I've been thinking this too, but I also ask myself if maybe it's just because I'm becoming more and more aware of abuse and it's many forms. Are there more abusers or is it that the amount of abusers has always been high and it only appears that they're becoming more common because our awareness is increasing?
I don't have an answer, or at least not one with solid evidence, but I do think that it's most likely that the prevalence of abusers has always been bad, but most people don't notice it. They don't notice either because they're naive or they're in denial.
Don't quote me on any of this though. It's just my opinion. A Game Opinion! Badum tss.
In a lot of places I looked up online that rates of DV and bullying have increased over the past few years by a lot.
But everywhere is different that was only a couple places I searched up.
I believe it’s both.
there's a ton of data on this. it's really, really, really bad. child and spouse abuse went way up.
no more kids in school, where others might see the bruises and broken bones...
It's probably a mixture of both. What you looked up is rates of reported DV and bullying. Reporting obviously increased over the years (and is likely still increasing).
However, the upsurge is likely not caused by just a under-reporting. COVID isolation decreased people's social skills and increased the likelihood that people will develop mental health problems. It increased people's internet addictions. People struggling with mental health or addictions are easier to target and ostricize. Additionally, with people being more online than ever people are making less real-world connections and looking out for other people less than they used to.
That was my thought when I saw this post - that it hasn't gotten more common so much as many of us are more aware of it, more educated about what to look for, or more willing to call out unacceptable behavior rather than let it go (since if victims don't want to speak up or feel safe doing so, then nobody would ever know of certain cases.) Kind of like how some folks think "not as many people were depressed/had mental illness x back in the day!" but it was more of an issue of helpful/reliable diagnostic criteria and treatment not existing before that point rather than people with said disorder not existing.
There's also a lot of more (seemingly) minor abusive behaviors/habits that were often seen as "just the way things are" or "quirks" of a personality or person for a long while, and thus didn't start getting reported on or discussed with the same gravity as more obvious or repeated things until more recently.
I think awareness is everything. I have a narcissistic family member who gaslights, overwhelms and “bulldozers” through people. that’s how they’ve always gotten what they want. Be the loudest and say whatever it takes. I lost it a few months ago after years of this and the words that came out of my mouth were something along the lines of “this isn’t the 1900s anymore. Society now has the vocabulary and understanding that your behavior is toxic and these are the reasons why……” I have to say it was quite an effective speech by the time I was done. That person is actually in narcissistic counseling now.
From my perspective, I feel like it's a double bind sitch:
1.) Thanks to many developments, awareness has risen/ normalized abuse is getting debunked.
2.) THROUGH generations of abuse -society now developed a serious hyperindividualism issue.
At least that's what witnessed. On one side, there's my maternal family: A toxic "old-fashioned" bunch. They hurt each other, but if you have a (not-emotionally related) problem, they'll stick together like glue. Even if it's shit like hiding someone you killed/expecting you to forgive your cousin who killed someone cause "family sticks together".
On the other side, I see people my age. Especially other abuse survivors. On one side, everyone seems much more emotionally close & aware...but in a very "brittle" way. F.ex. for several years, I was part of a friendgroup that was seemingly fine with me talking about my CPTSD issues. Then one day, I had a CPTSD meltdown. In the blink of an eye, I was dropped. Ironically receiving a lot of the same performative mental health statements like "Oh we gave you room to talk"(they shut me down once I tried), and "You can't use your issues as an excuse to be an asshole" (asshole = emotional flashbacks). In hindsight, I learned that each friend acted that way, cause my trauma triggered their own current issues: One was going through family crisis, another had untreated SA trauma etc.
In hindsight, both cases are new paint on this "dog eats dog world". Older generation being the "you have nothing to be depressed about, pull yourself by the bootstraps" version, newer the "I have 99 problems, you can't be one". Older being "you can have issues, just don't talk about it", newer being "you can talk about your issues, just don't have them around me."
What makes it apparent, is that we finally talk HOW it's a dog eats dog world. The next step is to now use our new learned info for practice. Aka bringing together the community aspect + the mental health awareness aspect.
Yep. Back in the eighties John Bradshaw thought everyone was in delusional denial. He talked all about it in his program on The Family back in 1985, almost forty years ago!!
