On Identity, Behavior, and Dissection by People Who Should Know Better
I guess I have a luxury. I knew who I was at an early age and wasn’t going to back down from these pieces of who I was. However, because some weird child-toucher was in my life, I’m a “person who was touched”, and no longer have any dynamic attributes with which to identify.
Or so you’d think.
THE PERSONHOOD QUIZ is a list of characteristics that you think define you, and you get to tick off which ones were “caused” by the abuse/molestation/rape/sexual assault/sexual exploitation.
QUESTION 1: WHICH OF THE FOLLOWING WAS DIRECTLY CAUSED BY THE ABUSE?! THIS IS IMPORTANT, PEOPLE!!! IT HAS SERIOUS MEANINGS FOR WHO I AM!!!11
-I identify as differently gendered
-I identify as feminist
-I avoid men (and others) who blatantly disrespect me
-I prefer ambiguously gendered people as friends and lovers
-I pick my nose
-I make weird faces in the mirror when no one is watching
-I choose metal as my (musical) drug of choice
-I curse a lot
-I identify as a general pain in the ass
-I have sex (and “lost” my “virginity” at 16)
-I studied Anthropology
-I do strange dances in the privacy of my room
-I hate rape jokes
-I like to write
-I eat a lot of sweets, fart a lot, fantasize about having a threesome with 2 men, masturbate, watch porn, drink, love bullshitting with people, scowl, value my mind over my body, like to look at myself and think about how beautiful I am, fuck men, don’t like receiving oral sex, snort when I laugh, hate spicy food…
So how about you start sifting out which of these were caused by the abuse. Almost all of them I recall before the abuse started (except for most things dealing with porn or sex as something other than a concept. I still thought sex was icky at the time the abuse started).
Oh, and I didn’t start drinking until I was around 20, but that was CLEARLY caused by the abuse!
If I was a trans person, I’d be denied the surgery I need because CLEARLY the abuse caused me to identify as trans! If someone administered the surgery, it would do more harm than good!
I remember glimmers of my sexuality before the abuse. It was very speculative, but I was never given a chance to experience it for myself and figure out what I really liked. Someone elses’ needs and sexuality were imposed on me first. That would be an interesting excercise, mapping my sexuality.
But at the end of the day, I have to do a simple Dear Abby Test: if I engage in these activities or thoughts, will it do more harm than good? Will it upset me? Will it cause me physical pleasure? Will it remind me of the abuse in a way that feels unsafe, uncontrolled, and triggering? Will it do all these things simultaneously? Try sorting it all out now, fuckers!
I’m a hedonist, so most things that feel good (physically, emotionally, what have you) are good in my book.
My point is: besides my sexuality (which is really only MY business in the first place), why the fuck do you care what was “caused” by the abuse? Are you clinging to some semblance of a different me that existed before the abuse, and can somehow be summoned? Guess what, that me was 10 years old. You CANNOT deny my experience that way.
Yes, it would be interesting to ask, “what would I have been like sans abuse?” but ultimately, that’s not a useful question. It longs for something that can never be. What happened happened. I’ve accepted it, and now I’m trying to own it and figure out where to go from here. I have grown while he abused me, don’t forget that. To deny my experience is to infantalize me, and invalidate all the work and growing I did during and in spite of the abuse. I have integrated this experience and blended it into my everyday life (because it was part of my everyday life). Pathological or not, it does no good to attempt to erase one part of my life.
So accept me for who I am. If you start taking out your precision scalpel to separate out which aspects of my existence are least upsetting to you, I’m just going to tip my hat to you, say good day, and keep walking.
Joan said,
March 29, 2010 at 8:04 pm
Thank you, thank you, thank you for this. Whew. As a former child welfare caseworker, I can only recall caseworkers trying to dissect people’s motivations based on what they were so sure they “knew” about their victimhood, instead of treating them as whole persons, and focusing on their personhood. I used to beg for sanity and to not treat children as little social work experiments. Whew. Good reading. Rocks my world, and in a very good way. Can’t wait to read more.