I've started to write some essay-like blog posts in addition to the conversations with myself, which I'll keep posting on thursdays. These essay-like posts will be sprinkled in here and there whenever they come up. Enjoy!
So I have been realising that I have a great hesitancy in me against unlearning some "bricks" of thinking about abuse and abusers. "Bricks" or "bricky thinking" is terminology that Dion came up with when we were talking together about how people (mis-)communicate, how ideas spread and how we use them in our own minds. And the bricky thinking is unflexible, deterministic, sometimes outright dogmatic and hierarchical or totalistic. These are fixed ideas, thought patterns and usually logical fallacies that we cling to and often push on others, despite them (the bricky thoughts) being too rigid and lacking nuance and context to be helpful. Context is a big one that is missing!
The counterpart to bricky thoughts are wildflower seeds and meadows and even jungles! These are thoughts, ideas, beliefs and feelings that are alive, vibrant, moving and shifting as needed, that are embedded in their context and unable to be removed from it, that resist being flattened down or being used as cudgels.
I have come to the understanding that we naturally have a wildflower meadow mind and that bricks are the result of abuse, trauma, indoctrination or manipulation of some kind. A lot of this is so normalised however, that it is hard to recognise the harm and trauma in it. For example making (certain) people sit still and be quiet, whether that's at school or in the workplace or at meetings or even social gatherings. Or getting consistently and outwardly annoyed at children – and others – for asking questions.
Of course, abuse is built on bricks. And it puts bricks into the heads and hearts of its victims (or at least attempts to).
It's quite fascinating what my primary abuser, The Twin, taught me about abuse. Because a lot of it was directly stated and explicit.
- abuse is a choice
- abusers are bad people who we should not feel sorry for or forgive
- believe victims
- never question victims
- don't even ask victims any questions at all
- center the needs of victims/survivors
- do whatever the victim/survivor tells you to do
- intent does not matter
- you hurt me therefore you are a bad person
- if you hurt me, you need to shut up
- don't let abusers explain why they did what they did
- empathy, understanding or forgiveness should only go to victims and never to abusers
- there is no such thing as a mutually abusive relationsip
- the cycle of abuse is a harmful myth that demonises abuse victims and suspects them to be future abusers
- abuse victims are in fact less likely to become abusers than the general population
- acting as though ANY abuse victim ever was capable of potentially abusing others is harmful, triggering and an act of social injustice
- the worst thing you can do to an abuse survivor is to compare them to an abuser
- comparing an abuse survivor to an abuser is never justified
- only privileged people can be abusers; if there's a power imbalance between people (male privilege in a heterosexual couple, boss and employee, significant age gap, etc) then it is only ever the more societally privileged person who could abuse the less privileged person, no exceptions
- if you have less trauma than me, you need to shut up and listen (and feel guilty, though that part is only implied)
- there is no such thing as brainwashing
Ok, that's a really long list already! Not all of these were stated explicitly and most of them were phrased differently, but a surprising number were said pretty much verbatim.
I think you can probably guess what happened here. My twin heard me talk about how our parents abused me and over time positioned themselves as an abuse survivor, too, and used that to deflect any and all abuse THEY themselves (twin, who uses singular they pronouns) were dishing out. That is, until at some point they suddenly and radically changed their stance 180 degrees to "our parents weren't and couldn't have been abusive and brainwashing doesn't exist" [I hadn't claimed it did] but also "you made me believe I was an abuse victim and thereby ruined my life by talking about how you are an abuse victim" [which I did on my own blog under trigger warning read-more's and which I did not require or expect them to read. But sure, that'll influence you to such a degree that it would be called brainwashing if true, and I wasn't even trying to, but "brainwashing isn't real". Sure it all makes sense /sarcasm].
To be clear, they absolutely are an abuse survivor. But so were both our parents and probably grandparents before that. Didn't stop either of them to become abusers themselves.
But I still to this day have a problem "unbrickifying" my thinking about abuse. I feel like a traitor and abuse-apologist when I question some of the above doctrines or even apply more nuance to them and see them in context rather than let them be thought-terminating clichés that automatically end the conversation. They should be the start of conversations instead, because a lot of them are true or carry seeds of truth with them.
Anyone can chose to lean into abusive patterns of behaviour, whether they're an abuse victim themselves or not. And it doesn't even necessarily feel like a choice to them. And understanding how abusers tick, how they feel and think, make and justify decisions is very important in order to RECOGNISE ABUSE and to get free from it. Which is the pre-requisite to shifting our society away from normalising and even enforcing abuse and towards protecting victims. Empathy is very useful to understanding others, if combined with critical thinking and discernment, such that empathy doesn't imply or necessitate taking on the (potential) abuser's viewpoint or granting them the kind of forgiveness that ends up enabling further abuse.
Aside here about forgiveness: It's interesting to think about the different definitions people use for this often very loaded and emotional term. I've heard people say that forgiveness to them means letting go of an obsession for revenge. That's something I can get behind. Whereas very often pleas for forgiving abusers end up replacing or sabotaging accountability and change, and barrelling over past and future victims' needs, safety and dignity.
