I lied to Dammit Janet in her diary. I didn’t think I was but I did. I said I was glad I had never experienced that kind of trauma. And I didn’t. But I did. I just had a few near misses.
Holy fuck I don’t want to talk about this. I feel so exposed. I am a very private person actually. I’ve had to be for various reasons including my mom’s paranoid schizophrenia. But that’s another story.
The one I’m willing myself to tell today is one that has never been pieced together into the story of a life yet. I’ve shared at different points, individual episodes, but never in one sitting.
But I have to. Reading all the incredibly brave posts by women I have deep respect and admiration for really brings it home for me. Talking about it and using our voices is the only thing we have left.
I have been very fortunate to have had wonderful and caring and supporting men in my life & I have never once hated all men. But I don’t get it. I really don’t.
I’m sorry to be piling on and continuing the string of diaries, but I am going to anyway because I’m stubborn.
The first time I was 9. My mother had recently re-married. He was an abusive fuck and liked to get his kicks when he wasn’t beating my mom by making me stand at the foot of their bed while they watched tv for hours on end as punishment. I learned that my imagination was a lot of fun when I needed to escape.
Then one day he decided we should all take a shower together. My mother agreed. He was hard the whole time and made me wash it. My mother did not object. I was really messed up by the whole thing. I was 9. I didn’t tell anyone. Who could I tell? My real dad was a junkie living in a hooker hotel downtown. He used to beat my mom and left us when I was 1 1/2. I only saw him when he cleaned himself up enough to get a job for 6 months or so. So he was out. I didn’t know his side of the family since they disowned him at age 9 by moving without telling him while he was at hockey practice. Not a good year to be alive in my family it would seem. My other grandparents would have died. I didn’t want to hurt them.
A few months later I went into a convenience store to play a video game because I didn’t want to go home (surprise, surprise eh). While I was playing the man who owned the store locked the door and then came up behind me and offered to teach me a trick on how to play. He stuck his thigh up between mine. I was so scared. I let him do it for a while and then asked him what time it was. I don’t know how, but I concocted a story about my dad waiting for me in a coffee shop across the street and that he would come looking for me if I didn’t get back. The man let me go. I went home and went to the laundry mat with my mom and step-dad. I didn’t tell anyone.
The next near miss was when I was 16 and at a girlfriends house for a party. We were young and stupid and doing shots of vodka. I passed out on the couch in the basement. I remember the 5 boys coming in to the room and I could hear them talking about me but I literally could not move. I’ve never been that drunk and high again. Their talk moved into actually having at me. And they started to. I couldn’t move. I whispered no over and over but that was all I could do. My top went up as did my bra. I felt two different hands on me. Then my pants started to come off. Miraculously at that moment my girlfriend burst into the room because her parents had come home early and she wanted me to wake up. She was followed by a few of my other friends.
They pulled my shirt down and picked me up. Funny thing is, they never mentioned anything or said anything to the guys. They just told them to go out the back and pulled me upstairs. And that was it. What if her parents hadn’t come home. I don’t even want to imagine it, but it nearly happened.
And these were all guys I went to school with. They were drunk and horny and didn’t see anything wrong with gang-raping me. Do I think that’s normal? No. Do I think any of the subsequent men in my life would do that? No. But unless we continue to talk about it and our men speak up to their friends about it when one of them objectifies a woman in a derogatory way (I don’t mind some objectification, it’s a sex drive and men are visual creatures) we will, as a society, continue to raise little boys who grow up to get drunk at a party and at the very least feel up a girl who is passed out.
So that’s my story. Or stories. Both time periods completely different. One child abuse and one woman abuse. But both unacceptable.
So I never wound up at a hospital which is how I responded to Janet. I was never raped. But I lied nonetheless because it hurts too. And it’s not okay.
But I am.
Thanks for listening.
I know the statistics, but still I am stunned at the number of women here at BT that have been sexually abused.
Thank you for sharing your story.
I know, me too. I think that’s what finally got me connecting all the dots in my own mind. The numbers of us. The voices all rising up. It was overwhelming.
Thanks for listening SN, I appreciate it.
I kept thinking about what happened to you after I wrote that comment. I think that as girls we brush off incidents like the one when you were 16 as just boys will be boys. You probably blamed yourself for drinking or being alone with boys, even though it was their fault. Maybe it took reading Janet’s and Tracy’s stories to convince you that what happened was a sexual assault.
The thing with your step-father and mother was just despicable and no explanation would ever be innocent. I’m so sorry that happened.
Yes, exactly. Boys will be boys. I was sooo drunk and why on earth did I go downstairs and pass out? How stupid of me.
And thank you. Nothing explains it on his side. On hers I’ve learned to understand, if not forgive, since she was mentally ill and had herself been subjected to physical and mental abuse for years by the men in her life. She was totally fucked up and couldn’t say no to him. It was tragic. But I am okay… or at least getting more so each and every day. Abuse always has a corner of your heart and mind, it’s just how you choose to live the rest of your life that matters. And I have a lot of joy and love left in me. 🙂
Thank you for opening yourself up to us. Sending you much love.
Me three! I guess that it is all in the “don’t tell” mentality that we have been conditioned w/all of our lives.
I am floored. Do you really not know that ALL of us, ALL of us have experiences like the ones in this diary, where we are fondled, groped, leered at, jeered at, yelled at from cars, cornered and got away… but not before giving up something we wish we still had? At the very least, innocence, and a faith in humanity and the world that will never return?
There are the groper teachers in middle school and high school. The leering teachers. The screwing-the-school-girl teachers (the ones who for whatever reason went along with it).
Then there’s getting groped in the halls in junior high, especially high school. Groped at the football game. Boys running around under the bleachers trying to see up your pep club uniform skirt — we should have printed “get lost” on our panties — don’t remember Sharpies, but I digress.
Then college, oh now it gets better. You want to walk home from the library at night? Hahahhaha. Now there are people jumping out at you from bushes, following you down the street, pushing you up against a wall in a bar to cop a feel, “Hey baby-ing” you from cars, no small amount of terror that one of them is going to succeed in harming you.
Let me just ask. If you’re a male and you went to college, how many times were you followed by someone who wanted to screw you, if they could figure out a way to make it happen?
The stories of your friends being harmed mount up. The boy you’re fixed up with on a date tries to rape you. Then the rape attempts mount up. To the boys, I’m sure that only logs as “I tried to get laid, but she was a bitch”, but to the girls, you’re fighting a bigger, stronger person you don’t care for that much, who’s trying to stick something inside you.
Don’t walk through the park! Don’t get off the main walkways where there’s plenty of light! Don’t dress too sexy!
“Heyyyyyy, babbeeeeeeeee! You wannna fuuuuuck?” say the guys in the slow-moving car.
specifically. Just trying to keep the story going, keep painting the picture of what it’s like to be young with female anatomy in this society.
We have not heard even one lady tell us that through her entire life, she never experienced at least an attempt at forcing attentions upon her that as adults, especially adults with female descendants, we would all agree constitute sexual abuse.
As for the catcalls and wolf whistles, they are, while vulgar, and while I do not intend to belittle the emotional stress and distress that they cause, since I am not a woman and I cannot imagine how uncomfortable it would be not to be able to just walk down the street without being bothered, still, I would make a distinction between uncouth behavior and anything that involves actually placing ones hands upon the lady when such contact is neither desired nor sought.
The thing is, and I’m going to try to say this kindly, so please forgive me if I don’t. Because when I think back on all of it I get angry, so it’s a fine line to walk!
The thing is… let me try to paint that picture again. You are 18 or 19, female, you are in college, there is a huge campus, many buildings, bushes, horny kids of both sexes, including yourself, with the right person those bushes might have a certain ZOW appeal, yeah.
But now you’ve been to the library to work on a term paper, you’re walking back to your dorm at night, let’s say 8 or 9 PM. The streets on campus have limited car access during the day, but are open to everyone at night.
You’ve been told NEVER to walk at night by yourself, but you’re a bit feisty, don’t want to be limited, so you know it’s dangerous, but you’re going to do it anyway. You’re sleep-deprived, your brain is crammed with data, but you’re on the sidewalk cruising along…
“Heyyyyyy, babbeeeeeeeee! You wannna fuuuuuck?” say the guys in the slow-moving car.
That car is literally 3-4 feet from you. There are a bunch of them. They are all staring at you. Will they stop? Will they drag you into the car and drive away? Drag you behind a building? They certainly could if they wanted to. Your heart-beat is pounding, your adrenaline pumping. Brain races: Walk faster may make you more victim-like. No where to duck in, nowhere open. No one else in sight to help. Will looking at them make you more or less vulnerable? Will saying something back help or make it worse? How long will they pace you, saying more stuff?
You see, the threat is what matters here. The terror they know they’re eliciting in you.
I really hate to say this, but it’s the same as if they barked, “Boy! Did you look at that white woman?!”
That’s why the catcalls and whistles matter. As much.
Yes, it’s the power that they were exercising over you, what they were capable of doing. And the fact that you were afraid. They didn’t rape you… this time. But you were afraid, humiliated, and subjugated. And put in your place, because I presume you did not walk there again.
