Victimhood and silencing
Sep. 30th, 2006 11:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
truepennyA friend remarked today that it's very difficult to be out about being the survivor of abuse without seeming to claim victimhood.
And I thought about it. And I thought of two reasons for that to be true, both of which are more theoretical than immediate, but that's also what makes them harder to see, and thus harder to deal with.
The first reason is that, culturally, our cognitive models for dealing with abuse frankly suck.
Stephen R. Donaldson talks, in the introduction to the first of his Gap books, about how he'd wanted to take three characters and move each of them around the triangle from hero to victim to villain. And, you know, we can argue about how well he managed that, and whether it was an interesting thing to attempt or not, but what catches my attention is the kind of three way toggle system, which he is both using and trying to subvert--not entirely successfully. What those books--and even more so, the introduction to those books--show is the narrow categorization underlying our cognitive models. Hero. Victim. Villain. If you're not one, you must be one of the others. This is why I don't think Donaldson is successful in his subversion: because he moves Angus and Morn and Nick from position to position rather than arguing that they don't have to inhabit those positions at all. It's structurally really kind of cool, but it also reinforces the binary thinking that got us into this mess in the first place.
Binary thinking? you say. Mole, can you not count?
Oh, I can count, and that's where we hit the second reason it's hard to be out about surviving abuse without being categorized as a victim.
Because "victim" is not a subject position. It is not a place from which one acts or has power, as both "hero" and "villain" are. It is a place in which one is acted upon.
It's an object position.
One could argue, in fact--hell, I could argue, this isn't academia and I don't need to elide myself from my argument. I am arguing that that that's the point of abuse, to make a person an object, to make them silent, to make them unable to act, unable to talk about who they are, about what's happened to them. To make them SHUT THE FUCK UP.
And all too often, it works.
And our culture colludes by refusing to relinquish the cognitive model of "victim." By assuming and insisting that anyone who speaks out is searching for pity. Because pity does not enable agency. Pity reinforces victimhood; it makes sure you stay right where you're put.
Pity is easy. Heroes and villains know how to work it.
What's hard is making eye-contact with someone who is willing to say, "Horrible things were done to me, but I'm better now." Someone who is asserting that having been abused does not erase their subject position. That they're still here. Someone who insists that they aren't a victim, aren't a villain, aren't a hero. That they're a person, just like you are. That what happened to them was not special--it did not happen because they were special, it did not make them special because it happened. That it could happen, could have happened, to you. That you are not exempt.
It's hard to face someone who insists that they don't deserve pity, as victims do, or loathing, as villains do, or admiration, as heroes do.
That they deserve respect.
As people do.
Culturally, we'd rather keep it at a distance, rather keep our nice safe categorizations of heroes and villains and victims. We scramble like mad to keep bothvillains abusers and victims survivors alienated from us, from who we are.
And that's why abuse survivors, when they speak out, have to worry about whether they sound like they are claiming victimhood. Because people assume they are. And they assume they are because they'd really kind of prefer it that way. Because it keeps the lid down on the box.
And it reinscribes the object position of "victim" all over again. Which must make the "villains" very happy. And lets the "heroes" continue to stare nobly into the distance, untouched and untarnished by our common humanity.
And that, in a nutshell, is why that cognitive model needs to die.
And I thought about it. And I thought of two reasons for that to be true, both of which are more theoretical than immediate, but that's also what makes them harder to see, and thus harder to deal with.
The first reason is that, culturally, our cognitive models for dealing with abuse frankly suck.
Stephen R. Donaldson talks, in the introduction to the first of his Gap books, about how he'd wanted to take three characters and move each of them around the triangle from hero to victim to villain. And, you know, we can argue about how well he managed that, and whether it was an interesting thing to attempt or not, but what catches my attention is the kind of three way toggle system, which he is both using and trying to subvert--not entirely successfully. What those books--and even more so, the introduction to those books--show is the narrow categorization underlying our cognitive models. Hero. Victim. Villain. If you're not one, you must be one of the others. This is why I don't think Donaldson is successful in his subversion: because he moves Angus and Morn and Nick from position to position rather than arguing that they don't have to inhabit those positions at all. It's structurally really kind of cool, but it also reinforces the binary thinking that got us into this mess in the first place.
