So as some of you know, my grandparents on my father’s side were world-class assholes. And his maternal grandmother, too. However, despite the fact that the entire family knows about the shit these people did, my eldest aunt is still holding out for a byew-tee-ful pikchur of her parents.
For one of my first posts on this (which is kinda screwy, in the sense that it doesn’t all make sense):
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=33930&pagenumber=2
It’s about halfway down the page
So anyway. I’ve been emailing her about various things for a few days now, and then she hits me with an email including this gem:
“As to the fabled failings of our ancestors … the well has been hopelessly contaminated by “recovered memories””
To which I responded:
Which, from what I have heard, are about as accurate as any other recovered memories anyone has ever had. That is to say, very much so. Not all “recovered memories” are the result of a piece of shit psychologist looking to get the patient well and bloody confused and pay more for therapy. And to date I have heard no such thing from any of my relatives (regarding shitty therapists), so not only do I believe what they remember, I do not believe those who try to invalidate their memories. So you know.
But then, people who try to rewrite history by challenging the losers rarely get good marks in my book. Or in many [family name]s’ books, for that matter. Which I’m sure you’re aware of, and which is why I know you are merely looking out to make sure people don’t go telling a story that is too saturated in bad stuff and doesn’t include any of the good stuff. Which, truth be told, can be a difficult thing not to do.
She continues:
“As perhaps you know, several of my siblings read, and recommended to each other, the same book, and, amazingly, came up with the same memories, although they told their memories only to their shrinks.”
I respond:
When you have the same people doing the same stuff, their victims are going to remember similar things. They are not all going to have the exact same memories about everything, and well they shouldn’t, because that would most likely be more than just very curious. But the idea that the memories are fake or wished . . . I don’t buy that for a second. Not one second. So if this is what you’re trying to convey, I think you may wish to go elsewhere.
Her: Their memories matched up with the book, though.
Me: Which, in the psychological community, gives them credibility. It doesn’t challenge same credibility.
Her: I don’t believe [aunt’s maternal grandmother] did rough surgery with scissors on children’s genitals, but that is not my problem and I wouldn’t dream of bringing it all up again.
Me: Then we will again agree to disagree, as the stories I have heard, and my experience with relevant matters both in peoples’ lives and in the psychological community, tell me that it would take a phenomenal case of Munchausen Syndrome. And it would be widespread throughout their life, not one isolated incident, which definitely makes it not MS.
Her: Horrifying stuff, but not, on their part, sexual perversion.
Me: Exactly. And that’s not the sexual perversion I know about.
Her: I don’t know of any accusations against Mama (except that she didn’t save us from [maternal grandmother]).
Me: Or, for that matter, her own husband or the wickedness of her own self, let alone her actions. But perhaps this is again a case where we should agree to disagree.
It continues in a sympathetic vein, which isn’t really part of the overall picture, and then goes to this:
Her: [Aunt’s older brother] was without question confused, sexually, and hoped to undo the repression that his parents and [his grandmother], following the dictates of the Church, had taught us.>
Me: Which means either he was an unwilling party who didn’t see it as bad, or he did what most other people who are molested (and molest again) do, which is to derive power in the same way it was taken from him. Innocence, too.
But when you get into a situation where someone is significantly older and still doing that stuff, that whole “dictates of the Church” bit goes willingly out the window and you have an honest-to-God pedophile on your hands, I don’t care what repression you want to bring into it. Others of Dad’s kids, raised in the same situation, didn’t molest their siblings or anyone else’s.
Her: I have heard rumors that [same older brother] messed with the school children. I don’t think [grandmother], Mama or Daddy did.
Me: It was also at [the school], where he was forced to leave or parents of some of the older girls were going to sue. He was forced to leave twice. His parents maintained that several of the girls in that class were nasty in the not-nice sense. I don’t know that appearance, as it is very often not even a factor, played into it.
I have nothing to confirm that they did. I have every reason to suspect it. But unlike in other cases, I do not have solid evidence that they did, so when I tell stories about the bad parts of my family (and I don’t include only the bad parts), I do not say that I know for sure they did anything to the kids at their school.
Her: Daddy and I adored each other. We had a perfectly normal and appropriate relationship.
Me: Then you would be the lucky one. For others of your siblings, as I an certain you have heard and in fact know, did not have normal or anywhere near appropriate relationships with their father. Or even relationships at all.
Her: Mama liked to believe that all her little children were happy and good. So yes, she was a facilitator, and in denial and all that stuff. When you read her letters to her mother, you will understand better what she was going through.
Me: I have read some of them, and I have also talked to various people about events affecting her relationship with her mother and her husband. She’s also a victim, though as I have said and as I will always maintain regardless of what other people tell me, being a victim does not allow you to make victims.
