Posts tagged abuse

inflateablefilth:

Because people don’t just abuse you in relationships or in your family. They exist in the world like any other person. They have jobs, they go shopping, they eat at restaurants. They interact with many people, and their abusive natures come with them.

Let’s think about emotional abuse for a second. What constitutes emotional abuse? My ex used to abuse my emotionally in the following ways:

• Calling me over-emotional when he made me cry
• Telling me I’m really shit at stuff
• Knocking my confidence
• Having a go at me for low self esteem
• Telling me I was a liar
• Telling me I didn’t appreciate him for what he did
• Deliberately doing something decent then telling me how much effort it was and how much I owed him
• Telling me I didn’t appreciate him enough
• Calling me a liar
• Telling me I need to ‘prove’ my appreciation
• Constantly comparing me to others to tell me how worthless I am
• Turning an innocuous conversation into an argument then blaming me
• Telling me I was making up excuses if I tried to explain anything
• Having a go at me for agreeing with him
• Having a go at me for disagreeing with him
• Being nice one minute then horrible the next
• Constantly blaming me for the way I am treated by him and others

And I just had a half hour conversation with my boss that covered ALL of these points. All of them.

Because I think my boss is an emotional abuser. I know the union reps are currently on his back about something to do with a staff member of my level. I know he had to move terminals because the other managers at the other terminal didn’t like dealing with him. And I honestly think he’s an emotionally abusive person. Because a conversation with my boss should NOT feel like a conversation with my abusive ex.

Abusers are our bosses, our coworkers, our customers. Abusers are the people who call cashiers worthless to their face for an item being non-refundable. They are the bosses who demand we tell them how much we appreciate them for all they do then call us liars when we say we do. They are the coworkers who belittle everything you do. They abuse people they see as weak targets, like new starters. They take people they have power over and they treat them like shit because they can. 

I feel like abuse needs to be recognized as something that can happen in all aspects of life. I think the word ‘bullying’ does not do enough justice to what is actually happening a lot of the time. And I think abusers in the workplace need to be recognized for the dangerous people they are. Because a hell of a lot of a time this shit is written of as a ‘clash of personalities’, if it is even taken seriously at all. The victim is seen as the trouble maker who’s rocking the boat, or the person who can’t hack the job. The abuser is seen as someone who is ‘a little tough to get along with’ at worst, and the cycle continues. Because if I leave this job, he’s not going to stop being who he is and suddenly not be an abuser because this is not my fault.

Let me just repeat that because I need to. This is not my fault. I am not a soft target, I am not someone who’s ‘equally at fault’. It took me so long to reach a point where I could say that about my ex and yet still I will think I was being to hard on him or I was hard to date because of my disabilities and trans status but fuck it, it is not my fault. And this man is targeting me because he fucking can, maybe because he knows I have PTSD, maybe because I am a woman (I am not out) or maybe because I’m new. Maybe all three. But regardless of his reasonings, he is treating me like shit because he chooses to.

Abuse needs to be recognized as something that happens in the workplace too. Because it can. It does. And it’s just as scummy as any other kind of abuse, and hell, it can be just as traumatizing too. But the world of abuse culture means we just write it off as office politics and squabbles and ‘personality clashes’. And honestly, I fucking hate that phrase because a personality clash is me not really enjoying working with a guy who doesn’t talk when we’re on the gate because I’m quite chatty. That’s two opposing personalities not really meshing. This is not a clash of personalities. This is an abusive man, acting in an abusive way to a new member of staff. And it’s not on.

(Source: cydandthat)

genderbitch:

If the rules of real logic were applied here, Catherine Brennan is not female by her own words.

(via alexandraerin)

amydentata:

morereasonsyoushouldntfuckkids:

[trigger warning: child sexual abuse, rape culture, victim blaming]

Though Friday night’s verdict prompted cheers outside the courtroom, inside, the mother of Victim 6 did not claim victory.

“Nobody wins. We’ve all lost,” she said before hugging her son.

[CNN]

I have a lot of feelings about this case. I don’t know how to properly articulate some of them.

This case is one of, if not the most, infamous case of child sexual abuse and child rape in my lifetime. It’s a story that is too horrible to believe. But this kind of thing happens every day— maybe not on the same scale, but with horrifying frequency in our world.

