SpanishRed
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I will not allow my story to be destroyed
🕑 Added 2023-11-03 03:35:46 +0000 UTCI’m an angry feminist. SpanishRed: Misandrist. That’s my name. That’s my label. Someone will write it up in my comment sections every time I write about gender-based violence. Angry white men are raging because I dare to break my silence; dare, for once, to speak about the female experience. You know the kind of experience I’m referring to. Gropings, rape, domestic violence… we’ve all been there, but straight white men don’t have a problem with those crimes. They have a problem with the fact that I speak about them.
And that tells me everything I’ll ever need to know. So you think I’mangry at pointless things like assault or violence? Perhaps I need to be angry about more important things like people writing posts I don’t like on the internet. The latter is so much more traumatic than the former. </sarcasm>
Do you even see yourselves?
“I don’t tell you [my story] so that you think of me as a victim. I am not a victim. I tell you this because my story has value. […]I will not allow my story to be destroyed. What I would have done to have heard a story like mine, not for blame, not for reputation, not for money, not for power but to feel less alone. To feel connected.” - Hannah Gadsby
My story doesn’t benefit me. I’ve long since recovered from trauma. I don’t talk about it with friends. I don’t even talk about it in therapy. I don’t think about it as I get on with the business of living. Most of my friends don’t even know it happened. It has become irrelevant to me, so I don’t write posts like these to drag crocodile tears out of internet strangers. I write them in the hope that they’ll make someone else feel vindicated or less alone.
My first professional writing niche was telling other people’s stories on the old “My Story” page of That Magazine That Should Not Be Named. I believe these narratives hold incredible power to break down loneliness. If you can convince someone to honour their feelings, they will find the power to get through one more day.
I believe in the power of our stories. Narrative therapy can help us to externalize our experiences and approach trauma with less self-judgement. If it happened to you and it happened to me, you’re not crazy. You’re justified. You feel you have the right to cry. You find that your feelings are like my feelings, so you’re no longer out there experiencing an isolated trauma. You are not alone. You’re not unusual. You’re just reacting normally to trauma.
That’s what I try to achieve. It might be pointless. I might be terrible at it, but that’s unimportant. What matters is that you’ve found fault with my voice but not the violence it draws attention to.
And that tells me you haven’t even earned your own voice. You don’t deserve it.
“Ignorance is a cage” – Hannah Gadsby
Comments
Raoul Schneider
No matter what and how you say it, I do believe it is important that those stories are out in the public. Many men, myself included, probably did not realize just *how prevalent* sexual assault and abuse is prior to "Me Too". We did not listen well enough beforehand, but all of a sudden it was too obvious that something was wrong. Sure, we knew it happened. But just how bad it was. The amount of consideration that goes into going on a first date with someone. On a second date. Moving in with someone. There was no way that all people would show respect and deference to such a mass outing, and reacted with backlash. It is hard to acknowledge that oneself is a monster, better to project that upon others. "It will put an end to flirting and chivalry" - nope, you just better learn to ask ahead of time. And be surprised how many people are okay with being hugged if you just *ask* first. Negotiation should ideally start at the first "Hello" and just expand from there. We are not there yet as a society, but as more and more people tell us about this, at least a part of us will learn. For the other part, I do not hold much hope, but at least they cannot silence their victims as easily as they could in the past. Frankly, SpanishRed, considering how many young people read what you are writing, and take it in, it is hardly pointless, but seeds that are hopefully bringing us slightly improved future generations. We all have to do our part in this, and you are doing more than your share.