Her: I think the Chirch is to be blamed for much of what happened to us as children.
Me: I think the opposite just as strongly. For the Church does not condone child-molesting. And I would know otherwise were that the case. Perhaps people acted thinking stupidly that the Church believed it or condoned it, but then you can say you’re doing anything in the name of the Church or what have you. That doesn’t make it the Church doing it, that makes it a child molestor, for example, doing it and having a really shitty excuse.
The Church has done many Very Bad things, to be sure. The Crusades, for example. But this . . . no. Or at least, as I said, we will have to agree to disagree, because even WITH the Church condoning it, it still isn’t anywhere near right.
Her: We were supposed to be pure so we would choose celibacy and enter the Church as nuns or priests (for girls are not much good, and a nun is the best they can do)
Me: You know,you’d be surprised how many people think just the opposite, and how many in fact used to. Many of them, in fact, religious conservatives. And as we all know unless e have kept our eyes shut the past fifty years (which, those of us who had eyes fifty years ago, we did not do), things were more conservative back then than they are now.
Her: She was bedridden during those years, but when we moved to Vienna she helped [youngest sister], [younger sister], and [younger brother], with the results you know of.
Me: I do. And I know of nothing that would require those results, or even encourage them. And it is entirely possible to be more wicked when you cannot move. And when you are being treated badly by someone who cannot (or prehaps chooses not to) move, you know that if you do move you will get it way worse next time.
I have heard that [your grandmother] was bedridden by necessity and by choice. Which, given my grandmother’s wish to be coddled (which is a survival tactic to a point, and with that same point can also be incredible evil), I can see very easily being the case.
Her: It did not, of course, occur to her that if she abandoned the rage and indignation, the pain would no longer trouble her. She blamed it on the folks that annoyed her. That does not work.
Me: Not wholly. But if you have someone, or someones, who were evil to you, you are perfectly justified in being as furious at them as physically possible. You also hurt yourself a great deal by doing that. And if you have a condition that is precipated by events you cannot deny or get rid of, or even help to soothe with therapy (which she, to my knowledge, did not do), that can work very legitimately. So long as you do not go then and inflict pain on others because of pain that was inflicted upon you, for which in this case I can see no excuse.
Her: I’m working on abandoning rage and indignation, myself. That’s why I have stopped working with gardeners … I started getting too angry when they didn’t manifest the reverence for life that I feel. But, if you’re trying to grow roses, some heads have to roll.
Me: You know, I agree on the garden part but not in the fact that this can be used as a metaphor. If you’re going to grow roses and you’re doing it the wrong way (this would of course have nothing do to with the plant), you must make sure that the roses know it and are okay with it, because if they desire, in their hearts, to be tulips or daisies or grape vines, you’re not going to do any good making them grapevine-shaped roses.
Her: And I hope you don’t blame Mama and Daddy for what was not their fault.
Me: I don’t blame them for what was not their fault. I do blame them for what was their fault. Simple as that.
That’s about half of the letter. Other stuff I deleted in this post because it wasn’t relevant. And of course names have been deleted. You want to think that’s cowardice, go right ahead. I don’t.
So I have finally, finally said my piece to my aunt. She spewed her “wisdom” and bullshit. I responded. I know I was rude. I just hope I wasn’t rude beyond the point of “you need someone to push this bullshit out of your head, I don’t care who it is.”
Aunt, you will not convince me that the actions of your parents and grandmother were condoned by anyone. You will furthermore not convince me that this somehow makes it right. You are free to have your own opinions which derive not so much from fact as from what you wish were true. When you goes telling other people your opinions as though they were fact, you will get shot down. You saw that today. Offended by it? I’m offended by you. You try to tell me half-truths and mire them in wishful thinking and “oh, but they could have been worse, and they had their reasons”, and don’t think for a fucking SECOND I’ll buy it. I know my shit here. I’m not going to let you promulgate anything you’ve planted in your head about your dear parents, no matter how much you wish it were true.
And if you do that, or try to do that, or I hear that you’ve done that, I will call you out. And I will not be anywhere in the general fucking vicinity of alone in calling you out, so you can take your “recovered memories” bullshit and your line about how anyone thought it was okay, what they did, and shove them so far into your rose garden you reach the bottom level of the bullshit you spew every fucking day. Because I do not buy it.
Let us say that she coped with the shit she got by harming her kids (not molesting them . . . at least not that I have heard), all of whom are grown up now. At least one of whom still bears the physical scars. So that would be just desserts, except I am not going to put myself in the kind of situation where I could get in trouble. She will die at some point, and hopefully the lies will as well. And if they do not, as I sid I an others will reveal the truth because our desire in life is not for things to look rosy but for them to look real.