Compilation of comments

 More recent comments from Reddit:

-----Subtle definitions of terms, like "chivalry" and "gentleman's club"

A question in another sub reminded me of a few terms that felt contradictory to me, as I was growing up. I was born in 1965, and my experiences with these terms were informed by books, religious indoctrination, TV shows and movies, as well as the way I watched society use these terms. Many of these terms have fallen out of common usage, but one term, chivalry, does show up occasionally, in a few conversations I have seen recently. 

I grew up loving the TV show, Mash. I also enjoyed the original movie, when I first saw it as a teenager. I received the full box set of episodes, specials, original movie, and interviews, as a birthday gift around 25 years ago. My kids and I watched reruns of this show as they were growing up.  

At some point during the last decade, watching reruns of this show became a real lesson for me, in how my peers and I grew up absorbing so many toxic ideas surrounding misogyny and masculinity. The way patriarchy was a built in systemic and accepted normality for me became much clearer, as I realized what my generation had once watched without batting an eye. The diminishment of rape and sexual harassment into running jokes, and the way the most respected men in the camp were the ones who could masterfully use coercion in a "gentlemanly" manner, in order to get laid, stand out now, in so many of the episodes. For me, it is disturbing to remember how I could not see any of this, as I watched this show religiously while in my teens. (I do not think any sections of the show should be removed or banned. It does paint an honest picture of life in our society, during the 1950s war era, and again later, when the movie and series were created.)

I do remember being confused by one particular scene, while I was still a teen. That scene didn't sit right with me. Hawkeye and Margaret were with Klinger at an aid station, and after a crazy day, they are trying to get some sleep. Margaret is concerned about nearby enemy activity. Hawkeye shares his blanket with her and scoots closer. Then he tells Margaret, "I want you to know, chivalry isn't dead. It's just been replaced by exhaustion." I remember wondering why he would equate "chivalry" with being awake enough to turn that moment into sexual activity. Why did it seem like he was saying that he couldn't be chivalrous enough to fuck her, because he was too tired? It sometimes felt like "chivalry" simply meant a man being more subtly coercive at getting sex, in order to not appear rapey. It was like a man who could be better at manipulating a women into sex, a man more well-versed in coercion, was somehow a more decent, chivalrous man. The kind of man who chose to frequent "gentleman's club," instead of simply paying for sex on the street. Which brings me to the 2nd term that was also troubling to me, as a teen. Was discretion and wealth the only character differences between all of the men who sexualized and objectified women? Was a man sipping cognac, smoking cigars with other men as they enjoyed women being objectified in an opulent setting, really more decent than a man getting a lap dance in a cheap strip club? 

I am in no way asking all of this to get into the subject of sex-work. I am just looking back at how I instinctively viewed certain terms as definitions that to me, seemed to be saying that men sexualized and objectified women, but decent men did it with better coercion techniques, and more discretion.-----

-----Sexualized children do not understand what adult predators are doing, the ways adult predators lie to them and manipulate them. Grooming is not something any sexualized child understands. Adult predators are the ones who tell these youth that they are finding their own sexuality, but that is not true, when older predators are exploiting these sexualized children.

Children who are not sexualized as toddlers/preteens, tend to search for their natural sexuality through peer interactions. That is natural. As in how nature intended. Puberty happens to most children roughly around the same age, and the slowing of the sexual organs also happens at roughly the same age. Humans are meant to be naturally experiencing sexuality with their peers. But in our patriarchy, it is afab children who are sexualized as early as toddlerhood, by everything marketed to them. Not amab children. And in our patriarchy, medicaid/medicare provides medical methods for older males to bypass the natural progression of their own physiology. Birth control may start to be less available for child-bearing humans, soon, but no way will the availability of ED medications ever be stopped. Convicted sexual predators can often get medicaid/medicare to cover the cost of such prescriptions. The natural progression of how male fertility is meant to work is seen as a dysfunction. Meanwhile, a pregnant person who medically needs an abortion will sometimes go thru hell trying to get actually necessary medical care.  

This is how our patriarchy works. Afab children are sexualized/objectified before they can read, then told they are making strong feminist choices by having their natural sexuality be totally manipulated by old predators. Nothing about this empowers anyone but sexual predators.-----

-----There is something much deeper happening, when it comes to the way afab children are being treated, in our society. It is why teen girls are going thru what they go thru.  

The documentary Pretty Baby addresses how this started, as a reaction to the first waves of feminism. It has gotten so much worse. While targeting youth for things like alcohol and tobacco have received pushback, the sexualization and objectification of afab children from toddlerhood on has not received any pushback. Instead, it has exponentially grown.  

We do not tell a 13 yr-old who consumes alcohol that if they know how to make a complicated mixed drink, this means they are mature enough to be given alcohol by adults. We criminally charge adults who provide youth with alcohol. We do not say a child with a drinking problem is making mature choices and is developing self-agency bcuz they drink a lot. Joe Camel was retired, and candy cigarettes are no longer on the shelves of most stores. E-cigarettes had to discontinue flavors enticing children, because we know a child who smokes/vapes is not making mature choices from a place of self-agency. But we have allowed afab children to be sexualized and objectified younger and younger, we allow adult men to interact with these sexualized children younger and younger, and as these girls are showing the symptoms of being sexualized and objectified, we blame these girls by telling them they are making powerful mature feminist choices, we ascribe self-agency to these underage girls. And who is benefitting? The adult men who are grooming these girls and sexually exploiting them for whatever they want are the only ones who benefit. Our teen girls are self-harming and killing themselves at higher rates than ever. We are allowing the destruction of our afab children. This is not their fault at all. But adult men say these afab children are mature, and are exercising self agency. They groom these girls to blame themselves with those very words.

As someone who experienced CSA starting at 2, and was trafficked by my hooker stepmother to her clients and for CP, I was blamed for all of the old men who re-exploited me, starting with my sda school principal when I was 13. It has horrified me to see how that outright slut-blame I received has been manipulated into some sort of mature feminist decision these sexualized children are making. It is blame, wrapped up in a bs bow. These girls are ending up with mental health issues, slicing themselves up, and killing themselves. And the predators just move on to the next girls.  

It makes me feel physically ill, to watch this happen to children.

Teen girls can have no idea what their natural sexuality might have been, when they are sexualized as small children. Natural exploration of sexuality for afab children is not happening. What 14 yr-old girls are experiencing now is not their choice at all. But they truly believe it is. And it is harming larger numbers of them than ever.-----

-----These trauma responses are the symptoms of childhood sexualization. It can take a long time to fully understand where these symptoms are coming from. CSA creates internal beliefs and damage that leave us suffering for a long time.  

For me, it took me learning to view my younger self as the child I had actually been, and no longer seeing my young self as some"bad, hypersexual child," like everyone always told me I was. I did not "cause" any old predator to harm me. Lifting all blame off my child self, and placing it on the predators who first harmed me, started to make me want to protect myself, because I saw myself as worthy of protection. This, in turn, made me learn to see predators for exactly who they are choosing to be. Where I once was easily manipulated and re-exploited by such predators, I can now spot them, and bcuz I now understand what they are truly capable of, and how they are harming damaged young survivors who are not at fault, I immediately set boundaries with them. The reward of finally being capable of keeping myself safe is so much better than anything I once believed I was getting, when I was still caught in the awful cycle of being re-exploited by manipulative old predators. It took me a long time, but I am in such a better place, now.  

I hope you find whatever healing will help you keep yourself safer, and give yourself the protection and care nobody else gave you when you were younger. You deserve to be safe, and to find healing.-----

-----For me, the freedom to naturally grow into our own individual sexuality would be ideal. We should all have such freedom. But I do run into a big red flag, when I see afab children being sexualized from toddlerhood on, who are interacting with adult men on apps as preteens/teens, then being told they are making strong feminist choices when they are being groomed and lied to and sexually exploited by these older predators. Children are not wiser because they are sexualized younger. These predators are the same sick misogynists who have been sexually exploiting afab children forever.  

Predators are finding ways to twist feminism into words that these youth can't possibly grasp. There is nothing natural or healthy about old men fucking kids. If we don't allow patriarchal ideas to warp feminist language into words those same predators use to have earlier access to afab children, then children will be able to discover what they truly want for themselves as they mature. If we let all kids naturally grow into their own sexuality instead of having it marketed to half of them before they even start school, then all kids have a better chance to discover their own preferences and experiences. Telling a sexualized afab child that them being groomed by an old sexual predator is a strong feminist choice, telling them they have the wisdom and agency to "choose" to be sexually exploited by a sexual predator, is another form of victim blaming. The only people who are gaining anything from all of this are old sexual predators. The same men who have been controlling patriarchies for eons.-----

-----I do not agree with the ideas I have read about Louis Perry's views. But I have noticed a trend where, in advocating for equality in the way adults are choosing to express their own sexuality, there are some predators twisting that freedom to include their sexual exploitation of afab children.  