Binary thinking? you say. Mole, can you not count?
Oh, I can count, and that's where we hit the second reason it's hard to be out about surviving abuse without being categorized as a victim.
Because "victim" is not a subject position. It is not a place from which one acts or has power, as both "hero" and "villain" are. It is a place in which one is acted upon.
It's an object position.
One could argue, in fact--hell, I could argue, this isn't academia and I don't need to elide myself from my argument. I am arguing that that that's the point of abuse, to make a person an object, to make them silent, to make them unable to act, unable to talk about who they are, about what's happened to them. To make them SHUT THE FUCK UP.
And all too often, it works.
And our culture colludes by refusing to relinquish the cognitive model of "victim." By assuming and insisting that anyone who speaks out is searching for pity. Because pity does not enable agency. Pity reinforces victimhood; it makes sure you stay right where you're put.
Pity is easy. Heroes and villains know how to work it.
What's hard is making eye-contact with someone who is willing to say, "Horrible things were done to me, but I'm better now." Someone who is asserting that having been abused does not erase their subject position. That they're still here. Someone who insists that they aren't a victim, aren't a villain, aren't a hero. That they're a person, just like you are. That what happened to them was not special--it did not happen because they were special, it did not make them special because it happened. That it could happen, could have happened, to you. That you are not exempt.
It's hard to face someone who insists that they don't deserve pity, as victims do, or loathing, as villains do, or admiration, as heroes do.
That they deserve respect.
As people do.
Culturally, we'd rather keep it at a distance, rather keep our nice safe categorizations of heroes and villains and victims. We scramble like mad to keep both
And that's why abuse survivors, when they speak out, have to worry about whether they sound like they are claiming victimhood. Because people assume they are. And they assume they are because they'd really kind of prefer it that way. Because it keeps the lid down on the box.
And it reinscribes the object position of "victim" all over again. Which must make the "villains" very happy. And lets the "heroes" continue to stare nobly into the distance, untouched and untarnished by our common humanity.
And that, in a nutshell, is why that cognitive model needs to die.
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no subject
Date: 2006-09-30 05:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-30 06:08 pm (UTC)It bothers me when the word "victim" is equated with evaluative terms like "hero" and "villain." Because the terms "hero" and "villain" carry with them a moral charge. We assume a hero is good; we assume a villain is bad. What then are we to asume about a "victim"?
Too often in our culture I think people *do* this; they assume that the term "victim" is morally evaluative. There is a kind of "talk show" move where to claim victimhood is to claim moral authority and therefore the right to speak, if not act. Hence the eagerness of many people who aren't what I would properly understand as victims to claim victimhood for themselves, because in doing so they will gain moral ground over people they are competing against.
And then there *are* victims, people who have suffered and would very much like to be out of this weird situation. I prefer the term survivor myself; it admits a temporary lack of power while preserving agency, and preserves a sense of moral ambiguity - there is no automatic assumption of "goodness" or "badness" associated with the term.
no subject
Date: 2006-09-30 06:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-30 06:33 pm (UTC)MKK
no subject
Date: 2006-09-30 07:05 pm (UTC)And what's interesting about that is that, made especially visible in fiction and brightly illuminated in 'action' genres, 'heroes' and 'villains' are *constantly* having bad things done to them. Harm to the hero often provides her/his motivations, and also - hearkening to what the above commenter says about ascribing a moral purity to victims - to illustrate that s/he is the good guy. A certain, carefully metered suffering on the part of the hero underscores his/her heroism. And then villains may have a history of suffering in a particularly psychologically incline story which wants to provide motivations for evil-doing, and certainly are expected to suffer in the conclusion of the story. So both kinds of agents suffer...but they're not, apparently, victims.