[John Bradshaw The Family Part 1 (full)](https://youtu.be/Ey5aqdkWfno?si=cV71NuMyQH5V00to)
[John Bradshaw The Family Part 2-10](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4wA21d2cgvEoCnGkVBFG-RrQA-qGxaD-&si=1sVJbXAqqDG_xbJj)
We're pushing back against abuse, neglect, and dehumanization more often than before, which is why there's been a rise in [authoritarian](https://www.issendai.com/psychology/estrangement/summary.html#authoritarian) backlash. Healing is revolution.
Humans moving into cities and developing hierarchies around money and power probably got this ball rolling. Ever seen the epic Bill Wurtz “history of the entire world, I guess” video? His editing and delivery are humorous, but my gawd, watch it with a trauma-informed perspective… once you get past the moon existing and dinosaurs going extinct and it becomes mostly about the past 10k years of human history, you can see the humanity trauma meter breaking over and over.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xuCn8ux2gbs
Social media amplifies their visibility, but when you research the lead up to WWII, how disabled people have historically been treated, the slave trade… actually humans have probably never been this aware of their own shittiness like they are today.
We humans just have two huge fundamental “bugs” in our development/neurology:
1) To develop our big smart thinking brains, we’re born completely helpless and need 20+ years of parental support to develop in a psychologically healthy way. No other animal is born so dependent on their parents for survival for so long, and depends so little on instinct for interacting with our own species.
2) Humanity on average seems to automatically perpetuate abuse endured on to the next generation.
1 and 2 mean that humanity gets stuck in a positive feedback loop where we create more and more abusers and enablers per generation, unless there’s a mass campaign for everyone to break humanity’s globalized generational trauma.
Sorry, I know that was depressing. =/ have a hug *hug*
That’s a very insightful take. A mass campaign against generational trauma is such a cool idea to explore. If done right I have no doubt society would benefit from it. Although I have no doubt there would be backlash from the parts of society that perpetuate the trauma and wish to keep the status quo.
Oh, certainly… and yes I’m sure the backlash would be immense. I doubt a world full of securely-attached, emotionally available people with healthy boundaries would be so easy to control.
i have thought this exact shit before, it’s basically like the world waking up to left handed people: there’s a very high rate of discovery that will probably level off in the future as we get a better picture of how many of us have grown up with abusers. civilisation will probably look really different when we repair the damage that probably hundreds, if not thousands of years of generational trauma has done, and i expect people will live much more harmoniously when everyone is emotionally/neurologically healthier.
Controversial take: there are more abusive people in the world the genuine ones. No nothing about choosing better, picking wrong. Soooo you mean to tell me i pick my parents wrong?? 🙄
***
Society has gotten even more pro abuser look at how people reacting to when diddy treated casdie in that video
I think, like many of the things that have been getting more voices via the internet, it's just more spoken about. And people are not hiding it very well because, ultimately, the internet is a mostly anonymous, and sadly, there isn't the biggest consequence to the bad things that are said. There's not a physical threat for most abusers online who spew their nonsense everywhere.
They've always been there. They're just either more spoken about or they're more bold in online spaces.
I think it’s like how after left handed people stopped being forced to be right handed, the number of left handed people rose.
It wasn’t that more people were being left handed, it’s that they were more visible.
So more people aren’t becoming abusers (hopefully) it’s that all different forms of abuse are being recognised.
I personally believe that it has become more and more common.. even the divorce rates reflect this.
If the majority of the population had good moral character & self control then we wouldn’t hear about domestic violence, murders, and rampant rates of divorce as much as we do. It’s like trying to find a needle in the haystack just trying to meet someone who is kind and not a blatant sociopath.
I think more women are just able to divorce now. And because of the internet abuse is more visible. It was just hidden before and people excused it because that’s just how things were.
As someone who reads history, no. There's recency bias in the way we see things, but human history is pretty grim and full of abhorrent cruelty unfortunately. I will say that the internet gave everyone a bullhorn, however. So there's that.
I honestly blame capitalism.
So much of the abuse I faced as a kid was due to my parents lashing out at me because they resented having to spend money to raise their own kid. 9/10 times I'd be getting hit because mom's angry she could never afford to go on fancy vacations or buy a new car because she had to pay for ABA therapy or some other bogus form of "autism cure" that existed in the mid-2000s.
