Esoterica
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This work by Mikki Kendall is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
 
 
 

TW: Abuse, BDSM

aboutmaleprivilege:

Male privilege is this image:

And the whole idea of BDSM leads to or is an excuse for abuse is something that pisses me off in general. Because it usually goes hand in hand with the idea of women always being submissive in relationship.

It’s a misconception that really bugs me when I hear because it should be obvious that it’s wrong. Common sense should tell people that what happens in the bedroom does not always translate to outside of the bedroom.

Dear Tumblr, I hate you for sharing. Why do I have to know people this stupid exist?

(Source: all-about-male-privilege)

 
 
When women tell how it is for them, when they self narrate their ordinary lives, it’s instantly sucked up by the culture—there’s already a place waiting for the story. A place where the story gets annulled. It’s 2012 and I’m still reading about what the girl or woman was wearing that night. Or how she should hold aspirin between her legs. Or how she shouldn’t say the word “vagina” on the floor of congress. Or how a friend at a bar wants the sob stories to end. What I’m trying to tell you is that violence against girls and women is in every move we make, whether it is big violence or small, explicit or hidden behind the word father. Priest. Lover. Teacher. Coach. Friend. I’m trying to explain how you can be a girl and a woman and travel through male violence like it’s part of what living a life means. Getting into or out of a car. A plane. Going through a door to your own home. A church. School. Pool. It can seem normal. It can seem like just the way things are.
The astonishing Lidia Yuknavitch, whom I love, on Explicit Violence - The Rumpus.net. Read the whole piece. Trigger warnings for rape, child abuse, violence, all the ordinary God-damned shit that too many women live with, either as memory or current reality or secret dread. (via mslorelei)
 
 

There seems to be something extra-hidden about abuse in queer relationships. Lesbians are coded as inherently egalitarian — after all, they’re both women, right? Both oppressed by the patriarchy? How can there be abuse if there’s no man present?

Lesbian relationships are not inherently different than other relationships, but social ideas that swirl around gender poison everything, including what we — and that means lesbians, too — expect or think about same-sex relationships. We expect women cannot abuse other women or men can be abused by other men (and trans people are never even considered in the narrative at all), essentially erasing those experiences from the dialogue. The baggage of gender roles overloads us so much, we can’t clearly identify behavior independent of our ideas about what women, or men, or people anywhere on the gender spectrum can or cannot do.

A man sobbing about how bad he feels after acting in a disturbing way reads differently than a woman crying for the same reason, even if the act of manipulation is identical. The cultural baggage we carry is clear: men are abusers, women are the abused, and the ideas are never inverted.

I try to imagine the things that happened to me with a male partner. Would I have let a man continuously, repeatedly put me down and humiliate me, in private and in front of my friends and colleagues? Would I have let a man call me a “fucking bitch,” rip down the shower curtain behind which I was cowering? Would I have let him threaten to throw me out into the sub-freezing night? Would, after that had passed like a summer storm, I have comforted him?

I don’t think so. But somehow, a petite blonde woman had me trapped.

Run Anyway | The Hairpin (via mslorelei)
 
 

so-treu:

blackraincloud:

izushiteesuteru:

pityplease reblogged your post: pityplease reblogged your post:…

I just told you how. You are deliberately stalking and following them for the sake of your own amusement. Knowing full…

Right, because Riley is clearly the only person whose faced discrimination at all and we have to baby them. I can tell you for a fact that neither me nor Shane grew up well taken care of. Neither of us were coddled, or held by hand.

And without you having to say it, this earns us no pity points, to play on your URL.

Are you expecting me to deny or to feel guilty that I followed them to find out how amusing it would be to deal with someone who, on the majority of tumblr, is seen as extremely close minded and racist?

Because I don’t. You’re absolutely correct, I followed them for my own amusement.

You’re still missing my point, sadly. Riley doesn’t have to deal with a person of my caliber, at all. It’s their choice, It’s yours too, actually. Don’t want me around? Block me. Simple as that. No harm done. Problem fixed.

Call me gross, nasty, a horrible person, whatever.

bolding mine: This is called intimidation and is part of the web of power and control abusers use to abuse their victims. 

You are not slick.

You are not smart.

