new thread
At Fitzgarce's suggestion, I am providing a link to a conversation about abuse that was spawned by a short comment by Michail in another thread. For those of you who have ever altered your appearance due to coercion from others, you may want to pick up the thread below Michail's post. Fitzgarce felt that some who needed to see the thread would miss it because it had descended a ways down from the top of the board.
Bill
Thanks for re-posting, as it was easier to spot.
Thanks for sharing your stories, and that you and others on MLHH provide a place for encouragement and support.
Like I said before, I wanted to do this in my 20's, but girlfriends, jobs, family etc, held me back.
("you have to cut it to make it grow.")
Happy Old/New Year!
The Spaf Man
I had some idea of Jason's upbringing, but I had no idea that you went through all of that, Bill. I'm happy that you were able to get out of all of it, though, and become your own man. You were more than helpful to me when I started posting here.
It's been my intense pleasure to have been able to help others. Jason and I exchanged many long private e-mails back about ten years ago when we were both churning through the issues. My sister-in-law has been captured by the same church Jason belonged to, and for many years I have been supportive of her wish to stay in the church while still owning her self-respect, something none of her family members have ever done.
Jason was afraid to even use his own name when he first came here, but you know, there's no closet for longhairs. I'm so proud of Jason, now openly using his name and growing his flowing mane. His escape from the pain of abuse will never be permanent. It never is. But we are both happier than we have ever been. We have been of great help to each other. And by being here, we show our delight in blazing the trail for others who seek their freedom to live their own lives. We don't have to come to MLHH to have long hair. All we have to do is stay out of barber shops.
Bill
Thank you Bill.
Ever since I read "On being a Long hair", I knew that one of the reasons you didn't grow it out soon was due to social pressure and being afraid of other people's reactions, but I couldn't believe that this was the only thing that kept you away from going after your dream. Knowing now that you faced abuse from very early on in your childhood, it all makes sense. Some parents just don't seem to know how this kind of abuse can damage a person for life. The earlier it happens, the more it will impact their life.
Like you, and that kid who said "We always knew your mother dressed you funny," people do know. They read between the lines. They can get an incomplete story that way, though, and it can be more helpful if they get the complete story.
Well, as others have also said, abuse is usually an attack on many fronts, and I could write a book about it, but that would be a bit much on MLHH. My hope is that I've said the most pertinent parts to understanding what lies behind the abuse mechanism to which so many of us have been subjected.
Bill
I thank you for sharing such a personal story with us. Believe it or not good has come from it, you can inspire many now because of your ordeal, I am grateful you shared with us. Thank you.
Yes, that is the silver lining in the cloud. I know by sharing it I have caused some good to come from it. It is not only of benefit to guys who post here, but by being on the Internet, it is likely to help many others whose names we will never learn.
Some people are capable of being more outspoken than others. For those of us who are, I see a duty in our helping those who may not be.
Bill
Thanks so much for linking to this thread, Bill. I missed it first time.
I am gobsmacked by the utter brutality and thoughtlessness of your childhood. Such abuse from a mother, traditionally someone whose selfless and unconditional love should pervade our upbringing, just beggars belief. You have my total respect for having emerged so strong and so brilliantly.
Damon
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I came into adulthood thinking all mothers were evil. I had a couple of other issues besides the hair and clothing ones I mentioned. One was a hearing impairment, and the folks at the local deaf agency helped me with that. Another was that I could not recognize people by their faces. In the 1990s I put together an e-mail list to deal with that problem, and I met several very caring mothers whose children had the problem. They wanted to do things to help their children instead of using their weaknesses to further batter them. I began to realize how evil my mother had been in comparison to most mothers.
I had taken notes from what I had learned from the mail list about how to deal with the face recognition problem. One of those mothers wanted my notes. I said, "Well they are kind of personal. I worked it out and others can." She replied, "Yeah, it took you fifty years. I don't want my five year old son to have to wait fifty years to learn what you know." I thought it over, and I felt that I should give her my notes. I also realized they were likely to get passed around, so I just put them on the Internet. In my notes, I called the condition "face blindness".
To make a very long story short, it turned out that almost 2% of the population has it. Up to that point, the condition had been virtually unknown. My notes started an avalanche of university research, and I have been on national TV in several countries to talk about it. You can google the phrase I came up with, "face blindness", and get many thousands of hits. All this came about because of a mother who cared.
At about the same time I found MLHH and they needed someone to write up an FAQ so the same questions would not be getting asked over and over here. The longtime longhair who volunteered never got around to it. So having the experience of writing up the face blindness stuff, I wrote up "On Being a Longhair".
The experiences of being here and of being on the face blindness list have told me that we have to help ourselves if we have problems. No one is going to jump in and help us. We have to be open. We can all suffer alone, thinking we are the only one in the world, if we don't all speak out. When we do, we find out that in fact we have lots of company, and in that discovery, we realize we are normal after all!
Bill
Please note the following articles in phys.org dealing with the discoveries found on "face blindness"; the first is the neurological sites of the brain that are linked to this: http://phys.org/news146840077.html Since I know only how to save via. control C and post via control V this is going to be a multi-post. Also since the posts are listed in reverse order this is going to end up on the bottom, such is life.
Here's another link that ties in how emotions effect face recognition: http://phys.org/news140844273.html
The last easy link I found was this one also dealing with the neurological basis of face blindness: http://phys.org/news199553463.html
I just read an article this past week on new developments on "face blindness" (prosopagnosia) being linked to the same gene that allows mothers to bond with their child. They are finding that without this gene, people have great difficulty remembering faces.(I can't remember wear I read the article...)
