I stumbled across http://fayekane.blogspot.com/ today. It is extremely disturbing, so I suggest any readers not go there. The blog is an extensive discourse written by a self-described homeless genius. Her main topic of conversation appears to be the glorification of her own self-arranged gang rape, with endless descriptions of how much she "enjoyed" it.
If one takes it at face value, without judgement, then she is a "liberated" mind, free from the judgement and expectations of society. I can almost guarantee some sort of pseudointellectual contrarian will demand her right to define her own experience on her own terms. If you dig into it a little deeper, though, you can see that she mentions an abuse stepfather, and an alcoholic mother. It is reminiscent of the interviews of various porn "models" whose memories and understandings of their own experiences are muddled and confused.
If you dig for answers on obvious questions, like why she calls it 'rape' if she consented to it, or, why, if she calls it consensual, she goes into so many details of how her consent was violated in various ways, you will not find an answer. Her blogs are a baffling mish mash of self contradictions and broken logic. As Dr. Drew has said many times on the radio show Loveline, it would take "a team of psychiatrists" to really figure out what is going on with a person like this, and to discover their true life story. An amateur stranger has, really, no hope of finding any sort of answers. But it doesn't seem too risky to speculate that her blog, basically, is an expression of a person who was an abused child, and in this light, some of her blogs begin to make more sense.
In her blog she also mentions that she had high level academic acheivements, including a degree in some kind of science discipline. She claims that people ask her, if she is so smart, why is she homeless? Her answer is that she chooses to be, and that she is 'Autistic'.
I think it is also not too risky to speculate that "Autism" is a word often applied to people who are simply abuse survivors. What are the symptoms? Withdrawal from others, failure to form relationships, difficulty in getting along, inappropriate behavior. Abuse and Autism share so many symptoms, but the label of "Autism" transfers responsibility to the abstract world of genetics or unknown environmental factors, instead of looking directly at the crimes of the parents or caregivers responsible for the abuse.
Thus, many 'smart' people are perceived in a misguided fashion. To be "smart", or highly successfull in a certain part of Academia, is not the same thing as being healthy, though the two are often confused. The trope, or meme, or stereotype, of having a high level of academic achievement being equivalent to some kind of success is a misguided model of reality. In fact, this stereotype can help perpetuate the abuse, because people who are considered academically brilliant, when displaying symptoms, will be discounted as eccentric, or "austistic", rather than the symptoms being treated as indicators of trauma or odd behavior treated as a cry for assistance.
In cases similar to Faye Kane's, perhaps the people themselves discount their own cries for help, insisting that they are perfectly fine, they have chosen this life, and it has nothing to do with their own brain chemistry, emotional turmoil, or history of abuse. Even as they become homeless, living in a tent in the woods, with permanent scars - that too has an elaborate intellectual justification and explanation. Since they have a history of being told they are smarter than all of their peers, and a history of being right when others are wrong, it is not a great leap for a person with such a history to simply assume, once again, they are right and all others are wrong. Besides, to admit to being abused, is, in a sense, to accept that one is a victim; is this not contrary in some sense to the psychology of survival itself?
Perhaps it is the mind's own self defense mechanism, disconnection from reality, taken to an extreme.
In her blog, she mentions a few people who help her, in traveling to the store, and in other ways, including a "Spherical Christian". Perhaps this is the one person truly without judgement of Faye Kane - the Christian apparently simply exists in Kane's life to help her. Perhaps this will evolve, for Kane, in a road back to reality. Or, perhaps, for the Spherical Christian, she cannot count on that ever happening; her duty is to help, to comfort the afflicted, and so she does it. Perhaps she believes that God will take care of the rest. Maybe she is right.