You are just being abusive to be abusive and us people with a conscience are going to push back to stop the abuse. 

this is what a sociopath looks like. this is what an abuser looks like.

“i’m going to stalk you and harass you because IT AMUSES ME.”

“and i am not responsible for my own actions”

seriously kill yourself

 
 

“Why WON’T you educate us and hold our hand? We ARE the ones in power, you know, but we are good people.”

cruelyouth:

I’ve seen this shit before and have been meaning to write about it.

Imagine an abusive relationship (can work with romantic relationships and/or with family) and this is said by the abuser:

“Why do you want to leave me?  I allowed you to live in my house, and I make all the money.  You’re dependent on me.  YOU need ME.  Nobody will ever love you like I do, and I have everything you need right here.  All you need to do is behave and say with me.  Why do you want to leave me?”

It’s the EXACT SAME shit abusers tell their victims so that the victims stay, and the abusers retain power and control.

EXACTLY.

And you’re not good people.

They might be subtle, but these are threats.  And you’re trying to make false promises of “equality” if ONLY PoC submit to you and behave the way you want us to. 

And you should be able to step on our foots all you want to, but we better not complain about it if we REALLY want equality, which YOU try to set the standards for.

But, you know, you are “trying to help” us.  Because you’re a “good person.”

White people who think this way and tell PoC who tell them to go away, “But don’t you want equality?  We are the ones in power and COULD give it to you if you would just act how we want you to act and say what we want to hear!”

It’s intimidating bullshit.  You are THREATENING PoC into submission, waving around your privilege and power and threatening to use it against us if we don’t submit.  You are crossing our physical, emotional, intellectual, and time boundaries all at the same time and saying “we must not want equality” if we try to enforce them while you invade them.

Nobody has to teach you shit, and nobody is obligated to hold your hand, change their tone, or take the time to accommodate their personal spaces for you. 

And who the hell would want to be “equal” to an abuser like you?

It’s impossible.  You actually don’t want equality.  All you want is control over others and will do and say anything to get people to submit to you.

PoC and marginalized people who get this from privilege people, RUN, don’t just walk, RUN away from them and blast them for the abusers that they are.  Please do NOT fall for this shit.

In the end, you cannot reason with abusers.  Just walk away, and don’t even bother wasting your time.

 
 

“But it was mutual….”

thelaceserpent:

speakoutbeheard:

** This is a raw emotional post. These are fresh feelings as they come out. Writing these down and showing them to you all is a great way of letting my feelings be heard. **

- - - - - - -

Your bones are trembling, your knees are weak, your heart is racing as fast as it possibly can just so it can get out, get out of this.

Confronting the person who has hurt you is a very hard thing to do. If your attacker is someone you still see in your every day life, who still remains in your family, your school, your circle of friends… you understand this all too well, just like me. Whenever you’re talking to your attacker, everything you’ve done to cope with your abuse comes completely undone, your strength unravels and you begin to feel as though you’re going to collapse. You begin to try and hold onto things, try and get in touch with someone who can make you feel better, you listen to music to drown out the reality of what is actually going on.

That just happened to me, just now.

Family gatherings are hard when you have to face your attacker, the person who harmed you for so long. The worst thing for me as a survivor is facing this person, talking to this person. I try and be strong and pretend like everything is OK, I try and pretend like we’re close but deep down I can’t. I am damaged, but I am strong.

How can I not see this person as a rapist, how can I not see this person as someone who is out to hurt me for their own pleasure? I can’t.

I was abused for twelve years and the attacker looks at me like I’m staying in the past and that I should just forgive and forget…. Are you kidding me? Am I suppose to lie and say I don’t lock my bedroom door at night, that I don’t worry about cracks in the door… worrying that you’ll peak through the cracks just to see my exposed body? This is where the attacker plays victim.

“I feel the pain too, It hurts me greatly to know what happened. It should have never happened.”

But it did.

“I didn’t want it to happen either, I tried to make it stop.”

But it continued.

The attacker continues to push, beg, cry, pester you until you give in, pressures you into doing the things you don’t want to do and then claims it was mututal. It is never mutual. Don’t give me your victim bullshit, you’re not the victim here. You have no right to tell me that I should forgive and let the past be the past, that was MY childhood, my childhood was stolen from me. It’s time for me to be your burden, remind you of what you did to me.

