(no subject)

(child sexual assault, sexual assault)

been thinking lately about how distant/unimportant sexual abuse felt to me, as a small "girl", and how most of the stuff i dealt with was like, catcalling and inappropriate questions and old men taking pictures of me without my consent when i was in costume

and how my older (female*) relatives who explicitly protected me from these things were all survivors of much more invasive sexual assault

like honestly the worst sexual abuse i ever experienced doesn't like...feel like it to me. it was only by thinking about it happening to someone else that it really registered to me that. it was definitely abusive. like it seemed fine to me, and to some extent still seems fine to me, because at no point did i feel like i was in actual danger

and idk if i have a point to this, i've just been thinking about, how the survivors of sexual abuse in my life did the most to shield me from experiencing it myself, to the point where, it never even seemed like a real possibility to me until i was like. much older, living on my own, and dealing with the return of my anxiety

like i'm not actually a girl and i have my doubts about my mom's commitment to gender but also: women are the most important line of protection for other women. like i know my dad and brother thought about at least like, appearances, and not leaving me alone with strange dudes, but idk that they were ever thinking about it as much as my mom and sister were