I had written a two page reply outlining my abuse, but instead of making this into a victim impact statement I’d rather keep my head clear and focus on the discussion–non-survivor priviledge! Growing up in a toxic, isolated, working class industry town (in Northern Canada–I mean isolated!!) I’m not sure how I have held onto my own truth. Self-esteem priviledge should be another topic! Those with secure attachments could be another one! Every day I reference myself to people who seem intimidating and ‘normal’ and terrifying, they have the ability to stand up for themselves. If I am challenged by them, even in conversation, how will I come up with the correct response? Will they negate me? This is no way to live, and I have been fighting hard to be heard. My therapists are very validating, but at $170/hour it is becoming obvious I cannot keep treatment up. So I am writing a book about abuse and truth, and have been researching neuroscience to understand what parts of our brains are responsible for our understanding of truths, and how these parts become stronger as we heal more. Anyway, a bit of food for thought, sorry if I went off topic but this is an exciting discussion for me!

I definitely can’t point him to anything with identifying information – my major is a small department, he knows all my professors, and I can’t afford to make a splash. However, something that points out the extreme ignorance of his position would be a huge help. For my peace of mind at least, and hopefully for his future students too.

I hope you’re either able to confront your prof. in private about this egregious ignorance or maybe write to the school administrators about it OR post fliers around the school exposing Prof. Fuckwit for what zie really is. (maybe it’ll even cost them a job! okay, this is making me a little TOO vindictive…)

Point your prof to my Hilary Adams article, and to this link where she discusses her shock at how many people came forward with similar stories, including the part where no one believes/supports the victims because the abuser’s friendship is more socially valuable to them:

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/mvc95/im_hillary_adams_the_girl_in_the_judge_william/

And you can tell him I relate to her so thoroughly, it’s depressing. Then you can tell your prof about NPD and ASPD, which most abusive parents have, and how those disorders account for about 2% of the population. That’s two people in every hundred. And most of them will have kids, just like most of everyone has kids, and they will always be abusive parents because they have no incentive not to be and the disorders predispose them to be. I have an upcoming series on NPD, too. And you can point your prof to this comment, because I would gladly email this person myself. It’s just not okay for people to teach, without a shred of research to back them up (and it wouldn’t), that people mostly support victims.

People blame victims and support abusers EXCEPT when someone from a lower class (say, a black man) abuses someone of a higher class (say, rapes a white woman). It’s all very clearly determined by the social status, and this is so obvious if you, like, watch the news. The person with the higher social status gets the social support – and abusers are almost always smart enough to pick on people of lower social status because even THEY can figure out what your prof is too dense to have noticed.

Sincerely,
Someone who doesn’t even have a degree, but does have the ability to observe, and like, read, and like, wait until I’ve researched something before I open my mouth to proclaim about it

PS – If you don’t want to show your prof this, I’d be happy to write an article using your prof as an example of the sort of “aiding and abetting” that we have to silence in order to correct this massive social issue, and then you could send him or her to that

Then my professor flat out told me I was being too cynical and I shut down. Spent the rest of the class doodling in my notebook. Cynical, my ass. When my father started abusing me in the middle of one of his parties, all his friends and neighbors left the party and went home. Didn’t tell him to stop hurting me, didn’t call the cops. They were uncomfortable enough that they didn’t want to watch, but not enough to actually do jack shit to help me. And I’m “cynical” because I know this can happen.

Side note: the people arguing against this model were all four students of color, the only disabled student, and myself, the only out queer. Everyone arguing for it appeared to be White, able-bodied, and straight. Gee, I wonder what the common denominator is here?

“Soldier in a siege” was exactly the way I reacted to a particular ongoing abuse during my childhood – I could tell that things weren’t right, but I was too young and underconfident and the possiblity of there even being an “out” was simply not there to my mind. To protect myself, I turned into a stone; completely emotionless, because if I betrayed any hint of feeling it was used to stomp me down even more. Nobody else could see what was going on. They just thought I was shy, quiet, or plain old unfriendly and snooty. It was different from how I reacted to abuse that happened later, after I’d learned how to feel emotions again.

I’m still trying to piece together fragments of memory to get a more coherent picture of the situation, but for the longest time I believed that the reason I cut off that person from my life was because “Oh you just had a silly fight, you’re so immature and can’t work out your problems!” like everyone was telling me instead of the fact that she was toxic, abusive, and had deliberately battered me emotionally for years to feed her own self esteem issues. Not that I’d ever reconsider what I’d done, but it took me years to figure the “abusive” part out and stand up for my decision.