i see a lot of quotes from Lundy Bancroft’s excellent book Why Does He Do That circulating on this website, but i’ve never really seen the last chapter quoted. So this is an excerpt from it: “Creating an Abuse-free World”.
(A note: the book is written for women who suffer intimate partner violence at the hands of men, because it is sorely needed and because that’s what the author has professional experience with. However, this insight is valuable for people of all genders, and also in situations in which the abuser is not a partner or former partner.)
“How can I help my daughter, sister, or friend who is being abused?
If you would like to make a significant difference in the life of an abused woman you care about, keep the following principle fresh in your mind: your goal is to be the complete opposite of what the abuser is.
THE ABUSER: Pressures her severely
SO YOU SHOULD: Be patient. Remember that it takes time for an abused woman to sort out her confusion and figure out how to handle her situation. It is not helpful for her to try to follow your timetable for when she should stand up to her partner, leave him, call the police, or whatever step you want her to take. You need to respect her judgement regarding when she is ready to take action – something her abuser never does.
THE ABUSER: Talks down to her
SO YOU SHOULD: Address her as an equal. Avoid all traces of condescension or superior knowledge in your voice. This caution applies just as much or more to professionals. If you speak to an abused woman as if you are smarter or wiser than she is, or as if she is going through something that could never happen to you, then you inadvertently confirm exactly what the abuser has been telling her, which is that she is beneath him. Remember, your actions speak louder than your words.
THE ABUSER: Thinks he knows what is good for her better than she does
SO YOU SHOULD: Treat her as the expert on her own life. Don’t assume that you know what she needs to do. I have sometimes given abused women suggestions that I thought were exactly right but turned out to be terrible for that particular situation. Ask her what she thinks might work and, without pressuring her, offer suggestions, respecting her explanations for why certain courses of action would not be helpful. Don’t tell her what to do.
THE ABUSER: Dominates conversations
SO YOU SHOULD: Listen more and talk less. The temptation may be great to convince her what a “jerk” he is, to analyze his motives, to give speeches covering entire chapters of this book. But talking too much inadvertently communicates to her that your thoughts are more important than hers, which is exactly how the abuser treats her. If you want her to value her own feelings and opinions, then you have to show her that you value them.
THE ABUSER: Believes he has the right to control her life
SO YOU SHOULD: Respect her right to self-determination. She is entitled to make decisions that are not exactly what you would choose, including the decision to stay with her abusive partner or to return to him after a separation. You can’t convince a woman that her life belongs to her if you are simultaneously acting like it belongs to you. Stay by her even when she makes choices that you don’t like.
THE ABUSER: Assumes he understands her children and their needs better than she does
SO YOU SHOULD: Assume that she is a competent, caring mother. Remember that there is no simple way to determine what is best for the children of an abused woman. Even if she leaves the abuser, the children’s problems are not necessarily over, and sometimes abusers actually create worse difficulties for the children postseparation than before. You cannot help her to find the best path for her children unless you have a realistic grasp of the complicated set of choices that face her.
THE ABUSER: Thinks for her
SO YOU SHOULD: Think with her. Don’t assume the role of teacher or rescuer. Instead, join forces with her as a respectful and equal team member.
Notice that being the opposite of the abuser does not simply mean saying the opposite of what he says. If he beseeches her with “Don’t leave me, don’t leave me,” and you stand on the other side badgering her with, “Leave him, leave him,” she will feel that you’re much like him; you are both pressuring her to accept your judgement of what she should do. Neither of you is asking the empowering question, “What do you want to do?”
In Western European folklore, growing hair on the palms of one’s hands is considered to be a sign of masturbation.
In Eastern European folklore, growing hair on the palms of one’s hands is considered to be a sign of werewolfism.
I can’t help but feel there’s ripe potential for misunderstanding there.
So the question becomes… does masturbation cause lycanthropy or does lycanthropy cause masturbation? Or are they so intertwined that you will get both simultaneously?
Your username in conjunction with the topic has reminded me of all those despairing testimonials by the directors of Victorian boarding schools to the effect that masturbation rates among the student body ran nearly to 100%, and now I have a vivid mental image of some sort of deranged Victorian boarding school sex-comedy-by-proxy in which the teaching staff is fighting a losing battle to convince the students that turning into wolves is bad for their health.
I was going to make a snarky comment about Dracula and the fact that Stoker was definitely thinking of both, but now I can’t because this is much funnier.
Tell me this is not the face of a man who’d try to fight an outbreak of lycanthropy with corn flakes.
“We were children trying to survive environments we couldn’t cope with. Every one of us. The system failed all of us, and we all knew it. Some of us survived, some of us didn’t, none of us came out unscathed.
All of us were singled out as the problem kid with problems, ignoring what surrounded all of us: violence, hopelessness, abuse, neglect, despair, bullying, torture, confusion, oppression.
What the media is doing to these children is its own form of violence. It is an invasion. It is telling our stories the way they see us, not the way we are.”
