I want to tell your truth about your abuse and give you a platform to publicize it… So that you can move on to your next stage of healing…

When #MeToo happened, I was in Los Angeles and my reaction was, “Whew!!!”

Like finally the cat was out of the bag! Male abuse had happened to us all and now we all knew it. So now, we could not only talk about it openly, but prevent it — going forward — and truly change the world to create a shared future for women and for men too.

And then I came back to France.

At my first dinner party, a married, heterosexual-passing man with his wife sitting next to him, spouted off about how unreliable the whole movement was. About how Kevin Spacey’s accuser was certainly lying because 14 year olds really want it too. And how victims shouldn’t be allowed to come forward so many years after their abuse took place.

I didn’t know at the time that the male in question was a regular sexual tourist of young moroccan boys himself, and neither perhaps, did his wife. But I was astounded by the general silence around the table when I proceeded to intercede.

“Have none of you ever been accosted? Abused? Molested? Or raped?”

The three women, two gay men and the closet pedophile at the dinner table, all shrugged their shoulders, pierced their lips and shook their heads ‘non’.

“Have you really never encountered inappropriate male predatory behavior, never been belittled, demeaned, denigrated or disparaged by a man? Never been over looked for a job, under-paid or trapped by a glass ceiling?”

They all assured me they had not. Ever.

But the most riveting part of all, was what they went on to affirm. Even if they had come into contact with occasional inappropriate behavior, they said, it had not affected them like it appeared to have affected the other survivors coming forward in the #MeToo movement. As I listened, trying to pin together what made me and the others so different from this handful of French diners, I began to feel more like an alien than just an American.

So that night I went home and wrote out my own list of #Metoo moments.

There were twelve.

They were bookended between two extremely grave events : my father’s rape when I was a child and Ted’s domestic-narcissistic abuse and his virtual rape in my late 40’s.

But it was the in-betweens, those everyday ‘micro-agressions’, I realized as I began to innumerate them, that were not only the hidden giants, but the ones that left immense scaring as well.

There was that big, fat man driving around my childhood neighborhood in search of some house when I was 10 or 11… who turned out to be masturbating with his pants at his ankles when he called my girlfriend and me over for help.

There was that nice, super-cute teenage guy who took me out for dinner and then wouldn’t take no for an answer when I told him I’d fool around, but not fuck.

There were a couple uncomfortable Parisian moments in the metro or on the street. When the man insisted I suck his dick without a single glance from the other riders or the guy who asked me how much the pass would be, while I was walking in the 16th arrondissement to have tea with my friends.

But there was especially that very big handful of moments spattered throughout my life which involved powerful men taking advantage of me in compromising situations.

I’ve lived only in France as an adult from the time I was that young woman just coming into my adult sexuality, unsure of my affect and my limits … up until the middle aged person I’ve become today…

I am white, North-American-born, raised at the heart of the second wave of feminism and I grew up thinking we’d made it. I was also raised with mostly minority friends though and came of age in the early 80’s when the Tea Party and right wing politics really began flexing their muscles. So when I fled to France, where women’s reproductive rights were no longer under assault, where work, parental leave, day care and compensation seemed more equal, I naively believed women had actually attained equitability.

I was still surprised however, to hear the other middle aged French women’s assurance that they had never felt any form of abuse whatsoever.

Was it just me then?

Was I easy prey as a foreigner? Or was I over-sensitive?

Was I always too spontaneous and too open?

Was it that I didn’t really speak the language in the beginning?

Or (my own personal favorite) was it that I smiled too much, so I was just attracting it?

Was it my prior childhood abuse which made me easy prey for my future abusers?

Was ‘abusable’ written all over my face, or what?

Why had I a list of 12? And my dinner partners had none?

I wondered mostly though, if women generally downplay their micro-abuses in order to make living with them more palatable.

Or whether these women, who had supposedly never experienced grave childhood trauma, were just way more capable of dealing with adult sexual aggression and therefore able to poo-poo it altogether, compared to me?

