetting; for now i ask for the benefit of the doubt that there is a profound difference here
- when i said "the rest is an elaborate performance", that once again was informed by my experience with my father; i see him as basically nurturing an addiction in himself. he has all the patterns: his infidelity habits are incredibly cyclical and chronic, they are a monetary investment (have to take time off work and pretend it's a work trip, have to have enough money for gifts and restaurant dates, have to buy a house in the countryside or another flat in the city to have somewhere to go to reliably), and they leave him a chronic liar who has to hide a huge part of his life from his family. sexual opportunism has been a genuine lifestyle for him; he has structured his life around making it possible to cheat on his wife for 20 years and imbue his every day with at least a little bit of sexual gratification at the expense of objectified women and girls. he has such little self-control that he flirted with one of the best friends of his extremely young second wife IN FRONT OF ME AND HER, at my half-sister's BAPTISMAL PARTY; he has such little self-control that he oggled my school friend in my line of sight and showed such obvious favoritism for her that it became a "joke" in our friend group. when i say this is the driving force in his life what i mean by that is that i have not seen anything he would not sacrifice for it, and that he has lied about so much in order to enable himself that i cannot trust any single thing he says about it or anything else; for all i know everything but the predation and the objectification and the opportunism were a lie. when he was leaving the family he painted himself as pathetic and heartbroken and sobbed in my lap, and for a while i felt bad for HIM for CHOOSING to be open about his infidelity for once, after psychologically abusing and gaslighting my mother for nearly 20 YEARS !!!! he felt soooo sad leaving us kids behind so that he could live with a woman the age of his oldest son, but he just cannot help LOVE! which is sooo different from all that Other cheating, which was Not love, but which he still couldn't help, lol. when i actually got angry with him (not even for the predation yet), he got angry BACK. no more pitiful "woe is me" self-flaggelation and groveling and sniffling and asking if i could ever forgive him. once i even Hinted at a boundary and occasionally revoked access to me as a consequence of his direct actions, all that was left was indignant rage. he PRETENDS that his sexual opportunism is something complex and ensouled and heartfelt and interacting with his humanity, leaving him suffering, but underlying it there is nothing but endless insatiable entitlement & the belief that there is Nothing reprehensible about him doing as much lying and violation as he needs to in order to meet his "needs". i have not met anyone else yet whose psychology is so profoundly defined by a relentless pursuit of using others at every turn, it is fucking terrifying. ever since i Did confront him about the predation and actually revoked access to me, i have not heard a genuine word from him. it has all just been endless lies, manipulation, half-truths in hopes that a half-truth will somehow placate me, and him hallucinating an internal turmoil i REMEMBER he did not have as he was preying on me. there is no human heart to it, there is only an endless sense of entitlement to me because i have usurped and stolen the pretty little girl that used to live in his house and used to give him endless jerk-off material, whether that be through my complacency or through my discomfort at violation, and i'm telling him he cannot have her anymore, and he does not like not having his toys in a row on a shelf to pick up whenever he chooses
all that being said; i find what you are saying about humanity and violence very interesting. also a couple thoughts here:
- i have less experience with being physically violent (my rage capacities are very repressed), as well as physically attacked, but i would say it has much more to do with survival instincts and potential misfiring of survival instincts, correct? obviously there are different types of violence, some of it is sadistic and some of it is survival-motivated; the two probably have different hormonal interactions within them as well. + adrenaline-driven violence can be misplaced rather than self-protective as well. but if we are talking about humans as animals (which we are!), instinctive and "natural" violence the way i understand it comes either from a pursuit of domination or the survival instinct and need to protect oneself; sadistic violence seems to grow out of the pursuit of domination, but it is much more specific and fine-tuned and psychological than blunt over-powering; and a lot of sexual violence i believe to be sadistic in nature