I am a never married, never gonna be married, sexually active female, who chooses to take part in intimate interactions with other non-partnered peers of all genders. I have involuntarily worn that damn scarlet letter my whole adult life, and experienced the slut-shaming that comes with it. I do not believe in shaming any consenting adults for anything they are choosing to do with other consenting adults. But I take absolute exception to the CSA/CP/trafficking I experienced as a child, and the resulting sexual re-exploitation I continuously experienced from 13 on, as somehow being a part of my own stong, feminist decision making. That is simply twisting words to continue blaming sexualized afab children for what adult predators are doing to them because of the symptoms sexualized children go thru as teens.

I hope I explained this better. It has been disturbing to watch more children be sexually exploited and re-exploited like I was, and see how blame is now being twisted into some sort of strong feminist choice these kids are making. That is something I believe needs to be made clear whenever we are discussing sexual equality.-----

-----I have not spent time delving deeply into her beliefs, but I feel my internal temp rise, too, whenever I hear anything that will increase the shaming of women for exercising sexual freedom.-----

-----The re-exploitation of survivors is a common, ignored, and accepted practice in our society. Adult predators see every child experiencing CSA as a potential future victim of their own perverse desires. They know these children are now going to be mentally compromised, which makes them easier to re-exploit and blame. They know these survivors have damaged abilities to set boundaries. They know that a harmed CSA survivor will be sent into the "flight or fright or freeze" state of mind whenever they feel threatened again. That means the predator can enjoy feeling like they are actually physically assaulting such a child, because the threat of being put thru something that survivor already had to go thru, causes the survivor's mind to react as if they are really experiencing CSA again. Some of these predators take it a step further, and start off by acting compassionate toward the survivor, offering to help the survivor, because they know these children need support and help to recover. These grooming predators do all of this in order to con the survivor into trusting them, so the predator can sexually re-exploit that survivor again. 

I believe part of the reason society does not do more to stop CSA/CP/trafficking, is because a significant portion of society sees such moments of abuse as the very activities that create youth who are easier to re-exploit, and then blame. Until society calls out such re-exploiting predators, and blames them for what they do to survivors instead of blaming the survivors, I don't believe the crimes encompassing CSA will ever lessen. These crimes have increased exponentially in the last few decades, and I believe that until these CSA crimes are no longer viewed as a sick aphrodisiac by such a large percentage of society, there will never be a real endeavor to see the eradication of CSA.

I am so sorry you were subjected to such sick re-exploitation, OP. The way your history has created mental and emotional symptoms that are harmful and painful for you, should never be viewed by anyone as an effed up chance to harm you even more. I'm glad you shut off DM's. No one online should be trying to communicate privately with you about any of this.

Your words here are an example of the strength you are developing. You are speaking up for yourself, and working to keep yourself safe. I hope you continue doing this for yourself, as you work toward healing.

I wish you continued healing and growth and safety in the future.-----

-----Any of the childhood abuses that destroy our ability to set, or even sense when we need, boundaries, leave us vulnerable to exploitation by predators. Such abuses keep us from developing a natural sense of ourselves, a sense that we each deserve to have nurtured in us as we grow up.

I am so sorry you went thru being harmed by just such a predator 💔❤️‍🩹-----

-----Aileen Wuornos was so harmed by re-exploitation, it was heartbreaking. Even a christian woman who said she was trying to help Aileen, after Aileen had been incarcerated, tried to turn that "helper" relationship with Aileen into something sexual. Aileen must have viewed her life as one sexual predator after another, just wanting to re-exploit her over and over. No one ever saw her as a human who deserved anything else. No wonder she wanted to stop legally fighting to delay her execution. She is an extreme example of society never once noticing what predators did to her from toddlerhood on. Society still compares her to other serial killers. I do not see her as a Gacy or Dahmer. Once she first experienced CSA, she was constantly re-exploited sexually. It completely destroyed her to be sexually re-exploited by everyone her whole life 💔-----

-----OP, anyone who can't say what they want to say to you right here, in front of everyone, don't trust them. You can shut off message and chat options. I highly recommend doing that. Just as irl, there are lots of predators here who troll SA subs for their effed up perversions. But decent people are here, too, and they won't be sending DM's. Because they understand exactly why you posted this 💔 

I am so sorry you have had to deal with these jerks.------

Angel Wings

A repost of my favorite Holiday song, and the photo I think of whenever I listen to it:

My kids and I created our own Christmas traditions, and stayed home almost every year to enjoy them together as they grew up. But, back in '98, my mom and sister took my kids on one of their favorite trips, to Disneyland for Christmas break. Right before they drove off in my mom's car to head for the airport, my 8-yr-old daughter dropped back in the snow, to make me a snow angel, so I wouldn't miss her too much over Christmas. This is the photo I took of her angel.

A few years ago, a friend of mine introduced me to Tom Prasada-Rao music. The first time I heard "Angel Wings," it became my favorite holiday song. It also made me think of my daughter's snow angel from the Disney Trip.

I wish a blessed holiday season to all my friends and family.

Tom Prasado-Rao, Angel Wings

Criminal double standard

 If a teen says they feel empowered and good when they are using blues or tranq, do we say that drug dealers should have access to that kid?  No.  We arrest dealers, especially around schools and playgrounds, because what those dealers are doing is harmful and illegal.  If a teen says they feel empowered and good when they are drunk, do we allow this teen to be served alcohol in a bar?  No.  Why are we letting sexual predators get away with sexually exploiting afab children?  There is no excuse for this double standard.  Youth have no way of understanding any of this.  They have not developed the wisdom or agency to understand who is exploiting them and who isn't.  No matter what some predator has groomed them into believing, we do not allow children to decide who is safe for children.  When predator clergy are caught molesting children, we prosecute those predators.  We don't let the groomed children tell us that clergy person is safe.  Children being sexually exploited cannot understand what predatory adults are actually doing to them.  We don't let sexualized children write the laws regarding sexual predators. 

When I was a young teen, I asked adult strangers to buy alcohol for me.  Those who did buy me alcohol were breaking the law.  

I believed my sda school principal was a safe man when I was a child.  I trusted his lies.  I had no idea what he was doing to sexualized kids like me.  He was a sexual predator who was breaking the law.

Adults with criminal intent toward our young afab children should never be given access to these youth.  For any reason.  

Reddit subjects

 The subjects of slut/kink shaming, sex workers, and the way older predators are manipulating the youth they are re-exploiting to speak in defense of these sexual predators, come up a lot on Reddit.   I am putting two of my responses here. These responses address how I view these important issues, and I have received a few emails from blog readers asking me about these issues:

-----When children are allowed to grow into their own sexuality free from adult sexual predator interference, or societal sexualization and objectification inappropriately being forced on them, whatever those children may grow up to consensually take part in will be, imo, a healthy expression of whatever they find fulfilling. Like anything else, there's a wide spectrum of activities they may discover they enjoy engaging in.

In our current patriarchal society that starts sexualizing afab children early and erroneously misplaces agency and wisdom onto them, and where CSA and trafficking happens at a horrendous rate, accepting the porn and sex worker industries without identifying the way so many members are survivors who are being re-exploited and harmed, is not conducive to a safe and healthy environment for those workers. My family has a long history of farm-working. This is a necessary and rewarding occupation. We don't ban farms because of the horrible exploitation that can happen, and has historically happened, in this industry. We find ways to keep exploitation from happening.-----

-----I experienced CSA from about 2, onward, and my stepmother was a sex-worker who trafficked me to clients and used myself and other children to create CP, starting when I was 5 until I was around 9. This had a profound influence on my whole life. Things I was involved in, and the ways I accepted re-exploitation and took on all of the blame for the first 2 decades of my life was not healthy at all. That is why it is important to me to never allow my childhood or teen years to be seen as a legit part of how people can safely grow up to develop self-agency and have a healthy or safe sex life.

For the past years, I have finally learned to set my own boundaries, to keep myself much safer, and to not feel shame for the ways I enjoy participating in intimate activities. Some of those activities are currently defined as kink. 

I am a consensual participant with other consensual, non-partnered peers, and I am quite content with my sex life as it is now. But I am absolutely averse to the path that brought me here. And I am averse to anyone saying that CSA and CP and trafficking made me what I am, and that it was my own self-agency to start participating in kink early, and that sexual re-exploitation of survivors is a form of "healing." This kind of narrative excuses sexual predators , and perpetuates the abuse and re-exploitation that continues to happen at alarming rates to children. When I was 13, I would have said I was fine with the 33 yr-old who was re-exploiting me then. I would have sworn it was, as my abuser told me, my choice (in other words, my fault) for what was happening. The 33 yr-old re-exploiting me was my sda school principal.  

