WARNING: I am angry as I write this post and as a result it is raw and uncensored due to the subject matter. Read or don’t read…it is totally up to you.
I am a person who likes to read both sides of the political spectrum so that I can understand more fully the issues that we face today. George Will is a commentator that I have long followed because he is well thought of as a conservative reporter. But I read a piece of his where he asserts that 1 in 5 college women who experience sexual assault have a “coveted status.”
Here is his exact quote. “They are learning that when they say campus victimizations are ubiquitous ("micro-aggressions," often not discernible to the untutored eye, are everywhere), and that when they make victimhood a coveted status that confers privileges, victims proliferate.”
I have now put George Will in the category of asshole!
I am a survivor of childhood sexual abuse and have spent much of my early life becoming a survivor and not remaining a victim. I don’t plan on sharing details here, but for years in search of myself I have shared my story—not to be the privileged victim Mr. Will describes, but to learn how to live despite all the crap that had happened. I learned not keeping secrets empowers the one who was the victim and by sharing my story it has helped me heal and also shows other victims that one can survive with the truth out in the open.
The attitude that has prevailed toward women and children who finally find the courage to come forward and say, “I have been hurt”, does as much if not more damage to the person who was victimized. From personal stories of people I have met, to victims of the Priests of the Catholic church, to Sandusky at Penn State, I hear the roar of the defenders of the people accused and my heart breaks for the person who found the courage to speak out.
I have found no special privilege that Mr. Will described, not unless you call childhood isolation a privilege. Growing up with few friends, being a loner, depression, self loathing and abandonment by family (who could not believe my story), and self loathing because I was made to feel somehow responsible for what had happened. (Of course I don’t know many children at age 5 to 15 who have that much control in their life.) It took a long time for me to overcome my “privileges” as Mr. Will described.
I was so convinced that I was not worthy of anything good in life when I was a young women, that when my husband proposed to me I responded by saying, “You won’t love me when you know the truth about who I am.” I then proceeded, for the first time in my life, to tell him my story in order to convince him to go back to Pennsylvania without me. After listening to me tell him the “whole” truth of my experience, he looked me in the face and said, “that is horrible and I am sorry you had to go through that, but what has that got to do with me loving you. My feelings for you have not changed.”
For the first time in my life, there was a separation of who I was from what happened to me. That Mr. Will, came from love, not privilege.
I pray every day that the world measures it’s words carefully when faced with a person of courage, and trust me, it takes courage to speak the truth of sexual assault. It takes courage because of people like Mr. Will who believe that there are privileges to being a victim and people who support Mr. Sandusky or the Catholic Church, by saying the victims are only looking for money, or notoriety.
One more thing Mr. Will, victims proliferate because there are jerks out there who continue to abuse their power. I believe the number of victims have always been there, but sexual abuse has most always been kept a family secret.
I salute the heroes who have found the courage to speak up. Until we do, too many will continue to think we are seeking privileges…in the end we are all just seeking peace.
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