We are all very ignorant about every aspect of abuse

I’ve been thinking about shame, abuse, and gender lately. (Evergreen tweet.) 

I thought about shame and abuse recently while listening to the Betrayal podcast. I thought about shame, abuse, and gender while watching the third season of Monsters and then writing about it. I thought about all three while watching I Just Killed My Dad, another Netflix true crime docuseries.

It occurred to me recently that when I close my eyes and imagine a victim and a perpetrator of sexual assault or domestic violence, I imagine a woman and a man, respectively.

I’m ashamed about that. Then again, I’m sure I’m not the only one. Then again again, most people don’t write about gender from a feminist and abolitionist perspective as their actual, full-time job. I mean damn, I wrote about male rape victims ten years ago for HuffPo.

I’ve also been thinking about when stressing personal responsibility becomes victim-blaming. When does prudence turn into prudishness? 

The sad truth is that we are all very ignorant about every aspect of abuse. We’re ignorant because we’re ashamed and we’re ashamed because we’re ignorant. And we shame victims because perpetrators want us to and because blaming and shaming victims makes us feel safer. But it also puts us all in greater danger.