Fugitivus Discussion Forum

Where I'm clearly tripping all over myself and offending people left, right and center.

I brought this to 101 because I do not want to possibly get any worse than I clearly already have, so please fellow board members, read what I've written (under the spoilers, obviously for offense) and tell me why it comes across as so ignorant.

Comment 1 - Where I thought I was expressing the concern that young girls can have multiple abortions with seemingly no follow-up or involvement after the fact.


Comment 2 - Where I'd hoped by explaining what I'd been taught would clarify and not offend, but I was off the mark again:


Karalyn, I noticed you responded to that post, and I thought I'd bring it here so that you especially could break down what I said there, and why it's so offensive. I've tried googling Privilege, but all I tend to find are websites on male privilege, and white privilege, and I'm not sure it's the same kind of thing that you're referring to.

I also noticed you gave an alternative title to my alternative title as Victim Blaming 101: How To Absolve The Perpetrator Of All Responsibility For His Horrendous Abuse. I just wanted to try to clarify that wasn't what I was aiming for. When I said "Emotional and Sexual Manipulation 101: How to recognize the signs and when to run like your ass is on fire", I was referring to if it were a class, the students would be learning what emotional and sexual manipulation are, how they come into play in relationships, and when to leave the relationship when these types of things come into it. I don't see that as absolving the person who is committing the abuse, but as learning what the signs are and how to avoid becoming entangled in a relationship with an abuser.

Here goes.

Privilege is not just for white people, or men. There's also class privilege* - that's mostly what I was referring to with my comment. Also the privilege of access to services. This is a real problem in the area where I go to school. Sure, if you're on campus or around campus, you have access to plenty of services, because it's a college town and students have all the amenities they need (including sliding scale health care in an on-campus clinic). However, the surrounding area is mostly farmland, and there's no public transit, so you need a car (or tractor, or horse-drawn carriage, or some other type of vehicle) to get anywhere. If you're a young, possibly underage girl? Good luck with that.

Some of the farms have internet access, but some of the farmers are very traditional and old-fashioned, so some don't. The children in those households rely on their public schooling or, more likely, their parents for knowledge - they generally don't know about things like Planned Parenthood, unless it's in the context of "where the college sluts go to get their babies killed."

The likelihood of teen girls in these households having access to hormonal birth control, or even condoms, is very, very low. If they can find a way to get on campus, and find a map, and find their way to the health center, they'll likely get a few free latex condoms, but that's not a guarantee as those services are mostly meant for students.

As for my alternative title to your class, I was mostly irritated because you were responding to this:

TheDeviantE put the responsibility right where it needs to be: On abusers. In your reply, you took that responsibility and shifted it back onto the people being abused - telling us that we should "know better", that maybe if we'd only had a class on this shit, we could have avoided all of it.

But let me tell you, that doesn't work. I'd had classes on it. I'm a social work major, and I've volunteered at women's shelters and rape crisis lines. I had all this background, and all these warning signs. And I still found myself in an abusive relationship. Except I kept myself in denial, because I'm a social work major who knows all the signs - obviously, I could never, ever be roped in by an abuser.

You could argue that it was my fault that I remained willfully delusional and ignorant about my situation, but the fact is the responsibility for my abuse still lays solely with my abuser. He was the only one with any control over his actions, and he was the one who decided it was acceptable to manipulate an overly empathetic woman with self-esteem issues for his own personal gain.

EDIT: I also want to add that it's hard to break out of the cycle of abuse if you were abused by your parents, which I was (well, by mom anyway). If you become accustomed to people treating you a certain way, to people dismissing you as hysterical, overemotional, stupid, irresponsible, etc...then you're not just going to walk away from that and say "no, I don't deserve that" when it comes time to date someone. People go for what is familiar to them. And people also go for whatever will make them feel better, which might not be the best for them.

I clarified earlier that mom was my parental abuser, but dad, while very loving and very giving, was also very traditional. He wanted the very best for me, but he wanted the very best for me as a woman. That meant he wanted to see me with a traditional man whose ideals matched up with his own (so long as I was able to go out and have a career and be happy - he wasn't that traditional). And because making him happy was more important than you, me, or God, I did my best to find that man. The closest I could come up with was my abuser. He echoed some things that dad said - such as that, at the end of the day, even the best man in the world was still a man and I'd have to come to terms with that and not be so shrill and angry.

Yeah, I had the list of warning signs. I also had my upbringing, my self-esteem issues, my fear of being seen as one of them shrill harpy feminazi bitches. And guess what? Those were enough to trump a stupid piece of paper and a stupid professor who didn't know a damn thing about me anyway.


*http://sap.mit.edu/content/pdf/class_privilege_checklist.pdf
Also, keep in mind the concept of intersectionality - race privilege can intersect with class privilege can intersect with sexual orientation privilege, etc

Amaranthus, what I got from your comments was that you were starting from a well-meaning point, but unaware of the way in which your privilege (as Karalyn said, particularly class privilege) influences the way you articulate your points. To start with your first comment:

- The 'nonchalant' thing: Harriet already covered this, so all I'll say is that your comment came off (tonally speaking) as a little clutching-the-pearls-y. Defining a girl's perspective on abortion as 'nonchalant' when you don't have any insight into her life erases her lived experience, and suggests that it's wrong for anyone to be nonchalant about an abortion, ever, which is the kind of 'I'm pro-choice, but only for women who use abortion responsibly' sentiment that isn't really pro-choice at all.

