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half for the sake of saying it
This post has nothing to do with Disney, or much of anything nice. (I should make more Disney posts; I've had some lovely experiences I should really blog about, and at the very least pictures that need to be shared.) I've been lurking on some posts about feminism and rape, and that sort of thing always makes me look inward contemplatively. So that is what this post is about.
This post by Ursula Vernon is the one that's got my brainmeats going today. This, in particular, set off my train of thought:
But--thing is--every single woman I know, with no exception I can think of, knows somebody who has been sexually assaulted or abused. In fact, with VERY few exceptions, that person is either somebody close to her, or her own self.
Whenever I try to do that same mental tally, or even when I just read about the subject, I'm never quite sure how I should be reacting - my automatic reaction, since I am indeed a very fortunate person with the luxury of rarely, if ever, feeling really unsafe, is "Wow, I'm lucky that hasn't happened to me..."
(Which is a shame and a tragedy in itself, that I should feel lucky to not have been brutally, viciously assaulted in the most ugly, debasing, horrific way that one person can hurt another.)
But I always have to amend the thought: "Well, wait, there was that one time..."
That One Time in my case is a pretty weird thing, a feature on my mental landscape I can never quite identify. It was definitely sexual in nature, it definitely traumatized me, but at the same time... like I said, I almost never feel really unsafe. It's not a trigger for me.
For clarity's sake, and to say it: I was eightish. There was a man who came to the playground; I was little and trusting and loved attention and just thought it was cool he'd play with me. One day he asked me to come with him to the bathrooms, and bless my tiny stupid head, alarm bells started going off right away. I still went with him, albeit suspiciously; the klaxons really started wailing when I realized he was taking me to the boys' bathroom - why that specifically set me off so much I'm not sure, but it did. He took me into a stall, and took down his pants. I started screaming my head off; my memory blanks momentarily here, I don't know if he tried to restrain me or not, but my next memory is of running, crying, out of the park and to home. I don't think anything happened. I'm pretty sure my first thought as soon as he dropped his pants was getting the hell out of Dodge, and in hindsight my shrieking like a bloody banshee probably saved me. This was in broad daylight, he would have been monumentally stupid to continue attempting to molest me in the middle of the day and with me screaming and sobbing loud enough to alert any idiot that something was Wrong. So I got away.
It was bad. It was terrifying. But it was also, thank all forces of goodness and justice in this world, not as bad as it could have been. I wasn't physically harmed or violated, though I sure was scared out of my mind and had just had my (stupid) trust absolutely brutalized.
So I mean, I was traumatized but I don't feel it as something that is traumatic to remember. Thus, the weirdness of "glad I've never been raped-- ooh, but that one time..."
I wonder, though. Something I'm always privately dismayed about in myself is my very lethargic emotional reactions to a lot of things, things that should horrify and upset me. (For instance, the posts I've been reading that sparked this one? I read them rather academically, recognizing and feeling that rape is a Bad Thing and Wrong but not feeling the active emotional response.) From time to time I wonder if that wasn't a defense mechanism. It's a very small thought, and usually shot down because I DO react strongly to a LOT of things and do definitely have emotional depth, but I do wonder.
Also, I'm increasingly suspecting that it did make me gun-shy. I have touch issues. I don't like being touched at all by people I'm not familiar with, of any gender - I'll freeze, squirm away from the touch, or if I'm really skeezed I'll jerk away. Even co-workers or classmates; there's a certain trust threshold you have to pass before I'm okay with you touching me. And it's weird, inconsistent, highly context-sensitive, and a lot higher for men. While I'm pretty sure I'm technically bisexual, I doubt if I'll ever be able to have a successful relationship with a man because of the problems I have trusting men. Beyond the touch thing, my instant response to guys flirting with me is NO, DESIST and slamming up the internal iron walls.
The touch issues are weird to me, when I think about them, because with friends I like touch. I'll touch, I don't mind being touched back, I'm physically affectionate. And it's interesting, because at cons the touch barrier is annihilated. I'm damn huggy at a con, and I'll cheerfully horse around if horsing around is going on, and the hell with gender. I don't know if it's the context of geeky kinship and We're All Weird, Let's Have Fun With It or what, but I feel incredibly, absolutely safe at cons. And when I feel that safe, touch is A-OK. It was the same way in high school, which was similarly safe.
(How interesting. I started out saying how I don't feel unsafe, and now I'm talking about "when I feel safe"...)
So, what am I getting at? I dunno. I think this was mostly an excuse to verbalize this train of thought, since it's been dragged up again. I guess it's really just a pointless, longwinded way of saying, why, yes, rape is a real and horrible threat that women face, and even the lucky ones like me still don't get off all that easy.
Sort of want to delete this post for its pointlessness, but what the hell. What is LJ for if not to go on about shit without a point sometimes?
Edit: To clarify, I don't feel bad or ashamed about That One Time not being a trigger or any more traumatic to me than it is - perhaps a small amount of privilege guilt, in that I know I'm damn lucky and I hate that other women didn't get to be as lucky as I am, but ultimately I'm really very glad I got out of that with as few scars as I did. For the most part, this is pretty much intellectual squinting inward and poking curiously at the wibbly bits.
