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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.
no subject
*and, seconds the impulse to maim That Guy very badly in his dangly bits*
no subject