Obsession

 Today's WTF Bonus episode is interesting. A few times throughout the episode, there are the mentions of emails people have sent, and how Marc and Brendan read and honor the emails that they feel do address important issues, especially for those who are paying listeners who receive WTF's bonus material.   Brendan and Marc both invite people to email them with these issues.  And Brendan once again mentions, "if you are paying for it" as a concept that might make such emails receive more attention. 

I have been paying 5 dollars a month for Bonus material since last year.  Obviously I am still paying for it, as I just finished listening to this episode.  I sent an email, "Well, hell," on August 30, at 10:01 pm.  On Sep 3, 2022, 8:33 PM, I sent an email, "OMG."  The saved IG Live reel I referenced in that email was removed, a removal I referenced in the OMG followup email, sent Sep 4, 2022, 10:07 AM.  Yes, like all emails WTF receives, my emails were being read.  My email content was never publicly responded to with any concern for the issue I was emailing about.  For 8 months, I did exactly what Brendan and Marc said to do, in today's Bonus episode. I was paying for WTF+ each month, and I was sending heartfelt emails.  The issue I am addressing, to this day, is an issue that involves the lives of afab girls with a specific mental illness brought on by a specific form of child abuse, a group whose members cut themselves and self-harm in many other ways, and suffer from the longing to be gone from a world where older adults they try to trust keep re-exploitating them for sexual gratification, later abandoning them and adding to their mental illness symptoms, worsened by the older adult who re-exploited them.  I consider the pain and suicide of such young people to be as important as every other group who experiences such pain and suicidal ideation because of the mistreatment they experience in systemic ways in our society 

Today's WTF episode, which I cannot legally share in this email, will have to be paid for, in order for others to hear it.  It is an episode explaining problematic WTF Podcast moments over the years.   It makes a point of explaining how some things from the past were wrong, and because of cultural changes, are no longer happening.   Marc Maron's grooming and re-exploitation of young afab survivors of child sexualization who have a mental illness created by that abuse, is ongoing.  Is happening to this day.  It is not some innocently overlooked past problematic issue he no longer takes part in.

When I realized, last August, that Marc Maron was choosing to sexually exploit young victims of CSA, it was literally the last straw for me.  I decided to speak up.  I could have spoken about any of the thousands of older adult predators who are doing this.  It was Maron's behavior that was my last straw.  I did exactly as he and Brendan have always encouraged listeners to do.  I emailed WTF.  For 8 months, I brought this subject matter to the attention of Mr. Maron, in the exact manner Maron and his producer tell listeners to do.  I am a paying listener.  This issue involves some of the worst consequences for those suffering some of the most damaging child abuses that exist.  Afab survivors of CSA who have BPD kill themselves every day, because they keep being re-exploited, and those predators who con them and later abandon them are viewed by others as decent people, while these girls are blamed for trusting these older adults who harm them.  I cannot see how these young damaged humans' lives are less important than others who are dying because of the mistreatment they experience in society. 

I finally found the strength to speak up for this group I belong to.  I wish, when I was 17, and spoke up about the SDA church-school principal who was preying on this same group, that I could have had wisdom and strength to speak about that predator the way I am speaking out now.  That's not how this works.  The reason young damaged members of my group are revictimized, is because they believe they are bad humans who cause older predators to damage them.  That belief, and the way society perpetuates the victim-blaming of this group, makes it so there is no way for this group to escape their plight.  They intrinsically need older adults who they can trust, because older adult helpers are the only way these damaged young humans will ever escape their hell.  Predators act like they care.  They act like they are the very help these damaged girls need. Men like Maron are allowed to prey on these damaged girls.  These girls, if they don't kill themselves, may one day realize how society fed them to known predators.   They may one day realize, when they are around 50 or so, how their lives, their anguish, was not important to anyone.  It hurts in a way I can't even properly convey, to realize my life, as a child, mattered to no one, because sexualized little girls are seen as "less-than," are viewed as damaged "others" whom it is perfectly okay to sexually exploit. There is no way to escape this.  I had to speak up.

In speaking out, it was Maron I chose to focus on, as an example of an actively-abusing predator choosing to harm the young afab members of my group.  If I had chosen anyone who is currently an active predator, I would be gathering information, pointing out the abuses, giving the very examples of behavior required by society, when anyone speaks up about those who are choosing to harm vulnerable members of an "othered" group.  The person who compiled that video of Joe Rogan using that awful racial slur, had a huge impact on others, because everyone finally had to see what was really going on.  That person(s) who made that video, had to comb thru years of Rogan material.  That person would have had to do this, regardless of who the slur-user was.  That person was not obsessed with Rogan.  That person was tired of everyone ignoring and excusing and explaining away cruel behavior.  That person was speaking the truth.  

I am not obsessed with Marc Maron.   I am doing my best to correctly speak out about the horrible, life-endangering behavior that is allowed to happen to girls from my group, girls with serious mental health issues caused by severe childhood sexualization.  The requirements for speaking out make me have to gather information and do my best to present it.  To try and diminish what I am required to do, by calling it anything other than gathering information,  is another form of blame-shifting.  If you must call what I am doing an "obsession," I will only own that word when it is used to describe the actual abuse I am trying to make others aware of.  I sincerely want young mentally damaged victims of childhood sexual abuse to stop being sexually re-exploited by much older predators who are publicly choosing to prey on these victims with no repercussions.   That is the only obsession I will own.  Maron was the straw.  That's the thread I have chosen to untangle.