 |
Follow @AstraeaHome |
Astraea's Politics:
Abuse Survivorship & Awareness
Looking for multiple personality resources? Go here.
Sexual and Gender Abuse Issues
On May 4, 2004, David Reimer committed suicide. Reimer, 38, was the victim of the infamous "Bruce/Brenda" study which was used to prove that gender was solely a matter of attitude and conditioning.
Female Genital Cutting and Mutilation: Networking and Education
Female Genital Mutilation in America An article from the New York Times. Speaks frankly & openly on a subject that has been covered up for many years. Don't ever let anyone tell you that this only happens in Africa and Asia. Touted as a cure for everything from masturbation to UTI's, a preventative for infertility and lesbianism or just to "look more normal". Ain't it lovely?
Martha Coventry: Making the Cut Gives you some background. Is this still going on? Yes.
Martha Coventry: Tyranny of the Aesthetic It isn't always a question of being intersexed.
Peter Feibleman: "Natural Causes" It is fiction, but loaded with genuine facts.
Doctors Against Circumcision Putting an end to routine male circumcision.
Cut babies and the horror of sex A history of male circumcision and why we think it's "healthy". (This website has many wonderful articles on censorship, homosexuality and culture.)
Barbara J. King, Why We Need More Than Three Genders Male, female and third gender or gender-neutral are not enough. Nor is this "some 21st century liberal-progressive agenda, as it is sometimes painted. Spending some time with this interactive map shows that fluidity in gender roles is and has been evident in societies around the world. A nonbinary perspective is neither new nor Euro-American."
With that in mind, also read The Emergence & Danger of the 'Acceptable Trans* Narrative by Drew Cordes. While we take issue with Cordes' idea that we must "go find" trans people who do not fit the "accepted" narrative, as if they had no voices (trans people of all races are speaking and writing) this article spells out very clearly why the idea of transgender cannot be limited to two polarities, or a certain income bracket, social class or race.
What if It’s (Sort of) a Boy and (Sort of) a Girl? The story of Cheryl Chase, the founder of the Intersex Society of North America whose mission is to end shame, secrecy, and unwanted genital surgeries for people born with atypical sex anatomy.
Supporting Boys or Girls When the Line Isn’t Clear More parents are leaving their kids alone on this. It's not easy, but it's past time for it to happen.
What's so bad about a boy who wants to wear a dress? This brought our attention to the fact that there is an internet community of these parents.
And here it is: Pink Is For Boys
PRINCESS DARTH. Man, this is just great.
The Child Who Simply Knew Parents support gender reassignment for their daughter, who knows she is a little girl. This story needs to be publicized, reprinted everywhere possible.
And so does this.
|
Title: 10,000 Dresses Author: Marcus Ewert Publisher: Seven Stories, Nov. 2008 ISBN: 1583228500 Bailey's been having some amazing dreams about beautiful dresses. She visits a palace with dresses made of stars, flowers, ribbons -- some even have windows to faraway lands and other worlds. But when Bailey tries to share her vision, nobody wants to hear it. "You shouldn't be dreaming about dresses -- you're a BOY." What's a girl in a boy's body to do? |
|
Support and recognition also need to happen for little boys who like "girl" things and girls who like "boy" things without being either gay or transgendered. There are boys who happen to like pink tutus and mermaids, and girls who like tool boxes and powerful action heroes. Is that really outside the realm of psychiatric reality?
Maybe this will set an example:
|
Title: My Princess Boy Author: Cheryl Kilodavis Publisher: Aladdin 2010 ISBN: 1442429887
|
|
Drop the Barbie! Does your little girl play with fire trucks? Does your little boy like to collect pink ponies and wear nail polish? Should we leave the kid alone and let him become the next Johnny Weir? According to your friendly neighborhood shrink, your child has a mental disease! He's gender-atypical! (or, more kindly, "childhood gender nonconformity"). Traditionally, these kids are institutionalized, drugged and conditioned in sometimes brutal programs to cure them of something called Gender Identity Disorder.
A 'Real Boy' and Not A Sissy A history of the psychiatric view of gender and masculinity. Extremely revealing.
Michelle Dawson (the autism advocate): ABA Treatment for "Gender Disturbed" Children This treatment was part of the UCLA Feminine Boy Project. These "feminine boys" were supposedly suffering in terrible pain. (Well, from being bullied, yeah...) So did Ivar Lovaas (yes, THAT Ivar Lovaas) do research on bullying or try to change society to accept "feminine" boys? Nooooo. The answer was to put them through Alex's aversive behavior conditioning in A Clockwork Orange. This is not for the squeamish.
Bullies and School Shootings
Bob King: Kurt, Kurt, Kurt... Reflections on life in high school, bullies and their targets, suicide and kids with guns.
Idat: Massacre of the Soul Thoughts on the Columbine killings
Jello Biafra: HELLBURBIA (AUDIO LINK) - A look at the Columbine killings. What was the truth behind the media babbling about video games, black trenchcoats and Marilyn Manson?
If this sound clip doesn't work, email us.
