Cognitive Dissonance … my husband recently said ‘it’s every guys dream to sleep with their teacher’ … the fact that this is so ingrained in our culture as a coming of age for boys is what causes this deep rift in not being able to call it abuse. They were conquering not being conquered (this is the cognitive dissonance). They weren’t conquering but being abused and many are just not ready to accept this as their story. Supremacy culture goes after boys and men first, the normalcy of male circumcision is another piece of this story.
I know it can feel like language fails us to describe this, but we can name it: it’s abuse. It’s an abusive relationship when an adolescent has a sexual relationship with an adult. It’s abuse when a teacher has a sexual or romantic relationship with a former student—not just creepy. Recently a story came out about Cormac McCarthy when the ages were similar, and the woman seems ok with what happened, but we don’t have to be. He abused his power as an adult over a vulnerable child.
Male victims are severely undervalued—and u mean that even in cold hard numbers, what we’ve seen in lawsuits about institutional betrayals of male victims, they have gotten far less and we all think it’s ok. We don’t have to perpetuate that devaluing, which only serves patriarchy.
Lastly, in terms of language failing us, that’s baked into the foundation of this country in slavery, a whole economic and social system built on rape of Black women. It might seem awkward to, for example, call Thomas Jefferson a child predator, but we know he was. Sally Hemings was Macron’s age.
Cognitive Dissonance … my husband recently said ‘it’s every guys dream to sleep with their teacher’ … the fact that this is so ingrained in our culture as a coming of age for boys is what causes this deep rift in not being able to call it abuse. They were conquering not being conquered (this is the cognitive dissonance). They weren’t conquering but being abused and many are just not ready to accept this as their story. Supremacy culture goes after boys and men first, the normalcy of male circumcision is another piece of this story.
I know it can feel like language fails us to describe this, but we can name it: it’s abuse. It’s an abusive relationship when an adolescent has a sexual relationship with an adult. It’s abuse when a teacher has a sexual or romantic relationship with a former student—not just creepy. Recently a story came out about Cormac McCarthy when the ages were similar, and the woman seems ok with what happened, but we don’t have to be. He abused his power as an adult over a vulnerable child.
Male victims are severely undervalued—and u mean that even in cold hard numbers, what we’ve seen in lawsuits about institutional betrayals of male victims, they have gotten far less and we all think it’s ok. We don’t have to perpetuate that devaluing, which only serves patriarchy.
Lastly, in terms of language failing us, that’s baked into the foundation of this country in slavery, a whole economic and social system built on rape of Black women. It might seem awkward to, for example, call Thomas Jefferson a child predator, but we know he was. Sally Hemings was Macron’s age.