Xanphibian, thank you.

[icarus]

Thank you, xanphibian.

For the record, I too am an incest survivor and I write about incest. heatherly's post... I have no words. Fortunately, xanphibian does.

Xanphibian sums up a lot of what I feel.

Yes. heatherly misses the point entirely. Yes. Many incest and rape survivors aren't just "okay" with these stories -- they actively seek them out. But to understand that, I think you should read xanphibian's post.

For the record, I'm bothered by heatherly's opportunistic fear-mongering about "outsiders" on the heels of the latest scares. There's potential for a fandom backlash against writers of incest, non-con, and chan. If that happens, no one's going to care if it's a good story or a bad story, or if it's "realistic" or not. We'll just be targeted based on the warnings.

If that happens, I'd do the same thing we did in LJ. I'd take all the warnings off my stories.

Lastly... "writing responsibly"? What the heck is that even supposed to mean?

Comments

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

I keep hearing this "they were abused as kids too" but in my observation it's not an identical carbon copy of what they experienced, but rather some new variation.

My friends were all excited about V.C. Andrews when I was a kid. They gave it to me to read, and I knew by page two it wasn't for me. I didn't tell them why, I just told them it was overemtional crap (partially true).

It didn't mess me up because I was smart enough to avoid it. So I have a hard time believing that a kid in my situation would read it. Maybe I was a unique snowflake and exceptionally smart and self-aware... yeah, right. It made me cringe and I dropped it like a hot potato.

I don't think I was fucked up. Fucked up comes later when you have patterns that no longer make sense. I think I had a very rational response to an irrational situation. Locking my bedroom door at night was only reasonable under the circumstances. Hiding the fact that I had boyfriends (even my brother didn't know) was smart given the interest and comments it stirred up from the man WG calls "Sleazebag."

I had my escape plan from the time I was 12: I would ride my bike to my friend's, tell her mom what was going on, then get a ride to my grandmother's. From there I would call my dad in Toronto. I'd be on a train to Toronto that day. From there I'd call my mom and tell her from a safe distance, and she could have all the drama she wanted once I was out of range (I knew she'd send my toys). The two critical flaws in my plan were that I'd have to leave my cat and my little brother, and I was the only one taking care of my brother. Therefore it was a last resort.

Years later, when I told my stepdad (he was an alcoholic and didn't remember what he did), well, his first response was, "That's monstrous." Then he denied it to my mom and let her believe I had "false memory syndrome." Though she was the one who came up with that idea, not that I was all that surprised.

P.S. After he left her the year before last, he called me and asked if it was good for me, then tried to tell me that it was thinking of me that got him to look for someone other than my mom. Lovely. I rolled my eyes knowing full well the real reasons he left my mom.

So, no. I don't buy the "think of the children" argument at all. One friend of mine said I was never a kid, but I dunno. I think kids deserve some credit.

[filenotch.livejournal.com]

Well, I suppose we're all one in Buddhism, but my facet of reality was much different from yours. But I guess in your view it makes me "stupid" that at the age of 10 I bought into a teacher teaching me about sex in such a way that I liked it. There were no doors to lock. This happened decades before it became common to talk to kids about appropriate and inappropriate touching. I had nothing with which to arm myself against it, much less any idea that I should. He was a teacher, teaching me more than the others because I was "special."

Which is, I guess, a euphemism for stupid, isn't it?

I have never meant, in this discussion, that anyone should do anything different, only that I wished some of them might give some thought to the fact that there might be unintended consequences of what they post. How selfish of me to express a preference. You were turned off by those books. Fine. Had I found erotic fiction that glorified my situation, I'd have eaten it like candy. It was a very slow awakening for me to learn that he was lying and the true reason for the need for silence. I was naive, and it's funny that discovering regular porn was part of my path. Eventually I realized there was nothing in it like what we were doing. Trust me, it was a moment like a kensho. I managed to get out of it without destroying his family, but it took another year or two.

And FWIW, a long after I put a stop to it he asked me if I had any regrets. When I said, "The sex," he responded that I'd be welcome back in his bed anytime. Perhaps it's a pattern of the type.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

And FWIW, a long after I put a stop to it he asked me if I had any regrets. When I said, "The sex," he responded that I'd be welcome back in his bed anytime. Perhaps it's a pattern of the type.

Ugh!

They see you as such an object of sexual gratification they don't get you have a will and mind of your own.

Not stupidity on your part. I was helped by the fact that I'd already seen him worm his way into my mom's life, breaking up her marriage with my dad -- and he bragged about his cleverness. So he was the dangerous outsider that I refused to call "dad." He had no basis of trust to work from. In fact, I regarded him with abiding suspicion and narrowed eyes, though eventually his charm won me over too, after three years.

Also, people who try to fuck you when they're falling down drunk are never pleasant. This was not intelligence on my part -- this was disgust.

That said, he got away with fondling me for a year and a half before he ratcheted it up to a level (drunker than usual) that frightened me. He never attempted to convince me it was right (and he could have), instead he told me, "I love you so much I want to eat you up." That's when I made my escape plan and started locking the doors.

Lastly, unlike your situation, he wasn't after me in particular. I was merely there -- a blow-up doll would have served the same purpose. I know that it's typical for kids to blame themselves, and for years I thought, "If I hadn't been so stupid I would have stopped it sooner...." It was humiliating.

But you have to give yourself credit. You did put a stop to it. I did come up with an escape plan and a clear line of demarcation where if he went this far, I would implement it. And that's pretty impressive for a 12-year-old. The fact that you considered the impact on his family is pretty amazing. We were too young to understand this was wrong but we did figure it out.

I still find myself having to shake off habits that I developed dealing with that situation, things like making excuses for him. I had deal with him every day, and I needed his support in my problems with my mom. I needed to negotiate with him to get him to stop bullying my brother and I used his attraction to me for leverage, distraction, whatever it took to protect my little brother. One of the benefits of being a nun all those years is that I completely broke my habit of manipulating men with a ruthless sexuality, though I hurt two boyfriends pretty badly before I realized it was a problem.

Back to the book... it's odd, though. I was given the book before I'd put together this was wrong and I still didn't like it.

[filenotch.livejournal.com]

...for years I thought, "If I hadn't been so stupid I would have stopped it sooner...." It was humiliating.

Trust me, it's more humiliating to know you walked in the door often anticipating it.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Oh, John....

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Oh, that last bit about being turned off by the book even before I'd figured out what my stepdad was doing wrong can easily be taken the wrong way. I'm wondering if you would have responded the same way I did, because there obviously were some niggling questions, a vague disturbed feeling that made me push V. C. Andrews away.