Thank you, LookingUp, for speaking out. You are not alone. Together, we are powerful. Women and men.
compare it to, to try to understand it, is being a person of an at-risk group in the US today. And I agree about the threat aspect, the uncertainty of whether the threat will become an attack. It is a possibility that one is constantly aware of. And even if one has not been a victim of physical attack, one always knows someone who has, which makes the threat very real.
And I don’t think that the impact of that threat, that uncertainty and fear, can be minimized. Because both the threatening behavior and the attacks proceed from the same cultural attitudes.
What I mean by a distinction is, people calling out things or making remarks is so ubiquitous, that I don’t think that you could find a woman – or a person of an at-risk group in the US today, who has not experienced that.
But is there a woman who has experienced ONLY that? Is there a woman who has never had a man try to physically impose unwanted attentions in one way or another?
Is that unwanted imposition of physical contact, for women, as much a certainty as the emotional threat she is sure to experience from the catcalls?
Must mothers tell their daughters, at some point in your life, someone is going to touch you even though you do not wish it?
Not just that this MAY happen, but that it WILL happen, that no woman can expect to go through life without at least one incidence of it.
Because that is the impression that I am getting, as I said, we have not yet heard from a lady who says it has never happened to her.
I would be absolutely shocked if you could find a woman that hadn’t had that happen to her. I’m surprised that so many men had no idea how prevalent this is.
the prevalence, but the only thing that the parents do is try to make their daughters cover up more, frequently more than they did in the home country, and restrict her activities very closely.
Neither of these methods is effective, or possible to completely enforce even if they were, nor are they good ideas to begin with.
I will stand by my recommendation from another thread, of mandatory self defense classes for all females three years of age up to eighteen. By puberty she should be able to at least discourage her attacker, since her male companions are apparently disinclined to do so.
Does US really want to become a society where no female is safe? May the generation who has their bosoms grabbed in public expect their daughters to be raped on the public street while passers by walk on as if nothing unusual were taking place?
Does US really want to become a society where no female is safe?
It already is. That is our reality now.
that I know that hasn’t experienced unwanted physical contact or felt threatened at least once in her life.
I’ve been reading these stories the past few days and have felt such relief that I was never sexually abused. But I do remember two incidents that I had filed away as “learning experiences.”
One was in 7th grade at a catholic school when I was alone in the girl’s bathroom, washing my hands. Three of the boys I had gone to school with since we were 5 years old came in and pushed me up against the wall and started to feel under my blouse and pull my skirt up. My teacher, Mr. Gifford, came in and pulled them off of me and flung them across the room. He asked me if I was okay and I said I was. I think he reported it to the principal but I think it was dropped because I never heard another thing about it.
Another time I was playing pinball in a bar in Colorado; I was 19. A guy came up behind me and grabbed my breasts. I gave him a hard, quick elbow to the gut and he left. I asked the guy I was with (who I would later stupidly marry) if he had seen what just happened and he said “yeah, but I thought you knew him.” I knew after that I had to protect myself because no one was going to do it for me.
the fact of acquaintance would sanction him coming up to you and touching your bosom?
I would have to agree with you that he was not a good choice for a husband.
Maybe I am an old fuddy duddy, but I find it alarming not only that apparently this kind of assault is something that every woman can expect to experience, and is so accepted by society as a whole, that a boy can touch a girl this way in a public place without fear that any man there, even if they do not know the girl, will come to her defense.
If I could I would go back and tell that 19 year old me that this companion would let her down many more times and she didn’t have to marry him just to avoid being homeless. I cringe at how naive and trusting I was back then.
given “the talk” and told them they cannot act like this?
That part of being a man is understanding that this type of behavior is not acceptable, that it demeans them and the world they live in, as well as women. That their feelings of sexual excitement and urge to explore are normal, but touching women who don’t want to be touched, is not normal, not necessary, and millions of men are proud to control it. That controlling those urges is part of what makes them a good and honorable man, and you have faith in them, that they will.
Our society will be safe for women when boys can expect to get that talk over and over, from men in many different aspects of their life.
I am not good with numbers, especially large numbers. One, two, many was good enough for me, and still is.
I don’t see why the Maya had to go and spoil it, just made things more complicated for everybody, and the only people who are happy about it are the calculator companies.
All my male descendants have had more than the talk, they have had the example, from their fathers and grandfathers, uncles and brothers, and more importantly, they have had the talk from their mothers and aunts and grandmothers, etc and their sisters.
I do not have a single male descendant who would stand by and watch a lady receive an unwanted touch, much less administer one themselves. And they are all secure enough to buy tampax.
After reading all these diaries, I realize they are unusual, and I should be very proud of them. But these things to me seem just common decency. Should I also be proud that they remove their shoes before coming indoors and do not spit on the carpets or hurl food at each other?
Well, actually, some of us have hurled food at each other, but not for several weeks…
I was just about to reply to your question (“Is there a woman who has never had a man try to physically impose unwanted attentions in one way or another?”) by saying — OK, here I am. I’ve never been raped, assaulted, incested, or otherwise MAN-handled.
Except for that one time, on a subway in another country. And now I’m sitting here trying to figure out why the hell I, an enlightened feminist-type person who actually studies feminist activism on violence against women … why the hell I forgot about that subway molestation through the whole course of this days-long metadiscussion.
And I wondered at the time, and am still wondering today, why the hell, when that creep touched me THERE, I didn’t do anything but turn away and burn with shame. I already had the education and the feminist theories to understand what was happening, to know I was not alone, that it was not my fault.
I made a friend years later, another American in the same foreign country, who told me that as a matter of policy she punches the molesting creeps on subways. She said that she invariably ends up at a police station, often for hours. Big hassle. No apparent results. He-said-she-said kind of thing, and she’s an inappropriate foreigner, so what can anyone do.
As for whether moms do or should tell their daughters: This WILL happen, be prepared. My grandmother was the one who tried to teach me — but these messages are never phrased as, “It’s inevitable, here’s how you should respond when it happens.” It’s always, “If you’re not careful, if you’re not always good, if you let your guard slip — this is what can happen.” So the warnings already blame the victim, see?
Anyway. So there you have it — your quest for the unmolested woman continues. Hopefully not in vain.
Re:
This guy, psyclism, got it:
and also:
Half the people, half the people are a “high risk group”. Us, we women. All day, every day of our lives. Exactly right, it’s wearing — brilliant way to say it.
Yes, as I’ve diaried elsewhere, you do NOT get through middle school and high school without being grabbed, there’s just no way. If you’re “too ugly” that’s a reason to grab you. If you’re “cute” that’s a reason to grab you, and so forth. I led a very sheltered life, no molestation by relatives, was groped a jillion times in the hallways, and was groped by a freekazoid high school teacher. He walked behind me and ran his hairy fat paw along the underside of my rear end, the freekin’ jerk. I almost decked him, but my swing would have taken out a girl standing in front of me first, so I aborted it. And I mean, in my family there wasn’t hitting, it was totally instinctual protection.
Well, they have to bring the subject up, unless they want their daughters more available for rape and fondling. I tell all the little girls in my neighborhood, “If someone bothers you, you come to ME, and I’ll get them. And don’t let them do it, don’t let them touch you if they try!” I want them to know that someone cares enough about them to want them to avoid it. I taught my stepson to protect himself, too –to spare my feelings as well as his.
I would think that same message would help them coming from dads and grandpas, too… The message, “I love you, I want you to protect yourself from this, the thought angers me to no end.”
The books say you’re supposed tell kids, “Get yourself to a safe place, then tell me, I’ll take it from there.” IOW, you don’t ask them to tell the authorities, just tell someone they love: you.
We also gotta tell the boys: It’s not OK to do this stuff.
hate to nitpick, but women comprise more than half of the world population: 52%. 😉
Also, as important as it is in the long wrong to educate boys toward non-sexist and non-rapist behavior, it is also important that men confront other men (so-called ‘grown-ups’) on the subtle forms of rapism and misogyny in their speech, thought, and action–relentlessly.
That task is of course infinitely more challenging b/c, well….the ‘grown-ups’ can ‘talk back.’
And they do. Every time you try to ‘call them out’ on it.
Yes, stark. We have to keep harping and harping and harping on this. Just like straight people have to call out other straights on homophobia, and whites must challenge racist whites, MEN have to make a stand against the jerks who glory in sexism.
You and I can complain and protest until we’re blue in the face, and the pigs won’t care. Our feelings and opinions mean nothing to them, because they only value the support and good will of other men.
Ductape can’t do it alone.
Booman can’t do it alone.
All the other wonderful men of the pond who get it can’t do it alone, but every time a man speaks out to other men about the use and abuse of women, he is commiting a revolutionary act of courage and honour.
yep and yep and yep again!
All the examples you cite: racism, homophobia, rapism.
Same thing: the ‘victims’ cannot stop it, and until voices rise from the ‘perpetrator’ GROUP, ain’t never gonna stop.
I’m 46 and I have been hearing that for most of my life–see post downthread. And, as I have heard it so much, I sometimes wonder if I should be almost immune to it…But, it is still unnerving.
Rapist are the front line troops in the war against women.
Without them, the catcallers would be confronted and slapped down. Without them we could walk alone at night, take a job out of town, live alone, marry later, have a drink in a bar, work nights, and compete on a slightly more level playing field.
