pedophile adding his name to the
ever-growing list of sexual predators in
Hollywood and as a sort of smokescreen
to cover up the allegations against him
he comes out as gay and people see right
through it he rightfully faces a massive
amount of backlash but it’s the wrong
kind of backlash because instead of the
conversation being Kevin Spacey’s a
pedophile and thought he could trick us
and that’s absolutely an issue that
should be talked about the stereotype
that gay men are pedophiles but it’s the
wrong time for that particular
conversation because it gave Kevin
Spacey exactly what he wanted it allowed
him to spin that scandal into being
about something other than what it was
which was childhood sexual assault which
I’m going to refer to as CSA from here
on out
and this isn’t honestly all that
uncommon on the whole people care about
CSI survivors a lot less than they’d
like to think they do like you asked any
given person like Oh what are your
thoughts on pedophilia they’re going to
tell you that it’s awful and evil and
vile but once you start criticizing the
sexualization of children and teenagers
in the media or school dress codes or
the role that pedophilia plays in comedy
a lot of those same people are a lot
less vocal for example daddy jokes a lot
of people have heard of the daddy jokes
and it’s it’s a sexualized term that you
use to describe yourself for your hot
friend and it’s become super common
especially with Millennials and because
it’s become so common the context and
origin of the word has largely been
forgotten but the word comes from a kink
a sexual roleplay called daddy damn
little girl in which one partner takes
on the role of a parental figure and the
other of a child and so for si si
survivors like hearing this kind of
language thrown around very casually is
obviously very triggering and upsetting
I I am a survivor I was molested by an
adult man when I was six years old and
he was not a father figure to me but
even so
hearing the daddy jokes thrown around
will set me off for at minimum the
entire rest of that day because it’s a
reminder of how pervasive this stuff is
and how little empathy people really
have for are the experiences of
survivors when were children much less
when were older and supposed to have
outgrown the drama and for other
survivors like my best friend Vegas who
was raped by his stepfather for years
like that holds an even more sinister
connotation and you know Vegas and I are
both very vocal about this stuff like in
person and on social media and it’s one
thing when people just don’t know
because you can explain to them the
context and and what it really means and
they have their moment with like oh my
god I had no idea and then they can
change their behavior but what’s much
more common is you have people who no
matter if you talk to them one-on-one no
matter how many times they hear you talk
about this stuff it’s inconvenient for
them to reevaluate their behavior or
they don’t want to accept that it’s
actually harmful so they just don’t stop
and because of that and the stuff you
just hear day-to-day it’s very hard to
go more than like a day or two without
being reminded of your status as a
survivor and being reminded of how
isolating that is I think something a
lot of people don’t realize is how much
being assaulted in childhood impacts the
entire rest of your life it’s not well
you were little and so you know kids
don’t have real feelings and once you’re
older you’re fine because when you are
raped as a child your brain is dealing
with some heavy adult stuff before it’s
a fully developed adult brain and when
you’re in this very specific window of
six to nine years old your brains in a
very sensitive stage of cognitive and
emotional development and as a means of
coping I’m in in the context of this
talk I’m going to be talking
specifically in regards to pedophilia
but any kinds of abuse experienced in
that six to nine year window as a means
of processing what’s happening your
brain can create a new identity a lot of
people are familiar with multiple
personalities disorder which is the
outdated term for what’s known today as
dissociative eye
any disorder or D ID and I think one of
the biggest misconceptions about D ID is
tied up in the word personality because
people hear that and it’s easy to
conceptualize it as like putting on a
mask or playing a character which makes
it very easy to discount the ideas like
just a delusion or well sure we believe
he believes it but we all know he’s
crazy because the thing is your brain is
really really good at what it does so it
goes all the way and when it creates
someone new and and that person is not
like a two-dimensional character it’s a
real fully developed person just as real
as the kid who was there first so the
term we don’t use personality the term
we use is alter and because most people
with GID have more than just one author
the term for all alters collectively is
a system so once you have the system
that’s created any other traumas that
occur throughout the lifetime have the
potential to create new halters so the
person who this body originally
belonging to her name is Maddy and she
was like I said molested when we were
six and it’s Maddy and then Percy and
math were the first two altars that
showed up as a result of that initial
trauma and then when we were in high
school
Maddy was in an abusive relationship for
a few years and I Ross hey was created
during that time to help her cope and a
few years after that once we were able
to finally get away from the abusive
girlfriend for good Maddy was
essentially like I’m very small and my
life has been garbage and I don’t want
to be here anymore it’s your turn so she
sort of went into hibernation and left
left me to take to run things
Fox stood up not too long after that and
after him
Sawyer Bucky and Steve so there’s eight
of us in our system and I think I think
people have it’s easier to understand
the difference between authors by like
interacting with them rather than just
