I’m so angry!

[JDartistic]

I am so angry watching the news about all these women who are being dismissed & men are degrading them!

I’m a rape survivor & I posted on my FB page how I feel, also as a gay woman & survivor of a hate crime.

My family disowned me when all of this happened in 1980. So I’ve been alone & survived.

So I post my anger about the hatred & dismissal of violence against women & my family’s children all attacked me! They said they were FINISHED WITH ME!

What? They never started with me! I don’t even know these people & yet all these kids of my siblings basically accused me of not being a family member!

In comments, they asked stupid questions about what happened when I was raped. Um- INAPPROPRIATE QUESTION. I was just expressing my concerns that woman are being demonized.

But like an idiot, I answered their silly questions. In 1980 I was disowned after it came out I was raped at a gay bar. I have issues, ok? I was 18 & instead of support, my family disowned me & kicked me out of the house!

So these descendants then attacked me for making them feel bad! ‘I didn’t know. Omg. U have a family.’

What? I don’t have a family! I never did! Who are u people?

They responded, ‘what do u mean by u people? I am finished! U have a family but if u don’t accept them, then that’s on u.’

What? Decades later & im getting guilted by the descendants of my siblings who disowned me at 18?

I HATE FAMILY. I ALSO HATE PEOPLE!

Someone please give me a perspective here cuz I just think people are stupid at this point in my life. Geesh!

 

[JDartistic]

PS I don’t want these people in my life! That’s not how you connect with someone. On FB? Commenting with hostility? After I express my experience of being raped & disowned by a homophobic family? OMG I’m so angry!

 

[Ambi]

This is why I got off of Facebook. It made me realize how little I really knew about people, how little of depth we shared, and how little they cared about the things that really matter imho. When I posted something really serious, disturbing, and relevant to my Facebook friends and got ZERO replies....well, then I realized the above. I still get riled up when I think of it, but I feel much better now that I am off of FB. I'm sorry you had to go through this experience, and I hope in time you can feel calm. That must have been re-traumatizing in a way!

 

[Fitzo]

I'm sorry for what has happened to you, but Facebook can be a dangerous place to express your views. I almost never use it for that reason. It seems to me you should just unfriend these people and be very selective about who you let in in future. This is probably a much safer environment to vent.

 

[WittyAspie]

Step 1: Unfriend
Step 2: Block
You don't need those people in your life. Disown them on Facebook as they did to you in real life. Don't have anything else to do with them until they can approach you with an apology.

 

[OlLiE]

being family is no guarantee for being a good person
choose whose opinions matter to you, ignore everyone else,
why care about what ignorant, less than evolved people think anyway

personally, i'm a bit older, i have tried the whole popular social media thing,
and have come to the opinion that it is a waste of time
trying to seek affirmation by exposing myself to random people seems 'not smart'

so block people, or delete all of it

people that are really your friends, are worth spending real time with
people that are really your friends but live far away, shouldn't mind corresponding through email rather than through soundbites on facebook, instagram, twitter, etc

good luck

 

[Suzanne]

I empathise, because although I am straight and it was not rape, but molestation from father, I have been pretty much treated the same way.

Mother has always been toxic and to this day is still toxic and does not like it when she hears that either her other children ( adults now) or nieces and nephew, were to want to get to know me, she gets to hear about it ( not by me, because I have nothing do with her with) and goes out of her way to stunt any relationships. This is because, I stood against her and she has never forgiven me for that and so, likes to stir the "wooden spoon" against me.

The thing is, that my one sibling who I had a very close relationship to, did not forsake her relationship and allowed her children to be in their gran's life and so, she has free reign to melign me and succeeded very well. My eldest niece hates me. My other niece cannot be bothered with me and my youngest niece likes to say things that she knows she will get a reaction and then, has the audacity to say that I should move on!

I had my sister on facebook and one niece; but it suddenly occurred to me, that they continue with the pain in my heart, that not one of them have shown support for the one sister who stopped all the abuse and disgust. I feel betrayed. It is like I do not exist and at first it tore me into, but once I made a concerted effort to get them off my facebook, I felt a sense of "weight off my shoulders"

It is painful to know one has a family, but in fact, it is only in name.

And as for your part about explaining the rape. That is exactly what happened to me and stupid me, was expecting a shock look, but all I got was eyes gleaming and tell me more? Did it hurt etc etc? I was so shocked that I said: I am talking about what my own father did to me and you ask intimate details? She did say she was sorry, but it fascinated her and I learned after that, to keep my mouth shut.

 

[Mr Allen]

Unfriend and block them.

I've done the same with idiot Daily Fail readers who slag me off because I don't work 40 hours a week on minimum wage, due to disability I'm struggling to find work outside of the voluntary sector.