All men benefit from rape. Many don’t want to, any more than I want my white self to benefit from racism, but the benefit exists all the same.
I am a male myself and while I confess I’ve more ore less have been reasoning like you do in your post above, these diaries of late do have an impact on how I see things. A comment by Second Nature in the diary “Women Who Tell: Stigma” by DuctapeFatwa yesterday, brought it all home to me:
Suddenly it is all about how she screwed up. How she forgot that she was prey.
Imagine that, at all times having to consider yourself to be prey.
deal. Exactly.
That’s the point of all the catcalls, the gropes, etc. Teaching you that you’re prey.
Look, I’m from a home where one aunt was published in Harper’s Review, one was first chair flutist in a symphony, one was literally Sec.-Treasurer of a small corporation, my mom had been in management while working, another aunt was traveling around the world with her husband’s career, an aunt was an interior decorator. In the 1960’s.
We were taught to reach for the stars, we could be and do anything. Yet there was this sub-text of being prey at school, on the streets. And when I got to the University, and realized how entirely second-class we women were, how marginalized, and still PREY, it was such a slap-down to my dreams. To my understanding of the world.
yelled at from cars…Don’t dress too sexy!
You know, that is one of the reasons that I hate summer! I’m tall and slim and I still hear the “you got a nice __” and I hate when that happens! Most of the time I just run around in cut offs and a t-shirt!
And that is one thing that really, deep down, scares the hell out of me. If, God forbid, I was ever sexually assaulted, I can just picture some idiot saying, she asked for it, the way she dresses! Damn, it is hot in summer!
Every woman who dresses for the weather is not a piece of meat. Just makes me nuts. And, believe it or not, I have been told by some women to take that as a compliment!
I’m more than a nice _
_, damn it!!!
Oh, but I feel you. And I immediately thought of this:
“U.N.I.T.Y.” by Queen Latifah
Definitely appropriate! LMAO!!
And the unusual thing is that I have more problems w/that now that I live in the ‘burbs. For some reason, that wasn’t such a problem when I lived in the city. And I lived in a rough neighborhood–cops wouldn’t even go there! Seriuosly!!!
I don’t doubt it, not at all.
Just wherever you are, you have to be careful. And that sucks that you have to be hyper careful all the damned time. Why can’t we just be?
And it’s interesting, the lyrics in the song (which I haven’t heard in quite some time, but I swear, it just popped into my mind like I heard it an hour ago). If you’re nice, you’re asking for it; if you defend yourself, you’re a bitch.
Damn, we catch hell coming and going, don’t we?
if you defend yourself, you’re a bitch.
Just shows you how controlling a lot of men are. If they can’t do whatever they want the name calling starts! And your right about having to be careful all the time–it’s like, damn, can’t I just have some peace in my life w/o worrying about how the assholes in this world will act, or how much crap I’ll have to put up with?
Again, its the control game, no matter what a woman does, its wrong!
oh man does that bring back memories! I haven’t heard that song in a long time. 😉
Thanks for sharing what surely must have been scary for you. Hugs.
…knowing how hard this was for you to write … I want you know that what you’ve shared w/ us here is a gift. A gift that I treasure. Thank you for that. {{{spidey}}}
Thanks olivia, that means a lot (and you too boran). It was hard to write, but it’s my story and I obviously needed to get it out. I am just so amazed at how comfortable I feel telling it to you all (and I guess the world since it is the internets and all… 😉
And I thank all my sisters here for blazing the trail. That is amazing.
And all the wonderful, strong men here who have stood by us as we’ve shared our stories. That is incredible too.
I am oh so grateful… and not the least bit snarky which says a lot 😉
Jebus, Spiderleaf, we have a lot of difficult overlap in our backgrounds. I am so sorry about all that you had to go through as a kid, not being adequately taken care of and supported and protected. I understand about your mom, too, at least to some degree. My mom never got diagnosed but there was clearly some mental illness going on with her, so I can relate on that level. {{{big Spidey hugs}}}
I think it’s important to talk about this, too. I like the way you draw a distinction between a derogatory form of “objectification” and a different kind of “sexualized looking” that constitutes a different action. I see the same kind of distinction myself, but find it hard to articulate because the things that constitute “objectification” in the derogatory sense from my pov can be very airy and hard to pin down. So much of it seems to be about intent, ie: Is someone doing sexualized looking with respect and a desire to give pleasure to another human being, or are they leering at what they perceive as an object to be used for their own satisfaction?
Thanks so much Indy. As I said, you and everyone else sharing their stories really caught up with me. Especially when you said you didn’t want to pile on to the steady stream. I basically screamed NO inside and said we have to use our voices and let each other know we are not alone. There are too many of us. And those bastards are still at it, trying by the second to criminalize being female. The time to speak and be heard is now. To gather together and push forward. To say enough is enough. You don’t own me.
On the second point, I absolutely agree. There is a difference. I love sex. Woman are beautiful. There is a definite line though and I think you hit the nail on the head… when it turns into dehumanizing a woman that is unacceptable and dangerous. But a man looking at a female and thinking sexual thoughts is perfectly normal. And frankly, if I’m into him a total turn on. But there is a line.
And I’m so happy the men in this community know what it is. That is beautiful too.
I really haven’t said much about it so far, but I wrote about 3K words in a diary that I plan to post tomorrow. There’s definitely a “you don’t own me” theme to my essay. 🙂
I really hope that all of us doing this will help the situation in some way, whether it’s contributing toward a cultural sea change on an overarching level or helping to let some lurking victim know she’s not alone on an individual level. I’m also damn proud to associate with a lot of the people in this community, and I thank you again for finding the courage to post this tonight.
Bless you for your stubborness, Spiderleaf. I’m thanking the gods you’re OK. Like some others I have been stunned to learn how many women here have been abused and raped. And hearing about people like your stepfather makes me want to throw up.
I have been fortunate not to have experienced this kind of abuse at the hands of my own family. And yet and yet. You’re not the only one who lied. I have never ever spoken or written before, about being choked by my boyfriend, when I was 20 and he ten years older, drunkenly mumbling how he would teach me to flirt with other men, and I froze under his hands instead of bashing him in the face because, I thought, I shouldn’t hurt him. I didn’t want to hurt him! I started to black out. Some other men pulled him off me and no one, including me, ever spoke of it. And more than once I went along with letting some man do what he wanted because I didn’t think I could or should fight back. And never told anyone.
And I have listened to more than one friend cry after a date rape. I wonder how many women HAVEN’T had an experience like this.
I’m so scared for my daughter. But she recently took a self-defense course put on by an outfit in the S.F. Bay Area, called GirlVentures. She has learned that defending herself is the right thing to do, and the appropriate ways to do it. I don’t think she will ever hold back for fear of harming her attacker. I don’t think she will ever keep silent about an attack. She is one self-assertive teenager.
In her self-defense class were some girls who could not yell when the “attacker” came at them. They could not raise their voice. They practiced and practiced.
May all our daughters be stubborn.
Bless you lil for sharing your story. For using your voice. And for being an inspiration. (man I sound cheesy, but it’s true 😉
I am so sorry you had to go through that, but I know exactly of what you speak. And I am incredibly hopeful for your daughter. Sounds like you are being an amazing mother and teaching her well. Let’s keep doing that and using our voices and telling our stories. We are the only ones who can.
Your story of the girls who couldn’t scream reminded me of something that happened about ten years ago.
I had an evening appointment in an office building, and by the time it was over the building was nearly deserted and many of the lights were off. As I waited for the elevator I started to get a creepy feeling and I couldn’t wait to get out of there. The elevator door opened and there was only one person in it…a man holding a hammer.
He did not have a tool belt on, just the hammer. Every instinct inside of me told me not to get on that elevator. But something else inside of me wanted to be the polite little girl and not hurt this man’s feelings by letting him know that I thought he was a murderer.
So I got on the damn elevator with him! Nothing happened but I couldn’t believe how stupid stupid stupid I was. Everything I had ever learned just went right out the window in favor of being polite.
Damn, Second. That must have been the longest elevator ride ever.
I read the books “How to protect your kids from assault”. Checked out bunches from library, read as much or as little as made sense to me.
One point: put a whistle around their necks on a string for when you’re going to be in crowds, so if they don’t find that voice to yell, they can blow that whistle!
Statistically, if a child resists, most attackers will leave them alone (child in public place, when an abduction starts). They can find another child who’ll freeze and go along.
So… whistles. And read the books if you have kids, or relationships with people who do.
Loud as hell one! I told both of my kids too that if someone tried to abduct them that while they were raising hell to make sure that they were shouting “You aren’t my mom or my dad!”