I am only three years out of the abuse, the rape, the pressuring… everything. My wounds are just as fresh as the first day my attacker laid hands on me at the age of six. I was a slave in my own home, no one was there to protect me but myself.

Attackers will refuse to admit that they were wrong, that they were the cause of all the abuse. Attackers do not understand the physical and emotional pain and damage that comes from being hit, slapped, bruised, thrown against a wall, raped, and touched. They either think of it as mutual because it is the best way they cope or they blame you for their actions. This is where I will continue to tell others, it is NOT your fault, you are NOT to blame, you are the survivor here. It wasn’t what you were wearing, or that you had one too many drinks, or you were flirting and being “suggestive” and deserved it. No. No one deserves to be raped because of how they were acting, if they were drunk, wearing a skirt… There is no reason to harm someone, there is NEVER a good reason to harm someone. No means no, no always means no. Do not fall for the “I’m the victim too” game, continue to be heard and continue to speak out against it.

What the attackers wants out of that is for you to doubt yourself, to give into the game. You’re stronger than that, I know it and you know it.

This is powerful, and so brave of you to post. Thanks for sharing this.

 
 

Vilifying the victim

cruelyouth:

A classic tactic of covert abusers where they portray themselves as suffering souls and say they were just “defending themselves” against their targets, who might have just been responding to the abuse and confronting the abuser.

The main objective is to put the victim on the defensive and disguise the aggressive intent of the person using the tactic.

This is what this white supremacist society is doing to PoC. This is why covert racism is a thing. This is what is happening to the Trayvon Martin case and why his parents constantly feel the need to defend their son’s reputation as the media soils his name. Never mind Zimmerman’s violent history. It’s what Zimmerman did to justify him killing an unarmed 17 year old half his size because his nose got bruised.

Whiteness breeds sociopathy. But don’t let this tactic fool you. Black people do not need to apologize for existing or being human.

 
 
Kenyan men urged to boycott meals in abuse protest

dynamicafrica:

A Kenyan men’s lobby group calls for a six-day boycott of home-cooked meals to draw attention to what it says is increasing domestic violence against men.

The organisation, Maendeleo Ya Wanaume, wants Kenyan men to stop eating meals cooked at home by wives and partners.

It says men should instead eat together outside the home, and share experiences of emotional and physical abuse.

Kenya’s government does not take domestic violence against men seriously and may be fuelling it, the group says.

Maendeleo Ya Wanaume’s leader Ndiritu Njoka told the BBC’s Network Africa programme that he called for the nationwide boycott to try to stop women beating up or emotionally abusing their husbands and spouses.

Correspondents say most meals in Kenyan homes are cooked by women - and culturally it is important for men to eat at home in order to show their appreciation for women.

Maendeleo Ya Wanaume - which means Development for Men - was set up to try to encourage men to speak out in a society that often ridicules as weak, men who are subjected to domestic violence.

The group says the problem is growing as Kenyan women become more economically independent - in part, it says, because of government initiatives to improve the status of women.

Last year, the group conducted its own survey of Central and Nairobi provinces and found that up to 460,000 men said they had been subjected to some sort of domestic abuse.

These figures have not been independently confirmed.

The two provinces have a combined population of more than seven million people.

  • reblog from
  • original from
 
 

[TW FOR ABUSE, ASSAULT, RACISM, CHILD ABUSE, ALL THE FUCKED UP THINGS]Anonymous asked: sorry to bother you, but what did woody allen, kelsey grammer, elvis, nicolas cage, gary oldman, bill murray, eminem, sean penn, and michael fassbender do? i don’t remember hearing anything about that.

theoceanandthesky:

No bother at all, anon!

