It really is so insulting the way people act like survivors should be able to sever all emotional connection and empathy from their partner the second they behave abusively, because it’s not how human emotions/attachment works and it’s not how traumatic bonding works.
Instead of the “if a man ever did that to me I wouldn’t put up with that” ask yourself “what if someone I trusted completely, who was struggling with something serious in their life, who I lived with, harmed me and then apologized profusely and cried and promised they’d never do it again?” If you can picture immediately walking away from— not a hypothetical person— someone you trust right now if that situation happened, then you’re in the minority.
And also- when, after abuse, survivors DO walk away from friendships and relationships the first time there’s even the hint of harm, then people shame us for “black-and-white thinking” or “self-sabotage” and imply we’re damaged, but then if we don’t do that and get abused again then it’s our fault cause we should know better
Folks really need to have more empathy for how emotionally complex abuse is. It’s not the same kind of trauma as a stranger assaulting you on the street. It’s someone who will cry after they hurt you and it will take months or years to realize that wasn’t about actual remorse but was so you felt selfish if you ever complained about their treatment of you and so you would comfort them and swallow your own pain.
It is not survivors’ fault for being compassionate or not compassionate enough or too forgiving or not forgiving enough— it’s abusers’ fault for abusing. There is no “you should have___” because I guarantee somewhere a survivor tried that exact thing and it didn’t save them. There is no way to win in a dynamic where someone has control over you.
It doesn’t matter what you think you would do, because when you’re in it, it doesn’t feel like “I’m being abused” it feels like “I’m the only one who can help this extremely troubled but ultimately well-meaning person who wants to be better” and the latter feeling is much harder to just walk away from than you’d ever imagine
I clicked on this clickbait article because I thought maybe there’d be something there that I could use a prompt for a little destiel ficlet, and when I scroll down to the very first item on the list, what is the gif they chose to accompany the text?
1. It always seems like he has something more he wants to say.
“Next Tuesday, McDonald’s workers at restaurants in 10 cities will walk off the job at lunch, waging the first-ever nationwide strike to combat sexual harassment.”
NEXT TUESDAY SEPTEMBER 18th – SUPPORT THE STRIKE!!!
hey i know i don’t have many followers but please spread this
sexual harrassment in the food industry is so prevalent that most women (including myself!) expect it when they come to work. And mcdonald’s workers are some of the absolute most vulnerable and least appreciated.
even if you don’t eat at mcdonalds you probably have followers who do and followers who work there and would like to see you supporting them
Idk if anyone saw this but McDonald’s is doing a free cheeseburger giveaway with their app that day to try and combat this strike 😕
I just thought about this today and dug through my pictures to find it: a letter from a black soldier in the Civil War to the person who owns his daughter. “The longer you keep my child from me the longer you will have to burn in Hell and the quicker you will get there.“
photo text (with corrected spelling and broken into sentences, paragraphs):
Letter from a Black Soldier to the Owner of His Daughter
Spotswood Ric, a former slave, writes to Kittey Diggs, 1864:
I received a letter from Cariline telling me that you say I tried to steal, to plunder, my child away from you. Not I want you to understand that Mary is my Child and she is a God given rite of my own.
And you may hold on to her as long as you can. But I want you to remember this one thing, that the longer you keep my Child from me the longer you will have to burn in hell and the quicker you’ll get there.
For we are now making up about one thousand black troops to come up thorough, and want to come through, Glasgow. And when we come woe be to Copperhood rebels and to the Slaveholding rebels. For we don’t expect to leave them there. Root nor branch. But we think however that we (that have children in the hands of you devils), we will try your the day that we enter Glasgow.
I want you to understand Kittey Diggs that where ever you and I meet we are enemies to each other. I offered once to pay you forty dollars for my own Child but I am glad now that you did not accept it. Just hold on now as long as you can and the worse it will be for you.
You never in you life before I came down hear did you give children anything, not anything whatever, not even a dollars worth of expenses. Now you call my children your property. Not so with me.
My children is my own and I expect to get them. And when I get ready to come after Mary I will have both a power and authority to bring her away and to exact vengeances on them that holds my Child.
You will then know how to talk to me. I will assure that. And you will know how to talk right too. I want you now to just hold on; to hear if you want to. If your conscience tells that’s the road, go that road and what it will bring you to Kittey Diggs.
I have no fears about getting Mary out of your hands. This whole Government gives cheer to me and you cannot help yourself.
Source: Ira Berlin, ed. Freedom, A Documentary History of Emancipation, 1861-1867. Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1982, 690.
I wanted to find out what happened (DID HE GET HIS DAUGHTER BACK?) and the answer is that not only was he reunited with his family, but went on to be a successful minister and his daughter was interviewed in the 30s for the Slave Narratives Project.
So a tiny story: on Black Friday a few weeks ago I went to Gamestop to buy my brother a game for Christmas, and I noticed this older man was watching me like a hawk. He was loitering around the front of the store without really buying anything, and every time I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye he was looking at me. I went to look at the PS4 games, and he was looking at something right behind me. I checked out the Nintendo games, and he was looking at them too. I was the only woman in the store, by the way.
By the time I got in line to pay he was loitering at the front of the store again, and I just had that feeling that he was going to try and take the game I just bought, or steal my purse, as soon as I left the store. OR, he was going to try and follow me home. And I know I don’t have to explain that terror to any woman reading this, but all I could think was that I’m in this Gamestop alone with at least twenty other men and something is about to happen. I’m beginning to freak out, to the point where I’ve just pulled my pepper spray out of my purse and into the pocket of my coat.
So there I am, next in line to pay, and there is this GIGANTIC dudebro right behind me, and I say gigantic as a 6 foot tall woman. He says, “Ma’am? Don’t be offended, but would it be alright if I walked you to your car?” and I was like “Are you serious?” and he was like “There are some weird guys in here right now. Have you noticed that guy watching you?” and then I showed the dudebro the pepper spray in my pocket and he was like “Right on. Would you still let me walk you to your car?” and I said yes.
So I paid, and waited while HE paid, and he walked me to my car. And just as I was getting in, the weird guy who’d been loitering came out of the store, saw me and my dudebro, and turned around and walked away in the opposite direction.
In short: men who recognize that women are unsafe in dark alleys, college campuses, grocery stores, gas stations and retail stores and do something about it are the kind of quality men that this world needs more of.
so i’m riding the elevator up to my apartment when the emergency phone in the elevator starts ringing
and i just stand there for a second because this thing is like thirty years old and has never rung or even been used from what i know
but eventually i answer it thinking maybe something’s wrong with the elevator?? it’s an emergency phone it’s probably an emergency??? i dunno
except i shit you not it’s a telemarketer
a telemarketer that’s as confused as i am when i finally interrupt him mid-spiel to inform him he has the wrong number and then interrupt him again to explain further that “uh, no, seriously, this is an elevator phone. i’m standing in an elevator. talking to you. on the emergency phone. i really think you got the wrong number”
“oh,” says telemarketer guy.
“yeah,” i say.
there’s some mutually-confused silence.
“so, this is my stop,” i say. “i gotta go.”
“oh,” says telemarketer guy.
“good luck,” i add, because telemarketer guy seems like he’s having an existential crisis. and then i hang up on him, because he’s having an existential crisis and won’t actually end the call, and because again i’m talking on an elevator emergency phone and, you know, this is my stop, i gotta go.
i’m just a big fan of the tone in which the ending was told
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