This line of yours,
What's hard is making eye-contact with someone who is willing to say, "Horrible things were done to me, but I'm better now." Someone who is asserting that having been abused does not erase their subject position. That they're still here.
gave me pause. I do a fair bit of writing in my own journal, albeit sporadically, about what I generally call my recovery process. And I feel odd about this piece, because I am really not "better now." Or at least not, as it seems to mean 'close enough to all better that it's not still affecting me now.' I'm still badly affected by my history, and still very much involved in doing the work of extricating myself from it and becoming the person I want to be. I have a rough time, sometimes, with dissociation and anxiety and all the rest of it, not to mention the more cognitive issues of how to deal with my family members. I wouldn't say I'm better now. But I still entirely feel that I am an agent, a subject, that I deserve - require, in fact - respect, that I am a great deal more than a-thing/person-who-has-been-hurt, that I have a rich and complicated life which is in no part untouched by what I lived through but also not defined by it. I am, very definitely, still here.
And I suppose I'm gnawing on your words more than is polite, and possibly more than is meaningful, but it seems to me almost as though this - "But I'm better" as a prelude to the deserving of respect - feeds back into the cognitive model you are otherwise attacking so effectively, because it suggests that one is not a subject/agent/person until one is no longer suffering.
I don't, really, know a lot of villains. And I think I know a lot of heroes, and I think almost all of them have been victims and heroes at the same time.
Anyhow. Thank you for the thoughtful post. I popped over from
no subject
Date: 2006-09-30 07:16 pm (UTC)Because, "Horrible things are being done to me," is a plea either for pity or for action, and what I was trying to get at is that survivors are people who aren't asking for anything except to be heard. Not asking for anything for themselves, anyway. Because asking that people be aware, and not let this kind of abuse be sustained, is not the same thing.
And I was also trying to imply, with that "better," a rejection of the progressive-present of being a victim. Because reclaiming one's agency--in any way--is surely better than silent, suffering objectification.
Okay, yes. Too much packed into one word. But I certainly did not mean morally better.
In which I make this all personal, in an effort to be more specific.
Date: 2006-09-30 07:51 pm (UTC)I agree with you that there isn't a very accepted/acceptable/nameable category/concept for the need simply to be heard of people who aren't asking for anything else.
I think I do sometimes ask for other things. As a survivor, I ask for reality checks about things where my history has impaired my judgment. I ask for patience in situations where I cannot respond the way I want to or feel I ought to because I am fighting my conditioning. But, no, there's no way for anyone to rescue me from things that entered the past perfect decades go, and I do want to be able to talk about this part of my life without sounding like I'm asking for assistance - which is impossible - or pity - which is unhelpful.
But what I really wanted to get at is something more difficult to get a grip on, somehow: even while the abuse/trauma/harm is on-going, even while the person is being actively victimized, even while there is, indeed, a pressing need for some kind of intervention (though it's usually an unmet need), that person is still an agent. It's something that's more vivid to me, perhaps, than for some other people, because I was living under abusive conditions for quite a while. From infancy until sometime in my teens, I was a victim. This 'now that you're no longer being victimized, you can stake a claim to being a survivor and thus an agent' model would have me not-a-person until nearly when I reached my majority.* But I remember being a person, being a subject, being an agent, during those years. I was a pretty messed up person, definitely. But I was active. I had a point of view. I had conversations with people that had no direct connection to abuse. (In fact, I *only* had conversations which had no direct bearing on abuse.) Even when I went home to things I promptly forgot, I was still a person, still there the whole time.
* I am not, I hasten to explain, saying that I think you were saying this, in its more spelled-out form. I'm fretting at the way that what you said could be interpreted that way, whether that was what you meant or not - and, to me, seemed to imply it without intention.
