Last week, when the first part of this "landmark" special aired, it somehow completely slipped my mind that I have a son. How about that? Somehow, my one-year old boy didn't enter into my consciousness while watching a show about male victims of sexual abuse. It wasn't until after the episode aired, and even after I'd written about it, that it finally dawned on me. When I told Katie, she was all, "Duh." Apparently she had been thinking about Merritt the entire time. That's some awesome parenting right there.
Of course, Katie is on top of this stuff. Even though Merritt is a baby, and is never really around anyone but us or his father, she's always on the lookout for signs that something is amiss. When we were in the grocery store two weeks ago and an older gentleman spotted Merritt in the cart and tried to get him to wave, Katie smiled obligingly, waited for the man to leave, then said, "That guy was trying to groom Merritt."
All that said, I don't think I would have written the last post on this subject any differently had I remembered that I have a potential victim of sexual abuse sleeping under my roof. I can realize my job to protect Merritt from these predators, and still be annoyed by both Oprah and Tyler Perry.
This episode was just more of the same, really. Though I guess this week's stories were more geared to how the men are dealing with their lives now, as opposed to what happened to them as children. One fat dude in the audience hasn't had sex with his wife in eight years because he's so traumatized over what happened to him as a child. His wife just needed to take one look at his neck (or lack thereof) and count her blessings, if you ask me.
We heard more from Dr. Fradkin, who has a Ph.D. and has worked with over a thousand male sexual abuse victims. You'd think that would make him pretty knowledgeable on the subject, but don't go telling Oprah and Tyler that. Otherwise they might think it was wrong of them to interrupt the dude frequently to interject their own asinine commentary. Here's an idea: if you bring an expert on to the show, maybe give him a chance to finish his own sentences. There's a chance that his doctorate degree trumps your 25 years as a talk show host, or your experience dressing up as an old, crazy black woman.
At one point when turkey neck was talking, a guy in an aqua shirt who was sitting behind Oprah interrupted to babble about coming on the plane to Chicago and looking out the window at the clouds and realizing that there was "a little boy" sitting next to him. I guess he was talking about the little boy he had been when he was abused? I don't know. None of it made sense. I mention it only because I was so confused as to why this guy thought what he had to say was important enough to interrupt and make two boom microphone operators hustle to his location so that we wouldn't miss a second of his inspirational tale.
Once again, I was annoyed more than once when it was implied that this abuse stuff is harder for men than it is for women. I realize that Oprah herself is a survivor of sexual abuse (which made her become something of a whore in her teenage years, she pointed out not for the first time), and that she's done a bunch of shows on the subject, but it just keeps driving me crazy the way she acts like men have some sort of monopoly on gender identity. She asked Dr. Fradkin, "Is it more devastating for a man because they feel like their manhood is taken?" Fradkin agreed that it is. And I threw up a little in my mouth, thinking that there's probably a pretty good chance that female sexual abuse victims lose their womanhood, too. But that's not as important as manhood, and so it certainly shouldn't be as "devastating" to those women to lose, right?
There was a little bit of talk about sexual confusion, and how being abused doesn't make one gay or straight. Probably not enough coverage on that topic, but at least Fradkin made sure to point out more than once that sexual orientation is not decided by sexual abuse. That's an important point to make. There was also a brief discussion about how a lot of these dudes are afraid to come forward with their stories of abuse because they're afraid others will think that they are pedophiles, too.
One of Oprah's producers, Ray, worked on this episode, and then told her the night before the show was to tape that he, too, was a victim of abuse. So he got a standing ovation.
Finally, at the end of the episode we saw a clip from a 2002 episode in which a man named Mark came forward and told his story about being abused by a priest. A woman named Donna was watching that episode, and her husband Ray was in the kitchen, listening. Ray recognized the blurred-out photo of the priest, and confessed that he, too, had been molested by that guy. Donna says this revelation saved her marriage, and Ray was able to get the help he needed to recover. Unfortunately, three months ago he had a heart attack and died in Donna's arms. Mark came out to meet her at the end of the show, and they hugged and shared an emotional moment.
With that, we are hopefully done with Tyler Perry for the rest of the season.
Monday: The Color Purple reunion
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