  • Woody Allen was accused by Mia Farrow, whom he’d been married to, of sexually abusing/molesting their 7-year-old daughter back in 1992.
  • I wasn’t able to find anything about Kelsey Grammer, other than his abuse of drugs (cocaine) and alcohol which lead to several arrests, parole violations, and rehab. Oh, and his divorce from his fourth wife, Camille, has involved a lot of mud-slinging from everyone involved.
  • There have been many claims that Elvis profited from songs that were originally sang by black people and other claims of racism. As for abuse goes, I’m sure some other Google-friendly people could help you out there, since I couldn’t find anything.
  • Nicolas Cage has been charged with domestic abuse, inflicting “mental, physical and emotional abuse” on his wife, and allegations of child abuse.
  • Gary Oldman was accused of spousal abuse back in 2001 by then wife Donya Fiorentino, claiming that he “put his hands around [her] throat and squeezed” and when she tried to call the police, he “hit her in the face with a phone.”
  • Bill Murray was accused of abusing his then wife, Jennifer Murray, saying he ”hit her in the face and then told her she was `lucky he didn’t kill her.’”
  • Eminem has had many songs that include lyrics that have gotten him sued for defamation of character and has his fair share of arrests for assault and possession of a concealed firearm, among other things.
  • Sean Penn was arrested for assaulting a photographer on a film set, allegedly hung a paparazzo that he found in his hotel room by his ankles from the 9th floor balcony. He also was charged and plead guilty to felony domestic assault against Madonna. His relationship with Robin Wright was also filled with drama.
  • Michael Fassbender allegedly broke his ex-girlfriend, Sunawin Andrews’, nose after throwing her over a chair and “Andrews also says Michael allegedly dragged her alongside their car one night after they had an argument about one of her ex-boyfriends … causing her to twist her left ankle, blow out her left knee cap and burst an ovarian cyst.” She took out a restraining order on him.

ETA from peasandcock about Elvis Presley: “I can help you out on the Elvis front, he very much was at least emotionally abusive of his wife Priscilla. He met her when she was 14. 14. And I believe they were living together by the time she was 16? Anyway, he was very controlling and it’s all very suspicious.”

(Source: happilyevernow)

 
 

On self-hate and victimization (and why sj warriors need to stfu)

cruelyouth:

TW:  Sexual harassment, coercion, suicide, abuse

Fucking being a survivor, how does it work?

If you knew me about three/four years ago, you would know me as a young undergraduate who was over medicated, who was hospitalized seven times within two years (yes, seven times within two years…still bugged about the hospital bills I can’t pay), who was coerced and threatened by a well-known sexual predator — who posed as a online counselor and tries to get young teens and women who have mental illnesses to be in a sexual relationship with him, and somebody who still believed that people cared about me, but it was MY fault that nobody wanted to be around me.  I was just too bratty, and my white “friends” were just WAY too good for me.

See, I didn’t think of myself as a victim of anything.  Racism?  Oh, PoC overreact to it, but not me!  I grew up around GREAT white people who I treated oh so BADLY by accusing them of treating me badly.  I was SO over it, and so should all other PoC.  Being hospitalized?  Well, I just got the wrong meds!  So I needed them switched, again.  They were prescribed to me as if they were different flavors of Pez.  Being sexually coerced by someone who is a known sexual predator?  It was my fault for not saying “no” or fighting back when I should have. 

And none of the bad things I went through has ANYTHING to do with racism.  Nope.  Nuh uh.  Even though my angelic white friends, the guy who was sexually harassing me, the doctors who misdiagnosed me, and everybody who turned their heads away from me and didn’t see I was hurting were all white.  Oh and my white friends?  LOVED the n-word.  It always made me feel bad hearing it, but freedom of speech, amirite?

I wasn’t a victim.  That’s what I was told, anyway, every time I tried to reach out for help.  So I stopped reaching out.  I was complaining for no reason.  If only I was as responsible as all the white people around me.  All the racism and abuse I experienced in my hometown and in my family?  Nah, I should have grown up and gotten over that by now!  I was out of there, so I wasn’t a victim of that!  I had to get over myself!

I wasn’t a victim.  I was just attempting and threatening suicide for the attention!  Such an attention whore I was!  And all my attempts failed anyway, so obviously, I just wanted to make people feel bad!  I wasn’t REALLY suicidal!

I wasn’t a victim.  And white people are good people!  So why am I seeing PoC complain about them online?  I need to defend them!  And why are they complaining about me having lighter skin?  They’re obviously jealous!  And I’m not a poor little victim like they are!  Thank goodness.  They had no idea what they were talking about!

I wasn’t a victim.  Victims are selfish.  Victims are weak.  Victims had bad things happen to them that scar them for life, and they are never able to live a good, productive life.  Nobody loved victims, so who wants to be one?

I wasn’t a victim.

Only I was.

