Have you ever had that dream where something bad is happening to you, but when you try to ask for help, you can’t speak? You try to scream for help but you just can’t get the words out? This doesn’t only happen in dreams. It happens in real life as well. Survivors of gendered violence experience this […]
Read more "Psychological Harm is Physical Harm 2: Why Survivors Lose Their Voice"The presidential debates, horrific as their results were, provided survivors everywhere with a strange, backwards gift. A recent piece notes: “It’s remarkable how many female viewers report feeling physically ill.” Trout has not touched any of them, not directly. Yet what survivors are reporting, watching him enter their living rooms via their TV screens, is that this kind […]
Read more "Psychological Harm is Physical Harm 1: Abuse Shapes the Brain"There are two kinds of boundary violations: overt and covert. We know a lot about one half of boundary violations: the kind acted out in an anxious way. This first kind of boundary violation is hopefully already obvious. This is when you say no, or are unable to consent, and someone goes ahead and touches […]
Read more "There is another kind of boundary violation: the covert cross"There is a variation on ‘Not All Men.’ It is called ‘I Feel Bad When You Say That.’ My godson Kyle is six. He is fairly emotionally perceptive for his age, as his grownups have been working with him to create an emotionally responsible and self-aware boy who we hope will grow into an emotionally […]
Read more "Own, Apologize, Repair: Coming Back to Integrity"