It took until my 30's for me to fully understand how nothing happening in my first 2 decades of life was healthy at all, that all those older predators were purposely targeting me and re-exploiting me and grooming me to blame myself for all of it, and lying to me about everything they were really doing and really thinking, like the fact that they were fucking other children. I did not know then that any older adult re-exploiting sexually abused youths is a predator. They had me believing it was perfectly fine for old men to fuck me. I had no agency at all. I was as brainwashed as any young person being raised by religious fanatics or by racists or by families who teach their kids to cook and sell meth.   

My childhood influenced my whole sex life. I am fine with everything I choose to do now. But I will never know what my natural sexuality might have been, if it had been left for me to discover on my own with my peers. Maybe I would still enjoy activities defined as kink. Maybe not. And as a woman who finally has true self-agency, no one else has a right to try and shame me for what I consensually do with other consenting adults, now. But it is very important to me that I do my best to speak out against allowing predatory older adults (in this patriarchy that is more often men) to keep getting away with sexually re-exploiting youths who have experienced sexualization and/or CSA. This predatory behavior does not heal young abuse survivors. I will never tell teens it is great if they are being sexually exploited by older predators. Those children have no agency, any more than a 17 yr-old drinking a margarita has any agency. That margarita drinker will say they are making their own mature choices. They do not understand what they are doing, or what the consequences will actually be. They do not realize that any adults who gave them access to alcohol are not being helpful, law-abiding, kind, safe or decent adults. Such adults are endangering children.

A child being brainwashed by white supremacist parents is not going to be a mature and knowledgeable teenager. A sexualized child is not going to be mature and knowledgeable, either, as a teen who is going to be targeted by sexual predators. 

In the midst of women understanding agency, and not being shamed for enjoying experiences defined as kink, I strongly feel we must never glamorize or excuse predators who are harming children and youth. We can be fine with kink, while still speaking out against those much older predators who have conned some underage survivor into thinking they are not being harmed. Children will continue experiencing CSA if we don't call out these predatory adults each and every time. Any youth who is defending a sexual predator who is re-exploiting them, is not exercising self-agency. They are a youth being sexually abused by an older predator.-----

Nothin' but death?

In the summer of 2002, I had my first glimpse of something true.  I wrote of this in my blog post, "Inconvenient Truth."  That was when I first started to realize that I had been born a child.  A real child.  Not some freakish slut-enfant, who caused my father to sexually abuse me.  This will be my TLDR attempt to better explain what I mean.

Up until that summer of '02, I vehemently knew that CSA was a horrendous crime, but I believed it was horrendous when it happened to other children, "real" children, not when it had happened to me.  I believed I had been born bad.  I don't know how to explain how it feels to have this belief.  It was a belief I internalized in my mind pre-cognizantly.  How do I explain the destructive thought processes created by having absorbed this belief before I was consciously aware of learning anything?  This belief was embedded in my brain before I knew what it was like to not have such a belief.  It was something I didn't know to even question.  It wasn't until July of 2002 that I started to realize I had been born a real human child.  I was 36 years-old when this first started to dawn on me.

Up until my 36th summer, I had no way at all to keep myself safe from predators like Marc Maron or my sda school principal.  I thought I was the one born bad.  I had no way to know that any adult who told me they knew how badly I had been hurt, when I hadn't said anything about my history, was someone who had spotted my symptoms from CSA, and were grooming me to see them as someone who had noticed the pain I carried, and wanted to "help" me.  As soon as they did that, I thought they really cared about me.  After all, they had taken the time to see the awful pain I tried to keep hidden.  I believed as long as I listened to this person, who had cared enough to see the unspoken pain in my soul, I would learn how to get better.  If I could do whatever kept this person happy and caring, they would help me no longer carry such horrible pain alone.  I just had to make sure I wasn't bad, which would cause them to leave me. The principal, the owners and bosses of places I worked, the parents of friends who bought me alcohol or pot when I was having a rough time, therapists, 12-step sponsors, doctors, neighbors, clergy, all easily conned and re-exploited me over and over.  And every time they were done with me, they blamed me for the CSA symptoms I had, said I was a bad person, called me crazy, and told me they never wanted to see me again.  That erroneous self-slut-blame core belief I carried was reaffirmed by all of this over and over, and that belief became more deeply embedded and solidified each time this happened.  This belief meant I couldn't keep myself safe.  But without exception, I was told by family and friends and society and the legal system that I had to once again go try to trust some new person, so I could stop having so many mental health issues, so I could quit being such a fucked up member of society.  So I would try yet again.  I was doing what I kept being told I needed to do.  And I had to keep trying.  I couldn't just give up.  I was doing my damnedest to raise three kids whom I didn't want to ever have to live life like me.  I had to fucking keep trying.

In July of 2002, I saw a news report about a child who had been taken from her yard in Southern California.  I heard someone say she had been taken by a person who told her he needed help to find a lost dog.  The cruelty of gaining access to a child by telling them about a ficticious lost dog made my heart hurt.  The pictures of that child, the sweet nickname her mother called her, the nightmare understanding of what that child was most likely going thru, made me feel physically ill, nearly panicky.  I did not function well that day, as I tried to get everything done.  I couldn't eat when I fed my kids.  As they watched Nick at Nite, my mind could not focus.  I was unable to sleep.  I remember how my stomach felt, as a sheriff's deputy held a news conference the next day.  He seemed to be shedding tears at one point.  He told reporters Samantha Runnion had been found, dead.  

As that emotional deputy said those words, my mind went into a sort of shutdown.  I kept picturing the photo of Samantha, with her cat, that had been shown at some point during the coverage.  My mind was trying to tell me something.  I could not let myself hear it.  For about a week, I was in a very disconnected state.  I would almost let myself see what my mind had glimpsed. But I couldn't reconcile it with my core beliefs about me.  In the end, I took that never-fully-acknowledged thought, and kept it at arm's length in the back of my mind.  I knew what the thought was.  I just couldn't make myself admit it was true. It would take over a decade for me to fully be able to accept, and express that truth I began to understand in 2002. And it wasn't until this year that I finally wrote that truth out loud.

Every decent human who heard about Samantha Runnion's abduction, assault, and murder, knew that she was a child who had been destroyed by a monstrous adult.  An innocent child had been horrendously assaulted and murdered by a man who had definable evil in his heart.  There was no gray area in this fucked up inhumane and absolutely depraved event.  On that day, in 2002, every decent human who heard this news story knew exactly who was to blame, and who wasn't. 

So, why in the fuck did part of my mind feel a sense of relief for that little girl, when that deputy had said she was dead?  What made me have such a horrible feeling?  Why was part of my mind thankful to know that at least Samantha would never be conned in a few years by some trusted school principal or therapist, be made to think they cared about her and wanted to help her heal from having been so harmed when she was five, just to have that trusted adult re-exploit her and leave her wishing she was dead?  Why was I relieved for that little girl's sake?  Mantha Ray Runnion would never have to experience being re-exploited by every predator who would have done exactly that to her, if she had lived.  She wouldn't have to know that a horrendous crime committed against her is viewed as an acceptable aphrodisiac for adult men in this patriarchy. 

Samantha Runnion's story happened publicly.  My mind was realizing that if she had lived, Samantha would have been viewed by predators, including Marc Maron, as somebody they could target and groom and get to know,  re-exploit at will, and then blame when they were done with her.  And those same decent people who knew she had been an innocent child in 2002, would be the same ones who believed she was to blame for what predators like Maron would've done to her. This meant my mind had to face, and accept, that even though Samantha Runnion was blameless for what happened to her, decent people were going to blame her for the very symptoms she would experience, because of what happened.  Thru no fault of her own, she would have been viewed as a girl who could be re-exploited and left in even worse condition, the same way every one of Maron's victims gets left:  taking the blame for being sexually re-exploited by much older adult predators. 

 

Seeing this truth started eroding the core belief I carried since I was a toddler.  I had not been born a slut.  My legs having to be in a splint due to a birth defect was not me being "seductive."  I did not make my father sexually exploit me.  I was as blameless as Samantha Runnion.  All sexually exploited children are as blameless as Samantha Runnion. And all of them are going to experience symptoms that will leave them vulnerable to predators like Marc Maron.  They do not cause decent humans to sexually exploit them. Adults who re-exploit sexualized children are the ones to blame.  They are sexual predators.  

Every single adult who allows older predators to re-exploit survivors of childhood sexualization, is as culpable as the predators are, for the further destruction of young survivors.  Samantha Runnion would be blamed today, by Maron and his friends and fans and a society who defend Maron's predatory behavior, if she had lived and Maron had interviewed her alone in his garage, and she had responded to his grooming.  Allowing an older man to re-exploit damaged young girls for over 3 decades is indefensible. This is a man who has spoken often about purposely grooming teen girls who have been sexually abused.  Underage girls are blamed when they respond to this man's grooming.  Little girls see him in their classrooms each November, reading a book aimed at them.  Children view this man as a safe character from a kids' movie.  Their teachers, their parents, everyone in society is letting children see this man as a safe person.  Maron wants to sexually exploit teen girls, and has bragged about it for decades.  He grooms sexually exploited girls, draws them in, gets close to them, then says they are obsessed with him, and that he is compelled to fuck them.  He has claimed he cannot control the sexual urge he has to fuck these damaged girls, to sexually exploit girls with mental health issues, girls at risk of suicide, girls now young enough to be his granddaughters. 

