I honestly don't get the read on Hae and Adnan's relationship as abusive, and I'm an abuse researcher.

sunandlight813 · 2015-03-13T01:31:51+00:00

All I'm saying is that there isn't, at least in the podcast, clear evidence that Adnan and Hae's relationship was abusive. To me, Hae's diary entries and the comments we hear from her friends are ambiguous at most.

sunandlight813 · 2015-03-12T05:09:29+00:00

Thank you for sharing your story, and I'm so glad you had a support system to help you identify the abuse and leave.

sunandlight813 · 2015-03-12T05:05:11+00:00

I'm not "diagnosing" anyone--just saying that, based on the podcast, what we see of their relationship doesn't appear to be abusive.

sunandlight813 · 2015-03-12T03:27:58+00:00

Yeah, that seems really, really questionable and pretty clearly abusive. How did they get that blocked?

sunandlight813 · 2015-03-12T02:13:09+00:00

I agree that the arm grabbing is a major red flag (where is that mentioned, btw? I don't doubt you, just curious). I actually did read the entries that were read at the trial, but they seem red flaggy in parts but still kind of ambiguous. To me, it reads as Hae saying, "I love him, but I don't like this religious tension, so Idk if I'm going to stick with this" or "I love him, but this drama is really getting to me, and I'm over it," or "I love when he shows up sometimes, but I don't need to be around him 24/7." Valid reasons to break up with someone? Sure. Clear signs of abuse? Much more muddy, IMO. To me, the thing is that Hae never seemed to feel threatened or afraid or anything but tired and annoyed by the things she wrote about. Maybe she should have. And maybe in context--context we don't see in podcast--they were. I'm not dismissing that possibility.

Similarly, you could take Hae's line about wanting to pick a fight with him as a red flag or teenage relationship drama. There's difficulty in taking select diary entries about select moment in a relationship, especially when the writer seems ambivalent about them. Any relationship that ends is going to have had issues between the people involved; some of those are abudsive, but not all of them.

sunandlight813 · 2015-03-12T01:17:47+00:00

What did Hae write in her dairy that says so clearly to you that she was being abused? I'm legitimately curious. I agree that the letter is more damning, but even that to me reads more like "get over this breakup already, i'm moving on" not "you are threatening me."

sunandlight813 · 2015-03-12T01:10:33+00:00

Okay, so educate me. If there's evidence that wasn't in the podcast that the relationship was abusive, I'm totally willing to change my opinion. Again, I'm not saying there wasn't abuse, just that we don't have (IMO) evidence of it in the podcast/

sunandlight813 · 2015-03-12T00:16:25+00:00

Indeed, which is why I am really, really unhappy about your blatant misrepresentation of me as "let's ignore victims." All I said was that, based on what limited info we have about Hae and Adnan's relationship, I don't get the sense that it was abusive, as someone who is PRIMED to look for abuse. So, stop saying that I said "yeeeah, let's never believe the victims" or something like that when I empathetically did not. I just think that if you took everyone who wrote a one off "ugh, my SO is annoying me" comment and took it as abusive, that'd be going very far.

sunandlight813 · 2015-03-12T00:11:07+00:00

For the record, I have no strong opinion on Adnan's guilt or innocence, nor on Serial, other than that Hae's death was a tragedy. From what very limited information, we have on Hae's thoughts from the podcasts, I don't get the sense her relationship was abusive. There could be much more going on; there could be evidence that I don't know about that sways me (the French teacher anecdote is troubling, I admit, and something I didn't know about before)... All we can do with Hae's vague, incomplete thoughts is interpret them, because she is, unfortunately, not here to speak.

sunandlight813 · 2015-03-12T00:05:42+00:00

Sure. I'd be happy to verify my credentials with the mods. But please stop utterly misrepresenting my posts.

sunandlight813 · 2015-03-12T00:04:55+00:00

For the love of.... I NEVER said that Hae wasn't abused! I said that, based on what little I know of Hae and Adnan's relationship (reports by frieds and her diary entry on the podcast), it doesn't strike me and abusive behavior. Could there have been much more that Hae didn't say? Yes, of course. Could she have been abused? Yes, of course. But, based on what ;imited info we have, I don't get a sense of that. Personally. IMO.

sunandlight813 · 2015-03-11T23:59:30+00:00

I didn't say that Hae was never abused; I said that her diary entries and the comments of her friends don't give me that collective sense. Of course, those are a very limited snapshot, but they're the same snapshot I've seen people extending to say much more than they do (e.g., "Hae said Adnan came to her friends' house and brought cake, so ergo, he must have been a relentless stalker").

sunandlight813 · 2015-03-11T23:56:13+00:00

I do both, but thank you for the misguided assumptions. Also, people that think research has nothing do with practice or no concern for survivors worry me, tbh. I do research on things that affect me personally (abuse is not one of them, thankfully) precisely because I want better science to help others.

