Deborah Lipp

I kind of stumbled across this amazing post on Swede & Czech. It’s about KT Mcfarland, a Republican candidate for Senator who is sharing honestly about being abused as a child and about being estranged from her brother, who died of AIDS.

Look, I’m not voting for a Republican in November. Seriously not. But I admire this woman’s candor, and I also feel for her despair at the way she’s being attacked for her candor (emphasis added):

McFarland said recent news accounts about her violent upbringing and how it may have contributed to her brother’s death constituted “another form of abuse,” making her wonder if her quest to unseat Clinton was really worth it.

Swede & Czech sums it up beautifully:

Can I see where she equates the treatment that they had as children to the life her brother was leading? Yes. Do I think she is right? Not necessarily. Did she do the right thing in abandoning her brother? Absolutely not. Is it my place to make her understand that? No. Not with the demons that she has to face about her past.

It’s called revictimization. Let’s make sure that anyone from an abusive background is forced to either lie or stay out of politics. Because that’s good for our system.

Here’s some cogent “political analysis”:

Two prominent Republicans tell me that if Spencer’s campaign advisers had their act together, they could’ve deployed someone — a Republican moderate, say, or a gay activist — to pilliory K.T. over her treatment of her gay brother when he had H.I.V. and was dying of AIDS.

Mr. Spencer could also try to go after K.T.’s history of repressed memory therapy, to try to tie it to their “Kooky K.T.” story line, the Republicans said.

Because seeking treatment for child abuse is “kooky.” Excellent.

This is what our world does, in case you didn’t know. People who talk about child abuse are kooks and nuts and freaks. Because it doesn’t happen or it isn’t that bad or it’s just…freakish. If you speak from your personal experience, from the gut and heart and knowledge and life that you have, then you “have issues” and can be dismissed.

Who do we protect by doing that? The abusers, of course. And the people who are afraid to hear. And who do we hurt? The victims and potential future victims, and the ones staying silent to see if it will hurt to get help, who discover that, by golly, it does.