as small as a world and as large as alone, pervocracy: Really can’t stress enough how much...

3:31pm June 9, 2014

Really can’t stress enough how much being a survivor of abuse is not a job. It does not come with any obligations.

If you don’t have the energy or ability—or simply don’t want—to become a politically active anti-abuse advocate, to warn everyone in your abuser’s path, to seek justice through the courts or otherwise? You don’t have to.

You didn’t choose to be abused, so you didn’t take on any moral obligations that a non-survivor doesn’t have.

The moral obligation that I resent the most is one put on me by some of my family: That of protecting the man who molested me.

I’m not supposed to say his name. I’m not supposed to say his exact relationship to me.

At least, that’s how things were for a long time, and I really resented it. I did talk to my family and I think they understand better now, why that’s a horrible burden to place on an abuse victim.

And it’s not that I want the man who molested me to get into trouble. He’s been through therapy, he’s changed his life around, he’s not molesting other kids, he does not deserve to be on a sex offender registry (and I don’t believe in sex offender registries to begin with), and I have a good relationship with him now.

But it is a burden, and a horrible burden, to place this burden of secrecy on me. To make it so that I’m not supposed to name him, I’m not supposed to get too graphic about what he did, I am supposed to protect him for the rest of our lives, even though between the age of 11-15 (25-29 was his age) he was molesting me and doing worse things than molesting me. He was not protecting me. Nobody was protecting me, because nobody knew, because I couldn’t even put words to what was happening for years. I have to live with the consequences of what he did to me, for the rest of my life, but I’m supposed to protect him? Bullshit.

If I protect him it is because I am doing him a massive, massive favor.

It is not something that can be expected.

It is not something that anyone should be approaching me about and chastising me about in any way if I fail to protect him.

(To any family members reading this: We have already discussed this. I do not want to have a conversation about this with you right now. I am writing this for the benefit of other abuse survivors who may be facing pressure to protect their abusers.)

Whether you protect your abuser is a personal choice.

You may have good reasons for protecting them.

You may have good reasons not to.

There will be consequences for you and for your abuser either way you choose. And you may face extreme social disapproval depending on what you choose. But it is your choice.

Personally… there is one person who abused me that I do try to protect, I try not to name them out loud, I try not to tell people very often exactly who they are. Because they were very young when it happened, they are totally changed, we have a good relationship, and I don’t even think of them as “my abuser” anymore.

But the man who molested me… it’s different. He’s changed too. But he also did me a lot more damage. I think he understands that any protection I give him is mine to give. Whenever I have talked to him about things like this, he has seemed to understand that there are consequences to his actions and that he will take whatever consequences come to him, and that he is grateful to me for not pursuing certain consequences that could really ruin his life. But he is grateful because he knows that those consequences would not necessarily be undeserved. He understands that on a deep level.

But I do feel like I sometimes have to talk about what he did to me. Which does have to do with who he was in relation to me, growing up. And which does mean saying certain details that maybe some family members would rather be kept private. I only say as much as I have to say, no more. But I refuse to labor under this burden of secrecy that, in the past, some of my family have sought to impose on me.

Because if he didn’t want me to talk about this part of my life, he shouldn’t have done it.

And that’s the bottom line.

This is a part of my life. It existed. It won’t go away by not talking about it. Sometimes I need to talk about it.

A lot of the damage that was done wasn’t from the act of being molested, but due to the gender messages I was getting. I don’t want to go into extreme detail here, but basically… being genderless did not protect me from his intense efforts to indoctrinate me into the idea that I was a woman and that his misogynist ideas of women applied to me. It didn’t protect me at all even in the slightest. And the misogyny did more damage than the frotteurism did. By far. And sometimes I need to talk about that damage without having to worry that I’m betraying some kind of promise I never actually made.

Because that’s what it feels like. Like everyone thinks I made a promise to keep a secret. Except I never made that promise. I didn’t ask to be molested. I didn’t ask to have my mind invaded with intense misogyny in the process of being molested. So why is it that I always feel like I’m betraying this promise that I never made? And that’s because people have acted, in the past, as if I made such a promise.

(I reacted with anger and tried to explain my position, and I think I was successful, which is why I’m not going to rehash this with any family who are reading. But I do have to explain this to other people who’ve been abused, because this has to be common.)

So it’s not just that you don’t have to do all this activism and shit.

It’s also that you have no obligation to protect the person who abused you.

You can protect them if you want to. And you may want to. And you may have good reason to.

But you don't have to. No matter what anyone says. You didn’t sign up for this and you don’t have to pretend it didn’t happen, or pretend like the person who did it is someone other than who they are, or anything like that.

I’ve settled into a routine where I say as much as I have to in order to get the point across, but no more. I’m not vindictive. I just don’t want to be confined by these invisible walls that tell me I’m not allowed to say who did it or what was done or whatever.

But you don’t have to be secretive if you don’t want to. And you don’t have to tell anyone anything if you don’t want to. It’s your choice. Be aware of the consequences, but it’s your choice.