Sexual Assault I'm so confused, please help me understand this

[Mary1234blueheart]

Hi everyone. I am a survivor of rape and I stumbled across this page on a website called "when triggered by intimacy: a guide".

The article starts off normal enough with a relatable and level-headed situation regarding consent: it mentions a girl who is with her boyfriend. The boyfriend leans over to start kissing her and the girl freezes. She dissociates. The boyfriend immediatley stops when he notices and gets off her, apologizing repeatedly. The rest of the article then goes on to paint this girl as an insufferable victim. She cries and feels raped because, as the article states, a nice boy she was going out with kissed her, and then stopped when he noticed she was uncomfortable. It goes on to talk about consent (the boy said 'i didn't do anything' when he noticed the girl was uncomfortable instead of being more maure and starting a dialogue about what they can and can't do), but then turns the conversation away from what I thought it was going to be about: empowering women to be able to feel like they can talk about sex and consent turned into a conversation about how it is up to everyone but the girl to commit to consent. Instead of giving girls ownership of their lives, they made that the responsibility of some third party Instead of telling girls how to comunicate their desires and to deal with realities of puberty and dating, they made the boyfriends into rapists waiting to happen who have to know how to jump all the uncommunicated hoops of consent with no imput from the girls.

Instead, this girl becomes a victim, her boyfriend becomes a rapist, and now this girl is in some quagmire of shame and guilt and mental illness because they can't cope with being touched by their ROMANTIC PARTNER in a completely safe, non-violent, way. The blog never mentions if this girl was sexually abused, but it is implied that this is the first time anything like this has happened to her.

Look, like I said, I've been raped. I was followed on a dark beach alone one night by a man who held me down, beat me, and did things to me. That was violent rape, and I am not a victim. Reading these stories brings up all sorts of feelings for me. I feel like my own extreme situation was ignored. It was ignored by my friends, my peers, 'social justice warriors' who would have been all up in arms about this girl being stroked by her boyfriend and then freezing up bc she's a young awkward teen who doesn;t know how to navigate sex said nothing to me (the same people who ignored my own rape story shared this link). They didn't give a shit when I was actually raped, alone in the dark by a stranger on a beach. I'm just so confused, seeing how people seem so... I don't know, extremely mentally weak and unable to deal with big issues makes me feel so alone and a little afraid.

It makes me feel like people will allow atrocious evil (my rape) to happen because they are apathetic and too weak to mentally deal with big, scary issues, so they over do small issues like a girl being touched by her significant other and getting spooked by new sensations. Can someone please explain to me in simple words why simple things like navigating teenage hormones and desires has become akin to rape and why teenage girls are so out of touch with their emotions that a person who is not an abuse victim would dissasociate with a boy she is choosing to spend intimate time with? Why does this become an issue about consent and not an issue of empowering women and giving them the means to be mentally tough, mature beings with hard shells who don't dissociate when they feel slightly uncomfortable?

 

[somerandomguy]

I think it has to do with the history of gender power dynamics. Traditionally, women have had little power over their own bodies. What we're seeing today may be an overcorrection in terms of power dynamics. This overcorrection is in itself problematic, of course, in that it often assumes that men are always predators and that women are always victims. Unfortunately, this is just as wrong and incorrect as the previous dynamic.

It sounds like the resource you were reading was highly oversimplified, which is another problem. These issues are extremely complex and contain multiple gray areas. Some resources are better than others at explaining these very contentious issues.

 

[EveHarrington]

Is this the blog?

Dissociating When Triggered by Intimacy: A Guide to Check In, When Checking Out

 

[Friday]

It makes me feel like people will allow atrocious evil (my rape) to happen because they are apathetic and too weak to mentally deal with big, scary issues, so they over do small issues like a girl being touched by her significant other and getting spooked by new sensations.

Right? Only 3% of rapists are successfully prosecuted, but innuendo in the office will land you in court, & you’d better film your mutual consent to kiss your girlfriend! :confused:

The only thing I can say is that social change is always topsy turvy.

It seems to usually work itself out in the end? But it takes a couple few generations to do it.

Like the book “The Jungle” by Upton Sinclair.... "I aimed for the public's heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach." Did eventually change the way we handle immigration & workers rights (although that’s still in process), but first? Total food industry reform :facepalm:

Or, we abolish slavery, but don’t actually get around to equal rights for a century? And it will probably take another century before it’s settled into commonplace.

Sociocultural change is a weird, weird thing.

Arguably, rape reform, started back in the Victorian era & women’s / lib, rational dress movement, right to vote/hold property/work. So it’s been in play, long enough, that there are lots of areas settled, while other areas are still thrashing about wildly, or weirdly off kilter.

IDK. People are f*cking strange.

I try and find the individuals I like, and leave the rest of the hairless beach apes to sort themselves out as they see fit. Ideally, with popcorn. From a safe distance. With several exit strategies. :whistling: