The Jackson Family’s incestuous climate
Children being exposed to their father’s sexuality (their first concerts being in strip clubs, his connections with prostitutes), relationships with the older brothers’ groupies taking place in the same room as the younger children, Latoya who hinted at sexual abuse by their father (I know she was being abused by her then husband but while she now supports Michael, her views on Joe seem confusing), and so on.
While I take rumors which a heavy grain of salt, the one about Joe pimping him over powerful people in the industry does send chill down my spine.
All of this occurred alongside the passivity of a mother whose religious devotion bordered on/embraced fundamentalism, and who has been portrayed as a saint on the altar of pop culture.
Today, most of this would be considered as an incestuous climate (bear with me, I’m French and this is an expression mostly used in France as far as I know) with the mother acting as an enabler just to protect the family’s status quo :
« An incestuous climate exists when a family is not marked by a direct sexual act, but by an atmosphere in which the boundaries between adults and children are blurred. The incestuous climate is the breeding ground for incest, which results in a psychic fraction of the same order as the act.
In this type of context, the child may be exposed to sexualized attitudes (looks, gestures, words, intimate confidences) or placed in an inappropriately close relationship with a parent or adult family member. The incestuous climate can also take the form of a role reversal: the child becomes a confidant, an "emotional partner", or even an emotional substitute for a parent.
Even without explicit sexual aggression, this climate constitutes psychological violence: it prevents the child from developing in safety, fosters confusion between love, sexuality and power, and increases the risk of psychotraumatic or relational disorders in adulthood of a parent. »
I don’t necessarily want to defend MJ by painting him as a CSA victim himself and switching the usual narrative (don’t get me wrong, I believe in his innocence and goodwill but still think his behavior was highly inappropriate) by acting as if it is 100% sure he was pimped by Joe or groomed by Diana Ross, but I do think we need to look into the whole family’s situation towards sexuality and secrecy.
Hell, I even think that even if Joe didn’t actually pimp his own son, he kinda acted like it in a symbolic way by seeing him as mostly a cash cow he could abuse as he pleased.
To this day, I still think most of the Jackson siblings want to protect the family’s image towards this by all means, while MJ was the most critical of it during his lifetime.