Sexual abuse, Eugenics and other light hearted topics
My first father in law went to Yale and became an engineer. He married the daughter of a doctor. That daughter turned out to be bipolar. Once in a while I saw a truly free spirited side of my first mother-in-law, and it occurred to me only years later to wonder if she had been sexually abused by elite people, given the circle into which she was born and the fact that she married a Yale man and lived on the outskirts of the greater Boston area. A Yale man marries the daughter of a physician - doesn’t it seem like perfect breeding (note dark humor tone - I am not a eugenicist.) I am As it turns out, the Yale man became abusive to both wife and son. Son grew up to have sexual addiction and to become verbally, emotionally and spiritually abusive. His sister, who tried to protect him, also went to Yale. She looked over her own trauma and her linage, having thought it through, decided not to have kids. The son had one kid - with me.
Just before Hitler got going with his extermination of the people and peoples he considered undesirable, the Eugenics Olympics was rolling across the country called the United States, starting just down the street from Yale with two men by the names of Fisher and Whitney:
In September of 1928, the Fitter Families Contest rolled into the Chautauqua Country Fair. The contest was part exhibit and part Eugenics Olympics.
“Some people are born to be a burden on the rest,” a sign at the fair said. “Learn about heredity. You can help to correct these conditions.”
The idea for the Fitter Family Contests came from livestock competitions at fairs. Farmers had long put their prized pigs, cows and sheep into competitions. Now, they could enter the competitions themselves.
Indeed, the AES (American Eugenics Society) not only assessed, but documented and tracked those who performed best. I wonder if they tracked my father in law, who did it all “right” according to their books? I wonder if they tracked my ex and his sister?
A few years ago I learned the Freud reversed his own position on what causes “hysteria.” Originally he believed it was caused by sexual abuse during childhood. Only later did the introduce the Oedypus complex notion, it would seem because pointing the finger at elitists engaged in rampant sexual abuse of children was not popular.
On my mother’s side, there was a series of marriages, including one to the same abusive man. I don’t know what class he came from. My grandmother bucked the elite family she came from and married a man from across the tracks. That was my mother’s father. But it didn’t work out. So she tried again and again until she finally decided a quiet life with animals was better suited to her than marriage. She lived a long life and died peacefully in her sleep, at home in the woods of Oneonta, New York. My mother believe she was unloved, but I knew it wasn’t true. Her mother just wasn’t good at motherhood. I once told my grandmother how my mother felt and encouraged her to show her love more. She did, by giving me a really hard time when I set boundaries because my mother was unable to functional with me. Families can be so fucked up even when they try to fix things. Whether or not my grandmother experienced sexual abuse, I have no idea. I don’t imagine she would have talked about it, but the more I hear, the more it seems so common, I would not be surprised. My mother was abused as a baby, but she claims her sisters was abused more than she was - because in her view, the sisters were more beautiful. I never thought my mother was less beautiful than her sisters, but that’s the double whammy she carried from sexual abuse combined with feeling less beautiful for being less sexually abused than other family members. When I trained in Simsury as a figure skater, it was my mother’s history of sexual abuse that had her alert right away when she saw the signs that Bob Young was grooming me. She put a stop to it before anything that would hold up in court even happened. I only wondered later, if that grooming experience set me up to end up marrying my youth sponsor - the son of the Yale guy - after all, I was still in high school when we met, while he was a senior college - not at Yale, but at The University of Hartford, having rejected elitism and choosing instead to hone in a Boston working - class type of vibe.
Here is an excerpt from a previous piece I wrote critiquing various forms of genocide, and in particular the white-washed genocidal and colonial Eugenics of Rhodes - yes the namesake of the Rhodes Scholarship Program:
“I was shocked that Rhodes even had defenders or rationalizers working on his public image at so late a date, but if you look around the internet, including at the work of professors emeritus from Oriel, you can find those who overtly or with great subtly let him off the hook of the worst of what he actually did do in their own imaginations.
Yet I discovered not only are several Rhodes archives curated by Yale, but there are notable connections between Israel, Ukraine and Russia, such that one can witness in oligarchs who share in common investments in Deutche bank, as well as investments in the US.
Where does this touch me personally? While I was unable to pursue my Russian studies as a young girl, around the same time and following my time at the alternative school where I began this interwoven story of influences, I began training in Simsbury, CT, with “The Russians.” As facts would have it, all of them were from the Former Soviet Union, but only few of them were Russians, while the rest were Ukranians. The wife of Victor Petrenko taught me and my friend Liz a bit of Russian, and when Oksana Baul was hungover, I got he early morning lessons. I didn’t have a problem with anyone and no one had a problem with me. I didn’t even find out until recently that Oksana has Jewish heritage! When I quit skating and tried to have a normal life, one of my best friends was a Russian Jewish girl, whose family had history on the West Bank. She was dating a guy from Iran. During high school she set me up on a blind date. My date was a South American guy. Her Date with the Iranian guy. It was a triple date. The other couple was comprised of my future divorce lawyer and his future wife. Everyone on the triple date went to Brandeis except for myself and my friend. We watched Waiting for Godot. Later when I needed a divorce lawyer, my friend, who took my out clubbing for the approximately two weeks I was single, suggested her friend, with whom I’d triple dated. Even before I got myself into a very scary marriage, Divine Will had me covered: my husband had already dreamed of a little blond haired toddler to whom he was, “Like a dad,” and he knew, as he stared at billowy curtains that resembled mine at the time he (my then future husband) met - he knew he was with her mother. On the day I got my divorce, the man I’ve now been married to for over twenty years started medical school. That blond toddler was babysit by his mother, while I was in court and he was beginning his path of medical training. My friend from school, the one I triple dated with came to tell the government all involved already knew and agreed on: were already clear about: that marriage was over. The thing is, my lawyer was late. Fortunately for us all, my friend had his personal number in her cell phone and was able to reach to him: for the first time in his legal career, he had slept in - right through his alarm! He arrived just in time. He was as nervous wreak, afraid of being in contempt of the court if he’d been any later. As it was, it was the easiest divorce known to people whose marriages end. If only untangling the knots of colonialism could be done so efficiently, with only a personal call to ensure follow through of all legalities!
“Committed Colonialist” Rhodes was joined in his work by Lord Milner, who eventually became a Rhodes Trustee. Milner a German fellow of both German and English genes, who went to Oxford, became a prominent leader of the colonial government in South Africa, in which role he contributed to the Boers wars and insisted education only be taught in English, and later was a member of the war cabinet and eventually war minister in the government of Lloyd George. After the War (World War I) he was made Colonial Secretary.”
According to First World War :
“On 19 April 1918 he was appointed Minister of War, replacing Lord Derby. Milner - unlike Derby but in line with Lloyd George - was an enthusiastic advocate of the creation of an inter-allied wartime command, led by Ferdinand Foch.”
And from archives:
Milner “was educated in Germany and at King's College, London and Balliol College, Oxford. He was elected to a fellowship at New College, Oxford in 1876…”
https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2003/09/25/playing-god-in-the-elm-city/