Re: In which I make this all personal, in an effort to be more specific.
Date: 2006-09-30 08:23 pm (UTC)But it's the conventions of our narratives that deny that agency, that personhood, that define one, once one outs oneself as a survivor, in the victim role.
So you can have all the sympathy in the world, in that role, but that's all. All you are is that, by definition, if you are that. And I wasn't only that and you weren't because life is complex and narrative conventions -- and conversation obeys narrative conventions more than you'd think -- are a simplification that people can cope with.
This is why The Bone People is the only book about abuse that I re-read.
Re: In which I make this all personal, in an effort to be more specific.
Date: 2006-09-30 08:27 pm (UTC)Re: In which I make this all personal, in an effort to be more specific.
Date: 2006-09-30 08:44 pm (UTC)This does not mean that I don't think it's a damn fine book, mind you. I do.
The thing is - about your broader point - that I have issues with this in fiction (although, hell, I also freely admit that sometimes I like the ridiculous simplifications - escapism is a worhty cause, and I like books that tell me that the world is simpler than it is, sometimes) but that it also exists in people's perceptions of reality. Not in the reality itself, but in the conventions, categories, archetypes by which people understand the world they live in, the same limitations come into play. I think there's probably some damage done by the prevalence of these simplifications even in fiction, but of them, the greatest is that it supports their continuation outside of fiction.
Also, of course, it makes it harder to tell the truth. I'm pretty much against things that make it harder to tell the truth, directly or through a medium of artistic deceptions.
Re: In which I make this all personal, in an effort to be more specific.
Date: 2006-09-30 08:51 pm (UTC)So - yes. That.
no subject
Date: 2006-09-30 10:07 pm (UTC)Because if Bad Things happen to definable Victims, then it can't happen to them. UNsympathetic magic, if you will.
I am a strong and articulate person. Someone once told me they didn't want to hear I'd been abused because if it could happen to me it could happen to anyone. And all I could say was 'Yes. Well, it can. There's not a Script and we are not sent out from Central Casting.'
I am, evidently, a Bad Victim because I don't follow the approved path of recovery and redemption. It messes with the narrative. I speak about the abuse when it applies, and I speak of it as matter of factly as I can. I break the silence, open the box.
I went through some pretty intense therapy along the way. And I lost people to that therapy, had people walk away because (and this is a quote) they liked me better when I was sick. When I was a Good Victim, you see, it was more comfortable for others. And sometimes for me, to tell the truth.
Telling the truth. That's what I try to do.
Re: In which I make this all personal, in an effort to be more specific.
Date: 2006-09-30 10:19 pm (UTC)I think my post is getting tangled up in the thing it's trying to deconstruct.
Because I'm trying to talk about cultural perceptions of victimhood, about perceptions from the outside, not about what happens on the inside, and how people live with and deal with being abused or having been abused.
I can't speak from an abuse survivor's subject position, and I'm not trying to.
no subject
Date: 2006-09-30 10:19 pm (UTC)I am not a survivor of sexual or physical abuse, but a lot of what you say here applies to my experience as a physically disabled person, as well. So many of the people who have worked with me concentrate on 'getting my needs met' to the exclusion of everything that matters in my life, because, once they 'get my needs met' they can feel all shiny and happy and good about themselves, because They Have Helped, and they never have to engage with me as a person.
Others try to characterize me as one of the 'unfortunate and weak' members of society, a classification I refuse to accept. I am me, and I have my strengths and my talents, and I plan to use them. I do not exist to provide a) good karma, or b) 'an example' of any goddamn thing, for anyone.
I'm still here, too.
Thank you, again. *memories*
no subject
Date: 2006-09-30 10:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-30 10:26 pm (UTC)Interesting, It never occurred to me that I should worry about how others perceive me when I tell them*. It's my reactions, my recovery or lack thereof that's important, and how my experience colours their reactions to current victims. All I care about--the reason I tell people in the first place--is so they may understand that even the most "normal" child, raised by parents who are heroes of parenting in a rich, white community, can be a victim.
