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Feministe Feedback: Addressing Abuse

Jill

A reader writes in:

In my early teenage years, a cis male friend started pushing me around. The abuse never happened in school, and there is only one person in my life who witnessed his behavior.

It took me a few years to realize that I had experienced physical and sexual abuse at the hands of this person. Because I wasn’t raped, I didn’t know how to describe my experience without going into detail. The details felt embarrassing, scary, and private…so I stayed quiet.

My grades plummeted, my friends backed away, and the school system turned a blind eye. I still maintain close relationships with a few people from high school. I want to share my story with them, but I fear the consequences. I think about these awful cycles of victim-blaming and shaming. I also don’t want the abuser back in my life, and I’m afraid my “accusation” will get back to him.

So, I’m looking for advice. I can’t hold my friends accountable for something they don’t know, but I don’t know how to safely begin this dialogue.

Thanks!

Thoughts? Suggestions?

And remember that you can write into Feministe Feedback by emailing feministe@gmail.com

19 thoughts on Feministe Feedback: Addressing Abuse

  1. Wow, the timing of this post is eerie. I was also abused (sexually) by a peer when I was a young teenager. I’ve found it extremely difficult to talk about, for two reasons: 1) I find that people–friends, my family, *therapists*–assume that sexual abuse exclusively means “molestation of a child by an adult,” and can’t be used to describe abusive sexual contact between minor peers; and 2) there was no PIV intercourse, and that seems to baffle some people. So my experience has been that it’s been difficult to talk about, and sometimes the responses I get stir up my own shame/guilt about it.

    Letter-writer, I think whether you can safely begin the dialogue depends on what you need for safety. It concerns me that you don’t feel you’re in a position where you can trust that your friends won’t pass the information back to the abuser, and that him hearing about it may bring him back into your life. Are there some people you can trust not to discuss this with others? Perhaps these are the people to talk to first. Then see how the discussion makes you feel, and whether you feel safe engaging others in it.

    Also, perhaps consider the reasons that are motivating you to share your story with your high school friends, and then consider which ones are most likely to fulfil your needs in that regard. Like if you want to do it because you want to be more open with your friends and closer to them, who will respect that and give it back to you in kind? And who, given your past experiences with them, might react in an unhelpful way?

  3. When I first started to disclose my experiences of sexual assault to people I knew, I often found myself getting flustered with anxiety or derailed by their questions. Obviously it’s up to you how you feel comfortable engaging with your friends, but I would suggest a way to begin dialogue is with a letter. You can choose whether you want to do this at a distance or in person, with you there while they read or you reading it out loud, but having all the details you want to disclose prepared ahead of time can be really useful in making sure that you can disclose while maintaining your own boundaries. Along with the story of the abuse, include what your expectations and needs from your friends are. Some of those might be that you need to be able to discuss this with them without them disclosing it to other people, or expressing that you are afraid that you won’t be believed. Your friends will find it much more difficult to respect your boundaries if they don’t know what they are.

    If you think it might be helpful to them, or you think that it will help avoid them engaging in victim blaming, have some resources on supporting friends who have survived sexual violence ready ahead of time. This could be as simple as a web link. Also try to make sure you have a safe space or opportunity to debrief with someone else afterwards, even if this is just having a counseling number on hand.

  4. Would it be useful in the letter (great idea) to not mention the abusers name? That way they would not know who to go tell. I am so sorry you experienced this awful bullying and abuse.

  5. I too am a survivor of abuse that occurred in my teen years. It happened in an institution, so the relationships with my abusers involved their authority over me. However, I too struggled for years to find to way to articulate what happened and to communicate to others that what happened was unarguably abuse.

    While I don’t consider the abuse they afflicted on me as sexual abuse, because no physical contact or other sexual behavior was involved, they did attack my gender expression and my sexual orientation (I’m a hetero cis-woman with Asperger’s Syndrome, and they were accusing me of gender dysphoria and repressed homosexuality–this was before high functioning autism was widely accepted in the US and so all they saw as a weird, quirky girl who didn’t fit into any social conventions). In addition to systematic methods of humiliation, shaming, and mocking which was intended to make me accept their “diagnosis”–often done in front of other patients or staff–they also tried to force to me to admit to sexual abuse by either my brother or father that never happened.

