blaming the victim

I'm an occasional reader of xoJane. It's a guilty pleasure, kindof my quasi-feminist version of a fashion magazine. The posts are mostly fluff, often from a cringingly young-and-inexperienced perspective, but sometimes there's one that strikes a chord. Yesterday's entry from Vanessa Formato, "I 'Accidentally' Read My Mom's Diary Over the Holidays and It Turned Out Terribly," was one of the latter.

Formato, a woman in her early 20s with a rocky mother-daughter relationship, describes getting an item out of her mother's bedside table drawer - with her mother's permission - and coming upon her open diary in the drawer. What she reads confirms her darkest suspicions that she is unloved and dredges up angry feelings about the way her mother treated her as a child/teen. (Side note - she mentions her mother's perfect cursive. Anybody else identify with that? Were you shamed for less-than-perfect penmanship by your mother like I was?) What follows is an examination of her feelings - her sadness, the anger that covers it - and some really insightful thoughts about who her mother is, why she parented the way she did, and how she might engage in some self-healing in order to avoid making the same mistakes.

You or I would probably wrap her up in a hug, tell her that we know exactly what that pain feels like, and tell her that it's NOT HER FAULT. I would want to tell her that I'm proud of her for figuring out some of these things in her 20s and encourage her to keep exploring those feelings.

Do you think the readers of xoJane shared this reaction? Oh, no no no. Here are some choice reactions:

"you're a bitch"
"She says YOU don't love HER. And you read that as SHE doesn't love YOU. I think that could be very telling about your relationship with her."
 "I very rarely think xojane should not publish a good story because of its content. But this, I don't know about."
"you would have been better off writing about it in your diary, and then letting it go."
"She never made you feel loved and you gave that back. What if you could just love her now?"
"you lack perspective"
"Sounds like you had a healthy dose of narcissism that manifested as defiance and victim hood."
"if you try my suggestions, and be the daughter she wants and the daughter you wish you could be, things will get better."
"Everyone lies and everyone keeps secrets, yourself included. Humans are pretty messy, accept it and enjoy the happy moments with your loved ones while you have them."
"This article was a major invasion of privacy and shame on you for asking to have it published and shame on XOJane for not having any integrity."
"It definitely sucks not to be loved by your parents, but whatevs. Shit happens."
"If you read another person's diary, you deserve to see whatever mean things are written about you in there."
"Your mother feels like you don't love her and you more or less confirmed that in this essay."
"you're jumping to conclusions about her diary entry"
"...it sounds like you and your mother have more in common than you'd like to recognize...except you might be a worse person for being completely oblivious to it"
"you're an incredibly shitty daughter. Time to own it. Especially if you want to play grown up."
"This feels kind of guilt-tripping and manipulative, though your reasons for that are damn clear. What are you going to get out of it?"

In other words: you're a childish and horrible person who doesn't consider her mother's feelings, and you deserve exactly what you're getting. You deserve to be unloved by your mother. You deserve to be criticized by us. You should shut up and sit down and try harder to be a loving, forgiving daughter. And *if* any of what you have said is actually true about your mother, you're just like her. But it's doubtful, because you clearly don't have any credibility when it comes to reporting your own experiences and feelings.
One commenter even goes so far as to insinuate that Formato is a pathological narcissist. The mother goes undiagnosed. Formato is pushed back toward the closet by people who don't seem to really grasp that emotional abuse thrives on secrecy.

Here's a quote from an essay of my own:

Now, regarding public bashing: talking about my feelings is not bashing. Nor is discussing my parenting goals. Owning and talking about my own truth is my prerogative. Part of my truth is that I have noticed that public comments such as this one generally contain more loving and accepting language than private conversations or written communication sent directly to me. In those types of conversations, I have been called delusional, hard-hearted, a poor communicator, and avoidant. I've been informed that her friends, when polled (kindof the older generation's version of blogging, no?), believe that she's entitled to disrespect her children's boundaries. I've been threatened with the "I hope your children do this to you someday" line, a classic conditional-parent move. I've been threatened with a lawsuit because physical access to my children is apparently more important to her than the effects of legal action on their family. These are all my personal experiences and mine to share.

If you don't want somebody to talk about how you abuse them, try not abusing them.

That's what I want to say to those commenters, and to Formato's mother. Fuck you and your protection of the abuser. Fuck you and your shaming of the abused.

I stuck up for her in the comments. I hope you'll join me. There is a scattering of support for her there, and I'd love for it to drown out the victim-shaming.

listening to shame

I just watched a powerful TED Talk from shame researcher Brené Brown. Wish I could embed it, but since I can't, I'll just ask you to follow the link, and I'll leave some quotes that caught my attention below:


"Vulnerability is not weakness, and that myth is profoundly dangerous... Vulnerability is our most accurate measurement of courage."

"Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity, and change."