Jello Biafra explains that he could have been profiled as a school shooter, judging by the profiles created by law enforcement after the fact. Kasiya^Sukey talks about this in It Could Have Been Me. How many young people recognize the reasons for Columbine, and for Cho Seung-Hui's actions at Virginia Tech even if they would never emulate them?
Mindfreedom's Cho Seung-Hui collection There was a lot more to Seung-Hui's life and what led to the Virginia Tech murders than you were ever told.
How to create a school shooter It should be no surprise.
Fear the Geek Dan Savage talks about the evils that have always existed in high schools, and suggests these school shootings might bring them to light.
Prof. Jenkins Goes to Washington This is the story of how a mild mannered MIT Professor ended up being called before Congress to testify about "selling violence to our children".
The Untouchable Mean Girls The death of Phoebe Prince. By the way, the young women who hounded her to her death got off with a year's probation and community service.
Tell Us What Happened Why classmates are afraid to speak up about what happened to Phoebe Prince.
The Six-Lesson Schoolteacher This essay describes our school experience back in the 1960s. Is your school like this? What can be done to change things? See also Gatto's Against School.
David Oaks: I Was A College Student Mental Patient Reflections on youth, psychiatric labeling, and the catastrophe at Virginia Tech. "I'm 51 when I write this. Between between the ages of 19 and 21 I was locked up five times in psychiatric institutions while I was attending Harvard..."
Prison Camps For Kids
Heal Online Among many other causes, these people have a huge amount of information on behavior modification centers and disciplinary "boot camps" for children. Scroll down to the pink section in the middle of the page. Pay particular attention to the section on Teens' and Children's Legal Rights.More on boot camps for kids here - Torturing Teens for Fun and Profit Cruelty, sadism, injury & death in locked residential facilities for so-called 'troubled' youth. Define 'troubled' -- many of these kids get locked up for such crimes as bad grades, black nail polish or investigating non-Christian religions.
|
Title: Help At Any Cost Author: Maia Szalavitz Publisher: Riverhead, 2006 ISBN: 1594489106 "For $2,000 a month and more, a program will take an oppositional teen to a lockdown facility or a wilderness boot camp for however long it takes to break him or her. Parents pay more than an Ivy League tuition for their children to undergo some "out-of-line" punishments (use of "stress positions," brainwashing, etc.), and, says Szalavitz, there's no evidence that these facilities cure anything. Indeed, many teens suffer post-traumatic stress disorders for years; some actually die in these facilities... These hugely profitable businesses are largely unregulated by legal, medical or ethical codes, avoiding accountability for failure by blaming the victim." |
 |
Services & Resources for Abuse Survivors
The FAQ for alt.sexual.abuse.recovery Might be useful even if the group is long dead.
Asarian International "Encouraging and assisting all survivors of childhood sexual abuse to move from victim, to survivor, to thriver."
Livejournal communities discussing sexual abuse
Survivors' Network of those Abused by Priests
You should also see Deliver Us From Evil if you can.
SANCTUARY: Safe Network Community, The Underground Abuse Resource was begun as an online forum on spousal abuse, it's open not only to all abuse survivors but to friends and supportive family. It is run as a MUD (Multi-User Dimension), and is essentially a very large, complex set of chat rooms and bulletin boards.
This link is kept current.
Sanctuary is now under new management.
|
Title: For Your Own Good: Hidden Brutality in Child-Rearing, and the Roots of Violence Author: Dr. Alice Miller Publisher: Noonday ISBN: 0374522693 If you think you were never abused, read this book. Most people do suffer some form of physical, emotional or intellectual brutality in childhood. People who are acknowledged by society to have been abused tell horrific battle stories. Those of us who were "merely" slapped, spanked, and bullied as children are thus inclined to overlook our experiences as trivial. Most child abuse goes under the sobriquet of parental discipline. It affects our thoughts and feelings in later life, often in subtle ways we don't even notice. "It made me stronger" often simply means "it made me numb". This is not a whiny book, nor is it a Bradshaw feel-good hugfest. Child abuse exists and chances are you've been through it. Don't revisit it on your kids. And the next time someone says "You think you had it tough" and starts talking about some publicized extreme case, show them this book.
What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Weaker Modern psychiatry is finally starting to get some sense about this. This book is now available in its entirety on line. Click here to read For Your Own Good in free e-text.
|
 |
Title: These Stolen Flowers A Rape Awareness Book: Poetry and Ideas For Avoiding and Overcoming Rape. Author: Patty Moskos Publisher: AuthorHouse 2010 ISBN: 1452010404 Artist Moskos wrote this after a conference in New Mexico describing the difficult experiences of rape victimization. The book includes space for the reader to write in their own thoughts and ideas, a self-help section on rape avoidance, and advice on overcoming rape experiences. Even though this is really for adult women, it might be useful to victims of child sexual abuse.
|
 |
Abuse-Trauma Therapy and Recovery
Find A Therapist
If you are looking for a therapist in your area, the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation has a database of trauma recovery/PTSD/MPD-DID/dissociative disorder therapists.Other support sites include Rainn and Survivors of Incest Anonymous: if you were abused by clergy, go to Snap.
