I love this so deeply. As an advocate for child survivors of SA, while society focuses on the anger of young men, I am unable to hide from the wrath of their mothers. “What about MY SON,” they seethe at me through their cups of tea at a luncheon for female members of the county Democratic Party, though I have done nothing but introduce myself and did not know anyone here even had sons. “Women can lie too! We can be just as evil as MEN” they remind me over watery vodka sodas at a happy hour for Progressive Women supporting trans rights, scowling at me the way I do cops. I want to say “your sons will be fine, please worry about your daughters -no one gives them second chances. The scarlet letter of having gone to HR will never be erased.” I want to tell them about the woman I worked with in 1999, whose boss followed her home drunk and was arrested for trying to break into her apartment; the next day she asked for a transfer to a different desk so she wouldn’t have to report to him any longer. This request was denied. He was terrified he would be fired and told everyone this; she was shunned though she never once asked for him to be punished. She wanted protection so accepted a voluntary layoff. Twenty five years later i meet her for lunch. Turns out she never worked in finance again in spite of accumulating advanced degrees. His career has flatlined but it still exists, in spite of himself. I would love to tell this story to these Progressive Democratic women who recognize the responsibility of raising privileged cis white men but not the system in which they are doing so but instead I nod and let my eyes glaze over while I order another drink.
Sometimes I think women's empathy for the men in their lives is the undoing of feminism. The challenge is to be empathetic without enabling. The solution to that which our current rulers have adopted is to have no capacity for empathy in the first place, and that can't be right either. So much easier to be evil than to be good.
And this is where I’m sympathetic to women because codependency and enabling is all we have ever seen or known. The burden on us to recognize and break these cycles is too great for any of us to bear. This is what I tell myself when the women I trusted disappoint me or when the women I love, harm me. We were raised by women forced by law and policy to become codependent with the most powerful and privileged man who would have them in order to survive; feminists of that generation focused on law and policy, and not on the implicit and explicit demands they made on each other let alone the generation behind them. They would argue that this focus on feelings is what allowed the policies they fought for to become undone. I fundamentally disagree with this, but as my anger towards other women serves me no purpose as of yet I try to forgive them and save my energy for the much bigger bigger fights yet to come.
That sounds right. It's probably easier for me as a man to say it's not my place to criticize, despite how harmful a lot of the behavior I see is. I think then the question we should be asking is where is the countervailing movement of men with empathy for women that makes them more likely to throw other men under the bus (which in most cases would be deserved anyway). Crickets.
Oh, we should be checking men first and foremost always. Second is making sure that we give as many women second chances as we do men. Quietly in the background women like me are doing the work one on one, calling other women in encouraging us to be better and hoping for the best, and trying not to take it personally or to view it as a failure when our efforts are met with derision and scorn.
Such a good post. I think this analysis of apology and forgiveness is so important. I've long thought that requiring forgiveness is another form of abuse and that people who insist on it and claim that it is freeing or the moral thing to do are weaponizing it in a way that further harms victims of abuse.
This is so good 🔥 I see this as Kate Manne’s theorizing of male entitlement applied to how sexual violence is received within our media culture and it is very powerful
Excellent piece. I have come to believe that this behavior will decrease only when other men call it out and both act to defend the women who are victims and shame the perpetrators. In my department at the college I taught at for nearly 40 years we had a casual harasser who the administration failed to deal with. After addressing the issue directly with him I simply started warning the women students about his behavior. He actually followed one woman post graduation to her new job. And our administrators did nothing. The department faculty largely shunned him as a last resort.
Thank you for this. As a comedy lover, it's been beyond dispiriting to see so many of them allowed to trickle back into the mainstream full of self pity and self righteousness with no real show of remorse or contrition.
One hopeful note: while "Forgiveness is giving up all hope of a better past," is really profound and something I need to explore further, it seems to describe acceptance more than hope. To me, it feels like the hope of a better past is *precisely* why we want people to try to make amends, the idea that while the black act cannot be undone, it can be at least partly redeemed if it led to a better future.
Serendipitous tonight. Revisiting the brilliance of Judith Herman and have found your article. Your work is so often validating during these tectonic paradigm shifts. Thank you.
This piece is so meaningful, I cannot put into words how much so, I will say two things: as a therapist I challenge my clients (many of whom are victims of a wide array of abuses) to be analytical of critical of others’ demands for forgiveness…cultural, societal, familial and perpetrator’s demands and expectations of forgiveness, and personally this piece hits home for me as a survivor, as a mother navigating this expectation of forgiveness in my own family system. I sent this off to my own therapist this morning. Thank you Moira, your writing is so powerful, I will be sharing this piece forever with my clients.
