What a thread...I've held off posting due to fear of being flamed (yeah, I'm ashamed of that
) but it's so weird and new to see people who I've known for years as outspoken critics of not just slavery, but also of imperialist aggression being lashed out at as ignorant enablers--or worse. And when Project Willow--a survivor and activist--was attacked, I wasn't sure that anything I could say here would be welcome. But parel has apologized and toned down the rhetoric and today especially I needed to post about the way that home-grown 1st world systems of sexual enslavement are almost entirely ignored by just about everyone. Perhaps parel is so new here that she's unaware that there are a number of survivors of cult and/or govt. funded, intelligence agency-run abuse rings who read and sometimes post here. I'm a survivor of such a system and, when I've approached high-profile activists to ask that they acknowledge that ordinary Americans of all sexes and races are being systematically exploited sexually via traumatic sexual abuse-induced dissociation and programming,
the silence is deafening. And with their next blog, these women went right back to their tight focus on 3rd world women and children ONLY--as though people who look like me simply do not matter.
RI is almost alone in giving us a voice and even here we face pretty predictable sneering from mostly the same individuals if we raise that voice. But there are so many deeply interested people here (some of them posting in this thread), that our stories are heard in the end, even if some posters remain unconvinced by our personal narratives. Today I got a PM from a long-time lurker who's like me and has had missing time while in the company of certain predatory men. Since the exploitation of highly dissociative individuals is virtually unknown here in the US or anywhere else, this form of sex slavery remains invisible and deniable. Most of us take years to remember even just fragments of the incidents and then we wonder if the perp is still preying upon other people like us and feel hopeless and ashamed that we can't expose this most insidious and hidden practice.
I do get that the activists who turn a deaf ear are probably just trying to preserve what little crediblity they've managed to garner so far. And I understand that the public has a limited attention span and also is probably looking for a reason to be able to ignore sex slavery of any sort, lest they feel obligated to do something about it. But the exclusion from the conversation is maddening for a survivor like me. We don't need prejudice and infighting within the ranks of activists too.
LilyPat