*Which is important, actually, because a large part of my continuing management of the emotional fallout is learning not to care what others think. There's more to it than that, but I am as yet unbreakfasted and my brain isn't functioning well enough to explain.
Now, maybe there's an important difference between physical abuse and sexual or emotional abuse; I haven't experienced the first, not in any significant way.
no subject
Date: 2006-09-30 10:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-30 10:36 pm (UTC)I am arguing that that that's the point of abuse, to make a person an object, to make them silent, to make them unable to act, unable to talk about who they are, about what's happened to them.
I think in many cases of abuse the point is not to make the recipient an object, but that the abuser cannot see the recipient as other than an object to begin with. Because abusers have also generally been abused. It is a terrible, vicious cycle, which can only be broken by a person doing the hard work of recovery. And those on the outside don't want to see the reality, or are also caught in the abusive cycle, and are in denial. It's the denial that has to end. Every time someone speaks out, that denial is challenged.
no subject
Date: 2006-09-30 11:29 pm (UTC)That works for me. It's the Good and/or Bad Disabled Person one I can't stand. What's really hilarious is when they try to use both examples at one time. "You handle everything in your life with immesurable grace and dignity, so of course you will let me screw you over in every possible way."
One day you should get me drunk and then ask me to tell you about my theory that all people in personal care support or whatever they're calling it these days were unloved by their mothers. The results will be...interesting, to say the least.
Besides, I'm already using you as an example of an experienced writer-type to be emulated. It's only fair. :)
no subject
Date: 2006-09-30 11:32 pm (UTC)Yes.
no subject
Date: 2006-09-30 11:34 pm (UTC)"Do as I say, not as I do." *g*
no subject
Date: 2006-09-30 11:38 pm (UTC)She was a Bad Victim too, and I applaud your truth telling.
Re: In which I make this all personal, in an effort to be more specific.
Date: 2006-09-30 11:40 pm (UTC)I was reading all of this and nodding, and reached this line, and it verbalized one of the reasons that I have at least four copies of The Bone People around, and why it's the one book I asked Soren to read, because it's so important to me. (There are others I've mentioned -- that's the only one I specifically requested that he read.)
Being a person, not an object/subject, has been a hard road -- or perhaps it's insisting on being a person that's been hard.
no subject
Date: 2006-10-01 12:31 am (UTC)"Never despise a coping mechanism, be it ever so bad, if it keeps you alive long enough to learn how to live."
I was and am a Bad Victim. Given the choices currently available, it's my best choice. I don't whisper and lower my eyes. Yes, I was raped. Yes, I was battered. Yes, I am still here. No, I will not be ashamed and quiet for the sake of someone else's peace of mind.
no subject
Date: 2006-10-01 12:58 am (UTC)Then there are the people who do believe me and insist on taking over tasks that I'm perfectly capable of managing.
Either I'm a liar/user or I'm a burden/inconvenience. There's no space for being a person in there.
no subject
Date: 2006-10-01 01:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-01 02:35 am (UTC)Oh yes, this eternally recurring conversation:
A: X happened to me once.
B: You are trying to derail the conversation by SOLICITING PITY and PLAYING THE VICTIM CARD.
A: No, I didn't ask for pity and I wasn't soliciting anything.
B: Of course you were. Why else would you have mentioned it?
-- and then you get people like that horrible writer who disputed the one-in-four rape statistic, not because she had research or numbers of her own to counter it with, but because, 'if one in four of my friends had been sexually assaulted, wouldn't I know about it?'
...well, no. People who can't be trusted with information like that don't generally get told.
no subject
Date: 2006-10-01 03:48 am (UTC)Thank you.