Fortunately for me the man who abused me died about 11 years ago. I was married to him for 30 years, give or take. His abuse was not forcing himself on other women. He was an actor so he very cleverly constructed a Persona, as Jung would have called it, that was what he thought he should be. But this Persona was not the person he really was.
He appeared to be kind, sensitive, even gentle. But he was always interested in seducing other women. He presented himself as a wounded duck, appealing to a woman’s desire to help him. He was very skillful at this role playing and over the time we were together he had many little flings with women he had cultivated this kind of relationship with, myself included.
I never figured out what he was up to. So he would periodically confess to his infidelities, which were frequently with my women friends. Thus destroying more than one of my friendships. Then he would imply that because he had confessed and told me he was sorry I was then required, expected even, to forgive him. I do not have a forgiving nature, and his flings severely damaged our relationship, sonething he never quite seemed to understand.
My father terrorized me when I was growing up, but after one particularly horrible fight, he finally apologized and said he’d never hit me again. This was in the dining room at the National Archives in D.C., where they had nice tablecloths and napkins. He never hit me again. I expected the same of my husband, but that simply never happened.
That is the way apologies and forgiveness are supposed to work. My husband was not sincere. He just wanted the itch of his guilt to be scratched. I always figured it was because he was a lapsed Catholic. Go to the priest, confess, be forgiven, then go out and sin again. But I was not his priest. I didn’t need to fulfill his fantasy. And the many women he charmed with his “sincerity” never saw him for the narcissist he was. But I did.
When he finally left me I was so relieved! I felt like someone had opened my prison cell and I was free at last!
I read this and immediately thought of religion. So often, you hear about the forgiveness for a heinous act as “proof” of the victim’s goodness. As if the victim must issue this apology in order to be “worthy” of support and recognition
I love this so deeply. As an advocate for child survivors of SA, while society focuses on the anger of young men, I am unable to hide from the wrath of their mothers. “What about MY SON,” they seethe at me through their cups of tea at a luncheon for female members of the county Democratic Party, though I have done nothing but introduce myself and did not know anyone here even had sons. “Women can lie too! We can be just as evil as MEN” they remind me over watery vodka sodas at a happy hour for Progressive Women supporting trans rights, scowling at me the way I do cops. I want to say “your sons will be fine, please worry about your daughters -no one gives them second chances. The scarlet letter of having gone to HR will never be erased.” I want to tell them about the woman I worked with in 1999, whose boss followed her home drunk and was arrested for trying to break into her apartment; the next day she asked for a transfer to a different desk so she wouldn’t have to report to him any longer. This request was denied. He was terrified he would be fired and told everyone this; she was shunned though she never once asked for him to be punished. She wanted protection so accepted a voluntary layoff. Twenty five years later i meet her for lunch. Turns out she never worked in finance again in spite of accumulating advanced degrees. His career has flatlined but it still exists, in spite of himself. I would love to tell this story to these Progressive Democratic women who recognize the responsibility of raising privileged cis white men but not the system in which they are doing so but instead I nod and let my eyes glaze over while I order another drink.
Sometimes I think women's empathy for the men in their lives is the undoing of feminism. The challenge is to be empathetic without enabling. The solution to that which our current rulers have adopted is to have no capacity for empathy in the first place, and that can't be right either. So much easier to be evil than to be good.
And this is where I’m sympathetic to women because codependency and enabling is all we have ever seen or known. The burden on us to recognize and break these cycles is too great for any of us to bear. This is what I tell myself when the women I trusted disappoint me or when the women I love, harm me. We were raised by women forced by law and policy to become codependent with the most powerful and privileged man who would have them in order to survive; feminists of that generation focused on law and policy, and not on the implicit and explicit demands they made on each other let alone the generation behind them. They would argue that this focus on feelings is what allowed the policies they fought for to become undone. I fundamentally disagree with this, but as my anger towards other women serves me no purpose as of yet I try to forgive them and save my energy for the much bigger bigger fights yet to come.
That sounds right. It's probably easier for me as a man to say it's not my place to criticize, despite how harmful a lot of the behavior I see is. I think then the question we should be asking is where is the countervailing movement of men with empathy for women that makes them more likely to throw other men under the bus (which in most cases would be deserved anyway). Crickets.