I will add my testimony. I can remember being sexually molested by my father from the time when I was less than five years old. Later he told me that he was out of a job and my mother went to work and left him to babysit us, so he decided that he could help us out by sticking his penis in our mouths. I have two sisters. He also told me later that reading the works of Sigmund Freud convinced him that he could help his children out in their sexual development by molesting them. Freud portrays children as sexual predators with his Oedipus Complex theory of sexual development. Disgusting. My father persisted in his sexual assault on his children, and called it “playing tails.” Then when I was 8 or 9 he raped me in my anus. The only person I really trusted was my grandmother, but when I told her she threatened to tell my father unless I would do her bidding. Guess if I ever trusted anyone after that. My father tried to rape me vaginally when I was in my early teens, but I would have fought to the death to stop him. I was an avid reader and had read Tobacco Road, so I had the image of a girl who is raped and impregnated by her father. I was very sure that I would want to die before I would let this happen to me. Since my father beat us all — including my mother — within an inch of our lives every day for minor infractions, it was not hard to imagine that he would fulfill his promise to kill us if we ever told anyone what he was doing. My father continued in these twisted behaviors until my sisters and I finally went to the police, since my mother was terrified of him and totally useless. My father wasn’t the only adult who shoved his penis at me when I was a child. There were also two neighbors and one of his best friends.
My god mythmother, I am so sorry. Words can never express how much I feel for you and your sisters. I am so grateful you got out of that situation alive and found the courage to go to the police. Thank you so much for sharing your story, your life, yourself, with us. I hope a small part of all this can help us heal, or let us know we aren’t alone. Enough is enough. The violence against us, physical, sexual, mental, emotional must stop. And we’ll need all our good, kind, loving men to help us end it. And I know quite a few now who are willing to stand with us. ((((hugs))))
Often I have felt like my whole life is a lie since it’s impossible to expect people to understand who I am based on the experience of my childhood.
Boy do I hear you there! It has gotten to the point now that whenever I start to develop a close relationship with someone who I would consider a friend that I just tell them what I went through. It may sound cheesy but, the more you talk, the better it gets. I promise. Just don’t do it if you are not ready to. Take your time sweetie. 😉
and you have my total unconditional support anytime, anywhere, anyhow. Just love to you from another…
It seems like a miracle that you have survived this. Curse them. There are no words.
It is a miracle! Thank you!
{{{{Mythmother}}}}
Thank you!
How does a child heal when the people who are supposed to protect her become her tormentors?
I can’t even imagine. I just don’t know what to say except I’m so glad you are here.
Thank you! That is the magical question. Life must be a miracle. Otherwise, how could any of us be here?
You are one brave sister.
Thanks ((((((TT)))))))!
{{{mythmother}}}
Intricate paranthetical hugs right back to you!
It’s so prevalent….this violence in our culture. So many voices……so many voices here that I have treasured on many of my lowest days being a soldiers wife. It’s really hard on my stomach today. I haven’t said much to my husband about everything that has been going on on the site and he is in the middle of a teaching rotation, but I told him that we have lots of stories going up. He knew that I had shared mine….his stomach is a mess today too and I think he’s picking it up from me but doesn’t know that. All this falling away of certain denials since SD. They say that every time we go through things like this as a group it brings healing into our society and our culture and we take our new awarenesses out there and share them with everybody around us.
I hope you’re right, Tracy, about the healing. The horror of this sickness is almost unfathomable.
Thank you so much, MT, for all of your thoughtfulness and courage. You are a light along the path for all of us.
through your words. My God woman….now that I know where some of that has sprung from! Being a survivor brings strength and the healing and the tears to me have always seemed like how the Japanese fold the metal into all of their swords. The masters even seem to be able to change the metal with their own lifeforce. Perfectly balanced blades that are works of art but can also protect!
It is the incomprehensible alchemy of survival. Where does it come from?
Try this on, tell me if it sheds some light:
God is not justice.
Justice is in his nature, but love is predominant.
People attach such importance to actions and their results.
They do not know that above action and result
is a law which can consume the fire of hell,
which can dominate even if the whole world
were being drowned in the flood of destruction;
they do not know that the power of love is greater than any other.
–Hazrat Inayat Khan
Thanks for this. Hazrat Inayat Khan is a wonderful wonderful inspiring writer, I have read many of his books over and over.
Shelves full here, also. Plus more….
I hope that going to the police helped you.
That is often not the case. Forty years ago a friend finally told her teacher after years of being raped by her father. She was removed from her home, put in juvenile detention with kids 10 years older than she where she was raped again, put out to foster care, raped again….
I think my heart will break, my sisters.
Police help was a very mixed blessing. It terminated the abuse, but the alleged crime was sodomy not sexual molestation of children. Plus it was announced in the newspaper and over the radio to add public shame to the abuse I had already suffered. My father was never convicted of anything. My mother, bless her heart, stepped up to the plate to get us out of there so we could have the remainder of a so-called normal childhood. Okay, by then she was having an affair with my older sister’s 16 year old boyfriend.
All of these stories are really helping me understand how to talk to the 14 year old girl who I am a guardian ad litem for. Throughout her life various male relatives and friends of relatives have taken advantage her and treated her like a piece of meat. From her very first memory of her 16 year old cousin putting his hand in her pants, to the 40 year uncle feeling her breasts every single time he was near her, to the time a few weeks ago when her mother traded her to her dealer for some crack.
It’s appalling that so many people victimized this same child. And what’s even more appalling and sad is that now she equates that with love.
It’s probably going to be quite difficult for her to believe that not everyone is out to victimize her in some way, and that that’s not the way everybody interacts with each other all the time. I was probably 20 or 21 before I realized that there was a possibility that there were actual good people on the planet who would never purposefully hurt me. And I was damn near 30 before I really believed it was true.
My definitions got all fucked up like hers apparently are. My mom would beat the shit out of me and tell me she should’ve aborted me — when I was 9 — but I’d tell people “we don’t get along very well” because I’d been taught to characterize it that way. It takes a lot of work and a lot of time to change that kind of thing.
I really appreciate the work you’re doing for her, and if she lives to be 140 she’ll never forget you for coming into her life like this, no matter where her story goes from here.
Thanks, Indy. I feel the weight of her soul in my hands. I don’t want to ever be just another adult who failed her.
So many thoughts.
–Thank you for being a part of helping kids like this.
–We need more decent foster and adoptive homes.
–This is one of the biggest interests in my life, helping end child abuse. We simply must do that.
–“The Aunties Program”.
Don’t know if you can use this idea to help her. I’ve had an idea for a few years, hoping to get an agency locally to pick it up formally soon. Simply involves getting a group of 4-5 women to serve as “Aunties” for teen girls in foster care. The goal is that they involve the girl in their everyday life, have her over to their houses, integrate her into what’s going on at the time, dinner with kids, laundry, whatever. Be available to yak with her on phone sometimes. Not like Big Bro/Sis in that there’s no expectation of glitzy outings together… and there is more than one woman working to uplift one child, the burden isn’t all on one person.
When I mention this to women, 50 percent of them say: “I’m there, I want to do this when you start it!” My theory is that 4-5 different models of relatively normal life would be needed to counteract a wacky childhood. That 4-5 models would allow her to create choice in her own head of who to imitate — or an “Aha!” moment, that much of the world actually lives a calmer, less abusive life.
Also, 4-5 women means one can be “too busy” for a few months, and she still has support.
🙂
I hope you do start that program because it sounds wonderful and just what this young woman needs. She has many people working for her now, but between her foster parents, several social workers focusing on different aspects of her case, teachers, counselors, doctors, etc., it is rather a disjointed effort. My main job as guardian ad litem is to make sure she gets what she needs from all of them.
the type who start and run social programs. They may add this to their existing programs.
It’s getting good reception from the lay folk out here. I have an appointment to present it soon to an agency, keep your fingers crossed for me/ us / the girls / our future.
As others have said, this shows that the human spirit triumphs over everything. Everything. What continues to amaze me is how much our society is in denial that this is happening to children. I think we need to get, as a society, that we can stop this, if we put our collective minds to it.
Forgive me for asking, no obligation to answer, but I’m so curious to know, what happened when you went to the police station? That doesn’t always gain the result we want.
I’m not sure if anyone is still reading this thread, but I will answer your question, Looking Up. I kind of glossed over the police situation in my original post, since it is a bit complicated, but what happened was this. My younger sister ran away from home with a friend and when the police found them she confessed that she ran away because she was being sexually abused. After she came home she told me that she did this and the police were watching the house, so this gave us the courage to go to our mother. I have always believed in my heart that my mother knew what was going on, and that she was just too terrified to do anything about it. HOwever, when she found out that the police knew, she went to them the next day and my father was arrested. They took us all downtown (this was upstate New York in the 1960s) and put us into separate rooms and took statements. There was a grand jury hearing where the statements were read and we agreed to them, so my father was formally charged. However, by the time he was up for trial we were 3,000 miles away in California and my mother didn’t want us to go back there. Eventually the charges were dropped since there were no witnesses. My father was a socialist and iconoclast and not on good terms with the local police, so I think they were glad that they finally had something they could pin on him. In the end it didn’t stick and to this day many of his friends think the whole story was fabricated. But people believe what they want to believe, and there isn’t much anyone can do about it!
I’m not sure if anyone is still reading this thread…
Oh, I am. Every single comment.
I’ve been too caught up in my own personal drama to comment much, or to even lurk lately, but I’ve read each story in this thread. And even as a woman myself I am just astonished at us. I know some very sick men hate us and show it, but damn. I so fear for my precious nieces–and now also–my brand new nephew.
