7:19pm October 9, 2013

➸ One Step at a Time.: MSC: Survivors, Abusers, and the conversation I don't want to have.

survivorravew:

selfcareafterrape:

tw: rape, abuse, suicide

I witnessed B’s rape when I was in elementary school. For those of you who are new… B is the mother of my niece. Most days I claim no siblings. Take from that what you will.

We need to have a conversation about survivors who become abusers.

We need to have a…

This is important.

Fighting the myth that all abuse victims and bullying victims are going to turn into abusers and bullies is important too (and that every abuser was abused because that is also a myth). Because peope taught me that was a reality I couldn’t run away from.

All are parts of the same complex subject.

I also think very few abusers are consciously abusive, most people in reality don’t think they are evil, abusing others or anything like that.

Yes. That myth can also be used abusively, to scapegoat and justify treating someone in whatever ways someone else thinks it might take, to “prevent” them from turning into an abuser. Often by people who really think they’re doing the right thing, but have enough problems of their own that they don’t have the tools to even recognize abusive patterns of behavior in themselves. Partly because that would also require taking a hard look at the abusive patterns they’ve been subjected to, and learned as “normal” from people close to them.

It’s all very complicated, and I think a lot of problems come from people trying to make reality and other human beings less messy and complex. Definitely not limited to Just Worlding/victim blaming, but that is one style of it. (And I would add that it can be particularly damaging when mental health professionals and others in a position to help oversimplify things and insist their version is The Truth.)

In the same way it’s easier to envision all rapists as monsters lurking in the bushes, it can also be very appealing to imagine that all abusers are basically soulless monsters who go around intentionally hurting other people. Not only do you not have to recognize and deal with abusive patterns of behavior from people you otherwise think well of—that automatically makes you, personally, nonabusive. Especially if you have a heavy investment in seeing yourself as a Good Person.

Where, in reality, we get situations like people who grow up thinking abusive behavior is normal, continue to become involved in abusive relationships—and ALSO unintentionally abuse their kids and other people they might have power over. While not even seeing most of the patterns of interaction as abusive in any way. :( And also people who are hypervigilant about their own potential to behave abusively, to the point of continuing to abuse themselves, often coming out of the same or similar situations. And pretty much every kind of response between those extremes.

Much messier than a lot of people even want to try to deal with, and so that it’s extremely difficult to form the kinds of categories and generalizations that a lot of people seem to think in without oversimplifying things to a potentially harmful point.

That myth was used to create false accusations - one of my abusers was told so much that they must have been abused that they basically manufactured a memory of abuse that didn’t exist, which devastated the person accused.

Notes: