The threat of rape is psychological torture

On the meaning of incest

Support Last Generation Canada — Climate action requires our support

Support Ici, on boycott Amazon — Organized labour requires our support

When I was fifteen I saw a pamphlet outside the office in my high school titled What is sexual assault? I picked it up. Inside, as usual, the language was vague but it said that any unwanted sexual contact was sexual assault — including kissing.

I always assumed that I wasn’t “molested.” Molestation is a word frequently used in descriptions of child sexual abuse. The word is incredibly vague. It’s as if we are all supposed to know what “molestation” is and therefore it needs no explanation. I just looked up the definition now and found this: “the sexual assault or abuse of a person, especially a child.” This definition circles back around to the definitions of sexual assault or sexual abuse. What constitutes sexual assault or sexual abuse? I always assumed that the word “molestation” necessarily included the touching of “private parts” (breasts, genitals, butt) or forcing a child to touch the “private parts” of the abuser. Therefore, I assumed that I was not molested.

What about the mouth? Is the mouth a “private part”? What about kissing? What about the penetration of the mouth with an unwanted tongue? Is this molestation? Is this sexual assault?

My entire life I believed that what happened to me wasn’t “that bad.” My body insists that it was — through my crazy behaviour textbook for incest survivors and my autoimmunity and other chronic illness also textbook for incest survivors. But in my family the sexualized terror of my grandfather was considered normal and no big deal. I now understand that all sexual abuse of children, no matter how severe, can be presented as normal and no big deal. Up to and including rape.

I was not raped. I was not touched on my breasts, genitals, or butt. I was not forced to see or touch an adult’s genitals. The sexual abuse in my family took the form of sexual comments (“this is the girl I’m going to marry”, “I’m going to neck with her out in the car”), sexual threats (“you may not want to kiss me now but I’ll steal a kiss from you when you are sleeping” followed by standing over our beds at night and leaning over our bodies in bed), adult near nudity (my grandfather was constantly wearing only a tiny pair of underwear), sexualized touching involving the face and mouth (my grandfather played a “game” called “slippery slobberies” in which he would forcibly hold us against our will and “play” at making out with us by rubbing his face, mouth, and tongue all over our faces and mouths, and in one instance, he took it further by forcibly entering my mouth with his tongue), and being punished and shamed for saying no, running, or attempting to have boundaries (our father would call us ungrateful and selfish and yell at us for resisting our grandfather’s sexual advances).

All of this was normal in my family and to this day my family only defines the time my grandfather entered my mouth with his tongue as “sexual assault” and the acknowledgement of that did not happen until I reported to the police. For most of my adult life I said I was sexually assaulted once. The countless times I was forced to endure my grandfather’s tongue all over my face and mouth while he held my body still through force did not count. To my family these countless sexual assaults still do not count. They are seen as a “harmless game” played by all the men in my grandfather’s family. At worst, it is seen as “inappropriate.”

I now understand that I, and the other children in my family, were being sexually terrorized. The sexual abuse I experienced cannot be reduced to any specific action taken or comment made by my grandfather. I lived in a climate of constant sexual threat. I knew and understood that my grandfather wanted to rape me. His undisguised lust toward the girl children was on constant display. He even verbally indicated that he had plans to take things further while we were sleeping and then would follow up those threats with behaviour that confirmed it: standing over us while we were in our beds.

The threat of rape is psychological torture. This statement would be dismissed as ridiculous by my family because in their minds — of course there was no threat of rape. The “games” my grandfather played were, according to my family, harmless. Maybe they were inappropriate. But certainly, my grandfather would never have raped us.

My question is — how can my family be so sure that he was not actually going to follow through on his obvious desires and stated threats? And more importantly — how could we, as children, have believed there was no threat of rape? Of course we believed that the threat of rape was real, and of course we knew that we would not be protected, because all of my grandfather’s terrifying, invasive, and sexually threatening behaviour took place in full view of the many other adults in my family. Not only were we not protected, we were punished for resisting and brainwashed by our father into submission.

I grew up with a constant fear that I would be raped by a family member. My grandfather, or my father, because even though my father didn’t lick our faces, he clearly believed that it was our grandfather’s right to do so. He saw nothing wrong with it. How long until he decided he wanted some for himself? Of course I had these thoughts as a child. Of course my body was constantly in a state of chronic electric danger. Of course the thoughts I knew I wasn’t allowed to think indicated that rape was a very real possibility. I cannot explain the weight of that terror. While it was life and death for me to treat the threat as real, I also knew I would be ejected from belonging in my family, punished, and humiliated if I acknowledged that I knew the threat was real.

We act as if sexual abuse has finally happened when some line that is forever receding into the distance is crossed. Culturally we dismiss sexual comments to and about children as “inappropriate” but certainly the adult wouldn’t really do anything. Accusing someone of being a pedophile or an incester is such a serious accusation that we play it “safe” and wait to say anything until it seems the line will really be crossed. What I am saying is that once any sexual behaviour has been enacted toward a child the line is already crossed. Children are not stupid. They understand danger. They receive messages from their bodies telling them that something is wrong and they have to find a way to make sense of and respond to these messages. Fight, flight, fawn, freeze, submit. These embodied survival responses take place in a context of pervasive denial, silence, punishment, and shame. The child must go to extremely creative lengths (usually involving some splitting of the personality) in order to survive these insane conditions.