When predators are able to convince children they were born wanting to be sexually exploited, it becomes part of their belief system, just like anything else being taught to kids. The only reason society is unable to allow Marc Maron to sexually re-exploit Samantha Runnion, a child abducted and sexually assaulted when she was 5 and Maron was 38, is because that child was murdered.  How long do sexually exploited children have to die, as the only way to escape sexual re-exploitation?

Inconvenient Truth

Beneficiary

The way I was treated by the adventist conference president, when I was 17 and tried to tell that man what my school principal had done to a number of his students, was a lesson for me about how religious organizations, and the adults in charge of them, did not care what happened to children.  The catholic church was the religious organization that received the most media attention for what priests had gotten away with doing to children, but I understood that my own church was as complicit in hiding CSA as any other religion.  Sexual predators are not limited to any certain religion.  They are everywhere, and churches are not the only organizations where children are endangered.  Church youth groups, Boy/Girl Scouts, Pathfinders, Royal Rangers, summer parks and recreation programs, music classes, skating rinks/parks, arcades and online gaming platforms, any group created that offers activities aimed at children is a group that will include predators in positions of power.  There is no distinction between affiliation with a specific religion or political party.  CSA happens wherever there are children present.

I once thought conservatives were more likely to ignore, or actively encourage, the sexual exploitation of children.  What I see happening currently is that left and right both hand children off to predators, they simply frame these exploitations diffently, to appeal to their base.  Children being raised in either environment are just as at-risk.  Each side will rabidly demonize the other for endangering children, while vehemently denying that children are being harmed within their own ranks.  Predators on all sides are the only "winners" of this selective word salad.  Blame and agency are always attributed to the children, in the end result.  Children are the ones who pay the price.

I recently interacted on a thread where a teen was describing their belief that they had been born with an inherent drive to act out sexually with adults.  The self-blaming words they were using came straight from predators.  This teen has been brainwashed to think that what is being done to them is okay, because it makes adults around them happy.  This teen has no way to understand that any adult who is "happy" when a child is displaying symptoms of having been sexually assaulted, is a predator.  Decent adults do not "enjoy" the behavior of an abused child.  This teen is only just starting to understand that their childhood is not healthy.  Unfortunately, plenty of predators, right there in that thread, tried to keep this teen from seeing the truth, by continuing to groom and SA this teen, right there on a popular social media platform.  My words in that thread were noticed by that teen.  For a few comments, that teen started to ask the real questions, started to see the truth.  But predators stepped in to intercept my comments, and deflect that teen's attention.  Predators do not want anyone reaching young CSA survivors with the truth.  

When a river is suffering the effects of being polluted, the best way to find out why that river is not allowed to be what it was naturally meant to be, is to find out who is benefitting from the introduction of pollution.  "Follow the money."  Someone somewhere is benefitting from that river's destruction.  Once the "beneficiary" is identified and held accountable, that river has a chance at recovery.  The pollution is not the river's fault.  The river had no way to protect itself from polluters.  The community around that river has to decide to stop whoever it is that benefits from that river being damaged, being defiled.  Healing that river has to become more important to everyone than whatever "benefits" a few may be receiving by keeping that river in an unhealthy state. 

Who benefits when a child is sexualized?  Only predators. That's it.

Release

 I have discovered for myself that when I can have a glimpse of another atrocity explained in words about atrocities I have personally witnessed or experienced, I am better able to understand what another person is going thru.  Metaphors can be a form of this, a way to help people step into someone else's shoes, see something from another person's porch.

I am about to paint a picture of a truth, by using a current situation in order to give a clearer picture of an atrocity that is ignored, and even laughed at, by those who don't understand what is really happening.  I have done this before, in my post, "Inconvenient Truth. " This is something that I don't feel completely comfortable doing.  In grabbing a headline from a current news story, I know that I am not sticking with using my own history, and that means this may be viewed as me trying to tell someone else's story.  I am not trying to do that.  

I do not know exactly what others are going thru, or will go thru in the future.  I am not speaking for anyone else's exact experiences.   I am just trying to explain what CSA/trafficking survivors face, the re-exploitation that they often go thru for decades.  So many people hear about a teen girl being sexually exploited, and their response may be a lascivious grin, an ascribing of agency to such a child, saying that the child understood exactly what was happening to them, and asked for it to happen.  Traumatized children are unable to know anything that is happening around them.  Trauma creates thought processes that are not capable of comprehension.  Unless a survivor of such trauma gets real help, trauma leaves them unable to understand the things they are going thru.  They are the perfect victims for predators.  Their symptoms, the way they react, the inner pain they need to have healed, all of these truths leave them intrinsically susceptible to predatory behaviors. 

What follows is some examples of survivors of a real-time situation, who from now on are going to be highly vulnerable to predators, who are statistically going to be at a higher risk for mistreatment, because of circumstances beyond their control.  They will not understand what is happening.   They will not know which "helpers" are safe, and which ones are re-exploiting them.  It is up to society to speak out for these survivors, whenever somebody is misusing or re-exploiting them.  The reason such trauma is horrible is not just the hell of the moments these survivors experienced during the original trauma. From now on, there are predators who will literally get off on sexually exploiting these survivors, under the guise of helping such survivors, or telling such survivor's stories.  That is the lifelong consequences created when the original trauma is happening. 

I am watching, as I type, the BBC coverage of the exchange taking place, between people who have been held against their will by others.  The news shows pictures of these victims.  Do you understand what is happening in real time, as the pictures of the child hostages are being shown?  There are adult predators who are seeing the photos of children who have been held hostage, adult predators who are turned on by imagining what these children might have been put thru.  If that idea doesn't piss you off, doesn’t fill you with anger or fury, you may lack empathy, or even be a predator yourself.

In the next few years, some of these children will be interviewed by others.  Their stories may be told in books or movies.  They may make the rounds of podcasts, including WTF.  Some of the interviewers will use their access to these trauma survivors to get off.  This cannot always be stopped.  But when interviewers have a decades-long history of sexually re-exploiting young female trauma survivors, those survivors should never be blamed.  They should be protected.  Predatory interviewers should be called out for re-exploiting survivors.

Go look at the pictures of these people from both sides who are finally being released.  They are going to be vulnerable to predators, for many years.  They need the protection of all of us, because their trauma will leave them unable to spot wolves in "helpers" clothing.

Marc Maron should never be interviewing any of the young afab hostages being released today.  He should never be sponsoring damaged young girls in 12-step/recovery groups.  He should never be marketed to children.  He is a danger to every young female being traumatized this second.  None of them are at fault when he re-exploits them.  None of them are safe or helped by his re-exploitation.  

In Inconvenient Truth, I named a specific child, because I wanted to make readers place a child's face onto the survivors predators like Marc Maron get away with re-exploiting.  Too many people viewed 13 yr-old me as some sort of mature, knowing, calculating "siren."  I was not that, at all.  I was a damaged child. Full stop.

Look at those humans being released today.  Look at them.  All of them are now vulnerable to exploitation.  The young females are going to be vulnerable to the kind of predators who re-exploited me at will.  It is time for this re-exploitation to stop.  

Protect these trauma survivors being released today.  Do not excuse or allow the Marc Maron's of the world to further damage these young trauma survivors.  Stop letting predatory adults get off on the pain of children.

Dog whistles

 I believe in free speech.  I have recently experienced having my own words silenced on different platforms, which is especially absurd when I post quotes or videos of Marc Maron discussing his decades old obsession with sexually exploiting teen girls, and I am told those words are breaking content rules, while Maron himself, or his fans, have some of those same quotes or videos on that same platform.  Pointing out the predatory nature in Maron's many bits and intros and interviews is seen as wrong, while the bits and words and behaviors themselves are perfectly acceptable. 

I have mentioned the term "dog whistles" in previous blog posts, and most people understand that term.  The funny thing about dog whistling is that most of us can spot it, if we are hearing whistling directed at those whom we disagree with.  Racist, homophobic, exploitive, or sexist dog whistles are not hard to spot and call out, for those of us who find such bigoted and exploitive behavior reprehensible.  But those who agree with the bigotry represented by certain dog whistles,  are the first to deny the subtle meaning behind the very whistles their ears are attuned to pick up. They know exactly what they are hearing.  And will zealously deny what they know.  That is the whole reason dog whistling exists.  To get away with signaling bigoted or exploitive behavior, while retaining plausible deniability.  It is a form of gaslighting that happens regularly.  Ya know, iykyk.

Maron's Thanksgiving podcast episode today ends with he and his guest discussing Lenny Bruce, a comedian who fought against obscenity laws, and was seen as controversial for his brand of humor, which included sexual material that fell under such laws still in place decades ago. 

