Docile Victimhood? Or Fighting Back?
From my last post you can see why I am death on people telling the victim that it's a sin to fight back. They are pressuring the victim to do the very thing that causes victims to suffer terrible shame in the aftermath of abuse -- give themselves up to it.
That shame we feel at doing so is an infallible indicator that it's wrong. No one needs a book or a preacher to tell them what's right and wrong. We KNOW that's wrong. Deep down inside we feel how wrong it is to give ourselves up to abuse. Doing so makes us feel like a worm. A doormat. We know it's lack of backbone. We sense the prostitution in it. We feel utterly degraded by it.
The only excuse for it is being subjected to overwhelming force so that we haven't the power to resist. Which is rape. Which is why we feel deeply violated by it. Whether it's sexual rape or any other kind.
So, we know that we must resist when we can. If only for the sake of our self respect.
And anyone who tells us that we shouldn't fight the agressor might as well order us to be a self masochist who injures himself.
They are pressuring the victim to prostitute themselves to abuse. How degrading! They are pressuring the victim to do what causes a human being unbearable shame. How cruel! They are pressuring the victim to do what goes against the laws of nature, our instinct for self preservation. They are pressuring the victim to commit the worst breech of faith, the worst betrayal, there is -- treason against your very self by delivering yourself up to abuse.
That's what Joan of Arc called it -- "treason," "wretched treason." She preferred the stake.
If it would be wrong to surrender another person for abuse, why should it be right to surrender yourself to abuse?
Trying to force the victim to do that is what the narcissist does! It's bad enough to abuse someone, but when you become so sadistic that you make them bend over for it on top of it all, you have crossed the line into extreme perversity, the Sin of Sodom.
Docile victimhood is NOT a virtue, and people who think it is are devoid of moral sense. They are people who don't think about what they say any more than a parrot does. Nothing proves that easier than to just then ask them, "Well what if the abuse happenes to be sexual rape? Do you say the victim should bend over for it?"
Certainly not! These are the same folks who would say that a woman who bent over for it liked it and was a whore. They would say she must fight tooth and nail.
And that's just as stupid, because sometimes she doesn't dare fight. If she did, she'd get killed.
There are few ways that the victim of narcissistic abuse can fight back, especially when the victim is a child. And whenever the victim does find a way to put up a resistance, there is always some holier-than-thou around to tell him or her that it's a sin.
You can't do that to people. That puts them in an impossible situation. That's what breaks minds.
Horrifying example. A kid is getting bullied at school. He periodically gets his head flushed in a toilet, while the "innocent" bystanders watch and laugh. He gets his lunch money stolen daily.
Now, would you willingly walk into a place where you know that someone is waiting for you to abuse you? Of course not. But we expect him to. So, when he skips school, he gets punished. We thus force him to present himself there daily for abuse. If he doesn't it's a sin.
So he punches the bully. Oh-oh. Now he committed another sin. He gets punished for that too, because "violence" (which force used in self defense ain't) is a sin.
So, he resorts to the last resort, the really stupid thing: he tells the counsellors about the abuse. They have "a talk" with the bully. Now the bully punishes him for that by escalating the abuse.
What is that kid going to do? We are forcing him to offer himself up for abuse like a sacrificial vicitm every single day.
Something's gotta give. He will decide to kill himself, and he may well decide to take others with him.
You can't force people to docilely submit to abuse. That's the most odious thing you can do to a human being. You are subjecting him to a slavery more odious and profound than that of the slaves, a kind of slavery we haven't seen since the macabre executions of the Middle Ages = slavery as someone else's property for the purpose of vicitimization.
Indeed, the victim isn't his own property if you deny his free will to the the extent that you deny him the right even to self preservation.
Those who think the Bible demands this had better re-read it. And study what the scholars have found and Church authorities have admitted -- how long after the events it was written, whom it was really written by, and how much it's been edited and added to since.
And applying a little common sense doesn't hurt either. For example, if Jesus thought defending yourself is a sin, why does scripture mention in several places that the apostles were armed? Duh, they were his bodyguards. And of course he told the three of them with him to put up their swords when he was captured -- because they were vastly outnumbered and just would have gotten killed. Interpreting that action as some sort of general prohibition again the use the use of force is absurd.
Common sense, common sense, common sense. There is nothing more dangerous than words of scripture in a mouth with its brain turned off.
Very often the victim can't fight back. At least not without that resistence resulting in greater harm to himself. But whenever he can, he has every right to. Indeed, the only morality a bully knows is a punch in the nose. It does work.
And the victims of a narcissist's abuse through character asssination have every right to accuse their accuser, to point the accusing finger right back at the narcissist to show that it's all projection. That's the victim's only defense! He or she should not be treated as though they are the attacker.
Character assassination is not nothing. It is character ASSASSINATION. I call it the abuse that keeps on abusing for the rest of that person's life. A crime in progress for the rest of that person's life, because that bad reputation pursues and continually damages the victim for the rest of their life. The victim has every right to defend himself from this ongoing abuse in whatever way he can.
7 Comments:
I agree that being made to bend over for it is as much an outrage as the dirt a narcissist deals you. And since being made to bend over for it is being written about here a lot lately, I will offer a personal example that anyone but a victim of a narcissist would probably find hard to believe. There are two narcissists in my family, one being a parent of mine that died years ago. When I was a small child, this parent would falsely accuse me of committing some rule infraction. I had not done the crime, nothing even close to it, ever, but I was too young to realize that it was no misunderstanding. Protesting my innocence would anger this parent. Each time (and this would take place once or twice most weeks), I was given two choices:
1. "Confess" the crime, then explain why I had committed the crime. (Man, coming up with that explaination was hard to do when I hadn't done the crime!)
