...but I didn't really, until this last week, because I had never experienced it directly.
I am finding the Duggar mess, and the way the media is covering it to be very triggering. I am upset by it because it brings back memories I thought I had dealt with long ago, and I should leave it alone, but I can't stop looking up every article that shows up in my Twitter timeline or RSS feeds.
First, the reason it is triggering.
I hesitate to describe myself as a sexual abuse survivor, because I have always felt that putting that label on my experience diminished the experience of those who survived REAL abuse, but it is still with me.
When I was in seventh grade I was already wearing a B-cup, and a boy sitting in the desk behind me in my core studies class decided it would be fun to reach up between the desks that were arranged in pairs to touch my breasts. I assume the teacher never saw it; at least she never reacted to it. I would have been about 12 at the time, and I had enlighten parents who had always answered any questions I had, about sex or anything else, but I was still confused, and didn't understand why I was finding this particular touching so very upsetting. I didn't know how to tell the teacher about it. "He keeps touching me," seemed a very whiny and childish complaint. I did tell my parents, but again could not find the language to tell them what was really happening. If either of my parents had actually understood they would have raised hell. They suggested I ask the teacher to move me to the front of the room so I could see the board better (I am very nearsighted) so I could solve the problem without having to give a reason that I couldn't seem to articulate. It worked briefly, until he got the teacher to move him so he was behind me again. I threatened to tell the teacher if he didn't stop, and he threatened to cut my breast with his pocket knife if I did. He even took the knife out of his pocket, and it was a silly little pen knife that was not in the least threatening. I had been carrying a real pocket knife in my purse since second grade (both then and now, I consider pocket knives tools, not weapons, and have to very carefully go through my purse before I fly). I didn't feel threatened by him, but I couldn't MAKE HIM STOP. It went on until the anger and frustration got the better of me, and I cried. Then he stopped, and even apologized, which made absolutely no sense to me at the time.
I have had more than forty years to understand the power dynamics of that little bullying incident, and it still bothers me a bit sometimes that I let him make me cry. A shieldmaiden of the Rohirrim does not let a pissant little bully make her cry. She steps on him like a bug (and part of my frustration at the time was that the social constraints of being a straight-A student didn't allow me to step on him) or ignores him with icy dignity. If this can still come back to bite me in the ass when I least expect it, despite the most supportive family possible, and education that has helped me to make as much sense of it as possible, what is this much more intimate betrayal doing to Duggar's victims?
And that is what keeps pulling me back to the story. I keep waiting for someone to pay attention to the victims. They talk about how he was only 14 (as if his youth makes it less abusive somehow), how a youthful "mistake" should be forgiven (as if anyone but his victims has the right to forgive him). The unspoken subtext of many of the conversations I'm seeing and reading in the media is that inappropriate touching by a 14 year old may may be wrong, or sinful, but it isn't really abuse. Making him the subject of every sentence is not just making the girls the object. It's making them disappear completely.
