Hi. In talking with N today, who knows a person who used to be the therapist for the Israeli incest survivor I blogged about here, I learned a little bit more about this guy. While I think it is very courageous of him to be so public with his story and to speak out against incest to so many, he apparently is doing something problematic. Apparently, he is teaching people that he knows all there is to know about incest survivorship and that he understands how all of us experience the abuse and the after effects. No one can absolutely know another's experience, and all our experiences as survivors are clearly not the same. I am a little troubled.
Let me be clear. It is great that he is doing work which right now others refuse to do. I just hope that he conveys that just as not every holocaust survivor had the same experience, the same is true for incest survivors. Elie Wisel has become a spokesperson about the Holocaust, but he does not claim to speak for every survivor or to know every experience. For the Mr. Orr (the Israeli incest survivor in the story) to give himself the moniker "Elie Wisel of Incest survivors" is a bit assuming. (I wonder if he even asked Mr. Wisel to use his name?)
[btw - unfortunately, Haaretz seems to have taken the story (now old) off of their server, so if you missed it the first time you can't catch up with it.]
No comments:
Post a Comment