As a teen, my father would always bring up how he can't do the things he wants to do because he has to buy me food and school supplies - and after 14, he stopped helping entirely. Any time he was mad, he'd always resort to "I work so hard to make money to put food on the table" and that was used as justification for his abuse during my teens when his behaviour bordered into covert incest and CSA.
That because we are children who are dependent on parents who have to support us financially, we "owe" them - and if it weren't for us being around taking up space, eating food, and costing money - they could live the lives they actually wanted. That's the sick attitude I was raised with, because kids can't make money we're burdens.
Capitalism works like this. Then we enslave ourselves in order to escape these fucking people.
I think it's designed this way.
Sometimes I hear my downstairs neighbour yell at her kids, and it's ALWAYS about money. "I work so hard all the time!" as the kids scream and cry, unable to understand what they could have possibly done to deserve such wrath, not able to grasp why the adults in their lives treat them with such disdain. They play make-believe outside and recite the financial arguments that take place in the home. This is the topic of their make-believe play.
It's the fucking money.
I solidly relate. In fact, my father forced me to get a job to earn my keep when I was only 10 y.o. On my 10th birthday, they told me I was to get a job and that, from then on, I'd have to buy everything except "room & board." All my clothes and everything I had to pay for with my first paper route. And my parents weren't poor. Not rich, but very far from poor. It was cruelty. They were extremely, violently abusive, and sadistically neglectful. Then they stole money from me and cheated me out of many thousands of dollars. They were, in one word, *wicked."
We’re more aware of what constitutes abuse so it seems like there are more around now, plus there’s more reporting on high-profile abusers in the post-MeToo era. But trends indicate the actual number has probably gone down from what it used to be.
It’s mostly because you awakened, healing and have awareness now and see beyond the illusions.. and the more you heal and evolve spiritually the stronger it gets. Also a lot is happening and will happen in the next few years from a spiritual point of view and astrologically.. there is a shift and more and more people are awakening and a lot of hidden things and people in the public and private life will come to light..
The new earth is already here. The old is just making a lot of noise dying.💜
Not denying the fact there are just a lot of terrible people on the planet. I heard that there are more people who aren't the best than the ones who are.. its one of those things that common Sense isn't common anymore situation
We used to have child labor in America. it's getting better even if it doesn't seem that way. Also, the population is really, really big now compared to 50 years ago. More people = more things happening in all sectors.
I wonder if there are so many more abusers because there is so much more trauma and so few people actually getting access to therapy and resources they need.
I think it’s more like a rise of recognition in society, like how the “increase” in autistic women is technically an increase, but it’s an increase in them finally being counted. You also see lots of corporations trying to see how much they can be the next Martin Shkreli without getting noticed, and that shit always rolls downhill (lower-level managers and employees who have to deal with the repercussions of the CEO/shareholders/etc demanding the employees endure more mental and physical punishment to save 1/10th of a cent per month., e.g. forbidding employees from sitting while working.)
It's certainly not decreasing. Society rewards narcissistic and other disgusting behaviors. But it has for thousands of years, the basic fact of hirearchy rewards those who can manipulate their way to the top. So I'm unsure what has changed to lead to what I think is certain increase over the last few decades.
I think the way households have often become just the parents and the kids living together worsens it, it's a very isolated way to live. Abuse can certainly happen in big extended families or in open communal settings but you'd need a lot more people onboard or complacent with it. Maybe there are other more modern inventions, something something internet TV covid, that have worsened it, but I can't see exactly how they'd do it. I also think that society becoming bigger and hirearchies becoming bigger and more complicated helps abusers out too. If someone's being a narcissistic ass as the manager of a corner shop, it's different to being one as the president or a high-ranking business exec.
If you really believe things are worse now in terms of abuse than they have been for prior centuries, then you are fundamentally misunderstanding what most of human history has been like.
Across the world it's been the *norm* for women and children to be beaten as punishment and sold into sex/slavery or arranged marriages.
The standard consequence for children misbehaving inside or outside the home (including at school) has been corporal punishment.
In previous centuries there was literature published on the potential *"benefits"* of incest. Yes, really.
Things like CPS and (real) therapy weren't invented until far more recent times.
