Dichroic Reflections

pity, silence, and shame

I've been reading Misia's post, "No Pity. No Shame. No Silence". The post is interesting, compelling, and a good idea. The comments are downright scarifying, in the sense of flaying a protective skin off your emotions.

Though I am one of the lucky ones, just the cases I know of among my friends support the commonly heard statistic that 1 in 4 women have been sexually assaulted. Given that it's not necessarily something people want to talk about basic statistics tells me the real number must be higher. Even that isn't enough to know, though, because the definition is so vague and because it leaves out the men who have been violated (one male friend I know of, and his brother - others have undergone emotional abuse).

Still, I can't entirely concur in Misia's slogan. No Shame and No Silence, certainly. We need to do whatever it takes to put the blame on assaulters rather than on victims, to help victims feel less isolated and to let them see that healing is possible, and especially to help adused children understand it's not their fault. But No Pity? I have more trouble with that. No escaping the consequences, certainly, whether those include jail time, therapy, having their names shouted out so everyone will know and resulting ostracism, or all of the above. Sane adults bear the responsibility for their actions no matter what led them into those actions, even if they themselves were abused. Juveniles need to bear whatever consequences are appropriate to their age (therapy, juvenile detention, etc) to teach them those actions are not acceptable in this society. But even so, I can't manage no pity. I wouldn't want to be inexorablyand irreprieveably sentenced to living in the head of a person who would do / has done such a thing. I keep thinking of the little boy in Rilla of Ingleside who, during WWI, said the best punishment for the Kaiser would be to turn him into a really good man ... because then he would have to live with what he had done.