Our Loved Ones, and Things They Say

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To be lead to a stake where you will burn, to stomp on your executioner's foot and to spit in his eye.

So easy it is, perhaps, to imagine yourself an underdog that resists to the end.

For who they are, after all, our enemies? A bunch of uneducated, hateful folk. Miserable people ignorant of their ignorance. Nobodies that do not matter, only the power they wield does. Or so some say.

Yet, would you call a girl you used to hold in your hands so dearly a nobody?

To me, reading the testimonies of victims has been one of the most excruciating and demoralizing things.

So, for example, there is this girl on SanctionedSuicide who writes about how she was mistreated all her life, and then there was also this one guy (26) how had sex with her (15), or, in her words, raped her. It was pretty traumatizing for me, she writes. But you didn't say no, he replied, and then she started crying. Can't he understand that it's more nuanced than that? Then, as she writes, he broke down, but never apologized; no people who mistreated her ever did, and that's partly how she found herself on that forum.

So, what happened exactly, I wonder. How should he behaved himself, for it not to be rape? Should he have asked for her consent beforehand? Ah, but what if he did? What a conundrum.

It's like no matter what you do, no matter what you say, no matter how gently, lovingly and saintly you conduct yourself, it's always rape... Which is demonstrably false, as there have been children who said and continue to say otherwise well into their adulthood. That's because they were groomed --- an anti would reply. But the joy and happy memories these groomed people had were real. Just like how tears on the face of that girl were real. Can we really bring ourselves to say to that girl in her face that she was brainwashed by society and read her an abstract lecture about cultural constructs and sociogenic harm? How would that be different from the kind of anti that would take from a girl her lover, and then proceed to gaslight her into believing that the relationship she had was nothing but evil manipulation and abuse? Although, one could probably retaliate by saying that in one a case a person is brainwashed into misery, unlike in the other.

At some point we will have to talk to people who have suffered from our love. Perhaps, it is through reconciling with them that the path to our freedom lies.
It may involve putting to question the reported experiences of the victims or their perception of them. Otherwise, are we forced to put up with a purely probabilistic approach? If same actions lead to disaster in one case, but not in the other. Surely, whether a disaster happens or not doesn't depend on a coin flip, there have to be special circumstances, which, if present, can hopefully be resolved.

There is something really fishy about how the notion of CSA resists quantification attempts.

[WavesInEternity]

I've been discussing those matters at length with my elderly mother, herself a victim of severe incestuous CSA, and to a lesser extent with other family members who suffered similar fates. Only my mother knows that I'm a MAP, though, which makes my conversations with her both especially constructive and especially difficult.

The example you gave reminds me of one case in particular, that of my aunt, which I describe in this thread:

[My mother] recounts a case where a female family member was molested as an 11-year-old by a narcissistic but otherwise "well-intentioned" uncle who thought of himself as a "good lover" and wanted to initiate her to sexual intimacy. When he fondled and masturbated her to orgasm, she didn't say "no" once. Not because she was enjoying herself, but because: 1) she didn't want to disappoint a man whom she considered her friend; 2) she was f*cking terrorized by this grown man doing something to her she didn't fully comprehend.

When he asked if she was enjoying it (and he did, more than once!), she even said "yes". She lied because she instinctively knew it was the answer he wanted to hear.

The fact is, that woman (my beloved aunt) is a lesbian, and was already aware of it by that age. She hated the experience and felt violated. She regrets that her first sexual experience wasn't with a girl she liked, on her own terms.

Ignoring the problems raised by incest (there were several aspects of abuse of power in the details of the situation), I wondered what exactly the man should have done, if we aren't to simply assume that any intergenerational intimacy whatsoever is harmful by default. Should he have asked for explicit consent beforehand? No, she counters, because fear of disappointing a loved one means the young girl will try to please you, even if it's traumatic for her.

I retorted that I'd be sure to explain that I want her to tell me her genuine feelings, not what she thinks I want to hear.

Her answer? "It's not that simple."

Well then, what can possibly be done? Ultimately, my mother and myself agree on the necessity of proper sex & relationship education, which should include an explanation of what "consent" means (both "no" and "yes"), from an early age. We also agree that incest and abuse of power are problematic and should remain illegal (an uncle with a niece under 18 should probably stay illegal because of the pervasiveness of the avuncular abuse of girls). Nevertheless, such proposals are not enough to understand, let alone solve, the issues at hand.