I got a disease that no therapist can cure…
You’re never too old to cuss and spit
You’re never too old to throw a fit
Even when I’m fat, bald, wrinkled and grey
A fuckin’ problem child I’m gonna stay
like, u know there is a degree of moderation there, right? someone has to order the books to stock in the library. a library that lets any old creep stash their hastily scribbled shota pwp in between the shelves is a library that’s going to be shut down p quick. by the police. for providing ppl with child porn. (and yes if a picture of a tree or a description of a tree can make someone experience a tree, then the same can be said about a picture or description of a child in a sexual situation ffs)
I mean there’s like a million other logistical differences, and idk who checks erotica out of a library, but hey ppl can be wild abt these things
Hooboy. Well, as a librarian who has worked in many varieties of libraries, let me… try to… respond to this from a library and librarian perspective.
1) It is true that libraries have a process to go through for accepting materials, and that there is a degree of selectivity involved–this is because libraries have limited budgets, limited physical space, and limited staff to process and manage materials.
So, yes, any random junk written and left in the library would be thrown out. Not because the library would be concerned about its liability if anyone should see it; because we like to keep the library clean and organized, and leaving stuff on the shelf is not how we add things to the collection (how would they get CATALOGUED and LABELED???) And, of course, any adult attempting to show pornography (or, say, themselves) to actual children would be Removed From The Library because this would involve actual children being harmed by an actual adult in direct contact with them. Police do not shut down the libraries where this happens. They arrest the people harming the children.
Meanwhile, libraries spend VAST SUMS OF MONEY and ENDLESS STAFF HOURS to keep copies of Fifty Shades of Gray on the shelves where children actually can find them quite readily (and have them checked out on their library cards if mom’s has too many fines). Same with Last Tango in Paris and Flowers in the Attic and Year’s Best Erotica collections. (And Bibles, which get stolen at a ridiculous pace. I don’t know why, we were just forever having to order more of them.)
In an online space, which has effectively unlimited space, where adding new material costs nothing, and where the process of organizing that material and making it available is fully automated and what labor is involved is taken on by the contributing author, literally none of those constraints apply, so more content is more content! It’s catalogued and labeled as soon as it’s posted! It cannot be misshelved. Perfect!
2) This is not to say that no physical library has handwritten erotica in its collection somewhere. Many, many libraries collect rare local works such as self-published zines, and unique items like the personal papers of notable people (San Jose State University, for instance, holds the papers of the Kensington Ladies’ Erotica Society; The University of Iowa Zine Collection includes fanfic zines with erotic content; UCLA has the personal papers of Anais Nin), and doubtless some of these zines and personal papers include erotica. Because this handwritten material would be unique and its value would be presumed to lie mainly in the fact of its authorship, it would be properly collected, not in a library, but in an archive or special collection, where some archivist would dutifully folder it and make a note of what it was so future visitors to the collection could readily access it.
The main goal there would be to protect the material, not the person who might potentially view the material.
I worked in a public library which had an extensive collection of Playboy on microfilm, for instance. We kept it behind a desk where it had to be requested and checked out with a library card before it could be viewed. This was partly to prevent children viewing material inappropriate for their age–just as, say, the AO3 clearly marks adult material as such–but mainly to prevent vandalism of the material by people who disapproved of it. Several of the images on the film had been damaged by people trying to scratch them out; for the safety of the microfilm, we restricted access to it. This is also why the AO3 doesn’t allow people who dislike a fic to force it to be taken down.
This is also why most libraries celebrate Banned Books Week by eagerly higlighting works which people have ATTEMPTED to force to be removed from libraries–including work like Lolita, which is read by many as a titillating pedophile love affair. Librarians are not celebrating Lolita. They are celebrating the principle that they will not be stopped from collecting materials of interest and making them available to readers.
3) From your description of a library where children can freely access anything on the shelves, you seem to have only one conception of a library–a public library with open stacks, or perhaps a school library. There are, in fact, many kinds of libraries, with academic libraries being the most obvious foil to your description.
In an academic or university library, all authorized users of the library are adults who take adult responsibility for what they find in the library, much like when adult internet users indicate on a website that they are choosing to view adult content.
When I worked in a university library, I asked one of the librarians what do when a guy was sitting at a computer very obviously watching porn while a young woman, sitting next to him doing something text-based, seemed like she might be uncomfortable. I was told in no uncertain terms that the library’s policy was to relocate the person who was uncomfortable. The library was a repository of information and a place to access information: any kind of information, including the erotic. Under no circumstances would we curtail a library user’s access to that information.
(Unless he got his own actual dick out where people could see it, then we could call the campus police. Because, again: actual humans directly involved.)
Duke University Library Erotica Collection, 1940s-1960s (”An archive of original illustrations, sketchbooks, and erotic stories, depicting transgressive sex acts including (but not limited to) lesbian and heterosexual sex, incest, pedophilia, sadomassochistic behavior, and copulation with objects as varied as sex toys, produce, and household appliances. The stories and illustrations appear to be the work of a single individual, with nearly all narrative told from a female’s point of view. Also includes some amateur pornographic photography and magazine clippings.”)
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
You must be logged in to post a comment.