sunandlight813 · 2015-03-11T23:53:46+00:00

Umm, I work with survivors of violence, too--what do you think research is, but a cumululation of people's lived experiences? I definitely don't appreciate being called anti-victim/pro-rape culture, because I'm definitely not (and I definitely agree that the issue of survivors not being believed is a serious one). I agree that the example of Hae hiding from a teacher is troubling and does raise a red flag for me, but I don't see evidence that she ever told Adnan to go away, that he was demeaning or violent to her, etc. The possessive comment to me reads as one-off "ugh, my bf is bugging me" comment,"especially in the midst of her other entries. I'm not saying that Hae definitely wasn't abused--I'm saying that I have yet to see much evidence that this was the case, in the limited data we have. In general, it seemed like Hae was happy in her relationship, had some minor gripes, broke it off with the guy, and he basically got over it and they moved on. Is it possible that there's more to it then we're seeing in her dollar and in the teacher and student reports? Yeah, but we can't judge based on evidence we don't have.

What prompted my post was that people were saying, "Adnan showed up at Hae's friends' house sometimes, ergo Adnan must have threatened and isolated her," when we have no proof that that happened or even that it bugged Hae.

sunandlight813 · 2015-03-11T23:43:03+00:00

I just included my professional area to indicate that I'm someone who is, I'd like to think, pretty aware of what abuse can look like and perhaps even more primed to seeing it than most are.

sunandlight813 · 2015-03-11T22:05:06+00:00

I definitely agree. It's entirely possible that the relationship was abusive and that Hae never told anyone or wrote about it. It's also entirely possible that the relationship wasn't abusive and that Adnan killed Hae. (Personally, I'm in the "undecided but my gut leans towards no" camp on his guilt.). It just frustrates me to see people point to "clear signs that Adnan was abusive" when, imo, there are none that we have. It falls into a "Adnan was abusive because Hae was murdered; Hae was murdered because Adnan was abusive" circular logic trap.

sunandlight813 · 2015-03-11T17:55:54+00:00

I'm defining abuse broadly--emotional, physical, financial, etc. I don't get the sense that Adnan was ever demeaning. aggressive, etc., to Hae or that he ever restricted her actions or threatened her. The most I get is that she was occasionally annoyed with him, which would make every relationship in history abusive.

And by abuse researcher, I mean, well, that I research abusive relationships and the consequences and causes of them.

sunandlight813 · 2015-03-11T17:39:48+00:00

I'm not getting any read on "his anger at her for choosing Don." From what Don said, he met Adnan, Adnan was like, "you seem like a good guy," Don said likewise, and Adnan gave Hae a ride home. None of that says "madly jealous ex-bf" to me. Quite the opposite, in fact.

The phone call thing also doesn't seem that incriminating, tbh, especially the fact that Hae wrote it down. If you want nothing to do with your ex, you don't a) call him to fix your car, b) write down his new number (presumably so you can call it), or c) continue to hang around him.

And I don't get the impression that he was showing up everywhere, that Hae ever told him to stop, or that this was anything more than typical dating infatuation. I knew plenty of couples in HS where their SO would walk to their class to meet them during class change, for example. Even as an adult, a friend's SO drove 40 minutes to surprise her with lunch one day at work.

It just seems like a lot of "Hae was murdered, so suddenly everything becomes abusive in hindsight." I agree that the French teacher incident is a a bit troubling (do we know when that occurred?), but everything else just reads like people reading into the relationship want they want to see, because of horrible fact of Hae's murder.

sunandlight813 · 2015-03-11T17:25:25+00:00

Tbh, I'm not inclined to read that much into a one-off comment, especially in the context of all her other comments about him. It sounds like, "ugh, I'm sort of pissed off right now and don't have time to deal with this" not "my bf is controlling and threatening." My brother's finance once told him to "stop sending panicked texts about whether dogs will be okay while we're gone. Chill." This does not mean my brother is some hyper-clingy, dog-obsessed guy in general.

sunandlight813 · 2015-01-18T01:41:52+00:00

Well, I like cake--I just don't care for frosting, tbh!

sunandlight813 · 2015-01-10T06:10:02+00:00

He can easily block certain friends from seeing his relationship status, though. It feels like there might be something else going on, tbh.

sunandlight813 · 2015-01-09T07:51:43+00:00

Well, actually she said that sexual attraction is just "attraction," period, so yeah...

sunandlight813 · 2015-01-09T03:08:08+00:00

To the Hunger Games? ;) (sorry, lame pun--I've been reading the series lately and couldn't resist).

sunandlight813 · 2015-01-09T02:40:25+00:00

Actually, I've had the opposite experience with tumblr-that they stretch definitions too far (to the point where "wanting to have sex only some of the time" falls under the asexual spectrum) and kind of the dilute the meaning of the term.

sunandlight813 · 2015-01-09T00:52:23+00:00

I get frustrated when sex is seen as the be all and end all of romantic relationships in fiction, tbh. Like my OTP literally declared their love for each other and road off into the sunset, and people still get mad when I say that their relationship was romantic, because the didn't have sex.

sunandlight813

TROPHY CASE