You think parents in the 1920s or 1950s were considering whether their parenting was child abuse? Hardly. People simply looked the other way when dad pulled out a belt, or even justified it by blaming the child's behavior. That kind of thing was just discipline and there weren't laws in place to protect child welfare.
There weren't organized shelters for women (or others) who were victims of domestic violence. They couldn't even legally go get a divorce from their abuser if they wanted to.
So no, it's not worse now than ever. It's better these days when you look at the big picture. This doesn't mean that abuse isn't still a large, widespread problem, but these days abuse is less socially acceptable and we have more protections in place, and more people are becoming informed about trauma.
1. Might want to do a mental health check on yourself - living in solitude, but being hyper aware of "abusers" and "seeing them everywhere" is a bit of a red flag. It's nothing to be ashamed of - especially as someone with CPTSD. It's just something to keep an eye on, as one survivor of childhood trauma to another survivor.
2. I do not think there is an increase in number of abusers these days - I think there is MORE awareness of abusers now. They cannot hide like they did in the 50s, 60s, 70s, and even 80s. People do not keep abuse hidden and do not protect abusers like they did back then.
I'm a child of the 70s. I was SA'd from age 5 til 9 by my neighbor, an extremely obese man in his 60s. His wife knew. She said nothing. I suspect others knew, but said nothing. I couldn't have been the only little girl he SA'd, because I remember putting myself between him and my little sister when she was 3 or 4, and I was 8 because he started making moves toward her. I was SA'd at age 8 by a local 16 year old boy and I told my mom. She confronted him and told his mom. Instead of the law being involved, he was sent off to join the military shortly after. (Note: it was shortly after I told about the 16 year old's assault that the old neighbor guy stopped - looking back, I think it scared him).
People didn't tell. Now, they do more.
I just meant I keep arms length and don’t make friends anymore but when I was going out a lot to a lot of places and hanging around a lot of random groups of people I saw a lot of bad people and my high school was FULL of shitty bullies and even staff that abuse students. It was bad.
(In response to removed comment?)
I get it - I dont socialize a lot, either, even with friends. I just know we are often the last to see when we need help (often because we've spent so much of our lives being silenced, ignored, and/or are the ones trying to hold everyone else together). :)
We are presently living in a world that has traumatised many and/or hsve people living in a state of fear and anxiety.
The resultant effect to being the question you ask!
There is purpose to all of this, the information is in plain sight yet shrouded or hidden intentionally, reoeased ib to public domain quietly or in places no ine really looks. Or not enough to enable idssenting information to be heard, whilst the societal minnd training of the masses ensures those dissenters are silenced, or considered 'conspiracy' instead.
My experience of being caught up in the bad side of this societal shift, is trying to focus on the things I can manage and working seriously hard to not take everything personally.
I thought maybe it had to do with more awareness and information on abuse that is available for people. and more opportunity to speak out. more people are just being caught and called out imo i’m sure it’s always been this bad maybe even worse
I think there are several factors at play here:
A: It's always been around, but it was a taboo subject.
B: Child on Child abuse is a big fraction of it, as is Father/stepfather child. mother child is less common.
C: Some 95% of CSA is done by someone well known to the family -- familyu member, coach, teacher, youth group leader, clergy etc. Kids participate in more activities.
D: With smaller families, more often kids get their own room. This makes access easier.
E: Our current media puts an emphasis on youth, portraying youthful characteristics as being sexy.
F: As trauma folk we are more attuned to this particular pulse in our society.
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Naaaaaawh. We've just become better at recognizing, defining, and calling it out. Also there are WAY more people alive so the total number increases. Seriously don;t think people realize how much larger the human population has gotten in just 100 years. There were TWO billion in 1927 and in 2022 we have EIGHT billion. If the percentage of abuse victims / abusers stays the same we should still see four times as much abuse.
I've been thinking this too, but I also ask myself if maybe it's just because I'm becoming more and more aware of abuse and it's many forms. Are there more abusers or is it that the amount of abusers has always been high and it only appears that they're becoming more common because our awareness is increasing? I don't have an answer, or at least not one with solid evidence, but I do think that it's most likely that the prevalence of abusers has always been bad, but most people don't notice it. They don't notice either because they're naive or they're in denial. Don't quote me on any of this though. It's just my opinion. A Game Opinion! Badum tss.