    It was egregious psychological abuse in a manner that few people can understand, and I struggled for many years trying to find a way to articulate what I had experienced without people laughing at me as if I was making a big deal out of nothing or telling some tall tale. That I was a teen when it happened seemed reason enough for some people to discredit my story of abuse. Additionally the aspect of abuse that involved my gender expression and sexual orientation made it especially hard for me to talk about it especially since I would have to endure many more years of other people pejoratively assuming I was a trans person or a lesbian who “just can’t admit it,” simply because my Aspergian gender expression didn’t fit their idea of a heterosexual or cis-woman.

    So I know what it’s like to face incredulity. The advice I can offer is simply based my own path in learning how to articulate my story and find healing:

    1) Find someone who gets it, like a support group or a therapist who specializes in helping people recovering from abuse. It is so very beneficial to be able to tell your story to people whom you can trust without being afraid that they will doubt or dismiss you. I can’t tell you what a watershed moment it was for me to finally have a therapist say to me, “What I am hearing is a horror story,” because, as painful as it was to hear someone call my experience that, it was also–at last–an complete acknowledgment of what I had endured. That moment of acknowledgement was the very first step in my own journey to reclaiming myself and taking ownership of my story.

    2. Learn the “jargon.” Talking to a support group or a therapist can help, but also reading books, online forums and blogs by people recovering from abuse. There is a vocabulary we have now to talk about abuse and this enables victims to speak about their experience without having other people try to turn our words into something else. It’s important for us, for our recovery and for telling our story, to understand the nature and dynamics of abuse, that it is about power derived from demeaning, controlling and dehumanizing another person. This is the core message we need to communicate. It’s not about revenge, or pettiness, or a personal grudge. It’s about someone dehumanizing us and using that as power over us when they had no right to do so, and we have a right to talk about this wrong done to us openly and without judgement.

    3. Accept that some people may not be able to hear you, at least not right away. If it is someone close to you, especially someone you knew while you were being abused. It will be very challenging to their perceptions of you, the past and their shared experiences with you to learn there was abuse going on that they either didn’t see or failed to acknowledge. This can be very upsetting to people if they aren’t ready to face it. Sometime you’ll find someone knew but just didn’t know how to address it, and they will be relieved once you finally open up to them. But sadly, in my experience, those are the minority. For the rest you’ll need patience. Just acknowledge that many people may not be ready to hear the truth and prepare yourself that.

    4) Now this is where it could get very hard. If they are not ready to hear it, you must not let them tell you–or suggest or imply–that you are lying or otherwise not recollecting correctly. This is where you have to stand your ground and say calmly, “I was hurt deeply by this. I have been confused in the past about what happened, but now I understand and accept it for what it is. It wasn’t nothing. It was abuse. I am sorry you cannot see that right now, but because I trust and appreciate you as a friend, I hope in time we can talk more openly about this.” Or something to that effect. I wish it could be easier, but it just isn’t. The best you can hope for when this happens is that your friend will give it some thought and be more open down to the line. Truly good friends usually are. But if they don’t come around, maybe they aren’t the kind of friends you need in your life right now. Sometime healing and reclaiming yourself leads to some tough decisions, but just remember–you’ve suffered enough, it’s time for you to heal, and you’re not alone.

    Best of luck to you.

  6. These posts focusing on the issues of abusive interpersonal dynamics have been really helpful to me. In truth I’ve done a lot of reading but to have these issues discussed by groups of women in public spaces rather than hidden away in group therapy, behind a therapist door, or otherwise tucking the difficult emotions out of th sight of society feels very empowering to me.

    So thank you asker, for asking this question, and Jill/Feministe for posting it.

    I wish I had more advice to give you but I have found this issue really hard. I’ve discussed the fact that there was abuse in my history but I found that when I’ve told friends I’ve done so really fast, skipped any emotions and sort of tried to minimize how devastating the experience was or how many emotions I still have about it or how much I really yearn for support.

