Chishiya!

I think it must be, at least partially, because, people hate the imperfect victim. Its easy for so many people to sympathize with someone who never lashed out. Less so for people to sympathize with people who are angry and lash out. Even though its a perfectly sensible reaction to being hurt over and over. I'm sure most people would like to think they would simply never.

And yeah while most people do internalize blame the solution is always presented as "break them down by telling them it wasn't their fault over and over, as many times as needed until they believe it and cry and heal" and if you did that to me I'd fucking hate you and never trust you again. I never find that shit validating, it feel GROSS. But apparently that makes me a bad victim.

Ofc the first time I saw the alternate narrative, the one that resonated with me, which was "okay well maybe you did fuck up and hurt others and it's your fault, you still didn't deserve it and you're allowed to just accept that shit sucked and was messy and confusing and move on, we may never get clean answers that feel good, but we do get to take the next step" it got maligned by everyone and their mom for being an evil, pro abuse stance. Because the character was in part at fault for what happened to them, and apparently suggesting that an abuse victim could ever be at fault or even just feel like they were was bad representation. That the only correct way to conceptualize your abuse is to vehemently deny that you did anything wrong ever and accept that you deserved none of it even if saying that makes you feel like choking on bile and drags you back into your trauma again and again with no reprieve.

Let victims be imperfect, even if it makes you uncomfortable. Especially when it makes you uncomfortable.

Source One is Burchard of Worms' Decretum, Book XIX. The Decretum was a collection of canon laws compiled in the early half of the 11th Century. Book XIX, or The Corrector, was a penitential: basically a guidebook for confessors. Here's a sin, have u done it, here's your penance.

One of the questions for women was, essentially, "Did you make a dildo, strap it to yourself and fuck someone with it?". The original text is in Latin, and there's a few translations floating around of what it said. Here's one, which I spent the past three days looking for, because I wanted a direct source:

Have you done what women are wont to do: to make a certain device in the form of a male member to the measure of your will, and to tie it to your own or another woman's genitals with some ties, and commit fornication with other women, or others with the same instrument, or with another with you? - Translated from Latin, taken from "Die Bussordnungen der abendländischen Kirche nebst einer rechtsgeschichtichen Einleitung", F. W. H Wasserschleben

Pretty cut and dry re: the use of strap-ons. And dildos, because the next question is "and did you use this device on yourself?"

The second source is from the trial of Katherina Hetzeldorfer, specifically Female Sodomy: The Trial of Katherina Hetzeldorfer (1477) by Helmut Puff, which has an analysis of the trial as well as a translation of the trial texts.

Katherina is the first recorded woman to be executed for homosexuality. There's a lot to be said about her and the way she performed gender but what I'm interested in today is the strap. So, from the court text itself:

...She made an instrument with a red piece of leather, at the front filled with cotton, and a wooden stick stuck into it, and made a hole through the wooden stick, put a string through, and tied it round; and therewith she had her roguery with the two women...