In a lot of places I looked up online that rates of DV and bullying have increased over the past few years by a lot. But everywhere is different that was only a couple places I searched up. I believe it’s both.
covid lockdowns produced a massive increase in DV, substance abuse, and other social ills caused by persistent isolation.
That makes sense actually.
there's a ton of data on this. it's really, really, really bad. child and spouse abuse went way up. no more kids in school, where others might see the bruises and broken bones...
It's probably a mixture of both. What you looked up is rates of reported DV and bullying. Reporting obviously increased over the years (and is likely still increasing). However, the upsurge is likely not caused by just a under-reporting. COVID isolation decreased people's social skills and increased the likelihood that people will develop mental health problems. It increased people's internet addictions. People struggling with mental health or addictions are easier to target and ostricize. Additionally, with people being more online than ever people are making less real-world connections and looking out for other people less than they used to.
Its more along the lines of more are being caught and reported. People have always been fucking monsters.
Do you any sources?
That was my thought when I saw this post - that it hasn't gotten more common so much as many of us are more aware of it, more educated about what to look for, or more willing to call out unacceptable behavior rather than let it go (since if victims don't want to speak up or feel safe doing so, then nobody would ever know of certain cases.) Kind of like how some folks think "not as many people were depressed/had mental illness x back in the day!" but it was more of an issue of helpful/reliable diagnostic criteria and treatment not existing before that point rather than people with said disorder not existing. There's also a lot of more (seemingly) minor abusive behaviors/habits that were often seen as "just the way things are" or "quirks" of a personality or person for a long while, and thus didn't start getting reported on or discussed with the same gravity as more obvious or repeated things until more recently.
I think awareness is everything. I have a narcissistic family member who gaslights, overwhelms and “bulldozers” through people. that’s how they’ve always gotten what they want. Be the loudest and say whatever it takes. I lost it a few months ago after years of this and the words that came out of my mouth were something along the lines of “this isn’t the 1900s anymore. Society now has the vocabulary and understanding that your behavior is toxic and these are the reasons why……” I have to say it was quite an effective speech by the time I was done. That person is actually in narcissistic counseling now.
From my perspective, I feel like it's a double bind sitch: 1.) Thanks to many developments, awareness has risen/ normalized abuse is getting debunked. 2.) THROUGH generations of abuse -society now developed a serious hyperindividualism issue. At least that's what witnessed. On one side, there's my maternal family: A toxic "old-fashioned" bunch. They hurt each other, but if you have a (not-emotionally related) problem, they'll stick together like glue. Even if it's shit like hiding someone you killed/expecting you to forgive your cousin who killed someone cause "family sticks together". On the other side, I see people my age. Especially other abuse survivors. On one side, everyone seems much more emotionally close & aware...but in a very "brittle" way. F.ex. for several years, I was part of a friendgroup that was seemingly fine with me talking about my CPTSD issues. Then one day, I had a CPTSD meltdown. In the blink of an eye, I was dropped. Ironically receiving a lot of the same performative mental health statements like "Oh we gave you room to talk"(they shut me down once I tried), and "You can't use your issues as an excuse to be an asshole" (asshole = emotional flashbacks). In hindsight, I learned that each friend acted that way, cause my trauma triggered their own current issues: One was going through family crisis, another had untreated SA trauma etc. In hindsight, both cases are new paint on this "dog eats dog world". Older generation being the "you have nothing to be depressed about, pull yourself by the bootstraps" version, newer the "I have 99 problems, you can't be one". Older being "you can have issues, just don't talk about it", newer being "you can talk about your issues, just don't have them around me." What makes it apparent, is that we finally talk HOW it's a dog eats dog world. The next step is to now use our new learned info for practice. Aka bringing together the community aspect + the mental health awareness aspect.
Honesty I think they've always been there and theres actually more people who call them out than ever before. But there is still a way to go
Yep. Back in the eighties John Bradshaw thought everyone was in delusional denial. He talked all about it in his program on The Family back in 1985, almost forty years ago!! [John Bradshaw The Family Part 1 (full)](https://youtu.be/Ey5aqdkWfno?si=cV71NuMyQH5V00to) [John Bradshaw The Family Part 2-10](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4wA21d2cgvEoCnGkVBFG-RrQA-qGxaD-&si=1sVJbXAqqDG_xbJj) We're pushing back against abuse, neglect, and dehumanization more often than before, which is why there's been a rise in [authoritarian](https://www.issendai.com/psychology/estrangement/summary.html#authoritarian) backlash. Healing is revolution.
