Bad dream
I had a dream last night that I found out my nephew was being molested and I had to tell his parents. What a horrible dream. I was so relieved when I woke up and realized it was just a dream, but at the same time, I feel oddly “spooked” this morning. Ugh!
Over the years of writing this blog, I’ve come to be very accepting of the different ways that survivors heal. What worked for me, may not work for you. We’re individuals, with our own issues tied to the specifics of what happened, and saying that there’s only one way to heal would be foolish. Some…
Pin What I want to address, however, is how our society defines victims and how it leaves far too many people behind. The article above is a great example. How many people, if asked about sex trafficking, picture little white girls or women abducted from Target? Probably a lot. For many, the only information they’ve ever gotten about trafficking are warnings about Target or shopping mall parking lots from their Facebook friends. They don’t know how many teenage boys from broken homes, living in poverty, are pulled into being trafficked. How many gay youths, rejected by their families, fall victim to it? How many immigrant children here, with no parental supervision, are sold off by the people who should be protecting them from sexual slavery?Â
Those stories, even if they’re told, are not going to grab national headlines. They are not going to evoke world-wide outrage and sympathy. Those are things that happen to “other people”. We might even be tempted to start looking for reason why it’s their own fault, or at least the parents fault, right?Â
From a media perspective, we also have to keep this in mind. An abduction of a young white girl from her home, is a rare event. It’s actually newsworthy because it happens so rarely. When it happens, it’s shocking. A trans, minority, teen being coerced into selling themselves, with no one to turn to for protection, isn’t any of those things. A gay male teen being kicked out of their parents house and trying to make it through homelessness, is also not something that happens so rarely that there would be major news coverage of it. These things happen all of the time. So often, that they aren’t really news.Â
So, which group should we have support and services for? I’d like to vote for ALL OF THEM. But that will take educating people about the reality of who gets abused, who gets trafficked, and for us all to accept that it happens everywhere. Until we get there, and are willing to see all different types of people as victims, we will continue to fail one group or another. That’s not acceptable.Â
I saw this comment pop up on the site this evening, and thought this was a serious topic that I really want to have a discussion about. Unfortunately, I’m also leaving for San Antonio early in the morning so I won’t have time to give this enough thought to form a proper answer for a…
Pin I get it. The people who write these laws live in a world where kids all have a loving family who cares about them and want only to protect them from the evil that exists “out there.” They will provide whatever help and information their kids need, and there’s no need for them to navigate the wildness of the internet. But we make information available to kids online because that’s not their reality. They don’t have supportive parents, they get kicked out for being gay, they are being abused at home, they are dealing with mental health issues their parents refuse to acknowledge, and they are often alone in trying to get help.
Those kids need an open internet.
Pin The recent news about the passing of SurveyMonkey CEO Dave Goldberg caught my attention not just because he was in the tech industry, like I am, or that he was married to Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg which made him somewhat more famous than most, but because he was 47. Yeah, I work in a similar…
Pat asked an interesting question in the comments of the last entry, and I wanted to expound a bit further on the idea: My question is: do you find that the fact that you’re a chid abuse survivor turns people off from you? It’s not that I tell people about my past. When I encounter…
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was this just a dream or was it real if it is real tell somebody dont hide it it needs to be stopped todauy not tomorrow not the next dat today
No, it was just a dream.