LilyPat, I don't feel attacked - I'm actually glad for the opportunity to say a few things here. And I'm not trying to attack you either, I'm just genuinely unsure about the various issues being touched upon here, and where each begins and ends. And I've been genuinely unsure about them for quite a while now - it's starting to become quite annoying!
Regarding Anna Nicole, there comes a point in everyone's life (with luck) where, no matter what got done to you, you realise that you are only hurting yourself by continuing to allow it, whatever "it" was, to drive your behaviour. If Anna Nicole was smart enough to be a Playboy bunny, if she was smart enough to marry a very old rich guy, she should have been smart enough to take a moment somewhere in the many years of her life to take a good hard look at herself, and the world. And she doesn't appear to have done this. Life can be cruel, life can be hard, but it gets a whole lot crueler and harder than the conditions Anna Nicole experienced. She doesn't need extra pity from me now that she's dead, just in case she was a victim of abuse or MC. (The only thing that makes me pity her is the thought that she may have been murdered). What she needed was for someone to encourage her to snap out of the silly little world she inhabited when she was alive. But I'm guessing she would have strenuously resisted any such encouragement. Again, as much reason for scorn as pity, in my opinion.
(This post is turning into a mish-mash of ideas, so I'll slip this one in here: Regressing to a childish state of mind isn't necessarily pathological, btw. It can be a symptom of a damaged personality, it can be tactic used to manipulate others, but it can be a way for the personality as a whole to go where it needs to go in order to remain healthy, or to
regain health even).
Yes, it's true, I'm angry at women - angry and resentful (I'm angry at men too, if that's any consolation!). Some look at a strip club and see exploited young women who quite likely were abused as children, others look and see pretty young girls who use their bodies and their beauty to extract money from the greedy and weak boys that frequent the place. Others again look and see a demand being met by a supply, and feel all warm and fuzzy inside at the percieved beauty of the inherent symmetry and perfection of the exchange. I don't know what the truth is...but you want me only to automatically pity such girls? Not likely.
But strip clubs are just an extreme case of a more general situation. Relations between men and women seem to have become more and more about mutual exploitation than anything else. The ego has taken charge of something only the id should be responsible for organising. Too much ego and sex, not enough id and love.
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I'm no stranger to the idea that child abuse is a widespread phenomenon. I guess reading
Jeffrey Masson introduced me to the idea. Funny story with that is, after reading Masson's book, I later did a few gender studies units at Uni, and the young feminist lecturer wouldn't hear a good word about Masson.
One idea which I will share, because I think it's worthy of at least a once-over, is the question of exactly how damaging child sexual abuse is in and of itself, and how much more damaging does it become for the victim once, as the years pass, the realisation dawns that there is a huge universally accepted spiteful hatred of the child abuser, and that as a victim of a child abuser, the child/young adult is, now and forever, associated with a behaviour which is universally hated, and universally considered to be profoundly wrong. This kind of guilt on its own can be crushing.