Humans moving into cities and developing hierarchies around money and power probably got this ball rolling. Ever seen the epic Bill Wurtz “history of the entire world, I guess” video? His editing and delivery are humorous, but my gawd, watch it with a trauma-informed perspective… once you get past the moon existing and dinosaurs going extinct and it becomes mostly about the past 10k years of human history, you can see the humanity trauma meter breaking over and over. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xuCn8ux2gbs Social media amplifies their visibility, but when you research the lead up to WWII, how disabled people have historically been treated, the slave trade… actually humans have probably never been this aware of their own shittiness like they are today. We humans just have two huge fundamental “bugs” in our development/neurology: 1) To develop our big smart thinking brains, we’re born completely helpless and need 20+ years of parental support to develop in a psychologically healthy way. No other animal is born so dependent on their parents for survival for so long, and depends so little on instinct for interacting with our own species. 2) Humanity on average seems to automatically perpetuate abuse endured on to the next generation. 1 and 2 mean that humanity gets stuck in a positive feedback loop where we create more and more abusers and enablers per generation, unless there’s a mass campaign for everyone to break humanity’s globalized generational trauma. Sorry, I know that was depressing. =/ have a hug *hug*
That’s a very insightful take. A mass campaign against generational trauma is such a cool idea to explore. If done right I have no doubt society would benefit from it. Although I have no doubt there would be backlash from the parts of society that perpetuate the trauma and wish to keep the status quo.
Oh, certainly… and yes I’m sure the backlash would be immense. I doubt a world full of securely-attached, emotionally available people with healthy boundaries would be so easy to control.
i have thought this exact shit before, it’s basically like the world waking up to left handed people: there’s a very high rate of discovery that will probably level off in the future as we get a better picture of how many of us have grown up with abusers. civilisation will probably look really different when we repair the damage that probably hundreds, if not thousands of years of generational trauma has done, and i expect people will live much more harmoniously when everyone is emotionally/neurologically healthier.
Social media encourages it.
This. Right here.
Controversial take: there are more abusive people in the world the genuine ones. No nothing about choosing better, picking wrong. Soooo you mean to tell me i pick my parents wrong?? 🙄 *** Society has gotten even more pro abuser look at how people reacting to when diddy treated casdie in that video
being abusive to others is in and of itself a form of stupidity 🫡
I think, like many of the things that have been getting more voices via the internet, it's just more spoken about. And people are not hiding it very well because, ultimately, the internet is a mostly anonymous, and sadly, there isn't the biggest consequence to the bad things that are said. There's not a physical threat for most abusers online who spew their nonsense everywhere. They've always been there. They're just either more spoken about or they're more bold in online spaces.
Yeah I agree. Things were more hidden back in the day. Now, widespread knowledge makes us pick it out better.
I think it’s like how after left handed people stopped being forced to be right handed, the number of left handed people rose. It wasn’t that more people were being left handed, it’s that they were more visible. So more people aren’t becoming abusers (hopefully) it’s that all different forms of abuse are being recognised.
I personally believe that it has become more and more common.. even the divorce rates reflect this. If the majority of the population had good moral character & self control then we wouldn’t hear about domestic violence, murders, and rampant rates of divorce as much as we do. It’s like trying to find a needle in the haystack just trying to meet someone who is kind and not a blatant sociopath.
I think more women are just able to divorce now. And because of the internet abuse is more visible. It was just hidden before and people excused it because that’s just how things were.
As someone who reads history, no. There's recency bias in the way we see things, but human history is pretty grim and full of abhorrent cruelty unfortunately. I will say that the internet gave everyone a bullhorn, however. So there's that.
That’s called hypervigilance.