- i am not opposed to the idea of sexual violence reflecting underlying biological reproductive dynamics and finding root in them; i Would say those dynamics are actually very very varied from species to species even Within nature, so while the push for reproductive male domination may be more or less universal, the forms as well as successes vs failures of it are shaped by various forces outside of it; and again, humanity has a whole psychological layer that cannot be understated, and men's sexual sadism takes on extremely specific forms that undeniably are Rooted in reproductive dynamics but at this point have so little to do with the most basic forms of them. i love to bring humanity down to earth and remind us all we are in fact animals and mammals, but i think a lot of the time we kind of broadly state one thing over the other ("humans are an evovled species" vs "humans are just animals"), w/o really acknowledged the complex and ugly interplay of the two
when i say these habitual perpetrators have harboured an ancient evil in them, what i mean by that is that they have embraced a biological imperative for sexual domination in its profoundly human, culturally / traditionally informed forms (pedophilic / necrophilic / zoophilic / biastophilic fixations are not somehow inborn and natural, they have no obvious immediate evolutionary purpose, they are dependent on our cultural contexts and the largely-misogynistic propaganda fed to men); and in that, they are already way too distant from what is "natural" to us as a species and what is beneficial to us as a society. it is not just instinct and it is not just culture, it is instinct warped by culture, and they have decided that they love the tingle that combo gives them and they will run with the scripts the culture has provided and will max out at getting off to violating others for as long as they get the freedom to do so
thank you for sharing about an extremely vulnerable experience; i'm so sorry he would do such a thing to you, that is terrifying and heartbreaking and profoundly traumatizing. what you're describing is making me think of the word "opportunism" again: it didn't happen randomly, it happened when you were vulnerable, and he had to be close to you the rest of the time to be next to you when you were vulnerable. in my emotional understanding of it, opportunism involves harbouring an urge most of them know is unrecrifiable with their public persona and even their own understanding of themselves, and keeping it hidden for long enough until an opportunity comes along. that is the part of their psychology that makes me think it is profoundly defined by performance. if they experienced their propensity for sexual violence the same as anything else they care about, the two wouldn't clash in their own minds in my opinion, and they wouldn't have to live a lie - and i think a lot of them are lying to themselves about whether they have perpetrated harm or not
yeah ive done this one but its also like what do you expect lol. you want women to hallucinate your like Innate Glow of Defiant Radical Womanhood that is just So Special and Magical and Beautiful and Enchanting for your validation purposes, and then when women go "omg i guess i am incredibly incredibly lucky to have been blessed by this Trans Angel !!!!! my lowly unenlightened Cis Self has been graced by the presence of a Rare Vision of Divine Beauty and Humanity's Very Hope at Eternal Liberation!!!!!" it's suddenly Weird. and like make no mistake IT IS WEIRD it is incredibly weird to talk this way about ANYONE but its WHAT YOU HAVE ORCHESTRATED !!!! ++++++ the constant over-emphasis on how HORRIBLY IMPORTANT it is to be open to dating a transfem DOES KIND OF MAKE IT A TEST so ofc women are excited for a chance to "pass" lol we are good well-behaved students!!! THIS IS NOT SELF-SERVING PROPPING UP it is actually wholehearted commitment to YOUR agenda of "make woman an eternal validation machine", and that commitment stems from our genuine desire to UPLIFT THE DOWNTRODDEN !!!! god forbid women get a little bit too enthusiastic while bending themselves over backwards in attempts to PLEASE YOU !!!!! "oh no they're playing it up too much so now it's embarrassing 🤬" YOUR WHOLE THING IS EMBARRASSING!!!!
i think the imagery of girls' bedrooms in pop culture is a big tool of the patriarchy panopticon because boys rooms are almost never shown and if they are, it's more personal or says something about the character
anyway i just think there's something about pop star photoshoots in teen bedroom sets (sabrina carpenter in most recent memory but a lot of them do this), iconic movie scenes like scream and jennifer's body and twilight, etc etc.