Lizabeth Casada carries on Lynn W's Many Voices work
Lizabeth Casada plans to start two web resources. Holding Space will be for people "who are still waiting to feel like someone understands them and that they are not alone. The work to reach those who are starting out or don't have access to help is just beginning.... I see it as a place where we can exchange ideas, talk openly about trauma, PTSD, and living with DID without the worry about security in social media."Online Now! A Life After Trauma -- "listings of online support groups, meet ups, conferences, helpful websites, phone apps, books, blogs and tools for you to use to begin to move past your trauma."
Contact Information: lizabeth@holdingspacecommunity.com Holding Space, PO Box 51552, Bowling Green KY 42102
Read Lizabeth's announcement here
Many Voices folded after the death of founder Lynn& Wasnak. (See below for Lizabeth's planned memorial to Lynn... you can be part of it.) All back issues of the Many Voices newsletter are now available as free PDFs, there will be NO new issues but Lizabeth plans these two new support sites to take the place of Many Voices. Go to Many Voices Press to sign up for email updates.
Founded in 1989, Many Voices was an independent newsletter written BY (not just for) people recovering from child abuse or trauma, dissociative disorder, PTSD or trauma -- multiples and singlets. It was the flagship publication for the voices of abuse survivors and multiples to speak up and be heard.
Lynn's daughter Diane says: "In January 2014, the following was found in minutes from a Board of Directors Meeting dated 9/20/2011. Lynn was nine months into Chemotherapy at this point.
"'ISST-D Liaison. I already contacted our liaison at ISST-D telling her to expect that we will have "contingency plans" to discuss with them.
"'I have had excellent contacts with them since MV began, and if we are not able to keep MV going, (when I am gone), this is the place I want to "take over", even if all they do is make back issues available on the web in perpetuity.' (THEY HAVE! Back issues free online now!)
"Many Voices issues are now the property of The International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation."
Leave a comment about Lynn at the Awareness Center or sign Lynn's memorial guestbook. Lizabeth also plans a memorial for Lynn and you can contribute. Write to Lizabeth at: Holding Space/ PO Box 51552/ Bowling Green KY 42102, or lizabeth@holdingspacecommunity.com. Be sure to include written permission for her to use your submission!
Autism
Stop the abuse of autistics
and the murder of autistic children by their families.
Murder of Autistics Archive ... Christopher Degroot ... Katie McCarron ... More on Katie
An Open Letter To Parents Considering Intensive Behavioral Therapy For Their Child With Autism Courtesy of Virgynia King. A stinging indictment of behaviorist methods. Applies to all children -- not just autistics. If you feel your child needs therapy, please consider play therapy or some other non-behaviorist method.
This does not just happen to autistics but to children with learning disabilities, or anyone who is considered different. Restraint and murder of 'different' children in our public schools has always happened. There is no law against it.
(Now that you've stopped laughing at the "when we send our children to school, we expect they will be safe from danger" remark, let's proceed.)
'Different' children are routinely and legally put in restraints. Not to mention handcuffed, arrested and jailed. And the school districts claim it never happens.
No Autistics Allowed Explorations in discrimination against autistics. What are non-autistic people deciding for autistic people? Pay particular attention to Bettelheim's Worst Crime: Autism and the Epidemic of Irresponsibility. OF INTEREST TO ABUSE SURVIVORS.
Also of interest: Ballastexistenz 'Severely autistic' does not mean incapable of thought or expression, nor does it take "years of therapy" in order to train a 'severe autistic' to communicate with the right technology.
 | A three-day conference FOR autistic people -- centred around autistic people’s needs, interests and sensitivities. 'It is not a disease, it is a way of life' Autscape, an event run by and for autistic people. It's the latest act of a burgeoning autism rights movement. Emine Saner reports on the campaign to celebrate difference, rather than make vain attempts to cure it. |
|
Title: Not Even Wrong: Adventures in Autism Author: Paul Collins Publisher: Bloomsbury USA ISBN: 1582343675 By the father of a child who may or may not be on the "spectrum" - unique among parental accounts because of its lack of tragedy. Instead of seeing his son as a victim of a horrible devastating illness, Collins saw his son's unique reading and mathematical abilities and his love of computers over people as part of what was right about the kid. He researched history to find individuals who may or may not have been autistic, and to find out just exactly what autism is. Collins' message is that it's a mistake to try to force we autistics into so called normality. He learns to communicate with his son through picture cards and he finds an autistic program in a school where the children are allowed to learn through their own special interests. Simply letting autistic people be autistic is such a revolutionary idea! But it may well be the future. A review of Not Even Wrong, by Jay Young If you are interested in books by autistic authors, try Amanda Baggs' Autistic Authors Booklist.
|
|
Discrediting "False Memory Syndrome" and the FMSF
Astraea differentiates issues of Abuse Survivorship from those of Multiple Personality. Read our statement to find out why. If you want to read about multiple personality, go to our Multiple Personality page.
Sredni Vashtar An inspiring story.
Child's Play Think it all started with D&D?
|
|
|
Email | Guestbook | FAQ | Home | Multiplicity | Religion | Politics | Anti-Psych | Anti-FMSF | Silly
Thank you NameCheap