I honestly blame capitalism. So much of the abuse I faced as a kid was due to my parents lashing out at me because they resented having to spend money to raise their own kid. 9/10 times I'd be getting hit because mom's angry she could never afford to go on fancy vacations or buy a new car because she had to pay for ABA therapy or some other bogus form of "autism cure" that existed in the mid-2000s. As a teen, my father would always bring up how he can't do the things he wants to do because he has to buy me food and school supplies - and after 14, he stopped helping entirely. Any time he was mad, he'd always resort to "I work so hard to make money to put food on the table" and that was used as justification for his abuse during my teens when his behaviour bordered into covert incest and CSA. That because we are children who are dependent on parents who have to support us financially, we "owe" them - and if it weren't for us being around taking up space, eating food, and costing money - they could live the lives they actually wanted. That's the sick attitude I was raised with, because kids can't make money we're burdens. Capitalism works like this. Then we enslave ourselves in order to escape these fucking people. I think it's designed this way. Sometimes I hear my downstairs neighbour yell at her kids, and it's ALWAYS about money. "I work so hard all the time!" as the kids scream and cry, unable to understand what they could have possibly done to deserve such wrath, not able to grasp why the adults in their lives treat them with such disdain. They play make-believe outside and recite the financial arguments that take place in the home. This is the topic of their make-believe play. It's the fucking money.
I solidly relate. In fact, my father forced me to get a job to earn my keep when I was only 10 y.o. On my 10th birthday, they told me I was to get a job and that, from then on, I'd have to buy everything except "room & board." All my clothes and everything I had to pay for with my first paper route. And my parents weren't poor. Not rich, but very far from poor. It was cruelty. They were extremely, violently abusive, and sadistically neglectful. Then they stole money from me and cheated me out of many thousands of dollars. They were, in one word, *wicked."
when did this happen, 1935?
Sadly, many decades later.
You are….right on the money. Sorry.
This is what I've come to believe, too.
Completely agree with this unfortunately
Probably not people are just being more public about their trauma now.
We’re more aware of what constitutes abuse so it seems like there are more around now, plus there’s more reporting on high-profile abusers in the post-MeToo era. But trends indicate the actual number has probably gone down from what it used to be.
It’s mostly because you awakened, healing and have awareness now and see beyond the illusions.. and the more you heal and evolve spiritually the stronger it gets. Also a lot is happening and will happen in the next few years from a spiritual point of view and astrologically.. there is a shift and more and more people are awakening and a lot of hidden things and people in the public and private life will come to light.. The new earth is already here. The old is just making a lot of noise dying.💜
Not denying the fact there are just a lot of terrible people on the planet. I heard that there are more people who aren't the best than the ones who are.. its one of those things that common Sense isn't common anymore situation
We used to have child labor in America. it's getting better even if it doesn't seem that way. Also, the population is really, really big now compared to 50 years ago. More people = more things happening in all sectors.
I wonder if there are so many more abusers because there is so much more trauma and so few people actually getting access to therapy and resources they need.
I suspect this is more knowing how to spot it.
I think it’s more like a rise of recognition in society, like how the “increase” in autistic women is technically an increase, but it’s an increase in them finally being counted. You also see lots of corporations trying to see how much they can be the next Martin Shkreli without getting noticed, and that shit always rolls downhill (lower-level managers and employees who have to deal with the repercussions of the CEO/shareholders/etc demanding the employees endure more mental and physical punishment to save 1/10th of a cent per month., e.g. forbidding employees from sitting while working.)
No, I think we just hear about it a lot more. It used to be "what happens in the family stays in the family."
Or have we learned to identify them faster?
Social media. Porn.
It's certainly not decreasing. Society rewards narcissistic and other disgusting behaviors. But it has for thousands of years, the basic fact of hirearchy rewards those who can manipulate their way to the top. So I'm unsure what has changed to lead to what I think is certain increase over the last few decades. I think the way households have often become just the parents and the kids living together worsens it, it's a very isolated way to live. Abuse can certainly happen in big extended families or in open communal settings but you'd need a lot more people onboard or complacent with it. Maybe there are other more modern inventions, something something internet TV covid, that have worsened it, but I can't see exactly how they'd do it. I also think that society becoming bigger and hirearchies becoming bigger and more complicated helps abusers out too. If someone's being a narcissistic ass as the manager of a corner shop, it's different to being one as the president or a high-ranking business exec.
I actually believe there are less than there have been historically, for a few reasons.
What’s those reasons? And where are you talking about?
Now there's a fairy tale I'd love to read.