Lenny Bruce's humor was groundbreaking in its day.  His comedic spin and subtleties were personal.  The obscenity laws he fought against were draconian, and his right to push the envelope edge, in finding humor through comedic commentary on human sexuality and behaviors, was valid.  Humor can be found in the darkest of places, and finding that humor can actually ease the pain inherent in such darkness.  Maron, in his most recent special, did just that, by finding humor in personal grief and loss.  That is a gift, the ability to finesse humor from grief, to extract laughter from tears.  This is probably what resonates most for me, as one who enjoys Maron's brand of comedic talent.

Near the end of today's episode, Maron speaks of a book, The Essential Lenny Bruce, and how he found a first edition years ago in Phoenix, Arizona. Maron refers to this book as "bible," an important piece of literature for him. He goes on to say that the copy he found was "perfect" for him, because "it had a bookmark in it that was a Campfire Girls' bookmark."  This is a dog whistle.  Maron's meaning is clear.  How he views underage girls is right there.  Plausibly deniable?  Not when one looks at Maron's own words and behavior, from 1989 up until the day this podcast episode was recorded.  Not when one looks at the victims he has left much worse off after he is through re-exploiting them.  

Would Maron's story about finding a Lenny Bruce book, containing a bookmark from an organization created exclusively for underage girls, be a legitimate laugh, if told by a comedian with no history of grooming and sexually exploiting mentally compromised teen girls who have serious self-harming and substance abuse issues?  I don’t know.  Truth is, I can't think of any non-predatorial comedian who would view this scenario as comical in the first place.  But what do I know?  I'm just someone who is pointing out a dog whistle.  I'm sure Maron and his fans will say I was hearing things where there is nothing to hear.

What grooming looks like

 I get a lot of questions about what grooming looks like, how to spot it, and what goes on when it is taking place.  In this repost of the YouTube video compilation at the end of this post, there is an example of grooming.  Through the first 11 minutes, Maron excuses his 30+ years of predatory behavior, shifts blame onto his mentally compromised victims, and at one point tries to say he has to have sex with these girls, even if he doesn't want to.  He makes it sound like these girls are the ones chasing him because they are enamored with him.  At 11:03, he speaks of a friend's daughter, a 15 yr-old girl.  This girl has no idea what kind of person her father's friend is.  She has no way to protect herself from this predator.  She sees Maron as a safe man, a man who is featured in a Thanksgiving book-reading for children, a man her father allows into her life.  Maron is bonding with her over something she loves, and giving her an expensive gift that is devised to catch her attention.  She has been set up by Maron.  If she has already been exposed to adults who are sexualizing children, she is a sitting duck, a perfect target.  Any response she may have toward Mr. Maron will be brought back down onto her in just a few years, by Maron, in the form of victim blaming, and she will not understand any of this until many years later.  The adults around her are telling her this predator is safe.  If she ends up like Maron's victim with the gun, Maron will say she chased him, he didn't want to have sex with her at all, and she will believe she did cause all of it, because her father, Storyline Online, animated movie production companies, and Maron's friends and fans, all behave as if this man is safe.  This girl will blame herself, if/when Maron uses her.  She has no way to know she has been cast into the middle of an insidious adult game, where she is destined to lose.

Every at-risk child being exposed to this man is being groomed by him, and everyone who allows children to see this man as safe is as culpable in these children's exploitation as any priest/bishop/parish that has shuffled predatory priests around to keep their parishioners in the dark.

Blame-shifting and grooming

Come gather 'round, children

Maron's Thanksgiving book reading for children is making its rounds.  The suicidal girl with the gun in this post link below was a 12 yr-old when this book reading was made.

This man is not a person children should be led to believe is safe, because he isn't.  Every little girl experiencing sexual exploitation this second is at risk from this man.

Is anyone going to start protecting children?  

A Real Predator

Awaiting the wisdom

Maron has been receiving a few questions from fans about the movie "Priscilla."  He apparently will be watching it this week.  

Before Lisa Marie died, I read she was worried about how her father would be portrayed in the movie Priscilla. Her father loved her, and she loved him. I don't question her reaction to the idea of public scrutiny regarding her parents' relationship. 

I have seen interviews with Priscilla recently, where she seemed to like the movie, once she saw it.  She admits she didn't know the word "grooming" until recently, and doesn't fully understand it.  She bravely/naively tries to say she was older in "life" years than her actual age of 14, when she met her future husband, but she  follows that up by saying Elvis took her to see movies and places she had no idea even existed.  He knew life as an adult.  She was still a child.  This predatory situation was not seen as bad or wrong, back then (or, one could argue, even now).  But it is still patriarchy at its "finest":  an older adult male sexually exploiting a female child.  When Priscilla was told by her husband that he didn't feel like he could have sex with her, or any woman, once they gave birth to a child, his own distorted belief that sex is only good when an adult man is fucking a young girl, hovers over that whole sad birth scene like some malformed angel sheltering a disgusted Joseph, as he stares at a teen girl giving birth in a barnyard next to a manger. 

One of Maron's young current victims wrote something so sad, recently, it hurt my heart for what she believes.  She wrote about wishing to die young, because of what she has been told by older men about how they look at their wives, and adult women, as if they are no longer worth anything, once they aren't young vaginas anymore.  The sadness I felt, reading of her terror about something so basic to living as aging, made my heart ache, for a number of reasons.  First of all, because she has been branded with the invisible marks left by childhood sexualization, she will never be safe from predators no matter how old she gets. That nightmare reality will haunt her forever.  It doesn't stop.  Second, the sensations men claim to be getting from children are all in their fucked up minds. Physiology doesn't back up any of the misogynistic beliefs passed around between patriarchal dogmatists for eons.  None of it is based in science or reality.  A snake didn't convince Eve to eat an apple.  The earth isn't 5000 years old.  And afab children are not meant to be fucked by old men.  Nature starts to slow down male and female genital organs around the same age.  Nature created altricial humans to be maturing along with their peers.  In order to continue holding power, patriarchy needs to control females, and that is most easily accomplished by getting to them as young as possible.  Calling afab children more "mature" than amab children, laying blame/choice/control on the very children that are sexualized in this society before they even start to read or write, is mindwarping bullshit.   And it stays always a step ahead of feminism.  Afab children like I was, are the children sacrificed to the religion of patriarchy.  It survives on our blood.

Priscilla Presley did the best she could, in a society that did not protect her, and even now keeps feeding afab children to old men, and calling it a "choice" being made by such children.  If these children were not sexualized from toddlerhood on, most of them would live very different lives.  The suicide rates among teen girls would not be skyrocketing like they are now. And 60 yr-old men like Maron wouldn't be seen as the ones fit to comment on a movie about a child being groomed by a 24 yr-old celebrity years ago. Of course Maron sees children like Priscilla once was as fuckable.  He's believed this bullshit for over 3 decades.  Yet he's seen as a feminist ally, even as mentally compromised girls are being left in much worse condition because of his re-exploitation of them.  He can flash a girl on set in Canada, 13-step a 19 yr-old when he was 50 (and blame her for it), and still have his male crotch-centric commentary on a movie about feminism (Barbie) be seen as wisdom.  

Maron's commentary on the movie Priscilla should be about as irrelevant as Limbaugh's opinion of the movie "42."  

Slide guitar

 An interesting throughline has been playing itself out, in a couple of Maron's outros, as well as an episode of WTF, the recent interview Maron did with Hannah Einbinder.  It is a sad, and glossed over, public example of how some parents allow their teens to be sexually exploited by much older predators.

Last fall, after starting down this rabbit hole, it was one of Maron's longtime fans who first let me know how Maron once tried to sponsor Hannah Einbinder while she was still a teen in recovery, and he was 50.  This behavior was common knowledge for a few of Maron's hard-core comedy fans.

Hannah was recently on WTF Podcast.  Here is what I mentioned about that episode:

"After listening to the Sept. 14th episode of WTF, hearing how Maron spun what actually took place a few years ago, making it seem like he was not trying to sponsor comedian Hannah Einbinder, a girl he flirted with from the stage when he was 50 and she was 19. Apparently, he just had a private AA meeting with her. I guess that is how he will be framing what he does to vulnerable young females in need of recovery."

https://sighlentz.blogspot.com/2023/09/more-of-marons-recent-words.html

Maron put a real spin on what took place between himself and a teen girl in AA, a teen with a number of serious issues going on in her life.  In Hannah's recent WTF episode, Maron placed the blame for what he did on Hannah's shoulders, and made his 13-stepping of her appear to be harmless.  

In today's WTF outro, Maron dedicates some slide guitar to Laraine, something he has now done in 2 of his recent outros.  However much Hannah's mother, Laraine Newman, understands about what Maron did to her teen daughter, it is apparent she is fine with what took place.  It's actually similar to something Laraine herself went through, at the age of 17.  As a boomer, raised to internalize toxic patriarchal beliefs, Newman most likely sees all of this as just the way it is.  