especially since a lot of that imagery is sexualized (sabrina carpenter), or about inviting someone in (scream, twilight) or performing (jennifer's body). like it's never really your own. it invites that performativeness into the most private/personal spaces in a way we never really do with boys. makes me think about how girls bedroom decor is pretty/aesthetics and boys is personal stuff like sports teams or personal interests. anyway i'm just saying shit lol idk
women you know what we need we need book clubs study groups and discussion circles. we are all very based and hot with our big brains and intellectual pursuits and reading of dense and profound literature but if we do not digest that material together and communally and through conversation we will lose it all we will lose the sharpness of our analysis. we need to deepen the definition of every seminal text we touch through proactive collaborative engagement or it will fade and soften into a vague impression instead of a vivid connective pulse that spurs us to thought conversation and action. we need to KNOW and FEEL and SAY what we and other women take away from the same texts we continuously reference!!! i suggest we start with Intercourse
something else i've been waiting to articulate is that. it is perhaps a #skill issue on my end but i actually Do struggle to see sexual abusers as normal human beings. and that does not mean i imagine them as like. distinctly sinister in ways that your neighbour Average Joe is not, because i 100% will believe that any random average joe is a sex pest. and i 100% understand the importance of asserting that a rapist man or a child molester man can display any number of pro-social qualities / be funny and nice / be kind to animals / be a passionate activist / stand up for the weak one moment and abuse them the next. i agree! but i cannot see it as like... human of them, ultimately. as in i think pretty much everything about my father (his status his money his career his competence his humour his style his interests his beliefs his politics his daily life his house the car he drives the food he eats) in one way or another are like... an elaborate performance of humanity and normalcy and adequate human lifestyle that provides for his main mission in life, which is to be a pedophilic misogynistic sex pest. i don't think he himself has rectified the divide between 'humanity' and his actual actions internally, which is why chronic sexual abusers are also pathological liars. and it's because their sexual victimization of others is not an "equal" expression of their psyches alongside with like, what their favorite song is and whether they're great with dogs or kids or at parties. i think one takes precedence over the other and i think they have chosen to be sexually opportunistic and abusive (otherwise they would not abuse), and so everything else is the performance they construct to keep living a life in which people give them access to victims to abuse
this is an emotionally formed/informed mindset that is not perhaps the most politically productive (one of its greatest weaknesses is that i can rarely summon rage towards perpetrators of incomprehensible sexual harm, because to me they are black holes, voids, vacuums of humanity, they are cogs in a machine of existential horror, their existence is so incomprehensibly terrifying that my psyche refuses to see them as human, so it feels more 'productive' to be enraged with actual human beings that enable them; i am aware of it and i want to work towards challenging it, because i don't think this is entirely helpful and healthy); but at the same time it just genuinely feels like there is like. an ancient evil in them that they chose and harboured and nurtured, and it matters to them more than anything else does or could. i don't think they're incomprehensible unique monsters that can never be mistaken for a cool kind chill guy, but i think once they choose habitual sexual violence they aren't really 'normal human beings' anymore
PSA to all the women sexually victimized and groomed at a young age
(especially at the early stages of their sexual development or just leading up to it)
you are fine if at the time you found your grooming process to be "erotic", enticing or arousing;
you are fine if the grooming process and your conditioned response to it shaped your sexuality for years to come;
you are fine if your sexuality is still influenced by your grooming to any degree;
you are fine if you feel you had "invited" your grooming (that's not have any of this works);
you are fine if your conditioned response does not align with what you understand to be your authentic sexual orientation (the effects of grooming do not define it);
you are fine if your conditioned response does align with what you understand to be your authentic sexual orientation (the perpetrator being of a sex you are generally attracted to does not mean you "enjoyed" or "invited" your victimization any more than another woman, nor does it make it any less traumatizing);
you are fine if the fear, pain or disgust you feel over your victimization are fully or mostly retroactive;
you are fine if you were influenced by cultural depictions and scripts that mirrored your grooming, and if pornographic exposure, whether it was prompted by the direct perpetrator or not, played a part in your grooming
love you all and you are FINE. let shame change sides. 🫶🏻
a bit of my own personal timeline below, in case it is of any comfort ❤️
i was groomed on and off throughout pretty much my entire childhood, with a few stand-out incidents but largely in a fairly "lowkey"/subtle manner; obviously the relative severity of victimization will make different women's experiences unlike one another's, so i am not at all an authority of yours. that being said, for me:
the grooming must have started incredibly young in its most subtle forms;
the most pronounced, direct incident i can recall would have been at the age of approx. 9-10 years old if i am not mistaken;
further, more subtle but memorable incidents are sprinkled throughout ages of 10 to 14-ish;
i felt the internal effects of grooming throughout every stage of my sexual development, coming in very close and intense contact with them from time to time from a very early age and into my mid teens;
i gained greater physical distance from the perpetrator (my father) at the age of 16 when he left my mother;
i started gaining awareness of the presence of grooming throughout my childhood and the effects of it on me around the age of 16-17; whether i was mostly aware of having been groomed (= external actions) or the effects of it (=internal experiences and my conditioned responses) varied from day to day, and i was rarely fully aware of both at the same time;
things really "clicked" soon after my 18th birthday;
i had to remain in occasional contact with the perpetrator / secretive about my victimization until the age of ~20;
i confined in my mother and fully cut him off at that point, but the rest of my family is not aware;
i am now 27, and despite his attempts and a few close calls/external pressures, have not seen him in person / spoken to him in 6-7 years.