Don't mind me. Just some maundering I sort of wanted to be heard.
This post by Ursula Vernon is the one that's got my brainmeats going today. This, in particular, set off my train of thought:
But--thing is--every single woman I know, with no exception I can think of, knows somebody who has been sexually assaulted or abused. In fact, with VERY few exceptions, that person is either somebody close to her, or her own self.
Whenever I try to do that same mental tally, or even when I just read about the subject, I'm never quite sure how I should be reacting - my automatic reaction, since I am indeed a very fortunate person with the luxury of rarely, if ever, feeling really unsafe, is "Wow, I'm lucky that hasn't happened to me..."
(Which is a shame and a tragedy in itself, that I should feel lucky to not have been brutally, viciously assaulted in the most ugly, debasing, horrific way that one person can hurt another.)
But I always have to amend the thought: "Well, wait, there was that one time..."
That One Time in my case is a pretty weird thing, a feature on my mental landscape I can never quite identify. It was definitely sexual in nature, it definitely traumatized me, but at the same time... like I said, I almost never feel really unsafe. It's not a trigger for me.
For clarity's sake, and to say it: I was eightish. There was a man who came to the playground; I was little and trusting and loved attention and just thought it was cool he'd play with me. One day he asked me to come with him to the bathrooms, and bless my tiny stupid head, alarm bells started going off right away. I still went with him, albeit suspiciously; the klaxons really started wailing when I realized he was taking me to the boys' bathroom - why that specifically set me off so much I'm not sure, but it did. He took me into a stall, and took down his pants. I started screaming my head off; my memory blanks momentarily here, I don't know if he tried to restrain me or not, but my next memory is of running, crying, out of the park and to home. I don't think anything happened. I'm pretty sure my first thought as soon as he dropped his pants was getting the hell out of Dodge, and in hindsight my shrieking like a bloody banshee probably saved me. This was in broad daylight, he would have been monumentally stupid to continue attempting to molest me in the middle of the day and with me screaming and sobbing loud enough to alert any idiot that something was Wrong. So I got away.
It was bad. It was terrifying. But it was also, thank all forces of goodness and justice in this world, not as bad as it could have been. I wasn't physically harmed or violated, though I sure was scared out of my mind and had just had my (stupid) trust absolutely brutalized.
So I mean, I was traumatized but I don't feel it as something that is traumatic to remember. Thus, the weirdness of "glad I've never been raped-- ooh, but that one time..."
I wonder, though. Something I'm always privately dismayed about in myself is my very lethargic emotional reactions to a lot of things, things that should horrify and upset me. (For instance, the posts I've been reading that sparked this one? I read them rather academically, recognizing and feeling that rape is a Bad Thing and Wrong but not feeling the active emotional response.) From time to time I wonder if that wasn't a defense mechanism. It's a very small thought, and usually shot down because I DO react strongly to a LOT of things and do definitely have emotional depth, but I do wonder.
Also, I'm increasingly suspecting that it did make me gun-shy. I have touch issues. I don't like being touched at all by people I'm not familiar with, of any gender - I'll freeze, squirm away from the touch, or if I'm really skeezed I'll jerk away. Even co-workers or classmates; there's a certain trust threshold you have to pass before I'm okay with you touching me. And it's weird, inconsistent, highly context-sensitive, and a lot higher for men. While I'm pretty sure I'm technically bisexual, I doubt if I'll ever be able to have a successful relationship with a man because of the problems I have trusting men. Beyond the touch thing, my instant response to guys flirting with me is NO, DESIST and slamming up the internal iron walls.
The touch issues are weird to me, when I think about them, because with friends I like touch. I'll touch, I don't mind being touched back, I'm physically affectionate. And it's interesting, because at cons the touch barrier is annihilated. I'm damn huggy at a con, and I'll cheerfully horse around if horsing around is going on, and the hell with gender. I don't know if it's the context of geeky kinship and We're All Weird, Let's Have Fun With It or what, but I feel incredibly, absolutely safe at cons. And when I feel that safe, touch is A-OK. It was the same way in high school, which was similarly safe.
(How interesting. I started out saying how I don't feel unsafe, and now I'm talking about "when I feel safe"...)
So, what am I getting at? I dunno. I think this was mostly an excuse to verbalize this train of thought, since it's been dragged up again. I guess it's really just a pointless, longwinded way of saying, why, yes, rape is a real and horrible threat that women face, and even the lucky ones like me still don't get off all that easy.
Sort of want to delete this post for its pointlessness, but what the hell. What is LJ for if not to go on about shit without a point sometimes?
Edit: To clarify, I don't feel bad or ashamed about That One Time not being a trigger or any more traumatic to me than it is - perhaps a small amount of privilege guilt, in that I know I'm damn lucky and I hate that other women didn't get to be as lucky as I am, but ultimately I'm really very glad I got out of that with as few scars as I did. For the most part, this is pretty much intellectual squinting inward and poking curiously at the wibbly bits.
Don't mind me. Just some maundering I sort of wanted to be heard.
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Second . . . I think as a culture we're still having trouble getting over the idea that a woman's worth is tied-up in her sexual purity so culturally we can't process a woman whose sexual purity is assaulted and who doesn't perceive it as her major life-defining event.
It was very traumatic for you and I'm really, really, really glad that it wasn't any more horrible than it already was but you shouldn't feel bad, like you seem to, that it's a very bad memory but not a trigger. If that's how it is for you, then that's okay.
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(...Admittedly, I haven't had sex yet, so I may well be in for a nasty surprise if I ever try to sleep with a guy. I hope not, I would be really pissed about that.)
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cut off his ballspunch the fuck out of him >:|no subject
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*and, seconds the impulse to maim That Guy very badly in his dangly bits*
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(When I'm analyzing myself I can almost inevitably trace all of my emotional reactions back to my Core Quirk of being obsessed subconsciously with control and self-control, though, something I realized about myself a long time ago. I feel horribly emotionally vulnerable any time I can't control my reactions to something, though what other people want to do and say is usually okay with me. If I felt like working it out, my Thing With Touch could probably be traced back to that too.)
And last but not least, may carnivorous fungi to grow from his reproductive organs. >/ I'm glad you seem to be able to face that with so much equanimity now. ♥
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I don't know, though. Meh.
(That's really interesting, and makes a lot of sense. Touch has a lot of control and power issues bound up in it, so if you're obsessed with control...)
Haha, thank you. <3 I'm rather glad, as well. All things considered, I'm pretty well off in that regard.
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(People don't usually notice it about me because I am 100% a-okay with the choices other people make; I might tell you that I think something's stupid, but hey, being stupid is your perogative! I just seem to be abso-fucking-lutely terrified at some visceral level of not being able to control my OWN reactions to things. It's why I'll never be able to take drugs recreationally and why the stuff I'm on now that changes my brain chemistry to kill my migraines makes me twitch. I AM A WEIRD, SELF-CONTAINED SORT OF CONTROL FREAK.)
♥♥♥♥♥♥
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(Oooh. That must suck, having to choose between self-control and migraines... >_o I hope you get more okay with the meds over time.)
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(Hopefully I'll just be able to get off them this summer, since I don't think I'm gonna change now. XD But thanks.)
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(Well, either way. XD AN END TO THE MIGRAINES. hopefully.)
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Even without that, I'm still squicked by being touched most of the time, I'm lethargic in EVERY way, and hell, sex itself squicks me.
On the other hand I WAS emotionally abused as a child (really, really horribly by my own peers), which may be part of it. The problem is with most emotional abuse nobody ever does shit about it because hey, nobody TOUCHED you, right? *sigh*
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Ugh. Was it school bullying? I think that's another one of the most poisonous and terrible things a human can endure. Have you ever read Please Stop Laughing At Me...? It's a very good, if painful read, that really hits home. It's one of those books I think everyone should read, for the awareness it raises... maybe it'd cut down on the abuse.
(Haha, I'm always slightly ??? when people are squicked by sex. I rather like porn and enjoy my sex drive, it's hard to wrap my mind around someone finding that gross... I bet it's much the same the other way around, too.)
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Maybe I should :\ It's why I sometimes just hate, hate, hate Anonymous becuase it's essentially what they're doing, just going around emotionally abusing people on the internets.
(It is XD I've slowly just accepted that hey, some people are cool with it, and I let it go becuase you know, it's life, people do as they wish. It's just not MY deal.)
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Yeah... I'm sure there's some good in Anonymous, but the WHEE LET'S GO BE VICIOUS ASSHOLES ON THE INTERNETS is... it's regressing to middle school bullshit. (I wonder how much of Anonymous is built up of people who 1. bullied in school, or 2. were bullied and decided it was their turn... Sociopolitics are so complicated.)
(What works, works. <3)
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*shrugs* It's life. It's mine. I'd like to think I turned out alright despite it all. ^_^
Whee, sociopolotikz~
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I don't think that it's a trigger either though - actually I'm not completely sure if it's really affected me that much at all. I almost forgot about her, actually – probably because I had the mentality “Well, I’m okay because she's out of my life and I’m not going to see her again”. I do get a bit uncomfortable with flirting but I think that’s actually to do with the fact that I'm naturally a shy person. I don't have a problem with being touched either. Actually, I did wonder why I wasn't so badly affected but then I'm glad I haven't been.
Hope that wasn't TMI or "LOL Attention Whore". Sorry, your post got me thinking about the "Well, I'm glad that I haven't been raped but then this happened". People just react differently to these things, I guess. But I'm glad you seem to be okay too.
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I think it's definitely better to get away less affected, if you're so lucky. I certainly prefer not being triggered or (too) badly traumatized to the possible alternative.
It really sucks that you were harassed like that, but I'm glad it wasn't worse for you either and you got away pretty much okay too.