wingsoutstretched:

okay, look, when someone who has been the victim of domestic abuse talks about domestic abuse

whether as a child, a significant other, a spouse, even a helpless onlooker trapped in that cycle of abuse

you shut up and listen to them

it doesn’t matter if you don’t feel uncomfortable, troubled, or terrified by a video of a teen being violently ~punished on a hidden camera, or a child being forced to lie in the snow as some sort of ~strength training, or someone being “schooled” by having their laptop shot up by a man who clearly wields his gun as an open and perhaps unspoken threat to his family

if someone who has experienced real, actual abuse in their family, first or secondhand, tells you that something is problematic, you don’t reblog to tell them how stupid and overly sensitive they are. you fucking recognize that even though maybe you’ve been through bad shit in your life, you’ve never been through this particular kind of bad shit, and maybe you ought to sit down for a minute and actually listen. 

domestic abuse is a real thing, and its survivors (myself included) have a right to speak up about the terrifying nature of — yes — even passive threats of violence that are captured on video and touted as ~good parenting. so before you speak up, take a moment to think, and to listen. try to see things through the eyes of someone who sees beyond the moment captured on video to the life it implies. take a minute before you judge and defend. try to think. the thousands — millions? — of us who have suffered abuse will thank you for it.

(via widowings)