> Please speak only for yourself without making sweeping generalizations.

I'm sorry - I didn't get the tone right. I'm used to writing from a third person point of view (has been drilled into me for a while now). I find it hard to write from a first person perspective - though I do try and do it I don't really feel like I've got the balance on that right...

I meant to present it as an idea for consideration. And maybe for ultimate rejection. I started providing an account of Hacking and then considered some (what might be thought to be) implications of his view. Maybe he wouldn't endorse that... Maybe I won't either at the end of the day... I didn't meant to come across as forceful or stipulating, though. I apologise for any offence that I caused...

> I did not CHOOSE to be abused.

I'm not saying that people choose to be abused. I'm not saying that people who have been abused deserved it or earned it or asked for it or requested it or liked it or anything like that.

I'm not saying that people choose whether or not their parents hit them or are sexually involved with them or yell at them or break their limbs or attempt to smother them or whatever.

I'm saying that 'abuse' is an evaluative term that we apply to neutral descriptions of events (as featured in the last paragraph). To call the above acts 'abuse' is to label the above acts 'bad'. But more than that... Because there are things that are bad that aren't abuse... Sometimes... I wonder if there are harms that are caused by our labelling acts abuse. There could be harms that are outweighed by the goods of social change. But from a particular individuals perspective... I'm not sure...

I do think about the harms a lot, though. And choosing how to describe events, well, that is precisely what I DO have control over.