Oh, we should be checking men first and foremost always. Second is making sure that we give as many women second chances as we do men. Quietly in the background women like me are doing the work one on one, calling other women in encouraging us to be better and hoping for the best, and trying not to take it personally or to view it as a failure when our efforts are met with derision and scorn.
This is so insightful, thank you for this.
Such a good post. I think this analysis of apology and forgiveness is so important. I've long thought that requiring forgiveness is another form of abuse and that people who insist on it and claim that it is freeing or the moral thing to do are weaponizing it in a way that further harms victims of abuse.
This piece is absolutely incredible, Moira. Your writing is gripping and poignant. Thank you for sharing this.
Thank you, Jessica!
This is so good 🔥 I see this as Kate Manne’s theorizing of male entitlement applied to how sexual violence is received within our media culture and it is very powerful
Well reasoned observations! Excellent article.
Thank you for this. You're an auto-read writer for me, and rigorous writing like this is one reason why.
Thank you, Hannah!
This was a great read.
Excellent piece. I have come to believe that this behavior will decrease only when other men call it out and both act to defend the women who are victims and shame the perpetrators. In my department at the college I taught at for nearly 40 years we had a casual harasser who the administration failed to deal with. After addressing the issue directly with him I simply started warning the women students about his behavior. He actually followed one woman post graduation to her new job. And our administrators did nothing. The department faculty largely shunned him as a last resort.
Thank you for this. As a comedy lover, it's been beyond dispiriting to see so many of them allowed to trickle back into the mainstream full of self pity and self righteousness with no real show of remorse or contrition.
One hopeful note: while "Forgiveness is giving up all hope of a better past," is really profound and something I need to explore further, it seems to describe acceptance more than hope. To me, it feels like the hope of a better past is *precisely* why we want people to try to make amends, the idea that while the black act cannot be undone, it can be at least partly redeemed if it led to a better future.
Exceptional essay! Thank you!
Serendipitous tonight. Revisiting the brilliance of Judith Herman and have found your article. Your work is so often validating during these tectonic paradigm shifts. Thank you.
This sheds light on so many things that are weighing on us. Thank you @moiradonegan
This piece is so meaningful, I cannot put into words how much so, I will say two things: as a therapist I challenge my clients (many of whom are victims of a wide array of abuses) to be analytical of critical of others’ demands for forgiveness…cultural, societal, familial and perpetrator’s demands and expectations of forgiveness, and personally this piece hits home for me as a survivor, as a mother navigating this expectation of forgiveness in my own family system. I sent this off to my own therapist this morning. Thank you Moira, your writing is so powerful, I will be sharing this piece forever with my clients.
Fortunately for me the man who abused me died about 11 years ago. I was married to him for 30 years, give or take. His abuse was not forcing himself on other women. He was an actor so he very cleverly constructed a Persona, as Jung would have called it, that was what he thought he should be. But this Persona was not the person he really was.
He appeared to be kind, sensitive, even gentle. But he was always interested in seducing other women. He presented himself as a wounded duck, appealing to a woman’s desire to help him. He was very skillful at this role playing and over the time we were together he had many little flings with women he had cultivated this kind of relationship with, myself included.
I never figured out what he was up to. So he would periodically confess to his infidelities, which were frequently with my women friends. Thus destroying more than one of my friendships. Then he would imply that because he had confessed and told me he was sorry I was then required, expected even, to forgive him. I do not have a forgiving nature, and his flings severely damaged our relationship, sonething he never quite seemed to understand.
My father terrorized me when I was growing up, but after one particularly horrible fight, he finally apologized and said he’d never hit me again. This was in the dining room at the National Archives in D.C., where they had nice tablecloths and napkins. He never hit me again. I expected the same of my husband, but that simply never happened.
That is the way apologies and forgiveness are supposed to work. My husband was not sincere. He just wanted the itch of his guilt to be scratched. I always figured it was because he was a lapsed Catholic. Go to the priest, confess, be forgiven, then go out and sin again. But I was not his priest. I didn’t need to fulfill his fantasy. And the many women he charmed with his “sincerity” never saw him for the narcissist he was. But I did.
When he finally left me I was so relieved! I felt like someone had opened my prison cell and I was free at last!
I read this and immediately thought of religion. So often, you hear about the forgiveness for a heinous act as “proof” of the victim’s goodness. As if the victim must issue this apology in order to be “worthy” of support and recognition
Didn’t read this. Didn’t you settle with that dude cause you libeled him?