Nothing like a few wholly self-absorbed, fallow people to completely derail a brilliant culture jam

[jawnbc]

So misia makes a wonderful, powerful, concise post, and it starts a great même for those who've experienced sexual violence:

I'm Hanne. I'm a survivor of sexual violence.
No Pity. No Shame. No Silence.

Brilliant.

Very shortly thereafter some suggests adding domestic violence--there's often an overlap, and the link--gender-related violence, most often perpetrated against women--is clear. And so it begins to unravel. Folks soon start adding their own criteria for sexual violence--things like "being objectified without my permission." So powerful becomes diluted, concise becomes verbose, and then the in-fighting begins--whose terms are right, whose criteria?

Some have also brought in being emotionally abused for not conforming well to gender archetypes. One person actually claimed his father berating him about being effeminate was just as painful as a women's experience with rape. That sort of equivocation doesnt' make me think "survivor"--more like "self-absorped wanker".

Regardless of life history.

Oh, and just for the record, My Name is John, and I survived domestic sexual abuse. No Pity. No Shame. No Silence.

And no misplaced sense that I have much in common with the women of Srebenica and Rwanda.

Some people can be such eejits--in the name of "healing".

Comments

[danbearnyc.livejournal.com]

Oh yech. One of my friends was the first civvie into Srebrenica, working as a translator for the U-let's-fuck-up-another-aid-project-N.

[schillerium.livejournal.com]

Right on the ball, babe. As always.

[nutmeggie.livejournal.com]

Can I just say that "I am"? Is that good enough? Uh, some days it is. Ok. I'm going with that.

*wry grin*

I'm sorry, but some days I just don't go for the survivor thing. I don't feel like a survivor. I don't feel like I did anything special to ensure my survival. Like maybe things just happened that way. *shove it down shove it down*

[jawnbc]

Be who you are, do what you have to do. But be willing to move outside the comfort zone if you want life to change significantly.


At least, that's been mine experience.

[nutmeggie.livejournal.com]

It's not a comfort zone thing. It's just, to me someone who is a survivor is someone who DID things. Like the gladiator that survived.

I dunno. I'm not expressing it right. Like that it's a verb instead of a noun.

But yeah you're prolly right. And it is too bad a bunch of people had to go in there and stomp all over it.

[deafdyke.livejournal.com]

Well, you can say that the work in becoming a survivor is largely emotional. And it's not something that can ever be called "over and done with" for many people.

as for comparing different forms of abuse, I think it's valid to accept that it takes many forms, and someone can be just as damaged (and often more so) by emotional and verbal abuse. The problem is in making comparisons rather than being mutually supportive.

I agree . . .

[jawnbc]

. . . but after many years in "the recovery community" too often it became Duling Suffering. Both (or more) battling over whose been hurt more (or worse), rather than commiserating.

And I do think that for a lot of people, it's the realization that, yeah, other's experience might have. in fact, been worse than their own.

But when someone's trying to bring attention to a clear issue (sexual violence, domestic violence), if any and all things that are abuse or violence are tacked on, the original issue is subsumed. And that's exactly the problem--no clarity.

[nutmeggie.livejournal.com]

Yes, because the damage to me can be different from the damage to you, but the point is we both suffered damage that is real. Right? And hopefully what one would learn from that is that damage is damage, I don't need to compound it by trivialising yours in order to make mine look more significant.

[mondragon.livejournal.com]

On the flip side, support/discussion groups that focus on specific kinds of damaging experiences that some people may be ashamed to talk about can be useful, so people can say "that happened to you, too?" But I agree completely about the evil of trivializing other people's experiences and pain.

[nutmeggie.livejournal.com]

*sigh* I spent a long time looking through that whole thing, and a lot of the basic things that are fundamentally wrong in this place are quite evident but there's a lot of good there too.

[danbearnyc.livejournal.com]

Dueling Survivors. Oy. I will never forget the one and only time I went to a Gay Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACoA?). Them queens was battling over who had the worst upbringing, and that was just in the introductory "My name is Bill" stage: "My name is Bill, and I'm the queer adult survivor of two alcoholics one of whom was also a codependent, whose mother in turn made me wear polyester and turn tricks to support her heroin addiction..."

[mondragon.livejournal.com]

I think it's fair to say that there are victim groups that are trendier than others, and I wonder if the people who are not part of currently trendy victim groups are desperate to find a place to talk about their pain? Some people may have seen the thread and said "I need to say that I too am a survivor of something bad" and didn't have anyplace else to say it. They weren't necessarily looking to subvert or reduce or nullify anyone else's stories.

I have to comment on one thing - why should I assume that the pain caused by childhood psychological abuse is *always* less than the pain caused by rape? Because I know for a fact it's not a supportable assumption. And for someone to say "I am an acceptable form of victim and *you* are a self-absorbed wanker whose pain could NEVER compare to mine" is just hateful.

The first rule for people dealing/clearing their feelings of shame in talking about bad things that happened to them should be to NEVER do or say anything to make others feel shame about talking about their pain. Even if it means erring on the side of allowing some people who just want to belong to some group to post their stories without being belittled.

Whoops, wrong person

[jawnbc]

I deleted my initial respone because I got you mixed up with someone from another thread....hopefully my adapted response below will be clearer. Sorry.

Part of processing pain for a lot of people only happens when they can get some sort of perspective that let's them see it beyond their very own narrow lifeview. My father "trained" me to be masculine, exacting a huge toll on my self-worth. But I'll take his virulent, rarely violent homophobia over my friends whose fathers raped them. Stark? Yup.

But the sum effect of numerous people appropriating this to their own histories arguably silences--or at least mutes--the original issues. I have a real problem with that.

The first rule might apply to helping persons, but not the universe--and I've not been a helping professional for years (and helping professionals, by the way, have this sort of this conversation all tiime--but not (hopefully) with their clients. Another common problem with persons damaged by life experience is a wholly unrealistic--and unhealthy--belief that the world needs to accommodate their pain. Regardless of how this might impact others. Then they are shocked when people react anything less than consolingly. A selfish, nihilistic and dangerous tack.

Re: Whoops, wrong person

[mondragon.livejournal.com]

I just found it a bit shocking to see what sounded like "shut up, go away, how dare you compare your pain to my pain" in the context of "No Shame. No Silence."

It also might not be reasonable to expect people in a public journal to know and follow the same boundaries that would be enforced by a moderator in a focussed support group.

Re: Whoops, wrong person

[jawnbc]

I guess the other side is, who's gatekeeping for when people in pain and difficulty are making really inappropriate self-disclosures here (or elsewhere online)--inappropriate for their sake's, not the audiences. That's equally problematic.

Re: Whoops, wrong person

[mondragon.livejournal.com]

I guess the answer is "no one" or "my killfile" or "removal from my friends list".

I think there are very few people who really get how public this all is - including the inappropriate broadcast of self-disclosure to a crowd of strangers, or thinking they're participating in a closed support group and then seeing things that diminish that experience for them and getting upset by it. It's experiences like this that bring it home.