Thank God I’ve not been molested or raped. But it’s always in the back of my mind that I can be, at any time. ALWAYS. I had one near miss–a bunch of friends had a potluck and got stupid drunk to celebrate the end of an internship, and I found myself “praying to the porcelain goddess” for the first time. Well later, this guy who I think is a “friend” starts to try to kiss me. I don’t know how I found the strength but I said “Don’t do that. I’m not that damned drunk!” and it must have scared him because he backed off.
Damn, I hadn’t thought about that in 14 years. And I damn sure hadn’t intended to write that until just now. That internship (and I was JUST discussing this with a friend last night, BTW) was what I called my “sexual harassment hazing” because of a lot of dumb ass comments by old ass men who should know better, and do, and don’t fucking care. Luckily, it was all verbal.
What I definitely had to put up with was fucking middle school. Just awful. It wasn’t called sexual harassment then–just boys being boys, of course. So the bra snapping/fondling/grabbing etc. happened. It wasn’t encouraged, of course, but it wasn’t actively DIScouraged, either. So a girl had to learn to dispense her own justice. I had to slap and scratch my fair share of dumb ass boys (who would later grow to be friends in high school…WTF?) and you know what’s scary? I just thought that’s how things were!!
Can you believe that shit?
The scariest shit for me was a minister in my church who said very inappropriate shit to young girls. That probably wasn’t all, though I never heard about it. What I HAD heard is other girls talking about him and the fucking inappropriate comments he made.
Just that look he gave. (((shivers))) I could beat the shit out of him right now. I remember I was in the pastor’s office with several others–it was youth day when the kids would be on the program: for the welcome, reading of sick and shut-in, etc.–and I was having trouble pinning on a corsage.
“I need help sticking this in/on,” I said (can’t remember which).
“I’ll stick her,” said Rev. Creepy Bastard.
The pastor shot him a look I’ll never forget. NEVER.
I knew then never to be alone with the bastard. My parents aren’t feminists but they taught me early on that I needed to know how to take care of myself and defend myself if needed. But I never told my Mom. I never told my Dad. I let it go.
Several years later, I was hanging out after service. The crowd had thinned, and I was getting ready to leave with my family. Well, why in the hell did I have to run–almost literally–into Rev. Creepy Bastard?
“How are you?” said Rev. Creepy Bastard, undressing me with his eyes–on church grounds, no less.
“I’m fine,” I said.
“You sure are…” said Rev. Creepy Bastard.
I fled.
At church.
I was fifteen.
I’m now twice that age and I’m madder now than I was then. I didn’t tell my Mom. And I damn sure didn’t tell my Dad. Because even at 15, I got the message. And that message is this: No matter that I was considered a “good girl”, a good student, with good parents and active in church by choice it didn’t fucking matter. Because it would have been my fault, somehow blamed on me; someone would have said I was just being some “fast ass girl”; and his dumb ass would ALWAYS be defended. My Dad would have fucking killed him–or tried–and HE’D be the one in jail, and not Rev. Creepy Bastard. I just wanted to be safe and not cause trouble. So I had to just be more careful.
I now believe that he would have tried to do more, but I was not as easy “prey” in that I had my parents to rely on. But there were plenty of girls who had only one parent (or none) to depend upon, and I always wondered what may have happened?
Still–I kept my mouth shut, now didn’t I?
Well, when I come home from college at the holiday break three years later, Mom tells me that Rev. Creepy Bastard died and oh, how sad folks were, blah, blah, blah. Before I could self-censor, I said.
“I’m glad the bastard died.”
Which took her by complete surprise, as I usually do not use the word “bastard” around her. So I told her the story. And of course, my dear Mom asked me why I hadn’t come to her. And I told her that I didn’t want her to worry (!) but also…I didn’t want her to tell Dad. Which led us to another conversation about how I should always talk to her.
Which may explain why I love God, but I hate Church. One of the many hypocrisies I’d rather not expose myself to.
That should read, “…astonished at the level of violence directed at us.”
Isn’t it astonishing that the congregation couldn’t see the creepiness ?
I feel the same way about the Christian Right’s love affair with GWB. “Oh, he’s such a GODLY man.”
What ????????????????????????
Too bad he’s dead. I’d come with you to knee him in the groin.
(The Right Reverend Creepy Bastard, not Bush ………. come to think of it, we should go knee HIM in the groin too.)
Thank you for you comments, AP, I am so sorry that you were subjected to this degraded person. But look how you separated out your spiritual life from the oppressive and corrupt bureaucracy of organized religion! That feat can only be attributed to the wisdom that you brought into this life with you. You are also very lucky that your parents believed you when you brought it to their attention. They sound like truly loving people.
Now that story, in the hands of the right person, is one HELL of a stand-up comedy routine. Rev Creepy Bastard, heh. I’m sorry, but don’t we just have to overcome every darned thing else, and just laugh at these people?
One time when my father was dying, Rev Creepy Bastard from my parents lily-white suburban church came to “minister” to us in the room. Said he saw the name on the hospital roster when he was visiting someone else.
I am nearing 40 years old, at the time, but look 10 years younger, eh? Mention age so you know I’ve been around the block and have my creepdar already.
So Rev Creep B decides to put his arm around me and draw me close to “comfort” me. I’ve never met this jerk! I decide I need to be on the OTHER side of the bed. In no uncertain terms.
Another man — I’d have cried on his shoulder, you know? The Rev Creep B’s are… creeps.
My story of going home a couple years later is better than yours. I kid you not — the man was caught in the church office having sex with his secretary on the desk! Yes, he was married… Yes they threw him out.
Now — was my creepdar right or what?
I know I’m all kinds of late with this, but that is truly some sick shit. What is it about the “cloth” that makes these people act this way? Sheesh…
I am so sorry. I am crying so much for all we have had to overcome. We all have our stories. And that just sucks. I’m so sorry…
horrifying to me. My children are such poor liars most of the time…..how terrified does a child have to be to tell a convincing lie to such a skilled predator? I’m so sorry about your mother too…I’m sorry that she didn’t protect you and couldn’t protect you. I’m sorry you had to learn how to protect yourself completely on your own and you were just a mite. How did you make it? No precious loving protection from a parent first and passing you the baton when you could do that for yourself. You’re a miracle! Thank God for parents coming home unexpectedly too. I feel like this was tough for you to share so I wanted to very deeply and respectfully say thank you soooo much. If only your diary was a piling on……but sadly your story is not that. It just pulls the veil back a little more.
A child who is molested by an adult fears the telling as much as the act itself… I was molested when I was a teenager by a schoolteacher and never said a word to anyone until I met my husband and told him. I just told my parents last year. Hell, I’m an adult and I still fear the telling part. The only person I’ve ever shared my stories with is my husband, and he was shocked when I told him what I had gone through. I’ve never said a word to my parents about the neighbour down the street who molested me, or about my best friend’s older brother who came home drunk and molested me, or about the first boss I ever worked for who got me alone in his car and started asking me about my virginity … Seriously, every girl has these stories right. This is the norm. Your initiation into maturity is a road full of horny, abusive, older men who look at you with those ‘eyes’ — evil eyes, and use their age and status to sexually bully you, and touch your person… It sure as hell seems that way to me. Look at the women here at BT. What the hell does that tell us…
What you wrote about the fear. Last night after putting my diary up and reading all the stuff up….one the dogs walked past the backdoor outside and it’s a glass door. I just about jumped out of my skin. Telling more people and on look out for Tyler to take his vengeance on me for telling and it has been many years now.
Well, think of it this way. If he does something to you, we all know who he is and he’ll have the wrath of the frog pond to deal with.
You just reminded me of a local news story I caught the other morning. A very angry woman set up a website called http://www.dontdatehimgirl.com. The stories I saw related to cheaters, rather than rapists. . .but. . .
As a caveat, I believe there’s a similarly named website with the words “class action” at the beginning or end, because some of the men are striking back. But seeing as it was on the news and all, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to mention. (Disclaimer for Boo’s attorney: “I do not endorse the use of the aforementioned site, nor do I recommend that any of the visitors on this site make use of the aforementioned site”.
I would like to extend a universal hug to all the people (of both genders) who have been victims of violence and violations. Something very strong has taken shape – perhaps as a result of the vote in SD – or perhaps the stars were just aligned for all of us to speak out.
The process is painful, but we’ve shown one common theme. Through all the hurt, through all the injustices, we’ve survived. And as Spide and others have noted, we must continue to speak in one very loud voice.
And let us tell our states, our nation and the world that we will NOT support political candidates who will take away our civil liberties!
Oh dear. Yes. I just had that feeling myself even though I didn’t name names or details as in your diaries. (I’m worried about you.)
Just the releasing of it into to the open — that tighly wrapped secret about myself — has opened up all sorts of emotions… I had to go away for a bit and catch a breather.
Is this a good thing — this release? I’m so scared that so many of us have had this happen. It makes me think of every little girl that I know right now, and wonder if she is being molested!
me too. and it’s making me wonder about all the guys I know too. It’s very disturbing to see the breadth of the problem.