    I haven’t figured out how to discuss this with people in a way that let’s the actual emotions about because the one time I did that the emotions all poored out and I had an entire peer group tell me that it was too much and I needed to deal with all of it alone.

    One friend gave me a copy of Emerson’s Self Reliance to help reinforce that I shouldn’t share such difficult emotions or cry in front of people.

    Because I had gone through a number of really horrific traumas in a short span, there was so much need for real support and instead I simply got a mental diagnoses, meds, and rejection from all my friends.

    It was not a good experience. Whatever happens, I think it’s better to reach out for support than to not. Some people can’t deal with it and that’s ok. I think my friend group had a lot of issues and drug addiction problems of their own and were running from their own demons and seeing my feelings so openly was extremely scary for them as it was all they wanted to hush in themselves. Hopefully you will find some supportive friends and if not keep trying.

    I haven’t really figured out how to do any of it, so mostly I just want you to know you have support.

  7. Others on this thread have given good advice.

    The truth of the matter is that there really isn’t a safe or comfortable way to begin the dialogue. I have learned the hard way that some people can talk about details this emotionally intense and some can’t. In the beginning, I found myself getting angry at myself and at other people when some reacted unhelpfully to my honesty.

    In a perfect world, we’d be able to discuss issues like these with the hindrance of guilt and shame by the survivor and general discomfort by others. Still, I myself have found friends who are capable of understanding and providing helpful feedback. One of them has worked for years seeking to end human trafficking, so the anecdotes and issues I share are similar to those she sees on a regular basis.

    Vulnerability in any form is perceived differently by different people. But you needn’t be silent, either.

  9. I could have written this post with a few additions: that of rape, the school punishing me for his actions, and my friends, parents, and my friends’ parents repeatedly punishing, bullying, or separating themselves from me. My advice is to only tell safe and trustworthy people. I determine safe people by first talking for a long while about abuse, domestic violence, sexual assault, and related topics and if they react in ways I find appropriate and if I learn to trust them, then I might tell them. Otherwise I recommend not telling others at any cost unless you are up for arguing why victim blaming is seriously harmful and how/why you are a valid person in the world who deserves basic rights and respect.

  11. As a fellow survivor of sexual abuse and assault, I resonate with both the original question and the comments provided by others. The first question on my mind is, what is motivating you to share your story with your friends from high school? I think becoming really, really clear on all the motivations driving you will help you decide if and how to approach your friends. Are you seeking their support? Looking for confirmation of the abuser’s abusive ways? Wanting to break silence in the original community/setting where the abuse took place? Will you be getting what you need if you choose to share your story with them? What are the best and worst outcomes? It is a real conundrum to learn how to discern who is trustworthy. My recommendation is to tread very carefully. I think it’s a great sign that you are seeking advice through a forum like this; I think it indicates that you want to be very mindful about how to proceed, and that you want to make sure you are protecting yourself from further harm. You deserve both to be fully heard and supported, and to not be hurt anymore.

    As a number of people mentioned above, there can be tremendous blow-back from choosing to share one’s story honestly. So many people carry around so much guilt, denial, confusion, trauma histories of their own. It may still be worth it to you to share your story with your high school friends, but you may want to think through all the potential scenarios and make sure that you’re really ready to handle whatever comes up. Or you may decide that the potential negative consequences are too much to risk. In that case, and regardless, I would urge you to seek out solid support from others who are not your high school friends, people you can trust and be real with, without fear of word getting back to the abuser.

  12. I recently revealed an instance of childhood abuse to my boyfriend. He doesn’t know who the person is, so it has no way of getting back to my abuser.

    I suggest telling someone who is close to you but is not from your high school days.

