TW! CSA The most difficult thing for me

[Desert Flower]

There's something I need to write about. And it's a very tricky subject. It makes me very afraid because I don't want to offend anybody. And I'm really afraid people will get mad at me and I find that very hard to deal with. But I need to get this out of my system and also, I need to make sense of it. I must. I hope you can help me out here.

I wasn't sure where to put this, the child or adult SA section, but the way I feel is it happened to me while I was a child.

- BIG Trigger warning - probably the rest of this post

I have not yet written much here about the sexual and psychological abuse I was subjected to as a teenager.  It's very difficult for me to.

It happened at the hands of my 'boyfriend' at the time. He was the most popular guy at school and I was a very very shy and insecure and - if I may say so myself - I think beautiful girl. He had sex with me against my will and without my consent hundreds of times I roughly calculated, I don't know why I need to mention numbers. A lot of it happened in the house I lived in with my m (I won't call it a home), she knew what was going on and she did nothing to protect me. She would tell me I was 'difficult' instead when I cried afterwards.

He was from another town across the country, he lived at boarding school in my town and we attended the same school. And it happened in his mother's house across the country as well, that I would sometimes visit on weekends and she didn't protect me either of course. I think the reason he (and his brother) were at boarding school was because their mother couldn't handle them.

And he would tell me for hours and hours on end all the things that were 'wrong' and 'bad' about me. Stupid things, like he called me fat, while I was in fact underweight. Said I had a red nose (when it was cold) and that my feet were flat and that was wrong somehow. I don't know. This went on for years and years. And I came to believe everything he said about what was wrong about me. Everything about me was wrong and everything he did was my fault. And I was not allowed to talk to anyone about it and I didn't. And all I said was I'm sorry I'm so sorry please don't hurt me anymore. And when he was done with me he would throw me out the bed.

Well, maybe I'll write some more about this another time but this will have to suffice for now. I'm trying not to feel anything, because that would make writing impossible. I can understand intellectually how wrong this was of course. I used to dissociate a lot and frankly I'm glad for that. I still do.

And in our societies these days, rightfully, we have this discussion about inclusivity and black lives matter etc. And black lives do matter, of course they do, we need to recognise that. But I never seem to know which 'side' I'm on because I'm white and my abuser was black (he was the first black person I ever saw in my life as a matter of fact in our town) and he was into Black Panthers at that time and part of the abuse was it was my fault because I was white and whites had been at fault for centuries against blacks (and they have been I know). I just never know where this leaves me. I am the victim here (survivor) while he was the perpetrator, while he was always expressing my guilt and his being the victim.

And I have been afraid to use my voice ever since. And I have not exactly been afraid of black people, but I have been afraid of black guys that remind me of him. And I think colour should not matter actually, we all should be treated with respect. I love every living being on this planet.

I'm very anxious posting this. I think I will be kicked off the forum now. Please forgive me.

- If this post is too much, please let me know and I will remove it. It certainly is too much for me. -

[Chart]

Desert Flower, your post is NOT "too much". You are expressing your experience and your feelings around that experience. You are perfectly within your rights to express these things. It sounds to me that you are struggling with feelings of guilt. The guilt is linked to a racial issue. This complicates the feelings. This is perfectly OK. You're trying to work it out.

First, sexual abuse is wrong. Always. Period. No racial aspect allows one person to abuse another.

That a perpetrator tries to defer the guilt and put it upon the "victim" is old and classic. But we know better now. This person is an abuser and that's final. Race or skin color doesn't enter into it at all.

My biological father began beating my mother at the birth of my sister. Three and a half years later I came along. Another four years of abuse ensued, my sister getting a good part of it. She became an adult who engaged almost exclusively in relationships with men who beat and mistreated her. One of her longest relationships was with a black man. I remember thinking and feeling a certain "confusion" when I learned that he was abusing my sister. And my confusion was absolutely wrapped up in the race issue and "political correctness". I remember feeling trapped in guilt. I wasn't allowed to feel my outrage because this person was part of a minority group...