i was definitely emotionally affected by my grooming as a child, but my distress was mostly "coincidental" (i.e. it affected the greater familial dynamic, esp my relationship with my mother, in upsetting / confusing / adverse ways). i did not experience the actual acts as distressing or painful at all
ages of 16-17 were characterized mostly by intense confusion, murkiness, guilt, fear and cognitive dissonance
the turning point at 18 felt raw and world-ending and distressing but not yet fully painful
i think ages 18 to 20 might have been the worst due to continuous forced contact/proximity, but ages 20 to 25 came with a lot a lot of social pain. the social pain was what was destroying me for perhaps the longest time.
for me, once the shock of the revelation/realization subsided, once the horror and disgust were accustomed with, and once my autonomy was regained and i no longer had to pretend things were okay, a lot of my rawest, most intense distress came from feeling alone, unseen, silenced, misunderstood by the culture at large and people around me, and by casual fetishization / normalization / erasure of my experience. if that is a source of pain for you, i cannot stress enough how important it is to have at least one friend that knows and understands you, someone you can talk things through in greater detail without putting yourself in danger and making yourself recklessly vulnerable - and with that up your sleeve, to find whatever communities (online, in person, diffused or strongly connected) where your experiences are properly contextualized and validated. i was lucky to have the former for years, but until we encountered radical feminist analysis of commonplace sexual victimization of women and girls, we felt crazy and isolated and alone, the two of us against the world. you need to not feel isolated.
crass narratives around victimization resembling mine used to bring me to my knees, make me shrivel up with hypervigilance and dread, at my most vulnerable and open-hearted they would leave me sobbing. a lot of that pain came from the fear of what it would mean to speak out, and the fear that if i did, no one would care, it would not connect with any other living soul barring one, that no one would want to make any space for me. that is a lie they want you to believe to keep you silenced and alone. you are not alone, you are not inconsequential, and what happened to you isn't random, isolated or incidental. there are forces at play with it that many, many other women care about dissecting, understanding, challenging and pushing against.
there is a lot of jadedness i still carry, from being failed on multiple levels, societal and interpersonal; i am jaded towards my family, i am jaded towards those who questioned me, dismissed me or lied about me; i am jaded towards the perpetrator, and i am jaded against the culture of apologism, lax attitudes, and commonplace societal grooming and conditioning that does half of child abusers' work for them. it is possible there are things i have not processed fully yet. but the way i understand it right now, from a more stable and secure state, is that the worst thing this has ever done to me was make me question my reality, my right to anger, outrage and a voice. in my experience, it genuinely gets incredibly incredibly better with those things reclaimed.
i hope that if you have not reclaimed them yet, you can, and once you do, it eases your burden at least a bit 🫂 that being said, do not let me speak over you in any way in which my experience cannot be used to understand and process yours; i encourage you above anything else to understand what core need of yours is not being met, and to pursue meeting it relentlessly and in an intensely politically minded way; we should never let anyone treat this as some private, random and personal tragedy we unfortunately stumbled into. we can and deserve to hold every person we meet accountable for ways in which they contribute to the systemic harms we have suffered directly. we deserve to demand accountability from people other than our direct abusers