Until society starts calling this predatory behavior what it really is, and takes the climbing suicide rates of teen girls seriously, the exploitation of teen girls by old predators will continue to be just the way it is.  And some things will never change.

Standards and Practices

There are legal expectations that dictate how interviews with CSA survivors should be handled.  These expectations are not simply guidelines for those in the legal system.  Anyone conducting legitimate interviews with survivors of CSA, are legally held to certain standards. 

Marc Maron has, throughout the 14 year history of his podcast, interviewed many CSA survivors.  His interview with Bradley Whitford is an example I used in my emails and my blog, as the way such interviews should be ethically conducted.  

Anyone who interviews survivors of CSA, are held to certain expectations.  First responders, hospital staff, physicians on record, court-appointed advocates and legal representatives, guardians and foster families, therapists and others in the mental health field, and credentialed members of the press, all have certain responsibilities and expectations placed on them, in order to protect CSA survivors.  These legal standards are not always followed, and the CSA survivors are quite often sexually re-exploited by one or more of those involved once CSA is disclosed.

When Mr. Maron interviews young female survivors of CSA, his approach is not always the same as the techniques used in his interview with Mr. Whitford.  Those who come to Maron's place of work to be interviewed about sensitive subjects, including the exploitation of children, have a legal right to be treated ethically.

I am going to copy below my blog post response to the Bradley Whitford WTF Podcast from last fall, regarding the safety and treatment survivors should experience, when they come alone to Maron's garage to be interviewed about sensitive material, including CSA.  Such interviews leave survivors vulnerable, and in some cases render them incapable of legally granting consent. 

-----My upcoming blog posts will sometimes contain the names of people who have recently been on Mr. Maron's WTF podcast. I have zero affiliation with any of these people I may mention, and only use their actual names because they were a public part of Mr. Maron's recent interviews that dealt directly with the subject of child sexualization/objectification and exploitation. These people have zero personal connection to me, my blog, or my views. I mean these people absolutely no offense. I deeply appreciate their willingness to openly speak about this personal and painful subject. Current and future victims can only be spared future pain if those old enough to fully comprehend their past experiences can be free to speak of those experiences without fear of blame or re-exploitation. 

I sincerely enjoy Mr. Maron's gift for comedy. That hasn't changed. My respect for some of his behavioral choices dropped dramatically after my millennial moment. That drop quickly infused my writing in the emails I sent to wtfpod.com.  

My tendency toward sarcastic writing as a way to vent anger and pain can be seen throughout these words I sent. Writing is the only way I have ever been able to coherently express anything I am feeling, as my ability to vocalize such emotions is almost non-existent. This all ended up giving my emails a tone that is more often found in those letters people are told to write, and then burn, in order to process the hurtful experiences they have gone through. If there were no current or future victims in harms way because of Mr. Maron's behavioral choices, that is probably where these emails would have ended up, as smoke and ashes drifting up from that digital cloud where these words were origanlly sent. Of course, if there were no such current or potential future victims, these emails wouldn't have been written in the first place.

My emails to Mr. Maron quickly took on a form of writing I have never before naturally employed. A sort of stream-of-consciousness, geared toward 2nd person, a point of view I have rarely used, and didn't appreciate much.   

The following is an email I sent to Mr. Maron on Sept 20, 2022, 7:16 AM, subject line "Imagined Scenarios."

"Mr. Maron,

You often mention your ability to imagine scenarios inside your mind. Because of that, I think you might have the capacity to follow some guided imagery. Let's give it a go, 'kay?

We are starting with the moment Bradley Whitford began to tell you about his experience with child sexual abuse. Place yourself back in that moment when you were with him as he did this. Remember his spoken cadence, tone, facial expressions. Hear how he was no longer vocalizing in a manner normal for him. Hear how the child he once was, is actually present in his voice. Can you do this? It might be easier if you make yourself relisten to that part of the interview. Close your eyes and let yourself really hear, and listen to, how that broken child from those moments of abuse is still in there, in the adult voice of Mr. Whitford. Hear how that child was trying to describe the worst parts of what was actually happening to that child during the abuse. Mr. Whitford was describing, in the voice of that child, the worst part of child sexual abuse. Little, trusting, naive young Bradley, thought that what was happening was actually something special, something teetering on real emotions, something that was meaningful. That child was trusting a person everyone in society tells children they can trust. That child was not at all able to see, in the moments of the abuse, that he was being horribly harmed because the person who was harming him did not at all feel anything decent or loving for that child. That person was using their power, their position, their appearance of maturity in society, to fuck with the body of a child, all while conning that child into thinking what was happening was special. There is no way that child could ever know what was really happening, how they were being conned completely into allowing a person to use their body. As years pass, this is the worst thing that happens to survivors of sexual abuse. They slowly come to realize how the reason they did not say "No," the reason they did not run or fight, the reason the child could be used at all, is because they really thought what was happening was "love." It is only with maturity that sexual abuse survivors can ever hope to come to understand all of this, and this realization is the pain that gets worse over time, not better. The understanding of how they were harmed hurts more and more, the older a person gets. And abuse survivors cannot risk saying how this is the worst part of the lifelong damage they carry, because the minute they admit they thought it was a "special" thing that was happening to them while they were being abused, people tell them that they caused the abuse, because they wanted it. Bradley Whitford was trying to explain all of this, in a small way, in the broken words and heart of a child.  

Abuse survivors are ripped to pieces by this. It is why the abuse of children and vulnerable and damaged people is so insidious and cruel. Unless the abuse is a violent attack that causes only pain, an abuse survivor feels like they were not really abused, because they did not say no. The person in power knows damn well their abuse victim is trusting them, that victim does not understand what is happening. That is what predators do. They seek out those too young or damaged to know what the predator is really doing.

Now, I am going to walk you through something that a straight man might have a hard time understanding. Please, try to follow the imagery while leaving your own sexual orientation out of it.

Imagine Bradley Whitford, trying to tell this story to a counselor, or a college professor, or a pastor, or a comedian doing a podcast. The moment Mr. Whitford starts telling the story, he actually re-enters the part of him that is that broken child. He re-enters the pain, the vulnerability, the naivete, as he tells the story. The person who is listening reaches out and touches Bradley's shoulder, and pulls him into their arms. Mr. Whitford will probably cry, and the child he once was will lean in to try and find the comfort that broken child needed so badly. Now the counselor/teacher/pastor/comedian, does something that makes the broken child in Bradley respond as the child he once was. Things become sexual. 

Let's stop right here. When did things actually become sexual in this scenario? The moment the person listening started to listen, they already knew what was going to happen. They knew Bradley would be entering his child frame of mind, he would be that broken child, needing to feel real love. But that child still believes that what the abuser did was love. So Bradley will be responding to the "compassion" shown by the person listening to their pain. For the counselor/pastor/teacher/comedian, the whole situation was sexual, from the moment they leaned in to listen to a story that they knew was going to turn them, as the predator, on. For Mr. Whitford, it is just him, trying to get comfort in the way that child first thought they were experiencing love and comfort. So, the age of the counselor/pastor/teacher/comedian is actually irrelevant. If this scenario had been what happened after Mr. Whitford's talk with you, you would be the predator, even though Mr. Whitford is older than you. He has a broken part of himself that will always be at risk of being redamaged by any person who uses that child's pain to get sexual pleasure in the guise of comfort and compassion. Please, reread the last two sentences over and over. Print them out and put them on your bathroom mirror. Say them like a fucking mantra. EVERY broken female that you have fucked because you knew how they were broken, is a person you victimized, as surely as it would have been you victimizing Mr. Whitford if you had turned the moments after his interview into a trip to your fucking bed.

Try to really sit with this.  

I have more to type, but whatever is guiding me or pushing me or driving me to send these emails says this is enough for now. I hope you will reread this email until you truly understand it.

Sigh Lentz"-----

https://sighlentz.blogspot.com/2023/04/grooming.html

Girlfriends on the Couch

 Starting around August of 2020, Marc Maron began interacting in a sexual manner with a number of his young fans who were following his covid-inspired Instagram Lives.  Some of his regulars took on a group moniker, the Girlfriends on the Couch. This group included many different women of varying ages.  The ones Maron drew into sexual interactions were much younger than he is, and were suffering from diagnosed mental illness and/or substance abuse issues resulting from histories of sexual abuse and trauma.  Maron often used the conversations in his IG Lives to make these girls feel special, "friending" some of them, giving some of them "titles" as part of his moderation team, or part of his staff for the "Dark Fonzie Podcast," a short-lived collaboration between  Maron and Dean Delray.   

During the time from fall of 2020, until fall of 2022, Maron sexually exploited relationships with these young fans, girls with serious issues, one in particular who has a child.  That one later became part of Maron's jokes, and was mentioned by Maron in his WTF Podcast a few times, one of those victims that Maron refers to as "lunatics," an example of how he uses these young girls and later vilifies them as they decompensate because of his exploitation.  This young mother was publicly harmed by Maron, and left in a seriously compromised mental state.  For about a year, this Girlfriend on the Couch was suffering, and Maron did not show any concern.  Instead, he spoke disparagingly of this person, publicly, during the time this person was suffering greatly.