I was relatively young then. I've since come to understand just what I wrote above: it's got NOTHING to do with race.

I think I understand what you're feeling, at least a little. I'd like to validate your feelings of confusion and inner conflict as being understandable. You DO have to now work this out, but my advice is to let go of the race element. You are valid to fear black men. We learn to fear our abusers and subsequently any who resemble our abusers. This is not your fault and you are perfectly valid to question your "guilt" feelings surrounding this issue.

I hope that helps... And if they kick you off the forum for this I'm quitting too. (But that's not going to happen )

[Desert Flower]

Thank you Chart, I really really needed to hear that. I'm so glad you're here and for what you said.
I've just been running around the block, taking a bath and doing breathing exercises and none of that helped. Your post did. Thank you.

[Chart]

 

[Dante]

Hi Desert Flower.  I'll second what Chart said.  What I read was someone in pain.  Someone who has a lot of confusion about how to feel about what happened.  I can relate to that.  I find that I go round and round in circles trying to think my way through something and can't.  The only thing that ever helps me is sharing it, and having others reflect back what they hear and then processing it through that filter.  That's what you're doing here.

What happened to you was not OK.  No matter who did it.  You were abused and victimized, and then gaslighted and discarded.  That's not OK, and I'm sorry that it happened to you.  (It always feels so trite to say I'm sorry, but so many of us - me included - never got apologies).

[Desert Flower]

Hi Dante, no, you're right, we never did get any apologies. I never got any until I came here a few months ago. And to me, it's important, it's not trite, it helps me heal and come to a better place with myself, so thank you. And I'm really sorry it happened to you to. 

[Saluki]

Hey Desert Flower,

It shouldn't be a tricky subject, but it is for me too: I started replying to you yesterday, but it's taken me all day to finish what I started writing. I'm glad you are here, because it's difficult talking about this stuff, and finally someone brought it up: the nightmare of contemporary identity politics. Thank you.

Even though we all agree that a victim of sexual abuse, coercive control, rape, sexual violence, is a victim who has suffered tremendous trauma, regardless of skin colour or ethnicity, I think identity politics often makes it way harder to talk about (even when it's intended to make it easier). Intersectionality can be useful in some ways, but it can also completely devalue the experiences of those who it puts in a "less at risk of oppression" category, presuming they're somehow "entitled" or "oppressors", or even lying. It can be used to justify insidious forms of racism. It is deliberately misused as a tool to discredit rape victims. It's horrible. (I'm sorry, I don't feel comfortable talking openly about some stuff because I don't want to be possible to identify so I'm not sure if this makes sense without examples).

The fact that you are feeling uncomfortable/scared about sharing this goes to show how nothing is as black and white (no pun intended) as people often try to portray. I feel very strongly about this subject because I've experienced it as part of a family with multiple ethnic and religious backgrounds and my goodness it really shouldn't be so complicated. The guilt complex about not being "worthy of victimhood" (for want of better terminology) breaks my head.


And that includes feeling one's experience is somehow invalidated because one's abuser was from a different, "more intersectionally entitled to victimhood", ethnicity or religious background or skin colour.

I have a similar experience to you and I get it. I'm not brave enough to go into "ethnicity" details, but I understand the political rhetoric that's behind your fear of sharing. I find identity politics so very toxic. I feel completely marginalised by the "Intersectionality" hierarchy. I belong to an ethnic minority and I was abused by a different ethnic minority. Mine "doesn't count": his "does" (I often think of how a male victim of sexual abuse by a female finds support in this atmosphere of "hierarchy of suffering"). "Oppressor vs Oppressed" rhetoric hurts my head.

My abusive ex husband completely distracted services I reached out to to help me and my kids, by abusing identity politics, to the point that his abuse against me became the second priority after his demand that I only called the police and social services because I'm racist, and that their services were "institutionally racist".

No, they weren't: they were trying to help a woman and her kids in an extreme domestic violence/abuse situation. They went to every length they could to find "culturally appropriate" workers. He really played them and the help I needed was way more difficult to get, not because of any racism from services, but because of his manipulation, of me, of social workers, of police.