And when I finally realized that, I lashed out.  I lashed out hard.  I lashed out repeatedly.  I stopped taking medication (so I stopped being so unbalanced), and though I stopped attempting it, I was still suicidal.  I somehow managed to get my undergraduate degree, but I couldn’t find a decent job to sustain myself.  My white “friends,” I saw, were fucking assholes who were just using me to make themselves look good.  They were all queer, but they weren’t as supportive as I was to them when I came out as a lesbian.  I noticed how little they cared.  I lashed out at them and turned suicidal when I ended my friendship with them.  They said nothing.  This was about two years ago.

I went to live with my mom.  I noticed how my mom never allowed me to have my own feelings, and she always tried to take the spotlight away from me.  I experienced more bullshit at home than I ever did before.

I decided I needed to do something.  I needed to get out of that environment.  I was a victim.  I came to terms with that.  But I wanted to be a survivor.

So, I applied for graduate school in a city — an environment I’ve never lived in before.  Yes, yes, I’m totally the small-town girl who wanted to live in a big city.  Not because I thought it would be “better” for me — I wanted to move fully knowing I would still experience bullshit from people.  But in a city, at least I had a chance to find some sort of support that wasn’t available to me in my hometown or my small college town.  I would have a chance to find someone who understood that I was a victim, not an attention whore.  And I would have a chance to formulate my own space.  I would have a chance to get away from my environment and do something entirely different.

Somehow, I got into graduate school, and somehow, even though I have always been a good student, I have the highest GPA I’ve ever gotten in school.  I have a place to live.  I’m still poor, but I’m doing okay by myself.  I started seeing a therapist, though I was understandably hesitant.  But fortunately, I got an awesome therapist.  I’ve recently been evaluated for ADHD, something that was never even considered before, even though it does run in my family and I show the symptoms.  I get the results sometime next week.  I’m better able to explore my mental and emotional health.

For me, my status of “survivor” didn’t start with a new beginning, even though that’s what it sounds like.  It started with an ending.  And that’s the key reason why I never got it right before and found myself constantly victimized — I tried to look for new beginnings and a new “me” when actually, I needed to end poisonous relationships, actions, and beliefs I had in my life, and I need to FIND MYSELF, not try to create a new version of myself while keeping all the poison.

I had to stop being friends with people who didn’t care about me.  I had to stop being a white-identifying, colorist asshole.  I had to stop denying what happened in my past, as horrible as it is.  I had to stop defending and making excuses for my mother.  I had to stop letting people invade my boundaries.  I had to stop thinking I was permanently damaged and hopeless.  I had to stop denying my emotions and learn how to identify what they are. 

I ended the life I had for 23 years.  And then, for the past two years, I’ve been working on building a new one.  If you have a brick building that was built wrong, the only way to make things right is to completely tear that building down.  But there’s nothing wrong with the foundation — there was nothing wrong with me.  And that’s what I’m starting to build up the material on.  I’m not fully built yet, but I’m getting there.  Houses can take a while to build.

But before, I hurt a lot of people because of poison I ingested.  I treated people horribly.  And I wouldn’t blame them if they never forgave me.  But looking back won’t make things right.  The best thing I can do is give apologies if I ran into people I really hurt, and then keep moving forward.

But people who are “hurt” by how I’ve changed over the years and people who’ve hurt me first who got “hurt” by me telling them I won’t take their bullshit anymore?  LOL.  FUCK.  YOU.

FUCK.  YOU.  I don’t owe you shit.

And sj warriors with privilege who dig up stuff from marginalized people’s past and then lash out on them?  FUCK.  YOU.  TOO. 

You probably know nothing about my past, and you’re only proving you really don’t give a flying fuck about marginalized people’s humanity or social justice.  All you give a fuck about is looking superior to everybody else.

FUCK.  YOU.  NOBODY OWES YOU SHIT, AND FOR THE SAKE OF MARGINALIZED PEOPLE EVERYWHERE, YOU NEED TO QUIT SOCIAL JUSTICE.

And I found a lot of people, actually, have been through very similar to what I’ve went through, acted how I acted, and are now surviving as I’m trying to.  But sj warriors online and privilege assholes will never quit.

But the only thing we can do is move forward.  Fuck the rest.

 
 
 
 
 
 
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