What I've gradually come to understand is that all the problems involved in AMSC aren't in fact unique to it, but are rather found in all kinds of intimate relationships, in particular those between men and women. The youth of one participant does tend to magnify them somewhat, but it certainly doesn't change their nature.

The most critical one is probably that women have a hard time saying "no". To varying degrees, they're brought up to please and obey men, much like children are brought up to respect and obey adults. For different reasons, children and women fear disappointing those who love them to such an extent that they're willing to sacrifice their own well-being for them—for children, this is due to their dependency on adults for survival and security, while for women, it's perhaps linked to the maternal instinct, although I'm very open to alternative explanations.

Another important factor that generally applies to both heterosexual sex between adults and AMSC is the sometimes profound asymmetry between the partners' respective sexual desires. I'm reminded of an adult woman who said she felt "violated" by her partner during sex as she was sure he was secretly looking at porn beforehand. There is an all too common lack of proper communication in couples and people too often make little effort to truly comprehend and appreciate the lived experience of their partner. While egocentric men have historically been wrong in taking for granted women's sexual availability, in our society, it's increasingly the case that normal aspects of typical male sexuality are being pathologized and demonized, in no small part as a result of haywire feminist discourse that has overstayed its relevance.

In many ways, the #MeToo movement highlights that everything that's usually criticized about adult-minor sexual interactions can also be criticized in adult-adult sexual interactions. Abuse of power, manipulation, "grooming", all kinds of pressure to engage in unwanted sexual acts, and so on...

[PorcelainLark]

The most critical one is probably that women have a hard time saying "no". To varying degrees, they're brought up to please and obey men, much like children are brought up to respect and obey adults.

There was this interesting perspective that kind of went against that, in a mrgirl video.
https://fstube.net/w/qBUG2jm8w3iQZRy8nmAn3U

[Fragment]

I'm not allowed to even know how my victims truly feel and they're not allowed to tell me. The system is in control now, and it has its own narrative.

The boys under pressure from parents, police and prosecutors will stick to that narrative. I need to bend the knee and recite that narrative, lest I be seen as lacking remorse.

I want to know what I actually did wrong, from the perspective of the boys. And, if necessary, apologize for that. But the system has no room for that. It's already decided what it means to be perpetrator or victim.

[WavesInEternity]

I'm not allowed to even know how my victims truly feel and they're not allowed to tell me. The system is in control now, and it has its own narrative.

The boys under pressure from parents, police and prosecutors will stick to that narrative. I need to bend the knee and recite that narrative, lest I be seen as lacking remorse.

I want to know what I actually did wrong, from the perspective of the boys. And, if necessary, apologize for that. But the system has no room for that. It's already decided what it means to be perpetrator or victim.

I got some powerful feelings reading those lines. They encompass so much of what's wrong in the current system, in so few words.

The conversation that needs to happen isn't happening. On a societal scale.

And not just with respect to AMSC... all sexual activity, especially between men and women. #MeToo brought the problem into greater focus without actually solving anything at all.

By putting people into such reductive categories as "molester" and "survivor" regardless of what actually happened, nobody tries to understand the true lived experience of the people involved. The presumption of serious harm and the presumption of evil intent preclude any real justice in cases such as yours.

[WavesInEternity]

There was this interesting perspective that kind of went against that, in a mrgirl video.
https://fstube.net/w/qBUG2jm8w3iQZRy8nmAn3U

I think his message is consistent with what I wrote. He does mention girls/women getting drunk to say yes, saying yes and regretting it, saying yes when they mean no, or "half-saying" yes, as examples of what he means by his claim that women have trouble saying yes. The fact that they also do sometimes say "no when they mean yes" doesn't contradict the overall trend, nor does it mean that the basic problem isn't a lack of consent literacy, i.e. learning to say both "yes" and "no" adequately. I absolutely agree with him that the prevalent climate of erotophobia—which is most toxic with regard to female sexuality—means that girls end up with a deeply conflicted attitude regarding sex, especially as they're simultaneously taught as children that adults have a right to access their bodies.