  13. People can react very differently to the disclosure of abuse, and often it can be very misguided and hurtful, as I discovered. It is sad to say, but many people, even people that we might expect to “get” it, just don’t, not at all. I think it is important to find support and strength from talking about this issue with people who do get it — but these people might be strangers online, or a support group for survivors of assault. You have already said that your “friends backed away”during or after this happened. They might be older and wiser now — or completely not. On one hand sharing your experiences with them might reveal that you were not the only person abused by this guy, or it might turn into the cycle of shame where you were somehow the problem, and get dismissed or devalued as “unstable” for not being able to take some “roughhousing” or “aggressive flirting” or “come-ons” or whatever dismissive euphemisms for his actions.

    This not exactly the same but this happened to me when I was 17: I was best friends with a smart nerd guy(who was very socially unskilled), who worked with this skinhead monster from the local punk scene. The monster was a door guy, and I would often see him being extremely physically aggressive and confrontational with people who were not a problem. I also saw his girlfriend with a black eye.My friend was telling me that this guy was a big funny lug, with a “slapstick sense of humor”. I disagreed and said he was scary and aggressive, and explained what I had witnessed. Nerd friend tells the monster what I said and tells him who said that. I was at a show a few days later, and encounter the monster standing with people I thought were my friends. I walked up to them, and immediately the monster started yelling in my face about how I was spreading “fucking malicious lies about him”. This is a guy who was a psychotic brute, at least 80 lbs heavier than me and 10 years older. He was inches away from my face SCREAMING with absolute rage. My friends did nothing — no one tried to calm him down, or protect me, or speak up or anything ! These were the same people who had talked about how the guy who lived next door to him heard violent fights between the monster and his girlfriend including what sounded like her being beaten ! My friends were in university, studying art and philosophy, and were all about far left politics and peace…except that this concept of peace obviously did not extend to violence against women. These people(mostly male) watched this happen to me, and when I tried to talk about it later, they were all dismissive, claiming the monster had a”Three Stooges sense of humor”, and didn’t believe that he would hurt me. I felt very scared and threatened as there was no sense of comedy in this display of extreme aggression. I phoned my nerd friend, who was a close friend then, and was really angry with him about how he had told the monster what I had said, and my nerd friend was semi-apologetic, but just could not understand what happened because the monster never treated him that way, or that doing this put me in real fear and danger.

    So:even though you might want or need these people to hear your account, they might not be able to HEAR you. It is very bad to be assaulted, but feels ever worse to be not believed, or protected, or even worse DOUBTED. Please proceed with great caution. There should be no shame about what happened to you — but this can be very challenging when misguided people begin to imply that you should have known better or not gotten yourself in that situation or whatever horror they can pull out of a hat to stick on you, like it was your fault.

  14. I am so sorry this happened to you. You didn’t deserve it and it wasn’t your fault. I know that may sound obvious to some readers, but when it happened to me I just kept getting the same message from the (very few) people I told or who found out, whether it was in the form of “how could you let this happen over and over to you?” to “we just all thought you were dating anyway…” as if being close friends for a man makes it ok for him to hurt you, to sexually brutalize you. I felt so alone in the world. I almost didn’t graduate high school. No one “got it” – even after the man who did it to me had someone tell the principal (because he wanted to shame me) the administration still acted as though I was a delinquent. I was chased down in the halls by administrators and told that I “had” to tell them about what happened, that I “had” to press charges. That it was the “right thing to do” and that I owed it to other women. That was when I first really found myself as a feminist, when I heard my female high school counselor tell me that. I was enraged that forcing a woman to press charges in a system where it was unlikely she would get justice anyway was being called “feminism”. I remembered the woman on the bus the time he did it to me there, I remember screaming for help and having her just pretend she couldn’t hear me screaming and crying as I tried to fight him off. He did it six times to me over the period of two weeks – we had been best friends all throughout high school. There was never penetration because I was thankfully strong enough to fight him off, and people used that too as an excuse to invalidate my experience. I hope that they don’t do this to you. If they do, please try to remember that there are other people out here that has happened to also, and that there are people who do understand your pain, even if we can’t be a substitute for your family and friends. Talking about it is so hard, especially the first few times, especially with men and with family. Be careful of other men in your life who might use this information against you, who might use your need for comfort and understanding to get something from you. It is hard to know how people in your life will react until you tell them. Some women carry internalize sexism within them and might say things that hurt. Some women though might have gone through something similar and might have gotten through it without turning into agents of self-oppression themselves. There is so much good advice from other ladies here that I don’t have much of worth to add other than this. Trust yourself. Love yourself. Treat yourself well. Reject the message that you need to blame yourself. Again, I am so sorry this happen to you. Healing will take time but it will come and you will become so much stronger than you ever imagined possible. Thank you so much for sharing and for asking for help with talking to others. I think it is very brave of you to share your story with in your life. As long as you are physically safe from your attacker, I don’t think you should worry about him finding out. It is not your job to take care of his feelings – he did something wrong, not you. Stay strong!

