For years, I told my story in a way that preserved my right to speak my mind. This involved NOT publicly naming who hurt me.
I am a big believer in living well is the best revenge -- I'm generally a conflict avoider and prefer, if possible, to walk away from trouble and let it die by starving it of oxygen -- but I'm also older than I used to be and have perspective on some things I didn't have in my youth.
Even in my youth, I was hesitant to say "Damn, I'm good!" and lecture other people about how awesome I imagine myself to be and preach to people that if you just handle things like I handled them, you, too, can have good outcomes.
Maybe my blogging would be more popular if I were like that. That garbage seems to have broad popular appeal.
But the reality is I was born into an uncommonly good family and the two people who molested me were not classic pedophiles. Everything I have seen over decades of trying to sort my baggage suggests pedophilia -- attraction to children -- is most likely caused by a head injury acquired before the age of thirteen.
Although my brother suffered at least three injuries before age thirteen that could have been the cause of such a head injury and I do believe he has a brain injury that wasn't really dealt with formally -- he took illicit drugs for years and likely killed something in his brain and became less of an ass as he got older -- he's not that much older than me.
I don't believe he's "attracted to little kids." I don't believe he ever was and I chose to not ever file charges in part because I did not believe he was an ongoing threat to children.
I don't believe my father was attracted to little kids either. In fact, I don't believe he really intended to molest me sexually.
I believe he came back from Vietnam and I was this ridiculously cute, bubbly little girl and he wanted to hold me on his lap and forget the war and things got weird.
He returned from Vietnam with shrapnel in his head. He was head injured but he was newly head injured as an adult in his forties. It wasn't a head injury dating to childhood.
So I don't think he was a pedophile -- someone attracted to little kids sexually. I think he made a terrible mistake while horrifically traumatized and at some point, probably after his injury healed up some, he went "Oh, this is NOT okay with me." and chose to stop and I believe he chose to drop his retirement papers when I was three to protect me from being hurt again because they were planning to send him back to Vietnam.
I was seriously hurt by two blood relatives. The word for what happened to me is incest.
And both of my relatives STOPPED of their own accord and made amends to me.
This is not how such things typically go.
I was on Metafilter and someone asked a question about how to deal with their father whom they described as a "narcissist." This is a popular word on Metafilter and in some other parts of the internet for talking about badly behaved people.
I've known narcissists and find them easier to deal with than most people seem to find (TLDR: Get yours FIRST). As the discussion of the problem went on, it became clear that this person's father wasn't a narcissist, i.e. some selfish bastard who callously didn't care about others around him.
No, he was a SADIST.
He didn't hurt people on accident because he didn't give a shit about you. Your suffering was the entire point and his harmful activities were very much intentional and he wanted you to KNOW he hurt you so he could take pleasure in his victim knowing.
That's a much tougher thing to deal with than someone being all "I got mine. Fuck you. Can't be arsed to care."
I'm not Christian. I'm absolutely not preaching that YOU should "have compassion" for the person who molested or raped you because, poor baby, someone must have hurt them first.
Carol Burnett once said in some interview that I think one or both of her parents were alcoholics and she doesn't touch the stuff. Just can't stand the sight of it.
She made it a non-issue. She didn't get on her high horse and preach about how she was better than people who drank.
Some people get hurt and use that as an excuse to hurt others. Some people get hurt and use that as a life lesson for what not to do and sometimes even have genuine meaningful compassion of a constructive sort for other people and their personal failings.
People who try to tell you "I got hurt first, so YOU need to UNDERSTAND and have COMPASSION for me." are just using a manipulative tactic to facilitate their abuse. That bullshit works on some people apparently. I suggest you not be one of them.
The law does not say "This is a crime -- unless, poor baby, someone hurt you first. And then it's fine to kick the crap out of anyone for any reason because YOU have a sob story."
If someone is a child molester because they have a brain injury dating to childhood -- and I think in most cases that's probably what is going on -- the reality is that you would need to fix their brain injury in order to be able to believe they really will stop hurting kids.
Sympathy and compassion and "understanding" and other emotional concepts of that sort are NOT relevant. You can't social engineer this into "If they just got the love and understanding no one ever gave them, they would stop hurting people."
No, if they got the MEDICAL treatment for their MEDICAL issue that actually FIXED IT -- and probably also on top of that some kind of rehabilitation -- that would be the "compassionate" answer that does not boil down to "Oh, let's let all the serial killers out of prison and tattoo them as licensed to kill because they have a sob story and everyone needs to understand."
I made the choices I made for how I handled what happened to me and the people involved in a context-sensitive fashion and those choices were informed in part by my reasonable, well-thought out belief that neither of the people who harmed me were really pedophiles, so neither of them was an ongoing threat to other children.
You need to decide what to do about your life based on the facts of the situation you are dealing with and if you KNOW they really are a pedophile -- someone attracted to CHILDREN -- and this is why they molested you, then keeping your mouth shut amounts to aiding and abetting their ongoing crimes.
What exactly should you do about that? I don't KNOW because that's not what I dealt with.
But following in my footsteps in a cookie-cutter fashion because you think I'm smart or got it right or whatever when YOUR situation and MINE are not alike is not a recipe for success.