I had to listen to social workers discussing with him "She's crying rape because she's racist". No, I wasn't. He manipulated me, gaslit me and coercively controlled me to the point he made me believe "no one will ever believe you because you are a liar".

His gaslighting and DARVO were exacerbated by his manipulation of identity politics to make his victim (me) appear to be a racist, prejudiced and cruel person, when in reality he verbally abused me using racist language against me on a daily basis. I have never, before or since, experienced such horrendous racism, as from my ex husband.

I think this sort of experience needs talking about, not brushing under the carpet, so thank you for being brave enough to talk about it.

Racism can come from a person of any skin colour. I've seen a lot of very toxic stuff from all sorts of people.

Due to the paedophile who abused me as a child/teen, I'm  scared of light skinned men with pale blue eyes and reddish brown hair. I'm afraid I always will be. I accepted that it's my brain's way of protecting me. My doctor matches that description and he terrifies me, but he's a really nice doctor. I make up imaginary stories about him and his lovely family going on family days out, to humanise him, because I want to overcome my fear. He's not the same guy, but I'm still terrified of him. I'm working on it!

I'm terrified of men with the same ethnic appearance of my psycho ex husband too. I'm not going to describe him but I honestly couldn't care less if people think I'm prejudiced against either of these types of people because I know why, I know my experience and I know I was severely traumatized by people looking like they did. Being aware it's just a trigger doesn't make our response less real.

Your experience doesn't make you a bad person. His behaviour does, however, make him a bad person. I spent years being gaslit that it was my fault. It wasn't. It was the fault of the abusers.

And what happened to you wasn't your fault either, neither is your brain trying to protect you from people who remind you of the person who abused you your fault.


One day maybe I'll be brave enough to tell my story with details.

[Chart]

Saluki, I'm very sorry you went through all that. It sounds truly horrific. Your ex is clearly a hard-core narcissist. I just wanted to validate your post and mention that the instant we identify "hypocrisy" in the language and behavior of an individual or group, it's a clear sign of toxicity. Too often we are like "deer in the headlights" when a narcissist starts bewailing the "unfair" treatment against them that we have just seen them doing themselves against us or others. This is often SO CONFUSING it shuts us down.

But it is at this point that we KNOW we are dealing with a narcissist, AND we have to train and prepare ourselves for a real battle.

So sorry you experienced all that.

[Desert Flower]

Oh Saluki, what a response that was to my post! I had not expected this at all. That you have experiences that are so similar touches me deeply. Somehow, when I read something like this as written by someone else, it really hits me a lot harder than my own story. I don't know. And I can just feel the confusion and your justified anger and all that you experienced right through the screen. I am awfully sorry you had to go through all that. And if we now both get kicked off this forum, we will still know that we are not alone in these awful experiences. I do hope sharing will help us make sense of this.

It seems to me now that these perpetrators will use whatever rhetoric or excuses or gaslight or whatever they can to confuse us, keep the abuse hidden, keep us small and captive. And we need to start recognizing that whatever story is being used to cover up the abuse, it is WRONG. There is no excuse. And we're not crazy, and we're not racist either. (I will say here again, just to be sure: I love every living being on this planet, any colour, shape or size.)

And it is so messed up that this was used against us, I just cannot get my head around why someone would do something like that. Is it because they can, just to try how far they can go? Or is it because they're so completely messed up themselves? I don't know. I don't need to know. I know there's anger in me and I can now finally start to feel a tiny bit of it. Which is good for me I think.

Big big hugs Saluki, my heart goes out to you.

[Saluki]

Hey Desert Flower,
We won't get kicked off: this is a good place in my experience. That feeling that we're going to "get into trouble" for exposing what our our abusers did to us might have something to do with the feeling remaining that were "doing something wrong" by sharing our experiences (that our abusers so desperately wanted to silence us, they would go to extreme lengths to scare us and shame us into silence)? Just a thought?

I think it's really important to allow ourselves to feel anger instead of guilt, shame and fear.