Penn State tells us a lot about rape culture. It tells us a lot about abuse culture. As I’ve said in the past, these things do not happen in a political and cultural vacuum; they happen because the moral and social fabric of an entire society is built in such a way that it can fail people— not just once, but over and over again. It takes a village. There were many times in my life when an adult armed with the right knowledge might have seen through what was happening to me. There were times, later on as a teenager, when I was very direct, but no one did anything. I wrote down that I wanted to kill myself and I showed it to a teacher. I asked for a social worker. I received multiple truancy letters. It takes a village.

So as I think about this case, and the people who suffered so much for years and years at the hands of Jerry Sandusky, I can only imagine how many times the world failed them. I cannot understand the pain in publicly revealing your story for prime time news pundits to pick apart. I cannot comprehend the frustration and pain involved in taking the witness stand and having your story criticized and attacked.

I read the grand jury report many months ago. It was terrifying. I had to stop halfway through because I felt myself getting physically ill. But I remember the testimony of the janitor who saw Sandusky abusing a boy— he said that the memory of that haunted and disturbed him more than the years he spent fighting in Vietnam. That is the gravity of what we are dealing with here.

But despite this desire to call Jerry Sandusky a monster, we have to remember that he is a person, and that people— people whom we think are “good”— can do monstrous things. Jerry Sandusky had many people testify to his “good character”. It takes a village. Joe Paterno let child rape happen, and instead of riots and outrage against him, he had riots in his name. It takes a village. And some of us still refuse to believe that even a priest, a “man of god”, can abuse a boy.

It takes a village.

Even now, I am starting to see the jokes about prison rape. It’s a sign of where we still are— we see rape as something that can sometimes be a punishment, instead of as one of the worst possible acts in human existence. We still believe that rape is something that can be doled out to those “deserving” of it, instead of as something that every single person in the world has the right to not have happen to them. We still believe that a person we don’t like deserves to have images of their rape and murder publicly broadcast, and that people who do good things can’t possibly be child rapists or child rapist enablers

This is the culture we are in— one that has variable beliefs on rape and sexual abuse, many of which contradict one another. It’s not okay to hurt little boys, but what if this case was about 45 counts of rape against women? What if some of those women were promiscuous or had other “deviant” sexuality? What if these boys were men when they were hurt? What if some of these boys, now adults, were convicted criminals? Gay? Transgender? Undocumented? Mentally disabled? What if they were some combination of all of these? The more “deviant” and “bad” we see a person, the more likely it is that their story is not taken seriously. That we cannot, with 100% certainty, say that Jerry Sandusky in another world would be convicted had his victims not been among one of the most believable, sympathetic groups in our culture— children— says a lot about where we are. And as we know, even little boys have trouble being believed.

In 90 days, Jerry Sandusky will be sentenced, probably with life in prison. But there are still other Jerry Sanduskys out there, and they have entire villages, entire cities of people behind them, actively ignoring abuse, or subtly covering it up. There are still Joe Paternos out there, knowingly allowing rape and getting away with it. This is not an aberration in our culture— it is a pattern that is systematically ignored and even encouraged.

The end of Jerry Sandusky is not the end of the many millions of other stories out there.

Read it. Read it again. Pure unfiltered truth.

I added some bold for things That were important to me, but the whole piece is important.

Its an astounding revelation, that your mother doesn’t like you very much. I’m in denial of it a good deal of the time because it just seems so stereotypical.

Its unavoidable, though. Its ridiculously painful. I look at my baby, my sweet little child who annoys the hell out of me sometimes but who lights up my day regardless, and I remember the day when I was 11 when my mother told me that while she still loved me, that she wasn’t “in love” with me anymore. I remember all the arguments where she spent the entire time accusing me of things I would never do, and equating being willing to admit when I’m wrong with being “unreliable.” I think about how she is still convinced that I talked my spouse into transitioning and how everything I have ever been has been for attention, and all of my emotions are either irrational or calculated. I think about all the things she told my spouse I was when I was out of the country and how those things almost ended my marriage. I think about how she congratulates my spouse for “supporting” me and “putting up with” me. I think about every offer of help that has been pulled back after I’ve committed to needing it and every emotional rollercoaster that resulted from rejecting her help. I just can’t comprehend it.

Maybe it has something…everything to do with the fact that she felt obligated to have me. She’s as much as admitted that she wouldn’t have been able to do the type of parenting I do because she didn’t want to be that involved with me.

I don’t doubt that she loved/s me in her way. No, that’s a lie. I think she thinks she loves me. That’s not the same thing.

I don’t know where I’m going with this. I hope that some day I can stop letting her live rent-free in my head. I’ve dedicated to essentially maintaining as little contact as possible, so that should help.