Emphasis added, again. Again, it sounds weird to frame rape/sexual assault in this way as a passive/accidental consequence of her doing “something monumentally stupid”.
Why do you think your daughter wouldn’t expect you to be appalled that some schmuck chose to hurt her, rather than just appalled that she somehow impersonally “was hurt”?
In my case, it was easier for my friend’s mom to believe that I was a 12 year old seductress than that her beloved 30 year old brother (my friend’s uncle) had done something wrong.
One of my Facebook friends, who says that she’s been harassed many times in her life because of her (formerly) very large breasts, pointed this out regarding the woman who said she’d been to more than 10 parties where she knew gang rapes were going on, and that the woman was nuts, to say the least, for at least not calling the police while this was going on, and for getting herself into a situation like that this many times.
I’m one of those people who agreed with her; the same thing is true for people who keep getting into bad relationships. This happens once - it’s their fault. This happens over and over again - something’s wrong with you. YMMV, of course.
My parents were the type who, if something untoward was going on, said that whatever we were doing to cause it, we’d better stop because it was embarrassing them. :dubious: Back when and where they were growing up, actually living a certain way was not as important as presenting the illusion that they lived that way.
I was definitely not critiquing his parenting, just trying to get additional information.
but note uh…noted.
Because my daughter and I understand each other.
This is not being framed in a weird way to anyone who isn’t looking to be offended.
Regards,
Shodan
Mod Hat On
Hijack over. The bolded part was unnecessary. No need to ascribe insulting motivations to posters questions.
No warning issued, but it’s time for everyone to move on.
I don’t think a lot of men realize how pervasive and deep-seated the idea that a girl/woman is the gatekeeper and responsible for what other people do to her body. Especially if you grew up in a pretty repressive religion and with parents who didn’t want to acknowledge that such things can happen. It would never have occurred to me to tell my parents because I had every reason to assume their response would be that it was my fault - something I said, did, didn’t do, etc, caused the “bad thing” to happen. I brought it on myself. My age was no mitigating circumstance. At age 56, I honestly still don’t know how they would have reacted if I had told them some of what happened to me before (or after) I moved out of their house, but I know that at the time, I absolutely believed all the fault would have been laid at my doorstep and any punishment would have been visited on me.
Watching and reading the news doesn’t convince me that much has changed in 50 years.
Maybe so, BUT: if you can’t set aside your feelings about their doing something that put them at risk, while you do your best to comfort them and help them deal with the trauma of being assaulted, then Houston, you’ve got a problem.
If there’s lessons they should take away from this, the time to bring that up is later. A good deal later, when they’ve healed enough to deal with risks in a rational manner.
I’ve never had to deal with this sort of situation, but I’ve had difficult relationships with each of my parents (separate relationships, since they separated when I was 21, and divorced shortly afterward).
Here’s the thing: a family is a whole web of relationships - brothers and sisters, grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins - and your parents occupy a place at the center of that web.
While it’s possible to keep up your relationships with the rest of your family while cutting off communication with a parent, it’s a hell of a lot harder. For most of us, it’s easier to keep the problematic parent(s) in our life for the benefit of more easily being part of the larger family, and just doing what we can to minimize the grief that problematic parent can throw at us.
That’s a pretty good post.
That said, there is such a thing as putting oneself in harms way.
I believe that is what the OP was stating he would be upset about.
Very good explanation of the various reaction processes, TruCelt.
Perhaps the saddest form of this failure. IOW they view life through a variant of the Just World hypothesis combined with extreme Risk Aversion, augmented by viewing themselves as having been dealt the weak hand. Therefore one must never push back or call attention to wrongs against oneself because the nail that sticks out gets hammered: assume that at least if you stayed in bounds and played by every rule you did all you needed to do. Because recognizing that sometimes evil will just reach out and prey on the innocent who are just minding their business, would mean* they have no way to save themselves* and that’s too much to bear.
Also involved in many cases in the dismissal is the “well, when*** I*** was faced with this I got over it”, wherein they translate how *they *once had to stoically bite the bullet and adapt to having no alternatives or power, into an inherent sign of strength of character.
This need not even be explicitly communicated or preached, it can be a general way of life about anything where conflict/power is involved, the children ***will ***observe and internalize it. The trust-building side of parenting is an active project.
Yes, when something terribly bad does happen, then too often the reaction is to panic and be overwhelmed by all the possible *further *negative consequences – family breakup, possibly harsher violent payback, legal hassles, social shame (related to the cult-of-virginity factor)-- that you *can *avoid by going into denial.
This is also related to the view that in any case better to keep the overall protective stability of the family/church/community than to defend the individual (which does not only affect sexual assault but many other issues of abuse of power).
Then of course, yes, there are the amoral fucking monsters who care more about themselves than the safety of their child. They DO exist and there’s more than we’d like to believe.
In my case, there were a number of factors. First, you kept your head down and didn’t attract any attention, especially with something which could become a problem.
Second, my father had already volunteered to me the details of how he had molested my sisters, and how my oldest sister was wrong for ratting him out to the bishop. The takeaway was that reporting the act was worse than the act itself.
Third, when my mother asked me if my older brother had done anything to me (after he had been caught molesting some boys at a YMCA camp) it was plain as fuck that it was too distressing to hear the truth and she needed to hear that nothing was wrong.
There is a huge resistance by many conservatives to the idea that people, especially women and girls aren’t at fault for being the victim of sexual assault.
The Mormon prophet I grew up with, Spencer Kimball, wrote a book saying it would be better for daughters to die rather than lose her virtue. They would preach to 12 year old girls that no one wanted used chewing gum.
Elizabeth Smart, the kidnapping victim said one reason she didn’t attempt to escape was that she had been raped, and her life was essentially over.
There must be some sort of idea in these parents who who get angry at a daughter for being assaulted at a party that the kid isn’t already blaming herself, and believes that reinforced mg it will somehow help — rather than having the opposite effect.
I’m not a fan of traditional religions because of this culture which promotes toxic shaming, with all of its negative consequences.
They’re amoral fucking monsters who care more about themselves than the safety of their child.
Reported. (Lic Marcos)
Why you did report?