Just to give you a personal example of some of the privilege that you're displaying when you refer to the choice to use BC to prevent the necessity of abortion:(spoilter'd for length)

Whew,that turned into a very lengthy anecdote, and I have to go catch my flight to no-internet land now, so I guess I won't get any further, but I hope it shows how the privilege accorded by things like education can lead you to make unfair assumptions.

I would like to add that saying someone can "stroll in to have an abortion" is pretty offensive to me. I don't think anyone does it casually. Overhearing one conversation of one teenager nonchalantly saying she is getting her own third abortion this year does not make that common, or may bely the fact that she may be concerned about being pregnant again. She may be in an abusive relationship. You can't judge someone's inside by their outside, especially by an overheard conversation, and it certainly shouldn't color your opinions about access to medical care and public health in general. It is a difficult decision, and focusing on the stereotypical party-girl-teenager-who-habitually-terminates-without-regret is dehumanizing to women who choose termination.

As a member of Medical Students for Choice and as a pretty outspoken pro-choice advocate, I can't tell you how many conversations I have had on the topic. And I can't tell you how many times I hear people invoke the teen-multiple-terminator specter. It is the boogeygirl of abortion, and it's tired.

Thank you, thank you, thank you Karalyn, Tevarre and Mom.

Thank you.

I finally have an idea of how I was coming across, and believe me, I'm sitting here red-faced and cringing right now. I really f-ked up badly, and I wish I could go back and delete those posts now because I know they're just going to be a sore factor until Harriet writes something else. :S

Karalyn, that privilege factor you mentioned is probably what helped to shape my mindset that if I have access to all these things, like birth control and sexual health clinics, and I USE them, then why doesn't anyone else? I know that in school, at least in urban and residential Canada, they make a very good attempt of making these things available to girls, but again, even with the choice to use it, like Tevarre said some people just can't.

I think the thing that blew my mind the most about that conversation I overheard wasn't so much the idea that she may not be concerned, but the idea that nobody else might be. Harriet talks a lot about the people she works for (with?) and it seems like these are the people nobody worries about, or cares about and she's even mentioned that by the time she sees them where she works that they're so not-used to anyone giving a damn that when someone does they just... refuse it. They come in, do what they need to do, and go back to life as they know it, instead of life as they deserve it. I guess what I really meant by "control" was more a system of checks and balances. I know better now that girls are counseled, and they get support after the fact, but I didn't realize that when I wrote my post.

Mom, I know nobody strolls into a clinic to have an abortion. I couldn't imagine anyone wanting to be casual, but I was more referring to the fact that in Canada, and at that clinic especially, they don't have as much red-tape that they have in the USA. I didn't even realize they had the restrictions in the States like they did, to be honest. And when I googled clinics here in my hometown, and found that one, I just skipped to the part about parental consent. I was relieved to see that they don't require it there, especially when I read through Harriet's post and realized just how hard they're trying in the USA to keep women from having the procedure done. It's bad enough that a woman choosing to not keep it gets harassed, but women who have to have an abortion because it's medically necessary get the same treatment. Blows. My. Mind.

Karalyn, thank you for being open with me about your background. Having been in an abusive relationship myself, I suppose I still think that I should have known better. I had been beating myself up about it for awhile, because once we broke up, and I really realized how he treated me (and that I deserved better!) I also noticed that not only did everyone else know, but they had been trying to get me to see it for a very long time. I honestly still feel like a fool because I didn't see it, and I spent three years with him before I finally broke it off for good.

Looks like I have some more reading to do yet. Thank you all for your help again.

Lord knows I relate to this all too well, and I'm sure most other survivors relate to it too. Society feeds us this message that it is up to us and only us to keep people from mistreating us; that we're defective if we can't prevent people from being assholes. Internalizing that is just the natural thing to do.

And plus, sometimes it's just so freeing to sit yourself down and say "Self, you are beautiful, intelligent, witty, brave, and all-around kick ass. So why would you accept anything less than the best? You deserve so much better than what you got, why did you ever waste your time on that?" It's empowering. It's giving yourself control over your destiny.

But there's a fine line between empowering yourself and blaming yourself. And at the end of the day, no matter how beautiful, intelligent, witty, brave, and all-around kick ass you are, your abuser is not your fault. Your relationship with your abuser is not your fault. The abuse your abuser dished out is not your fault. You staying is not your fault. You worked with the information and the tools you had at the time, and that's the best that anybody can ever do.

I love this space. I think this was a good experience to have communication like this, and I hope you agree, Amaranthus. (And I need a little faith restored today. It's been a shit day, faith in humanity wise).

I wanted to add that I was in an abusive relationship while doing advocacy work in medical school for abused women. And, I have been pregnant four times, all unplanned (yup, you read that right, four times) and I am a fairly privileged white person who is studying to be an ob/gyn. Life, including reproduction, is pretty complicated.

I definitely agree MomTFH. Here's hoping all communication in the future is all part of a good experience.