Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Sarah Over the Moon

Home
New Visions
No Experience Necessary?

No Experience Necessary?

Last updated on: July 6, 2013 at 6:52 am by Sarah Moon

No Experience Necessary? 2013-07-06T06:52:24-05:00 Sarah Moon

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

If you wanted an expert opinion on something, usually you’d ask someone with experience on the subject. If you wanted parenting advice, you’d probably ask someone who was a parent, not someone who babysat their siblings a few times. If you wanted to know what sky-diving was like, you’d probably ask someone who’d been skydiving, not someone who’d watched a video of someone skydiving on YouTube.

It just makes sense. Experience gives you an insight into a subject that books and Google cannot give you. It’s why musicians have to practice and perform, not just study theory. It’s why people majoring in education have to complete a year of student teaching before they graduate.

Experience is important, and usually we recognize that and respect the opinions of those who have experience in a subject.

But when someone is a survivor of abuse or injustice, one’s experience can actually prevent one from being taken seriously. If there’s anything I’ve learned in my short time as a blogger, it’s this.

I recently wrote a post responding to a fellow Christian blogger who wrote a version of the popular “good girl is corrupted by a bad boy” narrative. In that post, I argued that this narrative reminded me of my own experience in an abusive relationship. The “good girl” in the story does not consent to a sexual relationship with the “bad boy,” but is manipulated by a man who refuses to take “no” for an answer.

This Christian blogger responded and he had a lot of dedicated followers and many of them defended him, which is fine. People are going to disagree. It happens and I’ve been blogging long enough to be used to it.

What disturbed me, however, is how some of these followers disagreed.

Here are a few examples:

Many of the women who came at you have probably been victims and it has caused them to filter everything through that. They won’t be able to see anything other than what reflects through their own pain. I have real sympathy for them. For those that are just bitter and argumentative nags, not so much.

—————————————————————-

Read the story. And the issues that it brings up from YOUR PERSONAL STORY need to be dealt with. I empathize, truly. But the best way to deal with those personal issues is not crucifying a guy who wrote a fictional story that somehow reminded you of past or present pain. The arrows you’re shooting at Cory won’t heal your pain.

—————————————————————–

If you guys are that upset about a story, perhaps you should seek therapy. Displaced anger can be a nasty thing.

You get the point.

The not-so-subtle implication here is that my experience, rather than giving me insight as to what a harmful relationship looks like, actually disqualifies any opinion that I may have on the subject. According to these commenters, and many others, because of my history with abuse, I am now a helpless victim, stripped of my ability to think for myself.

Any criticism I have is considered invalid because it is assumed that my pain clouds my logic. Any anger that I may express is assumed to be misplaced, because I apparently don’t have the mental capabilities to separate any anger I still feel toward my abuser from my other emotions. Any argument I bring up can be hastily tossed aside by faux concerns for my mental health.

Survivors–who have already likely escaped situations in which abusive partners were constantly tearing down their self-esteem and causing them to second-guess themselves at every turn–do not need to be treated like this.

And frankly, we know what these people are doing. Often our experience with being abused makes us experts on recognizing controlling behavior.

We see through the “real” sympathy, and through the condescending, paternalistic suggestions that we receive therapy. We know that they don’t care about our well-being as survivors of abuse.

If they did, they would LISTEN to us.

We can tell that their comments are means of silencing us, of diluting our legitimate points by portraying them as irrational.

We survivors may be hurt. We may be struggling to recover.

But we are not ignorant. In fact, we know more about what abuse looks like than we could ever want to.

And we are not stupid, but we can tell when people think we are and it’s insulting.

When people refuse to listen to survivors of abuse, they deny humankind the wealth of insight that survivors have into the minds of abusers. When people refuse to listen to experienced survivors, abusers win. Abusers are experienced too. They thrive on secrecy and ignorance. They know how hide their actions and disguise their true intentions.

Abuse will only end if people stop treating survivors as victims in need of rescue and start treating them as experienced experts on survival whose opinions on the subject are not only legitimate, but invaluable.

As survivors, our pain doesn’t cloud our minds. It broadens them.

Listen to us.

Religion and Spirituality

survivor

Previous Post

June 25, 2012

Guest Post at Travis Mamone's blog!

Next Post

July 10, 2012 On Cornerstone...

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Uncategorized

Select a Month June 2017 March 2017 November 2016 October 2016 July 2016 June 2016 March 2016 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Who said, "Your people will be my people and your God my God"?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Ruth Bathsheba Esther Leah