With Eyes Unclouded

When someone has been abused (and realizes it), the natural reaction is often to lash out at the abusers... do everything in your power to get them to stop hurting you, and to try to keep them from hurting others. This is fairly healthy.

But so often, it doesn't stop there. The person who has been hurt immediately jumps forward, starting a crusade against all similar types of abuse, wanting to make sure it "never happens to another person" (or perhaps more commonly "never to another child"). And while the intention may be good, all too often this is jumped into prematurely, with an incomplete understanding of the situation. Rather than trying to understand exactly what constitutes abuse in such situations, and why, all similar situations are lumped into one catch-all basket and branded as abuse. All persons in such a situation (especially children) are immediately labeled in the mind of the crusader as "victims"... and all those who fit the crusader's image of abusers are immediately labeled as the perpetrators of abuse that may have only occurred in the mind of the crusader. One popular example of this phenomenon is the field of recovered memories of childhood abuse, where verifiable incidents have been overshadowed by false memories of satanic ritual abuse. It is commonly known that such memories are most often the result of an overzealous facilitator coaxing the recover of memories along certain lines. But less commonly mentioned is the fact that such a facilitator must themselves have a motive to do this, and a likely one is the zealousness brought on by a personal experience along similar lines and a personal crusade against it happening again to another person.

Also rarely thought of is the fact that similar things could happen in other fields. Child psychology, for instance. Tonight I had the interesting experience of reading something written by a child psychologist who has specialized in the rather unique field of child abuse in group marriage settings. Apparently the majority of which were mormon polygamy, as she had been unfamiliar with the practice of polyamoury and associates polygamy with male dominance, sexual abuse of young women, forced marriage and similar things. She then displays her personal crusade against such things by insisting that (in the absence of conclusive research data) she is forced to lump polyamourous relationships into the same category as mormon polygamy with regard to the psychological effects they would have on children being raised in a polyamourous household. Rather than logically associating the negative effects on the child with the other directly abusive factors, she has associated all group marriage settings with the abuse and maintains that belief even in the absence of the other abusive factors.

I can't help but feel that such crusades against things are a pervasive part of our culture... maybe even hardwired into our species in some way. And it's not entirely a bad reaction, since similar crusades can indeed stop other harmful practices from being allowed to continue. But a line can be drawn, and needs to be. People need to stop jumping immediately into crusades against things they don't fully understand but have personally experienced or witnessed. They need to learn to react to the individual example that they have personally dealt with, take the time to learn about the overall phenomenon, and only then make a decision about whether or not to try to help others with their situations. Otherwise, you are almost certainly guaranteed to perform amazing mental gymnastics fitting your preconceptions into the framework of what you learn in order to help those other poor victims who depend on you to be their advocate.

It all comes down to this: in order to heal or protect (others or oneself) one must first learn to see with eyes unclouded by hate.

I swear, so much in life seems to come back to that quote...