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Unless you were living under a rock last week, you likely either saw or heard that Mackenzie Phillips was on Oprah, discussing her upcoming book, High on Arrival, and what Phillips claims was the dark secret her family tried to ignore for years: That she and her father had a 10-year long incestuous (and, eventually, in her words, consensual) affair. She says that it only ended when she became pregnant and was unsure whether the father was her boyfriend or her dad; she had an abortion and never let him touch her again. She is sharing now, she says, because surely she can't be the only person to whom this has happened.
Mass reaction to this revelation has run the gamut, from sympathy and compassion for Phillips to people convinced that she's a lying, delusional, gold-digging famewhore. I first heard about this story on Facebook; one of my friends had a link about it posted, along with a comment that amounted to "ewwwwwww!" It was followed by comments from other friends, all following in a similar vein. "Yuck!" "OMG! GROSS!" and "What was she thinking?"
I was stunned. What was she thinking? My first thought was Stockholm Syndrome, and while that didn't appear to have occurred to anyone in my immediate circle, HuffPo's Alison Rose Levy concurred:
The assumption is that since she was a young adult, she could have stopped it. The reality is that she was not able to due what is known as the Stockholm Syndrome, in which people form what is called a "trauma bond" with their oppressors. Because survival depends upon the good will of the oppressor, the abused become infatuated with and bonded to them. The kidnapped heiress Patricia Hearst was a notable example of this. The trauma bond is common to victims of abuse, be they incested children or battered wives, as well as among prisoners of war, cult members, and victims of torture to name a few.
Traumatized people have traumatized brains which Phillips described on the Oprah show when she alluded to having "flashbacks," unwanted, repeating inner images, which she attempted to compartmentalize and block out. A traumatized brain does not respond or bounce back so easily. Drug use, also part of her family's behavior helped to annihilate awareness of the sexual episodes, the resulting emotional pain and the unwanted, intrusive memories-- that occurred later.
So this is the first fallacy I'm noticing, around the web -- people seem quick to believe that because Phillips was an adult, consent is consent; it somehow cancels out any prior rape, and she must be consciously and in sound mental health choosing to perpetuate the relationship (and therefore it cannot be termed abuse.)
HuffPo's Alex Leo strikes out at this assumption in her piece, Incest is NEVER Consensual:
Whether this is the media's understanding of her lack of outward protest or her own internalization of such heinous events, it's not true. She could not have given consent. She was 19 and drugged out of her mind and her father raped her. The trauma of that event combined with her obviously troubled past made her vulnerable to the saddest emotional and mental conditions: Women who are victims of sexual assault are 26 times more likely to abuse drugs and four times more likely to contemplate suicide. She was in no way capable of saying no to a man who had so much influence over her. I doubt incest victims ever are ever capable of consent with their abuser.
Why are people so willing to overlook Phillips' characterization of that first memory as waking up from a blackout to discover she was being raped? Even if you want to believe there was consent, later (in which case: please go back up a couple of paragraphs and read about Stockholm Syndrome again), where is the consent in blacking out and being mounted? I don't see it.
Cara at The Curvature says it better than I can:
Here’s the thing: Mackenzie refers to much of the sexual contact as “consensual.” I understand not wanting to put words in her mouth, and the liability that is involved with that — even though John Phillips was her father, and that should make this issue really clear cut. But the first instance was obviously rape. How do we know? Because one cannot consent to sex during a blackout. Also, because she called it as much on Oprah yesterday. She said that yes, it was rape. Her father raped her. (She also said