If you'd have been racist, you wouldn't have dated him in the first place and you wouldn't have been so hesitant to share. It takes time to overcome triggers. It's more about facial features like his, hairstyles and clothing similarities that remind me of him that trigger me.
What also makes that feeling of "I'll get into trouble" is the lack of good mothering perhaps?
I think finding validation from someone else similar happened to allows us to be angry on their behalf therefore we allow ourselves to feel angry on our own behalf? Like we can finally give ourselves permission?
Sending you hugs too.
I'm sorry it's taken me a while to reply.
I'm so sorry you "get it". It's a kind of double edged sword, isn't it, knowing that someone else went through similar? I wouldn't wish it on anyone, yet at the same time, sharing our experiences can help us feel we're not bad, we're not crazy, when we've been told so many times we are. It helps us stop putting ourselves down I think?

[Saluki]

I also forgot to say thank you for your reply!Thank you.

You know, I think highly narcissistic abusers are very conscious of the types of people they pick to abuse and unfortunately, the more compassionate the victim, the better for them, because they use our compassionate nature against us.

It's directing our compassion towards ourselves that's always the hardest bit for some reason? It took me a very very long time to stop blaming myself for what happened to me. I probably still do, (sometimes, a bit) if I'm totally honest.

My ex knew I was very much an "inclusive" type of person with regards believing in gender/social equality, LGBTQ rights etc etc. He KNEW I was very anti-racist and he used that against me. It's very confusing, especially when you've heard others say racist things about your relationship with your abuser, so you want to defend your "partner" (abuser) against the racist, then it turns out whilst of course the racism wasn't justified, the warning was- which is crazy making in its own right.

Because when a family member, for example, says "You shouldn't be in a relationship with that *insert racist slur here* because they'll only use you", it's even harder to get out of that relationship, because you don't want to prove the racist right that "all *insert racist slur here* beat their wives" or "are sex offenders "- because we know very well that's not true, yet the person abusing us is living up to a horrible, racist stereotype. And once you've defended the abuser against racism, perceived or real, when racism starts being used as a tool of manipulation against you, it feels like an absolute betrayal...well, it is a betrayal. Feeling the need to defend the abuser against racism, whilst simultaneously being in an abusive relationship where you are feeling the need to defend that entire ethnic group against being stereotyped too... whilst experiencing severe sexual abuse and violence...
Sorry my head isn't able to process this very well. It's difficult to put into words.

I don't think we need to prove to anyone that we're not racist. We already know we're not. People are just people, some good, some bad.

We know it's not a race thing, just a complication of the type of trauma we went through.

I think I felt very much like I had to prove to him I wasn't racist in order for him to stop hating me and therefore stop abusing me. When all along, had he been the same ethnicity as me and doing the same, he'd have just used the same method of abuse with a slightly different tactic.

I do worry though, that the abuse and manipulation of intersectionality and identity politics in cases of abuse may not be a rarity. I should probably have a think out loud on my own thread though!

[Desert Flower]

Saluki, I just wanna say       
to all that you've written. Thank you so much. This does bring some understanding and compassion to my experiences.

Especially:

highly narcissistic abusers are very conscious of the types of people they pick to abuse and unfortunately, the more compassionate the victim, the better for them, because they use our compassionate nature against us.

That really makes sense and explains how I feel.

And like you, I used to defend him too, against racist comments of others (like against my mothers partner at the time, who was also abusive). It's such a mess.

I'm a mess at the moment. I hope to get better. I'll try but at the moment I cannot seem to do anything but cry.

And Yes, this makes sense too:

That feeling that we're going to "get into trouble" for exposing what our our abusers did to us might have something to do with the feeling remaining that were "doing something wrong" by sharing our experiences (that our abusers so desperately wanted to silence us, they would go to extreme lengths to scare us and shame us into silence)?

And you're right about this too:
What also makes that feeling of "I'll get into trouble" is the lack of good mothering perhaps?

Thank you too Saluki for sharing. I do feel we can deal better with this together. 

[Armee]

Thank you Saluki and Desert Flower for writing these things. They are very helpful for me right now.