Because this actually helps explain to me a lot of why it is so hard for me to talk about the abuse in my past: I am always afraid that the people I'm talking to will assume I am taking the role of victim, when in fact the denial of agency that that role brings with it was one of the major things my mother used to perpetuate the abuse (e.g. after having a nightmare featuring a character from Lord of the Rings I was categorically forbidden to read all science fiction and fantasy for several years, because it had hurt me and therefore I obviously had to be protected from it: extend this sort of thing into human relationships and it becomes emotionally abusive really fast). And I don't know how often the categorization of the person being abused as a victim and therefore without agency is used to abuse them further, but it can't be just me.
Survivor is much better, especially since the only thing it says about state of recovery is that one is in fact still alive.
So yeah, that cognitive model needs to die, and thank you for pointing it out, because it will help me kill it in myself.
no subject
Date: 2006-10-01 04:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-01 05:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-01 07:40 am (UTC)What's hard is making eye-contact with someone who is willing to say, "Horrible things were done to me, but I'm better now." Someone who is asserting that having been abused does not erase their subject position. That they're still here. Someone who insists that they aren't a victim, aren't a villain, aren't a hero. That they're a person, just like you are. That what happened to them was not special--it did not happen because they were special, it did not make them special because it happened. That it could happen, could have happened, to you. That you are not exempt.
And then I remember this, what you say here...and I keep talking about it.
no subject
Date: 2006-10-01 05:37 pm (UTC)That's one of the things about abuse that most people don't want to learn.
It's a truth that I learnt to face while in an abusive relationship - only mildly abusive (verbal rather than physical); to a degree that I felt guilty labelling it as such because 'other people are treated so much worse' but I figured that as the effects on me and the healing process I needed were fitting so well into the spectrum of what others in that situation went through, I should stop denying it.
And I did deny it, because I did not see myself as the sort of person who would get into (and stay in) an abusive relationship - that simply cannot happen to me. It did.
no subject
Date: 2006-10-01 05:56 pm (UTC)I'm not saying that people 'want' to be victimised; but sometimes 'victim status' is easier to assume than breaking out of the situation.
Enablers come in many shapes and colours, and they can enable abuse in a number of ways:
- refusing to acknowledge it
- downplaying the effects
- confirming the abuser in his belief that their behaviour is rational or acceptable
- confirming the victim in their belief that this is the way life is, there's nothing that can be done
- telling the victim they're at fault
etc etc.
The abuser will objectify the victim or rationalise their own behaviours in a way that rewrites reality and makes it right; but victims can reinforce the relationship by provoking abusers (if it gets bad enough, maybe someone will do something about it), accepting the status quo, blaming themselves etc.
None of these responses are healthy. Not all of them are situations that either of the parties involved - victim *or* abuser - can get out without outside help; but I think part of the problem with the mental model you've quoted in your excellent article is that it objectifies the abuser almost as much as it objectifies the victim.
Very few people (we tend to call them psychopaths) set out, and enjoy, the act of hurting other human beings. They exist, and they need to be dealt with. But a lot of abuse is dealt out by people who become just as trapped in a situation for which they have insufficient coping strategies as their victims do; only that _their_ strategies spread hurt and pain. By labelling them 'villains' or re-labelling them 'victims of prior abuse' they, too, remain trapped in their place in this particular corner of reality.
no subject
Date: 2006-10-02 03:39 am (UTC)I used to want to be normal. But the normal people were the ones who saw the bruises and borken bones and said nothing. They were the ones who heard the screams and never called the police. I no longer aspire to normalcy.
I was damaged, but I have never been broken. I was hurt, but never killed. I was abused, but chose not to abuse. The past has informed me, shaped me into who I am now, but isn't the overiding power that drives my soul. I don't know if there is a term for that in the English language.
no subject
Date: 2006-10-02 04:02 am (UTC)I also think that while pleasure may not be gained from teh abuse, what I witnessed in my own mother, was a sort of savage satisfaction form seeing someone else cringing for a change. I am not certain that merely ascribing victim-hood to the abuser does anything but negate the power of their own free will and choice. The first time I was ever angry enough to move to strike a child in my care, I felt sick to my stomach merely thinking about what I might have done in that anger. I pulled back and withdrew, getting ahold of myself. I have had many children in my care since then and have never hit any of them, not ever. I chose, even before I got into therapy.
