schnumn

Speak Out (TW: Abuse) (WIP)

Added 2020-06-20 12:10:24 +0000 UTC

With everything that happend with Stolencomputer this week (and various other abusers that are being outed in the comics industry), I've been seeing how important it is for people who aren't the victim of abuse to put themselves on the firing line for their friends. A lot of the people who are speaking out are speaking out on behalf of people they care about rather than letting those loved ones face it alone.

I don't know why it is that people are less likely to believe an actual survivor than second-hand info but that's definitely the trend. I think when talking to the survivor themselves, people feel like they need to squeeze every detail out of them because there's the potential for doubt, but if someone else is spreading the info, the presumption is that the survivor already did the work to convince this other person, so the story must be true???

I think also that people feel like abuse is rare (it isn't). And when they're confronted with an abuse survivor, their first instinct is to be like, this is so awful it can't possibly be true. How could this rare thing possibly have happened so close to me? It's cowardice. Hearing the intel from a third party I think softens the blow. It makes it feel a little bit more abstract which I think makes people more comfortable and therefore more likely to believe the story?

Honestly I'm really not sure why it is. I'm sure smarter people than me have written about this. I just want to spread the message lol