I’ve been thinking about this and have come up with an explanation that I’d rather believe than thinking that 99% of women are being molested in some way. You can all tell me I’m crazy … When the pie war stuff happened at dKos, it really upset a lot of women, who came to BT. Obviously, the women (and men I should also include) that came here were more sensitive to the issue. It could be that our microcosm has a higher number of individuals b/c we’ve self-selected BT as a safe place (i.e., the reason a number of us came here initially). I don’t know… It’s really freaking me out — the numbers I mean. It’s just been a strange week.
what I think what accounts for more of it is that it is very very hard to be as honest and open as some have been able to be here. Setting aside that much denial and admitting to having that little control at times in our lives is just so hard to confess to. The other choice is to avoid thinking about anything that happened to you like this and get angry with others being honest about it. There is a safety in being part of the Wolf Pack. Some father posted that yesterday and I have read so much I can’t remember who…..but I think it’s part of that Wolf Pack dynamic.
I think you’re right Tracy. It’s not really something we talk about it, is it… I mean even during that tense time most of the stories we are hearing now did not really come out. You make a strong point: “…admitting to having that little control in our lives is just hard to confess.” Who willingly sings about their most secret fears.
I’m hoping that something good is going to come from this catharsis. Not sure what form it will take …
don’t have any. No progress can occur until one admits where one is. This is true whether we are talking about being lost in the woods, in an unsustainable situation politically, or for women, in an unsustainable position personally.
I share your hope that something good will come of it, that young men’s eyes will be opened, that fathers eyes will be opened, and that we will all see the need to do a better job of protecting our sisters, our wives, our descendants, and not by attempting to keep them under lock and key, but to understand that THEY are the ones who need more control over their lives, they need our support and our help and our protection, but they do not need us to try to control them.
We need to make sure our sons are part of the solution and not part of the problem.
And all little girls need to attend self defense classes until they are grown up women and experts at deflecting attackes. That is a control that we can give our daughters, even if we cannot change culture overnight.
Your comment made me think of my friends who have 4 daughters. All 6 of their kids were judo champions at some level, and when the oldest girl was in high school, some poor kid came up behind her at a dance and touched her (I think it was in a NONsexual way)…she responded without even thinking about it by flipping him onto the ground.
Her parents were delighted, as it was the talk of the school for weeks, and they knew no high-school guy with bad intentions would dare mess with her after that.
Things ARE changing for younger women, in terms of the cultural approval of being strong and kick-ass.
I do hope her parents are correct and that no man ever gets so turned on by the challenge of her kick-assed judo skills that he decides he had better bring a knife or a gun to that particular seduction scene.
Actually, that family is one of my role models for parenting. They had such an honest and open relationship with their kids, without abdicating the responsibilities of parenting. When we go visit, their teenagers were as comfortable hanging out talking with the adult family friends as they were with their own teenaged friends.
for thinking about it. I really, really mean it.
I think we women develop something like “gay-dar”… uh, “predator-dar” as we age. Perhaps if you men develop that also about other men, it will help.
It has happened to all of us.
We are not unique.
We are not alone.
We are not to blame.
The norm is not “Leave It To Beaver”.
We are the norm.
A war of sexual terrorism is being waged against women and children every day, and anyone who refuses to see it is complicit. These are crimes that are being deliberately covered up and allowed to continue by the whole society.
I really hesitate to comment in these diaries because they are so personal, and they are women’s stories, and I’m really afraid of saying the complete wrong thing. But it seems like I must, I have to, almost like I’m saying the issue is unimportant if I don’t say something. And the issues are so very important. So with trepidation, I’ll say what I hope are good and honest things…
These stories are really disturbing me, which is good. I’m one of these guys who is really shy and walks on eggshells around women that I don’t know. I’m very sensitive to mood, posture, and expression, I call it my man’s intuition and it’s never been wrong, about women or men.
Very often, I glance at a women and all the signals scream at me “What are you looking at, creep!” And I pull in, thinking gee, I didn’t mean anything by it. It wasn’t even a “look”. I was just glancing like I do at everyone I’m walking near. I feel stupid. But really, I don’t take it personally or even seriously, I know I’m hypersensitive that way. It’s often uncomfortable to get these impressions about people, but I’ve accepted it – I even revel in it (I mean, sometimes it’s good to know what people are thinking).
But I’ve been shocked by these stories about women having to be so very careful about where they walk and who’s around, even in “safe” places. It’s just the extent of the caution, like having to have your back to the wall at all times, and some part of your mind always scanning the surroundings. It must be creepy. It must be exhausting. No wonder women sometimes return my glance with a glare. She could be scared out of her wits. I’m so sorry that has to be.
WHY DON’T PARENTS TAKE BETTER CARE OF THEIR KIDS!
I’m so pissed off at the world. It’s worse than I thought.
But never flinch from reality, that’s the rule. So I read again.
Bless
We need men’s voices too, so thank you for sharing your thoughts. I’m the mother of 3 boys and it’s hard to know exactly what to tell them about women. I don’t want to ruin their natural friendliness, but I have tried to make them understand that all women feel at least a little wary about every man who looks at her. They’re always a little defensive, and you have to understand why.
But I can understand how that makes it difficult for nice guys…which the majority are.
Absolutely. Most men are wonderful human beings. But there are some who are not. And my guess is that they are repeat customers, hence how many women end up going through some form of abuse. But men shouldn’t be afraid to look at a woman. They shouldn’t feel like they’re a creep if they are attracted to her. But don’t leer, and if she ain’t interested just move on. I’m all in favour of women making the first move. Maybe we need to do more of that as females… but anyway, if all men acted like that we’d be all good.. but don’t feel badly or on edge, it’s natural.. just don’t be a creep 🙂
I’ve always understood there are different looks and that various looks cross different lines, and crossing those lines invades a person’s space to increasing degrees. I’ve never been good at walking those lines, so I always err on the very cautious side (in a word, shy). No worries though, that’s just me. I wouldn’t be any other way.
When I complained above about the world being worse than I thought, I was in no way complaining for myself. I was saying that, in spite of all I read (and I’ll read anything), I thought I really knew how the world was for people, the good and the bad (reading the political blogs opens up alot of wounds). But in spite of consciously missing no opportunity to educate myself, reading these stories has shown me that the world is worse than I thought for women, half the people.
Fantastic. It’s so great to read. Thanks so much for writing.
Very often, I glance at a women and all the signals scream at me “What are you looking at, creep!”
I’ve given men that exact same look! As I mentioned upthread, the catcalls and cracks that the idiots make re: my anatomy make me nuts! And it is frightening (especially in the summer–I don’t know anything about the man looking at me, and naturally assume the worst, not because he is looking at me, but because of the way he is looking at me. And, when that happens, I can only imagine the thoughts that run thru his head. In short, a woman has to be on the defensive constantly, no ifs, ands, or buts about it.
And the fact is, there are so many losers/smooth talking bullshitters in this world who pull that crap. So, it is a natural assumption that a man who is looking at a woman in a way that makes her uncomfortable will get the “What are you looking at, creep?” look.
Fact of the matter is that there are too many nutcases out there today, and I want to stay clear of them. So, many women have adopted the attitude that a man must prove himself, ie, show that he is really a good guy.
And here’s the unusual thing–most of my friends are men!! Just friends, and they have all given me similar advice–Just let the men (who act like assholes) know that you won’t take any shit and they’ll leave you alone.
for embracing the community and encouraging an environment where we could all share our stories in order to push things forward and make things better in this world.
Oh, and I miss Susan. She needs to come back.
Reading this series of diaries has just been heart-wrenching for me. Society allows our most vulnerable resources (our children) to be abused in so many ways.
I have watched as the brave women here have unleashed these stories and these words so that their (our) souls could be saved. If we hide these things, it is as if we are ashamed and that these terrible things own us. What we have witnessed here in the past week is women reclaiming their pasts and saying I will not feel guilt for one second longer. We have witnessed survivors who are telling their attackers that any power they once had is now gone.
My story? At the age of five, my parents found me in a closet with my 16 old uncle. We were fully clothed and I remember nothing, but why was he in a closed closet with me? No police, but my mother threatened to kill him and kept this uncle away from me as much as possible. He was never allowed to be alone with me. I remember him trying to tickle me and trying to come to my room to see my records, but no go. At my parents’ 25th wedding anniversary, this uncle came up to the 24 year old Toni and told me that I looked beautiful and tried to stroke my hair. I told him to go away and told my mom. She took a walk with this uncle and repeated her threat (almost 20 years later)and that was the last I ever saw of him.
It’s just infuriating that any predator would dare be that relentless and it’s scary as hell too!
You know, you bring up the term predator and I had the thought that that’s why I don’t like prison jokes about dropping soap in the shower, because predators prey on the weak and that’s why children are the easiest, then women, then, if you are in an all male environment, the weakest members of the population.
I’m a man who has been reading these stories with wonder and horror and a sense of being totally tongue-tied.
Just wrote and deleted several paragraphs . . .
Tonight I was talking to a woman who has been a friend for 25 years. (For what it’s worth, we always knew we were friends and we never got “involved.” It was a very rare incidence of knowing we were lifelong friends from the first moment we met.) She was raped many times by a cousin from age 3 to age 14. Her mother beat her when she tried to talk about it. She never had courage to tell her father. She is a broken soul. Despite years and years of psychotherapy and medications and hospitalizations, she is steadily descending into madness. My wife and I have been supporting her, but her behavior is increasingly wild and she probably cannot hold on to her house. I have her power of attorney, and I fear she is going to need to go into a group home, lost forever to her dreams. This is a woman I have prayed for almost every day for many years. It’s a big challenge to my faith, this one story and all the others.