  15. Everyone’s comments here are so helpful for me. I’ve been thinking about this post a lot since reading it yesterday.

    Something I want to add to my rather cautionary comment above, and to this discussion:

    I went through a period, about 5 years after everything happened to me, when I just needed to tell people what I went through. People in the community that had sat back and let it happen, people that I couldn’t really trust. My family, my church, people at school. I just needed to, for reasons I’m still not really clear on. I think it was because everybody was being nice to me again, and I wanted to be like, “No, this is the complete me!” Honestly, their response wasn’t that important to me at the time. It was something about no longer “hiding” this thing. I simply needed to do it.

    At the time, my mother kept urging me not to tell people. She warned me that I couldn’t trust most people, and that I didn’t have to tell people something so private. While I see now that she was largely trying to protect me from hurtful responses, at the time this *felt* very much like she was trying to keep me silent because my secret was inherently shameful/embarrassing.

    So I want to be clear to the letter writer that whatever the response of your friends is, your story is yours to tell, and you have nothing to be ashamed of. Maybe you just need to tell it right now, and it’s not so much about your friends’ responses.

    I also want to be clear that our concerns about your friends’ trustworthiness are just that. There’s nothing wrong with your desire (or need) to talk about your abuse. If you need to talk about it, and some friends don’t respond positively, fuck ’em.

  17. The weirdest part of abuse is how well we manage it while it is going on. For the most part, there aren’t any theatrical images of us huddled, screaming, in a corner during it. The human mind does everything it can to take experiences in stride and adapt as quickly as possible. You know the name for it: survival instinct.

    The downside of that is that we’re so busy managing the situation, we tend to diminish it for ourselves. In making the best of a situation, the situation looks far less serious to observing parties that what it really is.

    In my case, this was exactly what happened. I think it happens for a lot of those who suffer abuse. I was so busy making the best of it – you know, surviving – that when I finally found a way out and started talking about what was going on, people found it hard to believe I wasn’t exaggerating or using hyperbole. You get enough people telling you that what you’re saying isn’t the truth or that you are spinning the information negatively and it starts to really mess with your head. *see gaslighting articles!

    My best advice: be careful who you tell first. It will be the hardest time you tell the story, the time it will most difficult to be coherent. Only talk to someone you really trust and then find a time where you can try to piece together words and they will be patient with you.

    The act of retelling it can be very triggering. Be somewhere safe WITH someone safe. Only tell those who you can honestly trust with the information. People can often be callous with information that is deeply imbued for you, but not them. Only share it with people, until you feel more confident, who will understand your emotional response to the story.

    It’s right for you to tell your story. It’s right for you to know yourself and understand what has happened to you. I’m so sorry you have this anywhere in your reality. The nice thing is it doesn’t have to be your only reality.

  18. all of these are TLDR. look, telling your friends might not be a good idea. test the waters with someone who is legally obligated to keep their trap shut (therapist doctor lawyer) first. talk to them first. tell them the stuff you cant tell us. because despite what everyone above me seems to think, we cannot formulate an appropriate response to your inquiry without all the data, which you wont (and shouldn’t) provide. you CAN tell said person who is legally obligated to keep their trap shut however. and they can help you reach an informed decision.

  19. All of these are TLDR? What the heck? That is exactly what these people who were abused are saying was their reaction when they tried to tell friends. Please refrain from making generalized statements you believe to be true about others.

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