And while hearing that someone (this especially happens to men, BIPOC and queer people) was abused and immediately assuming they're likely to become an abuser or treating them as a risk or asking invasive questions is obviously wrong, it is also true that most abusers are repeating patterns that have been taught to them in some form or another. And one form that often takes is abuse. Hitting children for example teaches nothing but that physical abuse is justified if you call it "discipline".
Abuse is in fact a cycle that is set up intentionally to be self-replicating and it does so whenever victims chose to lean into perpetrating abuse rather than trying to avoid it. Of course people who haven't been subjected to especially egregious forms of abuse can still also choose to join in the fun.
But there's a phenomenon that can be conflated with the cycle of abuse and that is how abuse victims will often show patterns of communication and behaviour that "fit in" with abuse or mimic it. If you grew up neglected and the only way to get basic needs met was through subversion and deception, you'll sneak around or lie to get what you need and people might assume that's part of a pattern of abuse. But the deciding factor is how people react when they have a chance to learn, for example when they get called in (or out) or get caught and get told to be honest and open instead. IF that is indeed a workable way to get their needs met, do they now try to adapt? Do they welcome the change and are they relieved? Or do they find excuses and justifications to continue fucking people over even in situations without the necessity to do? I wouldn't call necessary survival strategies abusive, including the secretive, deceptive or even violent ones. But the choice of targets and the power dynamics between "survival strategist" and targets matter.
"This is what I had to learn in order to survive and that's why I'm doing it" is valid, and it can explain a lot. But everyone can learn and adapting to less traumatising and less abusive environments should mean perpetuating less harm. (It does get tricky though when the new environment just pretends to be less abusive and is in fact just as abusive or just dresses it up differently.)
I have had a lot of abusers in my life who pretended to be victims – or rather, they were victims in most cases, but used that as excuses for abusive behaviours. My mother was one of them. Even my father did this, albeit in more gender-reinforcing ways aka "being the breadwinner is sooooo haaaard you guys, why is dinner not hot and waiting for me when I come home??? No wonder I'm abusing alcohol and being a dick constantly, it's y'alls fault actually!"
But in my adult life, because I was so open about being an abuse survivor, I was constantly surrounded by other abuse survivors as well. Plus, I was still clinging to and excusing a major abuser in my life (my twin), so I never learned to spot abuse or protect myself from it or set boundaries or even notice my own boundaries. That attracted a lot of abusers towards me and since I didn't get rid of them and accomodated them instead and poured as much empathy, love and support on them as I was capable of, they accumulated in my social sphere until basically everyone else was crowded out or left because it was just so hard and irritating to deal with. There was a lot of drama between different abusers around me!
Anyways. Abuse survivors turned abusers were around me all the time throughout my life and a lot of them were poor, marginalised people, including queer and trans people. And so am I. That's why I say, everyone has the choice to lean into abusive patterns or not. Because while sure, the more wealth and power and privilege an abuser has, the more havoc they wreak, the poor oppressed abusers are still horrible to deal with. Because they target the people who are already at the bottom and poison what should be communities built around the shared need for mutual aid and survival in opposition to the abuses and oppression and exploitation enforced by the state and the more powerful abusers.
I plan on making that its own post though, or maybe write a book about it: The dynamics and tactics and nuances around poor and marginalised abuse victims who themselves become abusers. That's obviously a topic that demands a lot of care because I really don't want to demonise those already marginalised and victimised people. But it also needs talking about because currently, so many abusers in that category fly under the radar and poison and prey on communities that are already beleagured.
Being a victim/survivor of abuse, oppression etc does not absolve someone of all responsibility for their actions nor should it shield them from all accountability or criticism. And asking questions is part of that. There's a difference between retraumatising questionings that make survivors recount details of their trauma or that put the burden of proof on them before their basic needs, safety and dignity are even considered. Versus asking about the information that is actually relevant in order to move forward in a productive way. My twin's allergic reactions against any "questioning" of abuse survivors got me to the point where I was surprised to hear that it is in abuse victims' and supporters' best interest to have more investigations into disclosures ("allegations") of domestic violence and child abuse and that careful, non-prejudiced investigations (that don't retraumatise the victims) usually find proof.
I lived most of my life convinced that the worst thing that could happen to me and other survivors (like my siblings) was official investigations into the abuse we suffered.
Somehow I still have a hard time fully realising how obvious this brick is serving abusers and not survivors.
Sure, the way courts and justice systems currently work is heavily skewed towards abusers, is retraumatising to victims, is broken in all kinds of ways. But the truth is on my side. And more importantly, the unspoken premise that slipped in with this brick is both false and dangerous: That abuse can't be objectively proven. That abusers are sooooo slick that they won't ever leave traces and tracks and evidence. That everything was hidden so well that there won't be any witnesses.
Sure my abusers are dangerous criminals and they probably went to some length to keep their evil doings hidden. But they're just people. They're not even masterminds. I can stop putting them up on that scary, shadowy pedestal.
All abusers try to hide the fact that they're abusers, either by denying what they do altogether (my mother would not admit that she raped us children) and/or by justifying it (yes, sometimes somehow both). But all abuse leaves traces and all abuse has consequences and all abuse can be spotted and dealt with. Where there's a will, there is a way.