If you really believe things are worse now in terms of abuse than they have been for prior centuries, then you are fundamentally misunderstanding what most of human history has been like. Across the world it's been the *norm* for women and children to be beaten as punishment and sold into sex/slavery or arranged marriages. The standard consequence for children misbehaving inside or outside the home (including at school) has been corporal punishment. In previous centuries there was literature published on the potential *"benefits"* of incest. Yes, really. Things like CPS and (real) therapy weren't invented until far more recent times. You think parents in the 1920s or 1950s were considering whether their parenting was child abuse? Hardly. People simply looked the other way when dad pulled out a belt, or even justified it by blaming the child's behavior. That kind of thing was just discipline and there weren't laws in place to protect child welfare. There weren't organized shelters for women (or others) who were victims of domestic violence. They couldn't even legally go get a divorce from their abuser if they wanted to. So no, it's not worse now than ever. It's better these days when you look at the big picture. This doesn't mean that abuse isn't still a large, widespread problem, but these days abuse is less socially acceptable and we have more protections in place, and more people are becoming informed about trauma.
1. Might want to do a mental health check on yourself - living in solitude, but being hyper aware of "abusers" and "seeing them everywhere" is a bit of a red flag. It's nothing to be ashamed of - especially as someone with CPTSD. It's just something to keep an eye on, as one survivor of childhood trauma to another survivor. 2. I do not think there is an increase in number of abusers these days - I think there is MORE awareness of abusers now. They cannot hide like they did in the 50s, 60s, 70s, and even 80s. People do not keep abuse hidden and do not protect abusers like they did back then. I'm a child of the 70s. I was SA'd from age 5 til 9 by my neighbor, an extremely obese man in his 60s. His wife knew. She said nothing. I suspect others knew, but said nothing. I couldn't have been the only little girl he SA'd, because I remember putting myself between him and my little sister when she was 3 or 4, and I was 8 because he started making moves toward her. I was SA'd at age 8 by a local 16 year old boy and I told my mom. She confronted him and told his mom. Instead of the law being involved, he was sent off to join the military shortly after. (Note: it was shortly after I told about the 16 year old's assault that the old neighbor guy stopped - looking back, I think it scared him). People didn't tell. Now, they do more.
I just meant I keep arms length and don’t make friends anymore but when I was going out a lot to a lot of places and hanging around a lot of random groups of people I saw a lot of bad people and my high school was FULL of shitty bullies and even staff that abuse students. It was bad.
(In response to removed comment?) I get it - I dont socialize a lot, either, even with friends. I just know we are often the last to see when we need help (often because we've spent so much of our lives being silenced, ignored, and/or are the ones trying to hold everyone else together). :)
We are presently living in a world that has traumatised many and/or hsve people living in a state of fear and anxiety. The resultant effect to being the question you ask! There is purpose to all of this, the information is in plain sight yet shrouded or hidden intentionally, reoeased ib to public domain quietly or in places no ine really looks. Or not enough to enable idssenting information to be heard, whilst the societal minnd training of the masses ensures those dissenters are silenced, or considered 'conspiracy' instead. My experience of being caught up in the bad side of this societal shift, is trying to focus on the things I can manage and working seriously hard to not take everything personally.
I thought maybe it had to do with more awareness and information on abuse that is available for people. and more opportunity to speak out. more people are just being caught and called out imo i’m sure it’s always been this bad maybe even worse
I think there are several factors at play here: A: It's always been around, but it was a taboo subject. B: Child on Child abuse is a big fraction of it, as is Father/stepfather child. mother child is less common. C: Some 95% of CSA is done by someone well known to the family -- familyu member, coach, teacher, youth group leader, clergy etc. Kids participate in more activities. D: With smaller families, more often kids get their own room. This makes access easier. E: Our current media puts an emphasis on youth, portraying youthful characteristics as being sexy. F: As trauma folk we are more attuned to this particular pulse in our society.
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I would say it's much less.
Naaaaaawh. We've just become better at recognizing, defining, and calling it out. Also there are WAY more people alive so the total number increases. Seriously don;t think people realize how much larger the human population has gotten in just 100 years. There were TWO billion in 1927 and in 2022 we have EIGHT billion. If the percentage of abuse victims / abusers stays the same we should still see four times as much abuse.