For what it’s worth, I very much admire the strength and courage and wisdom on display here in these diaries.
That person destroyed her spirit. I will pray that she finds it again.
Some of us make it and we tell our stories and build our lives as best we can, but many many do not. After having “gone” to those places nobody is ever guaranteed coming back or ever having a happy life and getting to a place of healing. The lucky ones get that.
for you, something to offer her. I have to wrack my brain for some terms and contacts. There is a type of therapy. Would you email me — my email’s in my profile. (Would have sent privately if you had an email in your profile.)
There is no certainty that this therapy model would work, but I think there is certainty that 90 plus percent of therapists may not be able to go where she is, internally, to communicate with her.
First — has she done groups? Has she sat with other people who’ve been similarly molested? The value to that is that then she’s with other people who’ve essentially been driven into a spot that could make them crazy, but come back. They have or can tiptoe over the line between madness and sanity. They had no choice. They had to learn how. They may be able to reach her. It’s like soldiers helping other soldiers with PTSD. Those soldiers perhaps couldn’t help her, not enough common ground, but other molestation survivors perhaps could.
Also, IMO, if she has a therapist, that person MUST be someone who’s been through a similar hell, or they’ll be… ah, at a more superficial level than she needs in communication.
I want to tell you that your support for her is awesome, and I commend you for it. Also that you don’t have to ever give up. A man I knew 20 years ago worked in mental institutions, and he said sometimes when people were 70, they would just drop the craziness, walk out the door, and live a normal life. It’s that miracle mystery of life mentioned elsewhere this diary.
Second, and I don’t want to say too much about this online for fear of sounding too bats, but the type of therapy is in a way related to this story. In India, as you may know, there is a type of person who is “mad” who roams the streets. Tattered rags, filthy, talking to themselves or no one…
People feed them, as one religious belief says that they are in contact with God. Too blown out by that to function in this world, but in contact with God. I believe they are called “madzhubs”.
Also, sometimes in India, an elephant will go mad, start tearing things up, running amuck. Then the madzhub is fetched — and he can communicate with the elephant, he can hold up his hand and tell it to stop.
I absolutely agree with this. I went through 4 years of indiviual, group and family therapy and I can tell I loved the people in my group. It wasn’t just always girls…we had a few boys in there as well other offenders. Rough time for me…but worth it in the end.
To everyone here, it’s been hard over the last several days to know just what to post without sounding to trite but the very very sad thing to me is that none of these stories surprise me.
Over 20 years ago I realized just from being friends with many women that almost everyone I knew had either been raped, molested, beaten and not necessarily as a one time deal. I thought then and nothing since has changed my mind that this was a epidemic on a massive scale and I had no idea if it would ever change.
And this doesn’t even begin to add all the young boys who have grown into men who have the same stories to tell. If only all our tears could wash away this epidemic then starting now not another child or grown-up would be harmed and brutalized again.
And yes I too have a few stories about myself and I have not written of them only because I’m not sure quite how to start or how to write them down.
Whether or not you write your stories Chocolate Ink, I hope you know that the words you choose are not what matter. Just please don’t let it be the need to be silent that stops you.
No it’s not about being silent..I’ve talked to people before about this and have long since come to terms with the various events of molestation and near rapes ..it really is simply the fact that I keep trying to formulate some simple post and can’t seem get it written right in my head.
All the young boys…..
a whole different set of diaries.
You are a brave lady with a brain and heart that have inspired and touched me more times than I can count.
The last few days have been just a parade of courage, of women who have decided to tell, and in that telling, I believe there is a kind of healing, a turning off of the power of abusers whose actions, whether caused by ignorance, mental illness, intoxicating substances or a combination, did real and lasting damage to some very real and very beautiful human beings.
Lasting damage, however, we are learning, is not permanent, thank God.
Learning, however, is.
In another thread, we have started to talk a bit about what might help the next generation, with relation to teen date rape.
What are things that might help with the problem of adult abuse of children? And why is it so prevalent?
This is a whole ‘nother diary.
I hope someone well-known here will start it, so “they will come” — my last sank like a stone.
It is the number one arena of thought and research for me since 1992. I have contributions to make.
that is not against the rules here, or at least post a link to it, I would like to read it. I am sorry I missed it the first time.
It’s amazing all the sick, twisted shit we grow up with isn’t it Spider? Thinking all along that it’s more or less normal even when there is still a tiny voice in the back of that tortured mind telling us we have been harmed. But you better not say anything about because you will out yourself as damaged goods or worse, as in my case, offend a parent who has chosen to believe they are God’s gift to childrearing.
Something happened to me when I was 8 yrs. old that I’ve only told my wife about and even then only in a vague way because the details are sickening to contemplate, let alone express to another. And that is why I am so proud to know you, and each of you here who’ve shown the courage to speak up, because you see, I know how hard it is.
I salute your courage Spiderleaf.
Super, my brother was sexually abused twice in his life. Once at 13 by our male youth minister and once at 15 by a female teacher. Over the years as he has talked about these experiences in different settings, it brings out lots of issues that otherwise lie dormant about these kinds of crimes against children. Sometimes it can be extremely difficult for people because those issues are not even on our radar. But they are important the hear about nontheless.
For the record, what happened to me was not at the hand of a family member. But years later, when I challenged the Golden Parent with my version of my childhood, I was dismissed in a brutal way.
That’s all I’ll say about this here.
And in my opinion there is a special place in hell reserved for parents who don’t believe their child, and especially for those that choose a lover/spouse over that child.
I agree and diagree with you here at the same time. My mom was one of those people for a bit. My Step-father was so manipulative…so smooth…she didn’t even see it coming. Not to mention her being severly abused as a child more than likely helped to contribute to her denial all around. I just hope that the ones who refuse to see…eventually are made to see…like my mother was. It really is a different kind of hell.
Women have gathered into groups, in safe settings and small clusters we have gathered, spoken, cried, held each other. In job situations as older women where we have had goals and deadlines to meet, those of us who learned long ago to not make our way in life on the backs of others have really had to be there for each other because if things get “too much upstairs” in the noggin then we can’t function well. When team members have been down, if we weren’t one of the “girls trying to impress the crazy people” we have been temporary crutches for limping team members. Where do men go with the pain?
They go to their wives. But even that place is risky, depending on the wife and the relationship and what the expectations are of the man. Expectations that have a chilling effect on a man’s need to communicate his own fears in a world where men are supposed to be fearless and able to shoulder any burden in silence because society has taught him to shut up and provide. To shut up and persevere. To shut up and do your job. To shut about your feelings lest you be labeled something of a lesser man.
I had forgotten what happened to me because I had created a different version of it for myself. All subconciously I guess, because when I met my wife and found out what had happened to her it came roaring back out of the past and ever since then she is the only one who knows. I’m ashamed of it. Not just as a human but worse, as a man.
Shame is a fucking killer.
Shame is the thing that allows the abusers to keep doing what they do, isn’t it? When people don’t tell on them, it makes it easier for them to continue finding new victims.
As the mother of 2 boys, I’ve noticed that we could probably write a whole diary series on the wacky “be strong, be tough, never cry, but still be sensitive and caring” stuff that boys/men have to deal with, couldn’t we?
I have a very content and calming feeling knowing that there are two boys in Pa. who will one day be very open, responsible and caring men, unafraid to show who they are and what makes them tick.
My son, who is extremely popular at school is a perfect example of that if I’m allowed to pat myself on the back :o)
The fact that people question his sexuality, in a nice and open way mind you, is proof that he is way out ahead of his group in his ability and comfort in expressing himself freely in the world. His sexual orientation is irrelavent. He is challenging other’s notions of what a male should be.
Such a heavy burden our child-selves carry — the template for the rest of our lives.
I do not pry, but I am glad to have your voice here on this topic. I want all the misplaced shame and guilt to ease, for you and everyone else who was victimized when they were too young to defend even their minds let alone their bodies. If there isn’t a vaccine, I wish like hell there was a cure.
my daughter. When her dad went to Iraq and the whole world was fucking crazy she was so angry. I remember her spitting out venomously one day as I drove her to school that she had waited her whole life (and she just about had at that point) for a dad and now she had one and they sent to him off to die in a fucking war for a bunch of bullshit. It was before I had completely coughed up all of my denial about Iraq….it was before “we knew” that there were no WMD’s. Funny how the kids knew the truth before the rest of us huh? She started sneaking out with another girl who’s father was gone too and was special forces. They had been noticed by some high school boys. It was the second time they had done it that I know of. I was sitting up waiting for her when she snuck back in the window. I was mad as hell and I could smell alcohol on her breath and she just stood there staring at me…..that really pissed me off and I was hollering about how Colorado Springs isn’t exactly the garden of Eden and she had no idea what she was doing sneaking out at midnight on the streets there. I completely took away her life, she was so grounded….but some of her life had already been taken away that night. She told me six months later. She was fourteen.
fourteen and not only is it rape, it is also statutory rape. I will not allow my daughter to be revictimized though. Somebody is probably going to go down hard for this. The most important thing is the survivor though at this point. First we save my daughter….justice another day. Her counselor knows and her counselor knows the laws very well because he does this for a living. First we save our girl though and when/if she is strong and when she is capable we will go the rest of the way. Statutory rape just doesn’t go away.
