Okay.

I’m still not over what happened yesterday; in fact, I don’t think I’m going to be over it for a long time. Because what happened yesterday is that a number of people who identify as victims/survivors of abuse said “This looks like abuse to me and this is why,” and a number of other people who do not identify as victims/survivors of abuse jumped into defend and apologise for the behaviour which had been identified as abusive — and the worst thing about it is that a lot of the people who did this are people who generally recognise that invalidating others’ lived experiences is not okay. Yet for some reason in this situation it was considered “okay” to jump into a post where a self-identified survivor of abuse was talking about her own experiences and say “while I completely understand everything that you’re saying, parents are human”.

Like. No. That’s not okay. This was not a discussion about parenting styles and whether corporal punishment is ever appropriate; this was a discussion about whether what one person did to punish his daughter for expressing a negative opinion about him to her friends was abusive or not. That post was not a forum for someone who does not identify as an abuse victim/survivor to wade in and tell someone who does identify as an abuse victim/survivor that “parents are human” and maybe what he did was over the line but we all make mistakes: it was a post where a victim/survivor of abuse was asking people to shut up and listen while she explained why what this guy did was not okay and why minimising (justifying, defending, celebrating, etc.) that behaviour was problematic on a social level and triggering on a personal level.

And it makes me so angry that I got called ‘condescending’ for telling someone to “just stop” doing that: stop actually condescending to a self-identified victim/survivor of abuse by telling her that “parents are human”, stop derailing the conversation by removing the focus from what this guy did and trying to make it about parenting styles in general, stop victim-blaming by supposing for no reason except to defend the father that the daughter is some kind of juvenile delinquent for whom all else has failed and the only option left is to teach her a lesson with a gun: just stop. Like, look. When victims/survivors of abuse are talking about their experiences with abuse — and I’m not talking about me right now but about @deadasdisco who outed herself as a victim/survivor of abuse in the post which started the conversation — and you’re not a victim/survivor you need to shut up and listen. It’s not condescending to tell you to do that. It’s condescending that you’re not doing it.