I am a big believer in living well is the best revenge -- I'm generally a conflict avoider and prefer, if possible, to walk away from trouble and let it die by starving it of oxygen -- but I'm also older than I used to be and have perspective on some things I didn't have in my youth.
Even in my youth, I was hesitant to say "Damn, I'm good!" and lecture other people about how awesome I imagine myself to be and preach to people that if you just handle things like I handled them, you, too, can have good outcomes.
Maybe my blogging would be more popular if I were like that. That garbage seems to have broad popular appeal.
But the reality is I was born into an uncommonly good family and the two people who molested me were not classic pedophiles. Everything I have seen over decades of trying to sort my baggage suggests pedophilia -- attraction to children -- is most likely caused by a head injury acquired before the age of thirteen.
Although my brother suffered at least three injuries before age thirteen that could have been the cause of such a head injury and I do believe he has a brain injury that wasn't really dealt with formally -- he took illicit drugs for years and likely killed something in his brain and became less of an ass as he got older -- he's not that much older than me.
I don't believe he's "attracted to little kids." I don't believe he ever was and I chose to not ever file charges in part because I did not believe he was an ongoing threat to children.
I don't believe my father was attracted to little kids either. In fact, I don't believe he really intended to molest me sexually.
I believe he came back from Vietnam and I was this ridiculously cute, bubbly little girl and he wanted to hold me on his lap and forget the war and things got weird.
He returned from Vietnam with shrapnel in his head. He was head injured but he was newly head injured as an adult in his forties. It wasn't a head injury dating to childhood.
So I don't think he was a pedophile -- someone attracted to little kids sexually. I think he made a terrible mistake while horrifically traumatized and at some point, probably after his injury healed up some, he went "Oh, this is NOT okay with me." and chose to stop and I believe he chose to drop his retirement papers when I was three to protect me from being hurt again because they were planning to send him back to Vietnam.
I was seriously hurt by two blood relatives. The word for what happened to me is incest.
And both of my relatives STOPPED of their own accord and made amends to me.
This is not how such things typically go.
I was on Metafilter and someone asked a question about how to deal with their father whom they described as a "narcissist." This is a popular word on Metafilter and in some other parts of the internet for talking about badly behaved people.
I've known narcissists and find them easier to deal with than most people seem to find (TLDR: Get yours FIRST). As the discussion of the problem went on, it became clear that this person's father wasn't a narcissist, i.e. some selfish bastard who callously didn't care about others around him.
No, he was a SADIST.
He didn't hurt people on accident because he didn't give a shit about you. Your suffering was the entire point and his harmful activities were very much intentional and he wanted you to KNOW he hurt you so he could take pleasure in his victim knowing.
That's a much tougher thing to deal with than someone being all "I got mine. Fuck you. Can't be arsed to care."
I'm not Christian. I'm absolutely not preaching that YOU should "have compassion" for the person who molested or raped you because, poor baby, someone must have hurt them first.
Carol Burnett once said in some interview that I think one or both of her parents were alcoholics and she doesn't touch the stuff. Just can't stand the sight of it.
She made it a non-issue. She didn't get on her high horse and preach about how she was better than people who drank.
Some people get hurt and use that as an excuse to hurt others. Some people get hurt and use that as a life lesson for what not to do and sometimes even have genuine meaningful compassion of a constructive sort for other people and their personal failings.
People who try to tell you "I got hurt first, so YOU need to UNDERSTAND and have COMPASSION for me." are just using a manipulative tactic to facilitate their abuse. That bullshit works on some people apparently. I suggest you not be one of them.
The law does not say "This is a crime -- unless, poor baby, someone hurt you first. And then it's fine to kick the crap out of anyone for any reason because YOU have a sob story."
If someone is a child molester because they have a brain injury dating to childhood -- and I think in most cases that's probably what is going on -- the reality is that you would need to fix their brain injury in order to be able to believe they really will stop hurting kids.
Sympathy and compassion and "understanding" and other emotional concepts of that sort are NOT relevant. You can't social engineer this into "If they just got the love and understanding no one ever gave them, they would stop hurting people."
No, if they got the MEDICAL treatment for their MEDICAL issue that actually FIXED IT -- and probably also on top of that some kind of rehabilitation -- that would be the "compassionate" answer that does not boil down to "Oh, let's let all the serial killers out of prison and tattoo them as licensed to kill because they have a sob story and everyone needs to understand."
I made the choices I made for how I handled what happened to me and the people involved in a context-sensitive fashion and those choices were informed in part by my reasonable, well-thought out belief that neither of the people who harmed me were really pedophiles, so neither of them was an ongoing threat to other children.
You need to decide what to do about your life based on the facts of the situation you are dealing with and if you KNOW they really are a pedophile -- someone attracted to CHILDREN -- and this is why they molested you, then keeping your mouth shut amounts to aiding and abetting their ongoing crimes.
What exactly should you do about that? I don't KNOW because that's not what I dealt with.
But following in my footsteps in a cookie-cutter fashion because you think I'm smart or got it right or whatever when YOUR situation and MINE are not alike is not a recipe for success.
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