Some Secrets Should Never Be Kept: A Community Reading on Child Sexual Abuse

https://childrensbookforall.org/past-readings/20250518

by chbkall • 1 year ago

3 5 1 year ago

chbkall3• 1 year ago

We read the children's book 'Some Secrets Should Never Be Kept' written by Jayneen Sanders and illustrated by Craig Smith to evoke discussions on child sexual abuse among survivors and allies. Together, we also tried to create a safe space to hold experiences that some participants chose to share in this space.

yawpitch2• 1 year ago

In my experience it’s the idea of community and communities that forces that secret to be kept in the first place.

chbkall3• 1 year ago

I hear you. I also agree with you in some senses of the 'communities' we are part of. However, I do not agree with generalizing the experience to the idea of 'community' itself. What is the alternative then? Being alone and isolated? Doesn't that impact our idea of self, our psychological, emotional and social systems? I would like to believe in the idea of community. I would like to believe that with right intention, a diversity of ideas can find space to exist in a community. I would like to believe that a community can define, refine and evolve its value systems. I believe that a community if nurtured properly can and does become a healing space for people.

yawpitch2• 1 year ago

I think my critique is mainly around the distinction between communities you actively and in an informed manner choose to join, communities you don’t get to choose to join or not at all, communities you are assumed by others to have joined whether you consented to or not, and communities you would almost certainly never knowingly choose to join, but get forced to join anyway.

For example I didn’t get a choice to join the community of “biological males”, and without resort to my consent i have always been assumed to be “cisgender heterosexual male”… because of where my parents chose to move during my childhood I was forced against both my interests and my consent to become a member of the “crypto-atheist” community, and through the absurdly violent actions of others I was forced to join both the general “survivors of childhood sexual abuse” and the more specific “male survivors of childhood sexual abuse” communities… all of which have, to some degree or another, required me to adhere to norms and rules and expectations I never got to fully develop for myself. All of the above also required me to keep my, many, secrets, primarily for their comfort and convenience, all so that I could at least appear to be a member of those communities.

The great difficulty was realizing that I, and my self, are themselves a community with a diversity of ideas, all of which exist in the same overlapping spaces I / we know as my / our body and mind, and the senses and emotions the former mediates and distorts for the latter.

So yes, community can be good, but community can also be bad. When the community I didn’t get to choose to join is at its best it tries to foster a safe space for me and my self, and I in turn try to keep that community safe from me and my self. The problem is it was a member of that same community that made me an initiate in it… then other members of that same community that forced me to stay silent about it, in all cases to protect them from seeing (never mind acknowledging) their own secrets.

And yes, absolutely, let us define, refine, and evolve, and let us do so towards the greater good. But let’s also stop protecting communities when it’s the individuals within them that are actually human.

Some Secrets Should Never Be Kept: A Community Reading on Child Sexual Abuse

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