Apologize for leaving the parent no choice but to beat me.
In exchange, I would be "forgiven" the lie of proclaiming my innocence, and I would receive only one beating - the one for the crime.
or
2. Continue to deny the crime and receive two beatings - one for the crime, one for the "lie" of denying the crime.
Naturally, I would offer a false confession, accept the blame for the beating I would now receive, and apologize for "making" the parent beat me. I would then receive the beating, and I do mean BEATING.
Being so naive, I never could understand how it could be thought that I had walked six blocks from home and played in the middle of a highway (a frequently-used favorite) when I hadn't even left the house, or any of the other ridiculous things I was accused of. When I got old enough to see through that sick little game, a rage started burning inside me that didn't even begin to subside until long after that parent was dead, some thirty years later. It wasn't the regular beatings that made that rage live inside me all those years. It wasn't so much all the other sick little miseries that this naicissist parent had visited upon me as a defenseless child, either. It was the part about being made to bend over for it. I can still taste that.
anonymous,
Oh my God. That's it. That's exactly what I was talking about. That's making somebody bend over for it.
I think these sadists do that because it's absolute power over another person = the power to make him obedient to your will even to his own harm.
Think of the time this sadist spent on dreaming up this way to achieve that.
People who do that belong behind bars. Even if they never lay a hand on you. The mental cruelty is the worst part, and the most damaging.
They are not insane, either. Just twisted.
I thought nothing would shock me anymore, but that one did. And then people view the victims of narcissists as "weak"? Yeah, right -- weak people get through something like that, eh? To the contrary, only the very strong do.
I suppose it's due to the usual sloppy, fuzzy thinking -- confusing patience and tolerance with weakness.
I'm just recently divorcing my narcisstic wife. Her best weapon against me was shame. Through therapy I found out that I was a masochist. Apparently masochists are the few kinds of people that can actually live and deal with a narcissist. Anyway, her abuse was through constantly shaming me for everything. I was never good enough, indeed all my efforts were SHAMEFUL! Even my successes were shameful! She was extraordinarily talented at twisted everything and making it shameful. But I could take it all because pain was my pleasure, being a masochist.
Lakota
Kathy said,"People who do that belong behind bars. Even if they never lay a hand on you. The mental cruelty is the worst part, and the most damaging."
No kidding. I have had my character assassinated by a so-called spiritual leader in the community. It has affected my income, relationships with *friends* and my sanity. I just kept on, keeping on until one day, this person had the audacity to request to use my facility, for, of course, her own self-aggrandizement.
I almost laughed. I said "No, I think not. Not after all the trashing of me in public." It felt good to stand up for myself, refuse her something she dearly wanted and to "just say no." to a very wicked person.
I can relate to this concept of "bending over for it" too. A couple of things immediately came to my mind as I considered this. The first is the mental picture I have of getting spanked as a child by my narcissistic mother. There was a hard and fast rule about spankings. You were never to struggle in any way or the spanking would be much worse. Not only was I not to struggle in any way, but I was to bend over for it. Of my own will and power. I had to force my little child body to bend itself over the bed to submit to the beating. It was nearly impossible to do....but do it I did or risk further pain and harm to my backside. Damn, I hate that bitch. I had never considered the psychological component to her forcing me to do this. Even though I felt it for what it was....it was me accepting that the punishment was just and I deserved it.
The other incident that popped into my mind happened when I was six years old. My mother accused me of taking one of my favorite records across the street to a friend's house and then not returning it. I had been expressly forbidden from taking anything of mine out of the house without permission so I was being accused of a direct violation of an express command. I hadn't done the crime. I had never done that crime. I hadn't even been tempted to do the crime. I protested my innocence. My protestations of innocence only increased my level of guilt in her eyes. And her rage. But, for some reason, I couldn't confess to doing what I didn't do. Perhaps my six year old level of integrity couldn't confess to something I had never even thought of doing. It was a complete outrage to my self. My mother tried every tactic she had to get me to confess. Her rage level increased to terrifying levels. Which is why I remember this event to clearly. She even threatened to kill me. The threat still rings in my ears of how she wished she had a sword in her hands right now because she would stick it through me. (I have no idea why her preferred method of murder was a sword, but that is what she said.) The death threat slaughtered my child-heart, but I STILL would not confess to my non-crime. I completely broke down in tears though. Naturally. Later in the day my vicious bitch of a mother found the record. I suspect that in light of my refusal to confess she went back to look for it. She found it. She knew I had no opportunity to put it back where it belonged since the accusation. She knew she was wrong. She didn't apologize outright for her false accusation and attendant abuse of my soul. She went over to a drawer in the kitchen and pulled out a pendant that I had always liked but wasn't mine. She put it on a string and hung it around my neck. I knew it was her way of saying "sorry" without confessing her crime to me. I accepted the peace offering and felt vindicated. Perhaps another reason I have never forgotten this event (I'm 44 years old) is because it was a victory for my integrity. I won against an attack that fell just short of physical violence. Perhaps this was the beginning of the end of her control of my soul.
You can't force people to docilely submit to abuse. That's the most odious thing you can do to a human being.
You nailed it exactly. Great post!
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