Jun 11, 2020
Abuse Is No Excuse
Warning: This piece contains discussions covering rape and abuse that may be difficult for some people to read
I was 14 when I was raped
I was alone, frightened; had nowhere to turn to
It was the 80s. The law didn’t even recognise people like me could be raped and in no small part because the law refused to accept that people like me existed
I had been abused for years prior to that point, would be abused for years more, and that in turn cut off several other possible avenues of support for me
I was 14 when I was raped and I was alone, frightened, and had nowhere to turn
31 years later I still remember how I felt; the sheer horror and numb despair inside me, how it tasted whenever I tried to eat
And above all else the terror I lived in knowing I would be seeing again, and again, and again the person who raped me because this was a peer-on-peer assault and there was no way out of seeing them; knowing I’d have to paint on a smile and pretend nothing had happened, become complicit in my own abuse
Well, that’s not quite true. There was one way out. Two weeks later would be the first time I tried to kill myself
It didn’t take
I added the failure to the list of other failures I was convinced I was because of the abuse I was living with, tallied it alongside the growing awareness inside that I deserved to be raped, that I’d somehow led him on even though I hadn’t done anything. I mean, I must have done, right? It was my fault. Of course it was my fault. It was the only possible way to explain how the abuse that was happening to me could be happening. There had to be a good reason and the only good reason was that I was an abomination that deserved it
Because that’s the thing about abuse of any kind. It can make you believe that you deserve it; that it’s all justified
It took me a very long time to crawl out from that mindset. A very long time to learn that this is how abusers work; how they operate. They find all the ways to get in your head; to convince you that what’s happening isn’t just normal but also right. That, frankly, you deserve it
Rape isn’t about sex — It’s about power. I know there are a lot of people who struggle with that concept. What can be meant by rape not being about sex. Surely that is exactly what it’s about?
No, forced unconsenting sex is the tool. It’s the fact that it’s forced — unconsented to — that’s the point of it, what the abuser is after. Every form of abuse — at its heart — is about the same thing; stripping away the ability of the person being abused to make a choice. It’s about stripping away their dignity, their autonomy, their power
Rape is about power. All abuse is about power
It is the act of stripping away the autonomy and dignity of another that is the act of abuse —
— and it’s why Rowling’s latest ad hoc attempt at trying to justify the unjustifiable is abusive
Her writing is filled with all the standard lies and deceptions that trans people have come to expect from transphobes and so-called trans exclusionary radical feminists (who, despite Rowling’s claims, were named that by other radical feminists, notably by radical feminists of colour)
Her writing is filled with attempted justification after attempted justification about why it’s okay to strip away the dignity of trans people; to strip away from us the simple dignity of being recognised as just the women and men we say we are
Her writing is filled with attempted justification after attempted justification about why it’s okay to strip away the autonomy of trans people; to strip away from us the simple ability to say that we are who we are — that we are women, or that we are men — and instead tries to justify forcing onto us that we must be only what another with power over us allows us to be
Her writing is filled with attempted justification after attempted justification about why it’s okay to strip away the dignity of non-binary people; to remove from non-binary people the simple dignity of being recognised at all; and from that very act of depersonalisation; that act of saying that non-binary people don’t even exist that she attempts to justify ripping away the most basic aspect of autonomy that any person has — the right to exist
And underneath it all she attempts to pin her arguments together based on her own personal experiences of domestic abuse and sexual assault
I grieve for what she’s been through. I know first hand that pain; the terror, the fear, the absolute despair and feeling of being so trapped there’s no way out except death and even then that does not always offer a way out. I truly grieve for the things she’s been forced to live through
But I will not stand by and allow her to try and use that as a weapon to leverage abuse against others without speaking out
Abuse is no excuse
To engage in an act of abuse — to engage in acts that attempt to strip the dignity and autonomy of others — is to engage in an act of abuse. There is no ‘if’ about it; no ‘but’; no ‘maybe’. It’s abuse and it cannot be justified —
— ever
And to attempt to justify it with your own experiences of being abused is to do nothing more than to continue the cycle of abuse. It is to engage in an act that uses the experiences of abuse of others to try and justify your own act of abuse. And it is an act that diminishes each and every single one of us that have survived abuse
Those of us who have lived through abuse and have survived to the other side know full well what it did to us, the cost it demanded of us just to simply survive. So many of us didn’t make it this far; didn’t get the chance to survive, were murdered at the hands of their partner, or peer, or parent, or driven to taking their own life because of the same
We survived. And we should — must — know better than to continue the cycle of abuse
I know my own past. I know what it did to me. I know the scars it’s left me with. But not a single one of those things is ever justification for me to abuse another
Never
Because at the heart of all of this there is one simple truth that we must all face
Abuse is not an excuse
