I secretly did enjoy being held down by 2 very powerful men and used.
I wish we had better words to use for what we felt during acts of abuse. While the above quote might very well be true-ish, using this kind of language is using the language of abusers and people who don't believe sexual assault survivors.
I too "enjoyed" my abuse on a couple of levels. I "enjoyed" the attention that was being paid to me sexually ("being used"). I "enjoyed" the pain and torture on a surface physical level. I was certainly able to talk about it and laugh and joke about it with others at the time. At the same time, I did
not enjoy being sexually abused. I did
not enjoy the loss of power and control over my own body. I did
not enjoy the confused feelings I had about it, to the point of burying them. I did
not enjoy the physical suffering during the acts of physical abuse itself. I did
not enjoy feeling responsible for my abuse.
I think using the word "enjoy" to describe any part of any act of sexual assault is the result of our brains trying to make sense of what happened, and to minimize it, gloss over it, and to say "it wasn't that bad." Or maybe we have listened to and believed our abusers, who told us that we were "enjoying" what they were doing to us. So the word "enjoy" when it comes to sexual assault exists in a way that
seems true but really
wasn't and
isn't true.
Most of all, I wish we had different language because a stupid person, or a person with bad intentions, could read the above quote and get the exact wrong idea about sexual assault.
@Lisamercer, sexual assault is a confusing thing, and something that stays with us and imprints itself on our sexuality forever. We can even have persistent sexual fantasies about what happened to us. But I don't exactly believe you when you say you secretly enjoyed it during the act. It's a true-ish statement, but not one that's actually true. For the reasons I outlined above, it's your brain trying to make sense out of a senseless situation.