This person was mentally harmed and endangered by Marc Maron.  But this harm did not only affect her.  Her child suffered.  For about a year, which is a significant portion of that brief formative time children have with their parents, this child was harmed because Marc Maron chose to publicly use, and then degrade, this child's mother.  

When a survivor of childhood trauma keeps being re-exploited by much older predators,  their lives are being stolen.  When such survivors have children, those children are being horribly harmed by those who are sexually re-exploiting their parents.  The decisions a re-exploited survivor needs to be making, the interaction that needs to be happening between that parent and their offspring, is severed.  When it is a therapist or minister or caseworker who has sexually re-exploited a survivor with children, the harm is severe.  But when it is a public persona, a much older celebrity interviewer who is seen as an honorable person, who portrays themselves as an ally for abuse victims, the damage done to the victim and their offspring is multiplied tenfold.  To add to that damage, by the celebrity using this re-exploited victim as the butt of jokes, publicly refering to them with slurs like "lunatic," and placing the blame for the victim's pain on their damaged young shoulders, that kind of mental pain is soul-crushing.  That GOTC member, and her child, were forever harmed in ways that will follow that mother and child for the rest of their lives.  

Mr. Maron started contacting some of his past victims these past months, after I started confronting him about his predatory behavior last August.  He brought together the GOTC recently in some IG Lives, and got them all to respond as if what he did to those young mentally compromised victims among them was their own fault, not his.  He publicly blamed them for being his victims.  And the GOTC went along with this.  The young victims themselves don't currently understand how Maron is the one who exploited them, and he knew exactly what he was doing as he did it.  Maron has known, for longer than these GOTC victims have been alive, the condition his abuse of such girls leaves them in, how their substance abuse and self-harming and their longing to kill themselves is made worse every time Maron re-exploits such girls.  He knows he harms their mental health, he knows they end up more suicidal, and he chooses to keep harming such girls.  That is pathological.  And that is NOT the fault of young vulnerable victims.  

Maron could decide not to endanger anymore girls young enough to be his daughters and granddaughters.  He could get help for his predatory behavior.  Instead, he is now trying to groom parents to bring children within his reach, so these children can listen to him talk about his dick (which he has indecently exposed at least once), and hear him discuss masturbation and porn.  This man is grooming parents to let him victimize their daughters. He knows he will endanger such children.  He has over 3 decades of knowing girls he re-exploits end up much worse off when he is done using them.  Parents are choosing to pimp their little girls to this predator.  And call him a good man while they do it.  Their children will not understand what their parents, and Maron, did to them.  These children have no way to understand, or protect themselves. 

The GOTC are choosing to believe those victims of Maron's among them are the ones at fault for what Maron did to them.  If that young mother had successfully taken her own life, I gotta wonder how many of those Girlfriends on that Couch would have cared.  A couple of the GOTC have contacted me, and are a bit disturbed by Maron's behavior.  They especially don't understand how a 60 yr-old man who publicly dates teens can get away with trying to get closer to children now.  If he was a 60 yr-old man hanging out at a playground, talking about masturbation and his genitalia and porn, he wouldn't be performing on a stage, that's for sure. Those Parents on that Playground would not be happily pulling their children over to be close to such a man.

Why it matters, TL/DR

 

For those who don't want to go back thru my emails here to hunt for the reasons why Marc Maron's sexual behavior is dangerous and predatory, I will try to make it clear in this single email.

Maron has been grooming and fucking girls with serious mental health issues from child sexual abuse for over 3 decades. He, in real time in 2023, still sees 18, in the US, as the only limit on how young he will fuck.  He once bragged about these teen girls he chased and conned.  He is trying to hide it now.  But his 2023 guest appearances on podcasts tell the truth.  Parents now do not realize their 12 yr-old daughter sending messages to Mr. Snake from The Bad Guys movie is a child he can picture fuckng in a few years. And then blame for all of it.  He grooms and chases teen girls, then says it is them coming after him, and when they respond to his grooming, he can't say "no," to them, even if he doesn't "really want to."  (See this whole 12 minute video:  Maron's words)  Of course, when these damaged girls are later begging him not to ghost them on his Instagram posts, he has no problem ignoring them, then.  After he fucked them.

Parents of a child who has gone thru CSA need to know this man will see her as groomable while she is still a child, and he will fuck her as soon as he can, if she is damaged enough to respond to his grooming. And he will not care how much worse off she will be.

Here is an email from March that might make this man's dangerous behavior toward child CSA victims more clear:

-----MAR 10, 10:51 AM

You are a celebrity. You speak publicly of AA. (Big no no) You have made a living where you choose to joke about, target, and sexually exploit broken girls. Then you publicly berate those girls as "lunatics." Over and over. For decades. You interact with girls in 12-step, when you know damn well that 13-stepping ( BIG no no) is wrong. You sexually interact with your most broken, young girl fans, whom you groom to come after you. And you do nothing to protect the obviously endangered underage girls who respond to your public grooming. You endanger young female fans who have issues you know and understand well, and purposely target. You endanger sexually exploited children. This paragraph lays out exactly why your sexual behavior IS everyone's business. Every single parent of a child seeing your movies, every single person who supports your livelihood, has every fucking right to be protected from what you are publicly choosing to use your celebrity status to do to broken young fans in recovery, and broken girls suffering the effects from sexual trauma. You have chosen to behave as a predator toward your most vulnerable fans. Your sex life is damn well everyone's business, for just these reasons.---

Ask him: wtfpod@gmail.com

 If anyone doubts that Maron has read my emails, please feel free to ask him yourself.  He encourages his audience to email him:

wtfpod@gmail.com 

Marc Maron's response to my emails

Once again, Maron's intro to his podcast today is about children.  He is explaining how he is safe for children and teens.  Marc Maron is responding to my emails.  For the 8 months I wrote him emails from August of 2022 to this past April, trying to ask him to stop harming sexualized girls, he never once responded to my emails with any words at all.  He or his handlers responded by removing some of the proof of his predatory sexual behavior from online.  But he never once acknowledged my words to him about a very pervasive and deeply damaging subject.  Now, over a year later, he responding with his words and behavior.  He is purposely telling people that children are safe in his audience.  

I wrote to Mr. Maron from a place of deep pain, similar to the pain Maron has expressed about the antisemitism he has witnessed and experienced.  I told him the truth about the hell sexually trafficked children, sexually abused children, go thru.  How such abuse caused a lifetime of me being harmed by men who sexually exploit girls who have been damaged by such awful abuse.  He has not once responded with any compassion.  The reason I tried sending him emails in the first place, something he encourages his audience to do, is because I was speaking up for mentally compromised girls being hurt by his exploitation, girls now young enough to be his granddaughters.  I believed he would realize his behavior was harmful.  I believed he would care about sexually abused children.

He is responding to my emails, now, but not with compassion, or honest self-reflection.  He is saying things to his audience to bring more children into his sphere.   He is conning parents into seeing him as a man who is safe for children.  He knows most of his audience does not know his 30+ years of targeting damaged teen girls. He also knows most of his audience has no idea what I am trying to say about how damaging child sexual abuse really is, and how sexual re-exploitation makes it so much worse.   He knows that most parents are unaware of the teen girls Maron has left suicidal, the girls he has tried to sponsor in recovery, the girls who are left in crisis when he is done with them.  They don't know about the girl he flashed on set last year.  He is actively grooming his audience to see him as safe for children and teens.  

Maron's current words are hurting me, as I think of the girls he is, and will, damage and leave in crisis in the future.  He is very aware that my heart is hurt by his current words.  I know what sexualzed girls have gone thru, and will now go thru even more, as this man publicly makes himself appear safe for children.

My words will never be able to protect Marc Maron's current and future victims.  He has an audience he knows he can con.  He knows my heart aches, as he is publicly talking about children in his current intros.  Intros where he no longer brags about, but instead actively hides, the sexualized teen girls he grooms and fucks.  He hides his decades of drawing in teen girls.  

The damage Maron's victim this past April did to herself as he ignored her pleas, was a type of violence.   The gun in her possession, and her suicidal words, were potentially extremely violent.  The damage Maron did to her was deeply damaging to her.

It hurts, this second as i type, because Maron knows I am sitting here after hearing today's intro, with a constricted chest and a lump in my throat, having to realize this is how Marc Maron is responding to my emails, responding to the hell of my life as a trafficked child.  This man knows I am hurting even more right now because of what he is saying and doing.  This is how Marc Maron responds to a person who has gone thru the hell I lived.  

Marc Maron has no compunction about harming any victims of child sexual abuse.  