Did my own childhood hold the truth to the enigma? Or did it make me more astute than my French peers in facing the actual facts about abuse?

Statistics show that prior abuse of any kind is not the guilty party though- men are!

Globally, an estimated 736 million women — almost one in three have been subjected to intimate partner violence, non-partner sexual violence, or both at least once in their lives (that’s 30 per cent of women aged 15 and older). This figure does not include sexual harassment [1].

Globally, 6 per cent of women report they have been subjected to sexual violence from someone other than their husband or partner. However, the true prevalence of non-partner sexual violence is likely to be much higher, considering the particular stigma related to this form of violence [1].

48% of respondents to a recent Women’s March Global survey marked ‘Ending violence, harassment and abuse’ as the most critical issue in their community [2].

The majority of those respondents — 56% — indicated that they see ‘cultural’ and ‘social’ issues, as opposed to ‘educational,’ ‘technological’ or ‘economic’ issues… as the main barriers to progress in this area… which is reflected in the focus of today’s feminist action, organizing and protests around the globe against rape culture and violence against women [2].

So where was the disconnect coming from at the dinner party? From where does it stem?And how do we bring it to an end?

I think opening up the conversation about abuse and trauma is the first step in healing.

Whether the abuse is narcissistic, domestic, spousal, sexual, emotional, financial, workplace, childhood… women are clearly being harmed and need closure.

Before, instead of calling out my abuse, I was stuck in feeling shock, shame, guilt, fear and anger. But when I finally realized that abuse was not my hot potato to carry around forever and started telling the truth — my own personal healing process began.

The truth gave me the power to start looking at myself and examining how I had become a victim… but not like victim blaming.

It was only in really understanding, sympathizing with and loving that person who was the original victim… that I was finally able to love her as a survivor too.

Through self love, I stopped expecting the safety to come from the outside and started creating it within.

I’m not saying my abusers were not totally responsible for their own bad behavior… I am saying that my prior abuse only set me up for more abuse as time went on, because I became more and more un-present to myself as that victim.

I somehow made foregoing my own desires my norm, which made establishing barriers of my own, nearly impossible. All of which put me at the mercy of my abusers.

If I was not present to me… how could I ever have expected anyone else to be?

The typical abuse victim is someone who is totally unconscious and then in need and therefore dependent. And that’s a vicious circle.

A psychopath (or any abuser-type) is just a confidence-man who targets you, then rubs you the right way, so you’re really not paying attention at all to your own needs or aware of your own presence. He capitalizes on the fact that you’re looking the other way (like in 3-card-monte) and he makes you believe he’s the one you wanted him to be.

Which is where the shame comes from… When we realize he’s not at all the person we thought he was… Just like when we guess the incorrect card in the street game.

And that’s almost always when we persist in staying… because we convince ourselves that there really must be a pony in that pile of shit… although the pony becomes harder and harder to find each time around with each cycle of abuse.

That’s what needs halting. For me, telling the truth publicly has been a key component in my healing. It has been cleansing, powerful, cathartic and has brought me peace of mind.

But I especially hope healing begets healing for all of us…

as a group, as a community, as countries, as societies, as a species and also as a planet!

In opening up the conversation, my hope is that we will all profit equally from the good, positive, wonderful remediation that truth-telling brings to this world. And I hope whole-heartedly, that good conquers bad behavior, so that people will learn from and empower one another, to do better next time.

I’m therefore proposing my services. I’d like to write and host your story… for you. I want to tell your truth about your abuse and give you the platform to publicize it… so that you can move on to the next step of your own healing : real self care, real self love and setting real barriers that resemble who you really are.

I believe in that power. I believe in healing from the inside-out.

DM me to talk about your trauma… if you’re ready.

I’ve never done this, so I don’t know how it will work, but let’s try. Let’s begin your healing conversation together.

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Eva After

One woman’s navigation, survival and healing within the biased rules and gender expectations of a masculinized, patriarchal society.