Psychological warfare

My Feminist Journey, Part IV | Clarissa's Blog

The situation where the males invade one's private space in order to make you shrink into a smaller mindset ---I've had that experience a lot, earlier in my life.   To move in and take up space that you require, but which they don't require, puts you on the defensive.  That uses up psychical energy, which means you don't have as much to expend in developing a public life, either.  First consolidate your space in the private realm and then you can extend into the public.  My family of origin were very keen to stop me from developing in this way.   It was psychological warfare.

And by the way, the Rhodesian military used to use the same strategy of ongoing harassment to keep the blacks from making civil protests.  They would switch off their water and electricity and harass them with helicopters as a warning not do try protesting again.  So my father had actually had substantial formal training in the art of keeping someone down.

• bloggerclarissa

  JUNE 26, 2013 @ 8:20 PM

  I find that many people can’t even contemplate a discussion of familial abuse. The patriarchal prohibition against demanding accountability of one’s parents is too strong. In my culture, it’s the prohibition against being critical of the mother who is entitled to inflict absolutely anything on the children. In other cultures , it’s the father who is outside the pale of any criticism. The rage people invest into hounding a person who protests against this abuse is incredibly strong.

   

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• musteryou

  JUNE 26, 2013 @ 8:25 PM

  Yes, that is what I have found also. An additional problem is that I was unable to articulate the nature of the harassment. I now see where it comes from — a kind of soldiering mentality that was a conditioned outlook. But all the same, people will read what I have said and make excuses or even go so far as to insist that they had a better knowledge of my experience than I have had, as one UWA prof seemed to imply. Of course, to claim to know better about my experiences than I do is to claim omniscience, which is a narcissistic posture. So people seem to respond to my truths by taking on a narcissistic stance and insisting they have experienced everything I have in a more veracious way.

   

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