MMIW
I don't know what to call this post and I don't know how to approach the topic. I've written and redacted pieces on the topic before and I continue to struggle to find ways to say something meaningful and useful and informative without creating undue problems for myself and "putting out the fire with gasoline."
THIS post is an OPINION PIECE. As such, I am NOT planning to cite ANY sources. AT ALL.
My mother is a German immigrant who was born in the 1930s, so she grew up in Germany during World War II and its aftermath. AKA "Nazi Germany."
I love my mother and have IMMENSE respect for her. I cannot overstate how much respect I have for this woman who lived through so much hell and continued to be kind and generous.
But she certainly didn't get through it unscathed. Like with ALL parents, her unresolved baggage impacted the lives of her children.
My maiden name is Irish in origin. My understanding is my father was ethnically Irish-French-Cherokee. He was a Hoosier born and raised in Indiana (I was in my thirties when I learned some of his speech quirks were Hoosier-isms). He grew up on a farm and spent 26.5 years in the military.
He spent 18.5 years of his military career stationed "overseas" -- aka outside of the US. It was only after his death that I realized he looked more Native American than I realized, NOT lily White like I had always believed, and I have come to believe he preferred living outside the US in part to avoid racism here.
I was molested by both my father and my older brother. My father was newly returned to the US after a tour of duty in Vietnam and had recently acquired shrapnel in his head.
I don't think my dad was really a classic pedophile. I think he returned from the war and I was this amazingly adorable toddler with Shirley Temple blonde curls and a sunny disposition to match. I think he just wanted to hold me on his lap and forget the war and things got weird.
And then at some point, presumably when his new head injury was somewhat healed up, he came to his senses and decided "This is NOT okay" and chose to stop and did his best to protect me and make amends.
My brother had a forceps birth that left the mark of the forceps on his head for three days and on at least two occasions prior to the age of 13 he passed out when our older sister defended herself from his violent assault. I don't believe he knew my father had molested me at an earlier age but like our father, at some point he chose to stop of his own volition and spent many years trying to make amends in some fashion, a story told elsewhere.
Little girls being molested is all too common. The part of my story that is apparently a dramatic statistical outlier is that both people who molested me STOPPED of their own volition and MADE AMENDS to me.
I spent a LOT of years reading everything I could get my hands on about human sexuality and child molestation and related topics. I spent substantial time in therapy and kept a journal for years, etc.
I really worked at recovering but didn't really recover until I had a series of relationships to men who were Native or part Native.
They had a deep and abiding respect for women that I cannot find the equivalent of in White culture. This includes treating a woman like her sexuality is for her pleasure. She's not MERELY a sex object that exists to service some man.
I believe this cultural difference is a factor in the high rates of sexual assault against Native women by other races which is a noticeable statistical anomaly. In most cases, most sexual assault is by a man of the same race but this rule does not hold true for Native women.
And I believe this is a significant contributing factor to the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women epidemic.
I believe Native women have an inherently healthier relationship to their sexuality than women in many other cultures and are raised to treat their sexuality as a source of pleasure for themselves and men who see women as nothing but sex objects see them as hypersexual, "low class" thanks to racism and want to view them as "whores" who are NOT allowed to say no to a man and this fuels strong ugly reactions by men from cultures that fundamentally do NOT respect women.
I don't know how to fix it. Ideally, this respectful attitude towards women gets exported and other cultures become less shitty.
But, I mean, you know: NOT holding my breath here.
THIS post is an OPINION PIECE. As such, I am NOT planning to cite ANY sources. AT ALL.
My mother is a German immigrant who was born in the 1930s, so she grew up in Germany during World War II and its aftermath. AKA "Nazi Germany."
I love my mother and have IMMENSE respect for her. I cannot overstate how much respect I have for this woman who lived through so much hell and continued to be kind and generous.
But she certainly didn't get through it unscathed. Like with ALL parents, her unresolved baggage impacted the lives of her children.
My maiden name is Irish in origin. My understanding is my father was ethnically Irish-French-Cherokee. He was a Hoosier born and raised in Indiana (I was in my thirties when I learned some of his speech quirks were Hoosier-isms). He grew up on a farm and spent 26.5 years in the military.
He spent 18.5 years of his military career stationed "overseas" -- aka outside of the US. It was only after his death that I realized he looked more Native American than I realized, NOT lily White like I had always believed, and I have come to believe he preferred living outside the US in part to avoid racism here.
I was molested by both my father and my older brother. My father was newly returned to the US after a tour of duty in Vietnam and had recently acquired shrapnel in his head.
I don't think my dad was really a classic pedophile. I think he returned from the war and I was this amazingly adorable toddler with Shirley Temple blonde curls and a sunny disposition to match. I think he just wanted to hold me on his lap and forget the war and things got weird.
And then at some point, presumably when his new head injury was somewhat healed up, he came to his senses and decided "This is NOT okay" and chose to stop and did his best to protect me and make amends.
My brother had a forceps birth that left the mark of the forceps on his head for three days and on at least two occasions prior to the age of 13 he passed out when our older sister defended herself from his violent assault. I don't believe he knew my father had molested me at an earlier age but like our father, at some point he chose to stop of his own volition and spent many years trying to make amends in some fashion, a story told elsewhere.
Little girls being molested is all too common. The part of my story that is apparently a dramatic statistical outlier is that both people who molested me STOPPED of their own volition and MADE AMENDS to me.
I spent a LOT of years reading everything I could get my hands on about human sexuality and child molestation and related topics. I spent substantial time in therapy and kept a journal for years, etc.
I really worked at recovering but didn't really recover until I had a series of relationships to men who were Native or part Native.
They had a deep and abiding respect for women that I cannot find the equivalent of in White culture. This includes treating a woman like her sexuality is for her pleasure. She's not MERELY a sex object that exists to service some man.
I believe this cultural difference is a factor in the high rates of sexual assault against Native women by other races which is a noticeable statistical anomaly. In most cases, most sexual assault is by a man of the same race but this rule does not hold true for Native women.
And I believe this is a significant contributing factor to the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women epidemic.
I believe Native women have an inherently healthier relationship to their sexuality than women in many other cultures and are raised to treat their sexuality as a source of pleasure for themselves and men who see women as nothing but sex objects see them as hypersexual, "low class" thanks to racism and want to view them as "whores" who are NOT allowed to say no to a man and this fuels strong ugly reactions by men from cultures that fundamentally do NOT respect women.
I don't know how to fix it. Ideally, this respectful attitude towards women gets exported and other cultures become less shitty.
But, I mean, you know: NOT holding my breath here.