I also want to be very clear about this: bringing a child to a sexual abuser and telling the child they must not resist the sexual abuse, is itself sexual abuse. In my family it is an extreme crime to suggest that there is any possibility that my father might be an incester and sexual abuser like my grandfather was. To suggest that he could be is seen as absolutely insane. And yet — why wouldn’t he be? My family acknnowledges that my father comes from a family in which this behaviour was common and utterly normal. My mother has even said that “all the men in [my father’s] family did this.” And yet, in the doublethink of incest, it would be unthinkable and impossible for my father to also be a sexual abuser. Of course we believed, growing up, that my father could be like my grandfather! My father treated my grandfather’s sexually abusive behaviour as normal and right and the children’s running, fighting, crying, and saying no as bad, disrespectful, ungrateful, and selfish. He clearly communicated to us that he thought our grandfather had the right to sexually abuse us. This is patriarchal incest. We belonged to our father and he had every right to give us to his father.

Of course we were afraid that our father would also decide that he too had the right to sexual access to us. When and how this would take place, we didn’t know. But we sure as fuck did not ever want to share a bed with our father. My family denies that we could have had this fear. And under that denial is the incredulous shock that I would dare speak the fear out loud, that I would dare acknowledge it. But I am going to take this further. The issue is not the unanswerable question that has plagued me all my life: is my father a sexual abuser like my grandfather, was he planning or considering his own sexual abuse against his daughters? I have good reason to answer this question in the affirmative even though I have no proof. But whether or not he would have eventually started to make his own sexual advances against his children — he was already sexually abusing us. Giving a child to a sexual abuser and forcing them to submit is itself sexual abuse. If an adult gives a child to other adults to sexually abuse in exchange for money that is called trafficking. If an adult gives a child to another adult to sexually abuse because they are family that is incest. My father facilitated the sexual abuse of my grandfather. If it wasn’t for the love and loyalty I felt toward my father I would have bit my grandfather’s tongue out of his mouth like a wild dog.

There are countless incest survivors who do not know they are incest survivors because they are caught in the incest narrative that what happened to them wasn’t that bad and doesn’t count. Any and all sexual, romantic, and/or emotionally enmeshed behaviour from adults to children is deeply traumatic. Sensing the sexual desire of adults in your family and knowing you are on your own to defend against it is a profound form of psychological torture. The “line,” however we define that line, does not actually need to be crossed. Even sensing that there is a possibility that such a line could be crossed is itself a form of torture. Children should never have to fear sexual violation within their family. That fear itself is so intensely traumatic and profoundly damaging.

If I dared get close to the conclusions I’ve come to, I would tell myself I was stealing something from real survivors of sexual abuse. If I managed to get through the denial, silence, and brainwashing of my family, and reach the conclusion that I experienced chronic sexual violence as a child including the chronic threat of rape, I would tell myself that I should step back and be quiet and let survivors of childhood molestation and rape speak to the experience. It is true that different forms of child sexual abuse are different, and I cannot imagine the mindbreaking horror of my greatest fear as a child coming true. I do not share the experience of child rape, and it is important for me to stand behind and support these survivors in their articulation of the specificity of the incredible violence they have been forced to endure. But the idea that me articulating the specificity of the incredible violence I have been forced to endure somehow steals something from these other survivors is both plainly wrong and also very convenient for the culture of incest that wants survivors isolated, not in contact with each other, and competing for scraps of compassion or support. The message that there is a hierarchy of trauma and that only those whose abusers “crossed the line” should speak does not come from survivors of child rape. It comes from the incest culture, and the perpetrators and enablers of incest, who are using the trauma of some incest survivors to silence the testimony of other incest survivors, in order to prevent mass solidarity and consciousness raising about the true extent of child sexual abuse.

Survivors of child rape have never once suggested to me that what happened to me “wasn’t that bad.” Our experiences are not the same, but we share many experiences, including the unthinkable horror of growing up in a family where we had to defend against sexual invasion from family members. If you are caught up in the trap of believing that what happened to you “doesn’t count” or that you should let those who “had it worse” speak, know that your voice does not take away from the struggle against incest, it adds to it. Know that what happened to you was exactly as bad as your body is telling you it was, no matter what your fucking family says. Mass solidarity between incest survivors and other survivors of child sexual abuse would be an extremely powerful, world changing force. That’s why they want to keep us divided.