hearing about them so we’re actually
going to have Fox take over for a little
bit please excuse the boys crack Oh
ifox take over for a little bit Hey
just as a disclaimer we don’t this isn’t
like a party trick you don’t usually
just turn it on and off we can but we
don’t we have sorry we have this we’ve
rehearsed this but anyway like Ross said
my name is Fox the term for what I’m
doing right now talking interacting with
the world controlling our body is called
fronting we’ve worked really hard with
in our system to have strong internal
communication which allows us to have
pretty good control over who is fronting
when we’ve known other systems with
significantly poorer communication who
have little to no control over who pops
in and out so I wanted to talk about one
of the the biggest misconceptions second
biggest I guess misconceptions about D
ID is one that you see perpetuated in
the media a lot you haven’t movies like
split or like that one episode of any
given crime procedural drama where it’s
this person has di D and one of their
alters is a serial killer can they be
stopped and the thing about that aside
from the fact that it’s wildly untrue is
that the trope plays off of existing
stereotypes about di D which paint it as
one of the quote-unquote scarier mental
illnesses as opposed to say anxiety and
depression because for most people it’s
hard to imagine you know sharing your
body and head with other people but the
thing is the best way I can articulate
di D is it’s like living with roommates
only they’re inside your head right if
you uh if you don’t can’t communicate
you’re gonna have problems some of you
are significantly worse at remembering
to do the dishes and you inhabit the
same physical space so another question
we get whenever we talk about our
communication is how logistically that
works think about any form of media
you’ve interacted with in which someone
can read minds and they hear other
people’s thoughts inside their own head
but all the
voices sound different because they’re
all coming from different people again
because authors were our own distinct
people we all have our own distinct
voices so it’s literally just internal
communication sharing thoughts and
feelings and the thing the because like
I say this is media right it’s media it
tends to be very stigmatizing when
talking about mental health in general
but especially the rarer disorders like
di D so because most people haven’t
interacted with anyone with D ID most of
the information they have about it is
likely to come from stigmatizing media
which makes it harder for people who
have D ID to be visible about our
experiences and a lot of the the stigma
that exists also extends to the field of
psychology you have a lot of therapists
who don’t believe di D exists at all
a lot of intro to psych classes will
describe it as this is a term that
exists most of us don’t believe in it
watch the movie Sybil and move on and
the movie Sybil is a wildly inaccurate
depiction of di D and it’s since been
proven that the woman it describes Sybil
did not actually have di D so you can
imagine how that goes but our
psychiatrist told us about a year ago
that most therapists will not knowingly
take on a client who already has a di D
diagnosis and we did find this in our
personal experience to be the case
because di D is also accompanied by
almost always anxiety depression PTSD
but can also be accompanied by disorders
personality disorders eating disorders
psychosis and schizophrenia
so most like most psychologists a lot of
therapists will just not want to deal
with with everything you come with so
our psychiatrist told us that we should
pretend we didn’t have a diagnosis
wait for a therapist to get to give us
their own diagnosis and take it from
there which is a lot of work just to
find out if a therapist will work with
you at all
so we after about six months and several
traumatic therapy experiences we did
find the therapist
we have now who is a blessing and while
we’re on the topic of therapy so there’s
two there’s really a good kind of
therapy for di D and a bad kind and it
can be easy to assume that the way to
treat di D is is to get rid of the
system which is not the case thing about
di D is the problem with it is not the
presence of the system it’s the trauma
that caused it so you want to treat di D
for PTSD but you’ve got the bad kind of
therapy which insists on the idea of
integration which is mashing all the
altars back up into one person and for a
very very small number of people with di
D this is a desirable solution but for
most of us who knowingly wants to not a
not exist tomorrow so the good kind of
therapy leaves that decision up to the
person with di D in their system our
current therapist the first session we
had with her she asked us if we were
interested in integration we said no and
she has not brought it up since well she
has told us is that in systems like ours
where communication is sound that di D
is one of the healthiest coping
mechanisms the brain has for dealing
with trauma so we’re all we’re all very
close in our system we look out for each
other
if Ross is having a tough time someone
else will step in so they don’t have to
front until they’re more stable and we
in our personal experience di D has been
a very good thing that came out of
something horrible Ross again um so just
sort of in closing here I just wanted to
emphasize again like si si and di D are
both deeply misunderstood and super
super stigmatized and that leads to
silencing stigma is always used as a
tool of suppression which makes it hard
for people to talk about their
experiences for people to empathize with
experiences that they can’t personally
understand and it allows people like
Kevin Spacey to get away with it so like
empathy is the biggest thing we can
stress here today just please care about
children listen to children when they
talk about experiences listen to any
survivors when they
aren’t able to talk about their
experiences and look out for each other
thank you [Applause]