Thanks for the info, Bill. That "face blindness" must have been a very difficult condition to deal with. I sometimes have trouble remembering faces myself but clearly not on the same scale.
I guess I took my own mother's love for granted. My childhood was far from being perfect and my parents certainly had their faults (as did I!) but their love was never in question.
Damon
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Bill
Thanks for the link to the Wired article, Bill. I read it through and it was fascinating. I love stories of ground-breaking research like that. Your use of Usenet clearly made a huge difference in bringing people together and advancing knowledge. A nice example of the halcyon days of an altruistic Internet before it descended into the commercially dominated quagmire of today!
Damon
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Yeah, when I got on the Internet it was mostly tech types who were on. You had to be to get the right equipment and understand how to hook everything up. Also, everyone helped everyone else.
At the time, there were four skills that were seen to be essential to being fully on line. You had to be able to get and send e-mail, and you had to be able to read and make web pages. The "make web pages" part has faded. After all, back then, if we all didn't do our part to make web pages, there would be nothing for anyone to look at. Just about everyone knows cool stuff that others would enjoy getting to see, so there was a rush for each of us to get our unique knowledge on line. Unlike today, every Internet account came with web space, so we all had places to put our stuff. I pity guys nowadays who don't have web space, because we all have great ideas, and you really need web space to display them well.
MLHH started out as precisely that. It was put in Victor's web space. And my face blindness pages, and "On Being a Longhair", were more examples. There was a time talk was had of putting MLHH on Yahoo Groups. Well, we know how that would have turned out. By owning our own web space, no big corporation is going to dictate how we run our site or what can go on it. We own it. It is safely in the hands of our community.
You mentioned commercial interests. MLHH has no advertising. It is only beholden to other longhairs, and making longhairs happy is its only goal. It is a community effort. We each contribute to increase community knowledge, the equivalent of "research" you mentioned. MLHH is truly "old line Internet".
Bill
Thanks Bill. Lance
Thank you Bill for re-posting this, and also for being so open about your painful story of childhood abuse. As you know, we have swapped our personal hair horror stories in-person over the years, and I feel so lucky to physically live so close to you to be able to get to know you in this way. As you say, this is why we both hang around MLHH, because we feel we can be a help and support to those who might be struggling -- or have struggled in the past -- over any mistreatment that happened simply because of the desire to grow our own hair on our own head long (as nature intended and allows; but an over-controlling society disapproves and tries to restrict).
For those who don't know my own early life hair history, as a child I was given no choice by my father re. hair length or style. Every summer, for example, my dad would announce to me & my brothers right after school was let out in June, "Time for your easy-to-get-dry-after going-swimming haircuts!" -- which meant he was going to buzz our hair off for the summer vacation. We had NO CHOICE in the matter -- my dad even had a home barber shop kit; so he cut it off himself.
The rest of the year wasn't fun either -- my father being an ex-navy man, he only approved of military-short hairstyles even during the cold Chicago winters where I grew up.
Although in this photo from 1965 I can now look at it and smile, thinking to myself how cute my 4 brothers and I looked back then, this doesn't mean that forcing kids to have buzzed haircuts is "OK" -- the fact that we all desperately wanted to grow our hair long back then, yet not even allowed to talk openly about our preference, is without a doubt not only over-controlling; but in hindsight, definitely abusive. My dad was emotionally abusive in other ways that I don't care to get into right now; so hair was just the tip of the "iceberg" -- but to summarize a long sad story: it is extremely symbolic to me that I now have the complete freedom (both inner and outer freedom) to grow my hair as I wish... even if I'm doing it as an old geezer now!!
- Ken in San Francisco
Thanks Ken for sharing. I think a lot of us, as kids, were taken for hair cuts whether we liked them or not. Fortunately I never was "buzzed," but ANY hair cut was bad enough.... after I was 18 I kept it longer, but now I am on a mission...
Onward and Downward... The Spaf Man
Also Bill, I wanted to thank you for your web page,
"On Being a Longhair".
That is how I found this site, and as others have stated, you and others sharing your experiences really help us to not give in to the "norm" of society, which is not who we are...
Onward and Downward..... The Spaf Man
Hi Bill and Jason,
I just read your stories and was horrified! My apologies for taking so long to read them! I can only say I am glad you made it to the "other side"! Welcome guys!
Ted
Thanks Bill. I had some knowledge of the abuse that you suffered from other posts over the years but not the extent and breadth of it.
I did not have the abusive situation at home but I did have a personal obstacle in that throughout my childhood and young adulthood, I had extreme shyness and what today is called social anxiety. I would sometimes literally clam up (unable to make small talk) around strangers or people that I perceived to be of higher status. I didn't begin to emerge from this until I was well into college, and even today I still have some anxiety in situations where I don't know the people I'm with.
How this relates to hair is that although I had a desire to grow my hair, I was extremely afraid to stand out and bring unwanted attention to myself.
That's one reason it took me until I was in my late 20's to grow my hair for the first time.
Thanks again,
Chris
Chris,
The root of the problem appears to always be "fear". Whether it be "social anxiety", "severe abuse", or something in between, fear is the underlying cause. One should not have to be afraid to express one's identity. Any level of behavior by others that would bring that fear on, could be said to be abusive.
At times, persecution of one's group can be brutal. We experienced that during the Viet Nam War. The government with the military draft was at war with the longhair community. For those in the community it felt like genocide. Like after a genocide, the community never fully recovered.
Fortunately today the persecution is not so pervasive. It is more of a one-on-one event here and there. It is nevertheless very destructive to those who are subjected to it and are unable to defend themselves. Fear rots one's sense of self from within.
Bill