You are doing for your daughter what too few parents do for their own daughters and sons apparently, judging by these stories.
Like Second Nature said above, there is a special place in hell for parents who fail to believe, let alone protect their children.
hollering my fool head off about how I couldn’t keep her safe if she was going to act that way. Pissed because I could smell alcohol and she was so so young. Pissed because she stood there staring at me like a deer in the headlights and barely acknowledged my words…..she was miles away. If I wouldn’t have been so angry then would she have told me then? How can a “normal” parent not be angry though in that spot standing right there, having also caught the little stinkers doing it the first time too? Then there is her guilt…..”mom told me not to sneak out, mom was sitting there waiting for me again, even though I was angry at the world and angry with all the smart grown ups I deserved what happend to me.”
I’m sorry she had to learn that you knew what you were talking about in such a harsh way. And there’s no way you could have guessed that what you were worried about had already happened that night. I would have been hollering too.
I can replay events only so many times before I once again have to come up against that “powerless” thing. I don’t want to be the mom who was right damn it! I want to be the mom who causes their kids eyes to roll……..that damn mom, chickenlittle!
If I had a dollar for every time I’ve been right and wished I weren’t…
Just like we had to deal with things while we were growing up that our parents never did, now we get the flip side with our kids. And no matter how much you think you’ve seen or heard it all before, there’s always something you didn’t anticipate that comes along and bites you in the behind, isn’t there?
Parenting is by-the-seat-of-your-pants, on-the-job-traing experience. You do your best, and that’s all you can do. You’re there for your daughter no matter what happened and that’s what counts.
Don’t you know that a good parent’s anger with her child is ALWAYS just her fear throwing her for a loop?
I try to give my boys that message frequently — I’m your mom, I fear for your safety, I fear for your future, that’s a part of my job. And still they see me express anger more often than honest fear. I hope they know what is under the anger.
I’m so sorry this happened to your daughter, and by extension to the rest of your family as well.
You are being too hard on yourself. But that shows how much you want to protect your daughter. Of course you should have been angry in her room that night.
The simple fact is that we can’t be everywhere our children are and that is a parent worst fear, but it doesn’t mean that you failed her. She’s still there with you. And the fact that she feels guilt tells me that she cares what you think. If she didn’t she might have told you to go whatever yourself.
What’s important now is that you are doing all the right things as you see it.
sit on me while she cuts my finger off too huh? I’m off to “secret lunch” with spouse. It is a secret rendezvous date because it has been a tough week emotionally it seems and we need one……so don’t tell anybody okay?
No, no, no, Tracy. I can’t stop crying now. This is the ultimate betrayal. We can begin to tell our own stories, listen to the stories of our friends, but when we have to face the truth of living in a society so hostile to women and children that we cannot protect our daughters, the pain is too terrible. If catcalling and groping and beating and rape is painful to remember and recount, it is NOTHING to the agony of discovering that the same shit has happened to your baby, your sweet little girl, your bright-eyed, firecracker of a daughter. All her life you tell her that nobody has the right to touch her in a way she doesn’t like (including yourself; you can’t lecture about bodily integrity without respecting it), and still, years later she finally tells you about the incidents she hid from you for so long. Why ? Because she was ASHAMED. Not sexual self blaming, but ashamed for being STUPID.
Ashamed for not attaining at 10 the cynicism of a forty year old crack addicted sex worker. Ashamed that she was stupid enough to assume that all boys and men are innocent until proven guilty.
If good men passively sit by and let this continue, our daughters will either go on and on paying the price, or, in self defense, we will have to behave as if all of you are pigs until you, somehow, prove otherwise. It is in the best interests of all of us for men of conscience to bring all possible social pressure to bear against sexism.
(I just read that last paragraph, but I’m going to let it stand as a perfect example of how I just used polemics to distance myself from unbearable pain. You can feel the distancing in the writing, can’t you ?)
How, in the name of everything sacred, can we bear to live in world so wicked that we can’t keep our little girls safe?
Holding you in my heart, Susan.
And I salute YOUR courage, Super.
Yes, you know.
There is so much love on this site and among the Tribe that all I can is give you more love with them. Big hugs to you with love and nurturing.
You didn’t lie, you just weren’t ready t share. That’s okay.
I am so sorry you went through what you did. I’ve been hearing from so many other loved ones about their stories lately. Some I’ve known for a long time and they never shared.
Please know that you are loved and supported here – and that’s no lie. (((((((((((SpiderLeaf)))))))) I wish I could hug you in person. Maybe one day we all will.
I don’t know if any of you will ever see this, but. . .
I wish I could have participated in all the beautiful diaries this past week, I apologize that I was not able to. . .I have been pretty much out of commission. But I have read all of these amazing diaries and all the amazing responses by everyone.
I am stunned. And I am not at all surprised, and that makes me pretty deeply hurt in the heart. I have associated with all that has been said here, most of you already know about my childhood abuse from ages 4-12.
Here it is nearly 55 years later and I feel the feelings of the sickness, the shame and the unbearable anger as if it was just a minute ago. I spent plenty of time dealing with it, learning what I had to do to overcome it and lead a life in the best way I could. Several years of therapy helped a lot. Many years spent yelling at the newspaper or the TV when reports of this abuse were brought to light somehow helped since I couldn’t yell at my own abusers. And for whatever reason, my pain seemed even more for the innocent ones (sigh) and sadly, the millions of innocent ones that have, are and continue to have to go through this personal violence and behavior, more than for my own pain.
After therapy, I was shocked to learn after so much work on my own mental health and coping skills that it never leaves you. . .it is always there, the pain, the hurt, the anger. . . you just get to have some better tools to deal with it and move on.
I can’t begin to tell you how deeply all of you are held in my heart. I can’t begin to tell you much I hate it that I wasn’t able to make any changes that might have helped some other girl or boy, child or adult from having to experience it. I hate most of all that we as a society have not done it yet, that we have not made too much of a dent in this raging epidemic of sexual abuse and rape. I’ve been there many times to listen to someone’s story and to hold them in my arms and tell them that I know and to offer what I have been able to… I wish it could have been so much more.
I weep for all of you, for all the children (regardless of what age it may have happened)and I open my arms wide to you if you may find some comfort there.
This community of Booman is amazing beyond all imagination. I have never seen so much honesty, caring, love and willingness to share anywhere, ever in my lifetime.
What a shining light in the Universe!
My deepest, love, respect and caring for each of you whether you wrote a diary, made a response or only read.
Hugs from the deepest heart of me,
Shirl
Love you! Super big hugs {{{{{{shirl}}}} You always make me smile — hope you are well!
You always seem to, Olivia. Good to see you and I am wrapping myself in those big hugs. . .Thanks. Just coming back from a rough week of kidney stones, and it is slower than I would like, but thanks for asking.
Just thanks for being you.
Hugs a plenty
Shirl
We’re seeing, and hearing and feeling.
Child abuse is the gift that just keeps right on giving, isn’t it ?
I’m nearly sixty, but I’ve still got that atomic startle reaction; my body grew up in a sea of adrenaline. I have to pretend that I believe in the future in order to function in the world, but what I’ve always felt is that I’ll be dead in a half hour. The fallout of early and persistent abuse affects every cell of our bodies and every beat of out hearts.
I hold your hand, too, in the circle of sisters.
As a male human, I guess I should be stunned at the revelations here — and there are many. I am particularly moved by the references to ‘women as prey’ mentioned in other posts. Growing up in a smaller but pretty progressive town in Minnesota, I have to admit I never saw any of the behavior listed in these posts — the assaults, the catcalls, the groping — but I’m sure they happened. It’s just that I and my circle of male friends were lucky enough to grow up in households where behavior was actually taught, and shown by example, and respect for others (regardless of sex) and their ideas was paramount. I certainly don’t have any solutions, but I do have opinions about some of the root causes: one of the main ones is the ludicrous overemphasis on ‘being a MAN’ and on competitive sports (and drinking), starting in elementary schools all the way through college. In general, what this teaches males is “how to be a soldier.” Think about it — here’s what your son’s high school basketball and football coach is teaching him:
In addition I note a number of references to particularly disgusting male behavior, many of which take place in the context of male groups (the ‘team’) which may have been less likely if the behavior involved only individuals.
As I say, I have no particular credentials in all this, I only offer it up for consideration.
And in closing, a few lines from W. H Auden’s “The Shield of Achilles”:
“That girls are raped, that two boys knife a third,
Were axioms to him, who’d never heard
Of any world where promises were kept,
Or one could weep because another wept.”
Pray and work for a better world.
If all men were like you and the others on this site, the lives of women and girls would be dramatically changed for the better. How would it feel, I wonder to have the burden of constant, low-level threat lifted ?
I agree susan … The men here are truly extraordinary!