abuse and victims – this is gonna piss you off

Without a doubt, this entry is not going to make me many friends. I would like to introduce you to a victim of the victim culture. Someone who’s life has been destroyed NOT by what happened to her… but by how she has been taught she should react to what happened to her.

I’ll tell you the story in the short form, at age six this girl was touched three or four times by an older cousin. He may have made her touch him during that time. He did not beat or penetrate her, he did not threaten her, he did not force her to have sex with him.

“And then to sit on his lap. And then he touched me. All it took was one finger to rob me of my innocence. It happened more than once. It happened for three or four consecutive Saturdays in a row. He would touch me, force me to touch him.” – the full story

Should it have happened? No.

In a perfect world, would it have happened? No.

So let’s follow the story along a bit… at the time, she felt nothing odd about the experience. At fifteen she starts recovering memories of the incident, and her life starts going to hell.

“It had really happened to me. I was a victim of Childhood Sexual Abuse. I remember the day I came to this conclusion. I was in the shower, and I had just had another memory resurface. I knelt down on the shower floor and wept. I couldn’t believe it. I had a perfect childhood, the abuse notwithstanding. Why me?” – the full story 

Notice what she is upset about there… not the event itself really, but the idea of the event. The lost illusion of some mythical idea of a perfect childhood and the now firm belief that she is a victim … and we all know how victims are supposed to act, they fall to pieces right? Because no one could possibly be expected to live with such a burden… right?

Now, I don’t know this person from a passing car – and I have no idea what the circumstances of these ‘memories’ were during her recovering of them – but I do know that "False Memory Syndrome" is real… and that a situation like this does fit that profile. Is the memory real? I am not sure – and I don’t think it matters to my point…

This is going to destroy her life because she has been taught that any time bit of trauma or less than perfect childhood dooms her to ruin and horror. That she is now fundamentally maimed and incapable… she is not human anymore really, she is victim. That’s what they tell her, because that’s how they get their power.

“I didn’t want anyone to find out my horrendous secret. It was hard work, to keep this facade from cracking, but I did it. I didn’t know what would happen if my friends found out, how they would react. I didn’t want to find out.” – the full story 

Think about that. What in the world would they have thought? Certainly they weren’t going to (I hope) disown her because she had been touched three or four times nine years ago. No, she was afraid they would start treating her differently…

And they would have.

Why? Because they have been fed the same diet of victim mythos. They would believe that anyone "like her" is now a deeply disturbed ticking time bomb of mental health that will need years of therapy to straighten out. That’s what they have been told… and the prophecy goes on to fulfill itself.

“By the end of the trip, I had tried once more to commit suicide by mildly overdosing on pills.” – the full story 

Just think about that. Somehow, a healthy intelligent resilient human has been reduced to attempted suicide because she was touched by someone inappropriately nine years ago. I will say this – that is not the trauma of the incident at work there – that is a young girl acting out the script the world around her has told her she is doomed to… with a inevitable logic and steps on the ladder.

1. If you were ever touched or treated wrong, you were abused
2. If you were abused, you are doomed to therapy and fragility
3. Your friends know you are doomed, and will treat you as such
4. You will try and kill yourself
5. You will spend your whole life coming to grips with it
6. If you are not destroyed by this, you are betraying everyone who was ever raped AND you are simply so damaged your in denial.

It’s a playbook almost tailor made to create an emotionally crippled populace. One that needs a savior… and there is no end of groups and political hacks who will offer to do it.

“Which brings us to today. I can’t say where I’ll be in a month, or even in a year, in my recovery. But I can see that one thing has changed thus far. In the beginning, I saw myself as a victim of Childhood Sexual Abuse, but today, right now, I consider myself to be a survivor.” – the full story 

None of that should be necessary. Neither the experience nor the memories of it should have destroyed this girls life. What she should have been able to do was shrug it off, deal with it a little as something from a long time ago and move on with her life – knowing that that event does not diminish her abilities now in any way.

But that didn’t happen… and that particular blood is not on the hands of that older cousin… it is on the hands of a society that has bred a generation of people so brittle that they are incapable of rising above any adversity or lack of perfection – a generation tailor made for victimhood.

Let me clue you in, no ones childhood has ever been, or ever will be perfect. As long as we keep telling those around us that if they were not the beneficiaries of this mythical perfect life that they are abused victims with deep mental scars who need therapy we will be hip deep in emotional wreckage.

How should it have gone? I will not presume to discuss legal remedies – that is up to the family to decide… but her internal dialog should have gone like this:

"Hey, I think when I was six my older cousin molested me with his finger a few times. What a prick. Remind me to hit him next time I see him."

And if she wasn’t a girl who has been told all her live how people "like her" are damaged and fragile… given a role model of psychosis to live up to, she would have.

Oh, you can spare me the "how can you defend that rapist" hate mail. I didn’t defend his actions, that is just more of the victim culture silliness… to say that she should still be able to function is not to say he was not wrong. It is exactly that short of thinking that has led to the current situation – where the more destroyed and incapable you are the bigger your badge of "victimhood" is, and the more we love you.

Madness.

My sympathies go to her for the two times she was victimized – by the actions of her cousin and by the society that robbed her of any ability to deal with them.