My mother chose to abuse me. She never did it in front of anyone, played the "perfect mother" to all viewers, and then beat me bloody when no one was watching. Her care to conceal shows a knowledge of wrong doing that argues an understanding of her actions. The number of abusers who hide their abuse, who coach a child in how to lie, to doctors, teachers, police, that speaks to a desire to harm while evading punishment. It might not be the pleasure that psychopaths get from torture, but it certainly implies that some sort of benefit was derived by the abuser. Does it not?
I think that ascribing insanity to an abuser, or victimhood, is a way of distancing the viewer from the reality of a choice, willingly made and re-made for many years. I do not believe for an instant that my mother "couldn't help herself", if that were true, she would have hit me in front of a policeman or teacher, instead of holding back and waiting until we got home.
She knew what she was doing and she chose to do it. Just as I know what I am doing and chose not to.
no subject
Date: 2006-10-02 01:51 pm (UTC)But I digress. As usual. :D
I really, really agree with the content of this post - I hate the term "victim", as it assigns a pasivity to the person that probably isn't the case. Bad things do happen to good people. And most of the time, they just want to get up and move on and get back to their life, and not been treated as a "victim" all the time. I am trying so, so hard to remember that when I have a knee jerk reaction to people, and thank you for putting this one up to remind me of why I do it.
no subject
Date: 2006-10-03 04:41 am (UTC)The first time I was ever angry enough to move to strike a child in my care, I felt sick to my stomach merely thinking about what I might have done in that anger.
This speaks to one of the reasons I HATE the victim-abuser cycle stereotype (that may not be the word I want). Yes, many/most abusers were themselves abused, but not every victim of abuse becomes an abuser.
I've been abused; I also regularly babysit children and have taught preschool. I am so utterly sick of the shock people express when they learn that people actually leave their children in my care. I've had the following conversation several times:
Me: I'm babysitting X Friday.
Them, in shocked tones: YOU babysit?
Me: Yes...
Them: But your father beat you!
Me: And your point is?
Them, usually flustered by this point: Is it hard to keep from hitting those kids?
I usually walk off at that point. Damn, but it's insulting. Not only does it oversimplify a horribly complex issue, but it's yet another way of reducing, me, a person with, y'know, a personality and a set of moral principles and a whole host of experiences including but not limited to abuse, to victim #247.
Dammit, people. I am not what was done to me.
no subject
Date: 2006-10-04 01:45 am (UTC)You are really, really smart. You know that?
Yeah. That. And it fits in with a thing I sometimes rant about, which is the attitude: "But you... you're happy and successful! Therefore, what happened to you can't possibly have been really bad." (The proof they cite of this, of course, is that since what happened to you is not on your waking mind every single minute -- and, moreover, displayed in ways acceptable to them -- then it wasn't really a problem and certainly wasn't that bad. And then they get to slag you not for being a victim, but for falsely trying to claim victimhood... which of course you never set out to claim in the first place. It's maddening.)
no subject
Date: 2010-05-11 01:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-23 02:45 am (UTC)Thank you. My mother knew what she was doing too, how else would she have managed to never hit my sister where the bruises would show, and never do it in front of anyone who might call the cops? She happened to have been (and still is) mentally ill, but it's awfully fucking convenient that she managed to hide both the abuse and the illness from anyone who might have gotten her some help.
no subject
Date: 2011-09-23 10:04 pm (UTC)I am right there with you. My mother suffered from dementia, but still managed to be on the town council and hide her abuse of me from everyone. I call bull on the whole concept.