Endangered

Teen girls are killing themselves at an unprecedented rate.  PBS article

At 17, I tried to speak up when a girl tried to kill herself.  Our SDA school principal had sexually exploited her, as he had done to me, and other teen girls with "daddy issues."  I told the Upper Columbia Conference SDA president what that principal had done.  That Conference president got off on my words, then told me he could do nothing, and hung up the phone.

I will not ever be silent again.  This 60 yr-old comedian, Marc Maron, is preying on girls in a sexual manner that leaves them suicidal.  Teen girls, already at higher risk of suicide than ever, are being endangered by this man.

Since 1989, Maron has publicly groomed and fucked teens.  Girls with specific issues he has joked about targeting.  Issues like suicidal ideation, compromised mental health, and substance abuse issues.  He has sponsored these girls in AA.  Last year, he exposed his genitals to a girl on the set of Delores Roach. 

I will keep speaking, until this predator is stopped.

As for Maron's words, they speak for him quite clearly:

-----From an interview with Hadley Freeman,  2018:

On his podcast, Maron has been excellent at calling comedians out for unacceptable behaviour. He has confronted people about joke-stealing and taken others to task for homophobia. So I wonder if he regrets any of his own past jokes. In 1999, he appeared on David Letterman and said he knew he was getting older when teenage girls stopped looking at him as a sexual being. “Don’t misunderstand: I’m not saying I want to have sex with teenage girls… I’m lying: of course I want to have sex with teenage girls. Come on, doesn’t everyone? That’s why there’s a law.” In 2014, he was interviewed on US TV and asked about his reputation for dating much younger women. “Yeah, resolving daddy issues since 1989. I’m here to help the young ladies,” he replied.  

But when a male fan wrote to Maron recently to suggest that maybe he should take that Letterman clip down from his website, he was outraged.

“What am I, a personal totalitarian state? I’m going to have to start erasing my history? I don’t think it’s an inappropriate joke. I mean, the idea that men want to have sex with teenage girls – really, are you shocked? It says a lot that somebody – that a man – would reach out and say, ‘It’s not a good look to have that joke up.’ What is happening?” he asks.-----

Hadley Freeman interview

-----From Maron's WTF Podcast dispatch, 10/16/2023:

"I’m suddenly feeling okay about performing for teenagers."-----

Today's WTF Dispatch

Marc Maron's dispatch for today hurt my heart. He says he is "suddenly feeling okay about performing for teenagers."  This 60 yr-old man, who left a damaged girl with a gun feeling suicidal a few months ago, who has been publicly chasing and grooming teen girls for decades, who says it is appropriate for him to try and fuck teen girls, just wrote those words today.  The girls who will respond to this kind of grooming by old men like Maron have been sexualized and already have nobody protecting them.  This man knows what my old principal knows, what all predatory old men in this patriarchy know.  Nobody is protecting these mentally damaged, sexually exploited teenagers.  This man does not give a shit about sexually abused children.  He just wants to fuck them as teens.

WTF with Marc Maron Podcast

OCTOBER 16, 2023

Children in the Audience.

The Pacific Northwest, People!

I flew into Seattle, climbed into a rental car and drove north to Bellingham. I know I have talked about this many times before but there is some part of my soul that just lives in that part of the world. The trees, the sky, the water, the rocks, the crisp air, the expanse of islands. Love it. 

I think the region was wired into me when my family lived in Alaska for two years when I was a kid. '69 to '70. Impressionable. 

I don’t recall ever being in Bellingham. I feel like there was a one nighter gig up there that I did almost 30 years ago. 30 years! It was in a mall, I think. It certainly didn't leave me with any good memories. 

The town is beautiful. I took a drive down Chuckanut Drive. Smelled the pine and wet forest. I needed it. 

The show was at a stunning, old theatre called the Mount Baker. It was the first real theatre I’ve done the new hour at. It went well. 

I was walking to eat dinner after sound check and ran into many people heading to the show. I ran into an excited man with his wife and young sons who told me they were coming to the show. I was immediately jarred by the reality that young kids were going to be at the show. One must’ve been 12 and the other was younger. I told the guy it may be rough stuff for the kids to take in. He didn’t seem to really believe that. If you know my work I just couldn’t wrap my brain around why you would bring young kids. It’s not even that I’m ‘blue.’ I just speak honestly as a relatively screwed up adult. 

Not having children I don’t really know what it's like to be a parent. I’ve definitely developed an aggressive empathy rooted in what was dumped in my head as a kid. Some of it doesn’t go away. Not all of it is good. 

I think the idea most parents have is that the stuff that doesn’t make sense won’t really register. I don’t know. Maybe it’s just that the guy wanted to share his excitement about seeing me with his family. 

I felt it necessary to open with a warning. Without pointing them out I said there were children in the audience and that I would be dealing with very adult themes and if they wanted to leave I would refund their money. It seemed right. I have no idea if they left. If they didn’t and I live long enough, I imagine a young adult person will come up to me someday and tell me they saw me when they were nine and they never quite recovered from it. I’m not saying I have a lasting impact in any general way but if I saw me when I was that age, it would’ve blown my young mind. Though, I believe, I would’ve loved it. Maybe I should stop projecting. 

I found a vegan place called The Big Beet. I’m learning that if you find a good vegan place on the road there’s no reason not to eat as many meals as possible there. Consistency. 

Today I talk to Rob Halford. He’s the lead singer of Judas Priest. A seminal Heavy Metal band. I didn’t grow up loving metal. I’ve grown to appreciate it as an adult. I don’t think it’s quite the same if it didn’t save your adolescent life from the emotions and tedium of being an adolescent (male usually). I’m suddenly feeling okay about performing for teenagers. Anyway, I spent a couple of days loading some Priest into my head just so I could be in the groove when I talk to Rob. It was a great talk. 

I look forward to immersing myself in the work of people I’m not deeply familiar with. I’m currently listening to A LOT of Joan Baez to prep for my talk with her. From Halford to Baez. This is my life. 

Thursday is a comedian double-header with Louis Katz and Doug Stanhope. Comedy for grown ups, for sure. 

Enjoy!

Boomer, Monkey and LaFonda live!

Love,

Maron

THE ME GRINDER.

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Fleetwood Mac

Sometimes ya gotta play an old fave 😉

Fave Fleetwood Mac song 

Huh? Really?

Today's WTF Podcast guest is Tom Papa. At one point during their conversation, Marc Maron takes time to again repeat a false narrative he came up with years ago to try and deflect from and camouflage his predatory behavior. He poses a narrative that attempts to paint himself as a potential victim in danger of being hurt. Here are these two little scenarios, the first from today's podcast, the second from a special he performed eleven years ago:

These two sad little scenarios Maron poses are not at all what he will ever go thru. Because he does not feel anything for these girls that resembles love. He sexually exploits sexually abused girls. They end up more suicidal, and using more alcohol or drugs, after he is done with them.

Even though Mr. Maron knows how so many of his past victims have been harmed by his predatory behavior, he keeps choosing to do it over and over again. He felt nothing for the girl with the gun. If I had not spoken up here on April 26, he would not give a shit what might've happened to her. He was done exploiting her.  That was all he cared about.  Nothing he feels for female victims of child sexual abuse is decent or kind. If he did actually care about sexually abused children, he would never groom teen girls. He would know the last thing they need is to be interacting with predatory old men. There is no concern or compassion or decency in how he views damaged girls young enough to be his granddaughters. 

Last fall, one of Maron's current victims tried to tell one of his past victims that Maron loved her, that she was special to him. The past victim told her how Maron had said similar shit to her, and this escalated the crisis of the current victim. She had trusted a man who feels nothing but lecherous desire to sexually re-exploit young girls. This reality is devastating for these girls to have to realize. It leaves them much more broken, less likely to ever heal. Maron doesn't care. To tell a sad little story about some old man being hurt by some young girl who leaves him, as if it might be in Maron's future, is bullshit.  Love is incapable of existing in the sexual offenses Maron is thinking of as he continues grooming mentally compromised sexual abuse victims.  When he looks at pics sent by underage fans, that isn't love he is feeling. 

An Ally

 This is what a real ally for feminism sounds like:

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZT8rJt9aV/

This is an ally, speaking the truth. This truth exposes exactly what men like Marc Maron are really doing.

All Ages

This is from Marc Maron's latest tiktok post, advertising for his upcoming shows, where his latest material has included Maron talking about his genitalia, excusing his 30 plus years of dating teens, and discussing child sexual abuse, among other adult subjects. During his last tour, and every tour before that, this man played to adult audiences only. Now, all ages are allowed in to see this predator. Children on tiktok are being publicly groomed by this man. WTF is wrong with those allowing this to happen? WTF is wrong with this man? He is purposely choosing to endanger at-risk sexualized little girls. He knows exactly what he is doing, and he knows I am speaking up for these girls like I once was. But he does it anyway, because he knows no one gave a shit about me at 13, and no one gives a shit about the mentally compromised little girls he is grooming today.  He does this because he can.  No one is going to stop him.