 

[Bella Pines]

And rightly so! I've been watching the news and all the unfolding scandals, reading about Harvey Weinstein and the reactions have made me feel angry and sick.

The shining lights for me have been Rose Mcgowan and Alyssa Milano, who I believe are actually affecting culture as a whole and turning the tide of victim blaming. There was also this great comedy sketch by Ed Byrne which was quite refreshing. He challenged the statement of "things that were acceptable..", WHEN? When was it acceptable?

So drop them, family or not, turn away from them and know that you have every right to be angry.

 

[Judge]

Frankly it just sounded like your relatives used the issues at hand as a pretense to wage a personal attack against you through Facebook than a serious debate over multiple notorious cases of alleged sexual assault and harassment presently in the news.

It may also have been politically motivated given the most recent accounts which are further polarizing the body politic even within party structures. Basically it sounds like you were "ambushed"- online.

As others have said, block them all. Though if it were me, I'd "just say no to Facebook" on general principle. I've always seen it as little more than an online manifestation of "Lord of the Flies".

 

[JDartistic]

Thanks everyone.

I LOVE THIS FORUM. it’s the only place I feel safe. I wish you all lived near me cuz we’d be best friends.

Ive been wanting to go off FB. It’s the only social network I’m on & was good for finding old friends but that’s about it. I think now I won’t ever post my feelings. Most of my stress comes from when I do & then I get upset for days. Worse, I start thinking I’m crazy for even posting in the first place. It’s just that I have no one to talk to. Next time, I’m come here - where it’s safe.

 

[pjcnet]

Abuse is not always just against women and sadly when it does happen to men they're much less likely to be taken seriously or believed, also any support networks are usually geared only towards helping women while men are often automatically assumed to be the perpetrators. Similar happens with domestic abuse and violence, people again automatically assume the male is the guilty one, for instance I was beaten by a women who had very severe mental health issues and instead of the system reaching out to offer me support as the victim I got a warning from the police stating that I was now on a domestic violence register for so many years as it was just assumed that I was beating her when neighbours complained about the noise. How do you think that made me feel? Obviously this totally ruled out asking for any help as the system certainly made it blatantly clear that no-one would have believed me and if I ever did make a complaint and she then decided to lie and complain back in retribution to defend herself, who do you think the police and a court would believe? Because of this attitude men are far less likely to come forward when they're a victim of rape, sexual abuse or domestic violence and this makes it appear like it doesn't happen to men even more because they are forced to suffer in silence. The whole automatic assumption that women are the only victims needs to change!

Obviously your family are totally wrong and it's a total utter disgrace how you were treated, I'm sorry I can't offer further help except to say that it sounds like you're better off without them. I can most likely give you the reason why this happened however. If we go back in history to the early 1960s and earlier, same gender sex was a felony in every state in the USA where it was normally punishable by a lengthy term of imprisonment and it was similarly just as illegal in most Western countries, back then gay people were looked at with disgust, in a similar way to how paedophiles are thought of by society today (obviously paedophiles should be punished and looked down upon, but not gay people). As time went by laws were slowly changed, although removing society's prejudice and hatred of gay people was much more difficult and was a very gradual process that is still not totally complete. Even though it was legal in 1980, gay people were generally less accepted than they are now and your family would have most probably been old enough to remember when same gender sex was considered a very serious crime or at least a time when most of society were severely prejudiced against people who were gay, your family was/is almost certainly still indoctrinated by this. Thankfully times have changed and things have greatly improved, but sadly there's always going to be some prejudice passed down from older generations and many elderly people were so heavily programmed with prejudice and hatred that they will never truly accept gay people. There's still obviously a way to go and I very much doubt that there will ever be 100% acceptance and equality (there may be 99% eventually) and it's absolutely shocking that some non Western countries still see same gender sex as a very serious crime that can even be punishable by death, this is in my opinion murder and it goes to show just how evil the world can still be. Hopefully even in these countries laws and attitudes will eventually change, but some of these countries are generations behind Western society.

 

[clg114]

Frankly it just sounded like your relatives used the issues at hand as a pretense to wage a personal attack against you through Facebook than a serious debate over multiple notorious cases of alleged sexual assault and harassment presently in the news.

It may also have been politically motivated given the most recent accounts which are further polarizing the body politic even within party structures. Basically it sounds like you were "ambushed"- online.

As others have said, block them all. Though if it were me, I'd "just say no to Facebook" on general principle. I've always seen it as little more than an online manifestation of "Lord of the Flies".

Facebook is a forum that promotes lies and bad feelings. I do not have anything to do with Facebook or any of the other popular social media forums. My wife ( a NT) is always complaining about something that someone said on Facebook or making someone mad with something that she wrote. What foolishness !