Announcements

Recent episodes of Fucking Cancelled:

Depressing but true: we’re hurtling toward human-caused climate collapse and our political-economic system, captured by capitalist elites intent on squeezing out profits until the day our civilization collapses, is effectively incapable of responding by itself. It must be forced: but how? Petitions haven’t worked. Rallies haven’t worked. Posting on Instagram hasn’t worked. And ****ing up pipelines, sexy though it might be, hasn’t worked. So while purists call for mass eco-insurgency and liberals circulate change.org petitions, the A22 Network has responded by organizing and mobilizing huge numbers of committed militants around the Western world, using large-scale civil disobedience as a tactic to push governments to adopt basic climate policies. These tactics have been controversial but successful: Just Stop Oil, the British branch of A22 perhaps best known for throwing soup at a Van Gogh, recently disbanded itself because its main demand — that the UK government cease approving any new oil and gas exploitation projects — has been adopted. In Episode 81 we chat with Laura Sullivan, a spokesperson for Last Generation Canada, which is the Canadian branch of the A22 Network. We talk about Last Generation’s demands, the tactics used by the group, combating the freeze response often provoked by discussions of climate collapse, and preparing for revolutionary conditions as things inevitably deteriorate. Listen here.

Plagued from a young age by disturbing intrusive thoughts and unable to control dangerous compulsive behaviours, 3 Body Problemscreenwriter and best-selling author Rose Cartwright was immensely relieved to learn that she had a disease called OCD, which was caused by a chemical imbalance in her brain and could be easily treated with a pill. She became the UK’s poster girl for recovery from OCD, and even wrote a book called Pure—later adapted into a TV show—about the success of the psychiatric model in treating her disorder. But years later, having sunk back into chronic suicidality, she struggled with the fact that this model hadn’t really produced any kind of long term relief. Then she discovered something astounding: that there is no biological basis for most of the disorders in the DSM, and the ‘chemical imbalance’ theory of mental illness had been quietly discredited years ago. She embarked on a quest to understand what was going on, resulting in her groundbreaking book The Maps We Carry: Psychedelics, Trauma, and Our New Path to Mental Health. In Episode 80, we talk to Rose about her story and her research, getting into the failures of the medical system to treat mental illness effectively, the amazing properties of psychedelics in this field, and the question of how to give working class people access to these new, important tools. Listen here.

When survivors of incest act in the ways any sexually abused child would act, they are psychiatrized and medicated, and often returned to their abusers. When they grow up and search for resources on what happened to them, what they are most likely to find is terabytes of pornography. When they write about their experiences, they are siloed into the realm of self-help and excluded from the realm of politics. In episode 78 we talk with writer Kelsey Zazanis about the epidemic extent of incest child sexual abuse, the rights of children, and incest as a site of feminist political struggle. We also get deep into Jungian psychology and discuss spirituality as a way of making sense of the world. Listen here.

If you like the Fucking Cancelled podcast, do us a favour and interact with us on substack. Liking and sharing our episodes on substack makes a huge difference. Thank you!

Other exciting news: My book Fucking Magic has been picked up by Revolutionaries Press. Fucking Magic is a collection of 12 issues of the zine of the same title, published between 2017 and 2020. I self-published it as a book in 2021, and it is now finding a home with a press in 2025, as part of my push to establish more legitimacy for myself as a writer in the mainstream literary world. Thank you to Wallea Eaglehawk for believing in this project, and taking a chance on republishing an independent book. Stay tuned for more information as it becomes available. I will be selling off all the remaining copies of the self-published version at a discount for a limited time. If you are in Montreal, I can give you an even bigger discount if you are willing to come pick up the book. You can contact me about that here.

Related: Revolutionaries Press is looking for an artist to design the cover of the new edition of Fucking Magic: We are seeking cover concept submissions or pitches for Clementine Morrigan’s FUCKING MAGIC second edition release. Please send examples of your work, either a rough concept or pitch of what you’d like to do, and an indication of your rates to wallea@revolutionaries.com.au.

---

I am a writer, zinester, and literary punk based in Montreal, Canada. I have been making zines since the year 2000 and have probably made more than 100,000 hand stapled zines over the course of my career. My best selling zine, Love Without Emergency, has sold more than 11,000 copies, and I have many other zines besides that. I write essays, literary nonfiction, and philosophy, and am known for my unflinching approach to deep and difficult topics, as well as my accessible, down to earth use of language. I am known for my work on many topics including surviving incest and other forms of trauma, trauma informed polyamory, bisexual women’s sexuality, opposing cancel culture on the left, and finding compassionate, non-punitive approaches to ending the cycle of violence. I have a podcast with my partner Jay Lesoleil called Fucking Cancelled where we develop our thinking on how to build a robust, effective left that doesn’t eat itself alive, and where we’ve had the pleasure of interviewing many important thinkers and writers. I have published six books over the course of my career, Rupture, The Size of a Bird, You Can’t Own the Fucking Stars, Trauma Magic, Fucking Magic, and Sexting. I sometimes teach workshops on various topics. This substack is a huge archive of my writing, a place where I am regularly and consistently producing new writing, and one of the main ways I support myself as an independent, underground writer. Thank you for being here. As well as the archive, make sure you explore my bibliography, my body of work, and the list of interviews I’ve done. Thank you for your support of my work.

I am looking for a literary agent and publishers who are excited about unconventional, underground writing. If this is you, or you have any leads, please get in touch

.

---