My dad died shortly after I received the news of his illness. The Skype conversation we had before his death was an eye opener. Several of my relatives were present during the chat, relatives I haven’t seen since I was a child/teenager. Relatives who had no idea about the abuse and who believed that my husband forbade me from contact with my father because that was the excuse my father gave to explain away my absence. It was also the excuse he used to anesthetize himself when I confronted him about the abuse in my 20s. My father asked me why I had never let him meet his granddaughter. I never told him I had a child and I can only surmise a relative found out and passed the news along to him. I explained that in light of the events of my childhood I felt it was unsafe. He denied the abuse, said everything that happened was imaginary. If my entire childhood was imaginary does that mean I am a magical entity? At the end of the conversation he added that I looked old. The conversation proved to me once and for all that I had made the right choice in ending contact. My father hadn’t changed and his inability to take responsibility for his actions even at the last possible moment, without risk of any legal repercussions proved that he would never change in such a way as to make a relationship with him possible/healthy. He sexualized everything I did as a child, he reminded me at every possible moment that a woman’s purpose is to fulfill a man’s sexual desires, and he body shammed me relentlessly. Even his compliments were a form of emotional manipulation. He didn’t always shame me for how I currently looked but how I would look in the future and how that future me was going to be undesirable to men. My dad was just an asshole and I know people hate speaking ill of the dead but I spent so many years trying to euphemize his behavior and I won’t do that anymore. He was awful to the women in his life and he was proud of it. He felt entitled to women’s bodies and he objectified every single woman he met. For many years I saw my value only in my desirability to men and so a vast majority of my encounters with men came from a place of intense shame. Just today I skimmed through celebrity news titles (which I almost never do) and it was much of the same bullshit. Men raping women and women posing for sexy pictures. I am just done with it. I am done with a culture that says boys aren’t allowed to have feelings. I am done with a culture that tries to beat men straight. I am done with a culture that believes alcohol or a short dress is a legitimate excuse for rape. I am done with a culture that doesn’t even talk about all the boys getting sexually abused. I am done with a culture that promotes rape and enforces gender stereotypes.
If I had any advice to give to society it would be: Stop raising your kids to be assholes in order to protect them from bigger assholes. The world doesn’t need more assholes, period.
That concludes my rant for the time being. I don’t have any intentions of leaving WordPress I am just processing some things.
mindlovemisery 