"Shame drives two tapes: Never Good Enough, and if you can talk it out of that one, Who Do You Think You Are?"

"There's a huge difference between shame and guilt. And here's what you need to know. Shame is highly, highly correlated with addiction, depression, violence, aggression, bullying, suicide, eating disorders. And here's what you even need to know more. Guilt, inversely correlated with those things. The ability to hold something we've done or failed to do up against who we want to be is incredibly adaptive. It's uncomfortable, but it's adaptive."

"We're pretty sure that the only people who don't experience shame are people who have no capacity for connection or empathy. Which means, yes, I have a little shame; no, I'm a sociopath. So I would opt for, yes, you have a little shame."

"Shame is an epidemic in our culture. And to get out from underneath it, to find our way back to each other, we have to understand how it affects us and how it affects the way we're parenting, the way we're working, the way we're looking at each other."

"If you put shame in a Petri dish, it needs three things to grow exponentially: secrecy, silence and judgment. If you put the same amount of shame in a Petri dish and douse it with empathy, it can't survive. The two most powerful words when we're in struggle: me too."

"If we're going to find our way back to each other, vulnerability is going to be that path."

the loyalties you no longer recognize

Sometimes you read something and it's like somebody reached inside your brain, plucked your thoughts out, and wrote them down for you. It's a validating, affirming experience, especially if you're in a lonely place. That's how I feel about this post from Amy Eden's blog, Guess What Normal Is, in which she reminds her readers:

How will you know (a) that your family-of-origin is still dysfunctional (because when you begin to grow and heal, you’ll sometimes forget…after all you’re trained to forget), and (b) how will you know that you're really being a champion of your personal perspective, truth, and needs? 

The answer is this:  when your family starts to get agitated, mad, throw emotional darts, stop talking to you, ask if you’re depressed or having some kind of early menopause or cancer of the smart, loyal part of your brain – that’s how you’ll know.  You’re finally knowing what you want, seeing things as they are, not blaming yourself, not excusing their behavior, and starting to move past surviving and into thriving when the boundaries you’re setting—and the loyalties you’re no longer recognizing—invoke emotional itchiness in those around you; they’ll reach for whatever blackmail techniques they reach for when they feel threatened.  It’s the abandonment that we fear—which I fear, the withdrawal of my family from me just when I’m actually, finally living and behaving from the center of who I really am. 

Speaking out is the ultimate sin in a dysfunctional family. It's considered disloyalty, breaking of confidences, airing dirty laundry. If you really must talk about your (stupid little) (probably imaginary) problems, you should really only do it in private with your bestest, bestest friend. Never say it out loud in public, because goodness, what would people think?

Abuse thrives on shame and silence. Abusers know it's in their best interest to put on their Sunday Best in public and to act sweet in groups (We love each other soooo much! We're so close!) so that nobody suspects that in private, they're tearing apart the people they supposedly love. And if one of those torn-apart people dares to speak in public, they will deny everything. Who, us? But we're so sweet and cuddly! Everybody has their disagreements, but we loooooove each other! If that person continues to speak up, those still enmeshed in the dysfunction will act as one loyal unit to shame, blame, and otherwise try to cram the errant family member back into their rightful place.

Speaking up is a lonely, lonely, lonely place to be in.  Most people would prefer to believe that you're crazy or a histrionic, attention-whoring bitch, rather than consider that maybe what you say is true.

But speaking up is absolutely worth it. Claiming your autonomy, refusing to be treated poorly, telling the truth is absolutely worth it. When I speak the truth, I inevitably hear from people who recognize themselves in that truth, who feel silenced by their own dysfunctional families, who are grateful that somebody is talking about it out loud. And yes, it has to be spoken out loud, because the cost of membership in a dysfunctional family is voicelessness. We cannot police a person who has regained her voice and tell her when and where and how she may share her thoughts; to do so invalidates her and reinforces the shackles of the dysfunctional family.

I've been called an emotional vampire, self-centered, narcissistic, high and mighty. I've been labeled in absentia as suffering from borderline personality disorder (does my HMO have to pay if I wasn't present at the time of diagnosis?). All for what? For saying that it's not ok to treat me like crap, and that I won't remain in a relationship with people who do so. And for sharing those thoughts out loud.  Who are the people who treat me like their enemy? My brothers, my parents. The people who, if they were truly loyal to me, should recognize my troubles and be open to discussion and change are instead the least supportive people I know, preferring to call names and deny family history rather than work together to form healthier, more fulfilling relationships.  Apparently we only love each other sooooooo much when we all play by the pre-determined, soul-draining rules.

If you're feeling sucked backed into a family vortex, know this: you don't have to be loyal to people who were never, could never be, and will never be loyal to you. You owe them no allegiance.

To whom do you owe allegiance? Yourself. Give yourself your utmost loyalty. If you don't, who will?