Ok, say maybe I came on a little strong. I apologise for jumping in without thinking and sorry to those who may have been a leedle upset by my ranting…
Greens on the Valdez. WHAT THE?!
Please don’t send me to the pit…its hot and ranty tanty in there 
Ok, say maybe I came on a little strong. I apologise for jumping in without thinking and sorry to those who may have been a leedle upset by my ranting…
Greens on the Valdez. WHAT THE?!
Please don’t send me to the pit…its hot and ranty in there
Well…obviously something went awry there :eek:
HB, you’ve got nothing to apologize for. You lived through a horrible situation and have somehow managed to come through it. Kudos to you. I can’t believe anyone would be snarky about it; I somehow expect more from the Straight Dope community.
So, speaking for myself, I certainly took no offense, although I was greatly angered and saddened to hear about what you went through, as well as the fact that the rapists seemed to get off scott free.
Greens = in my mind - wasn’t thinking about Europeans, sorry - the Green Party here in the Untied Stats of Numerica, who are (on their worst days) hard-core environmentalists. They would have been sort of out-of-place on the Exxon Valdez back when/before she vomited her cargo of black gold all over the Arctic. 
I’m not a European…
I’m an Aussie girl…
**Hillbilly Queen, Atheist Princess - ** Thank you both for sharing the stories that you did.
I teach a seminar called SHARP - Sexual Harassment, Assault & Rape Prevention - and if you ladies don’t mind, I’m going to incorporate those stories into the program. One of the things we discuss is controlling your environment, and that includes not getting boozed up or high, or being around people who are. These are classic reasons why not.
Please believe me, your stories are ging to help someone else make better decisions in life. I’ll see to that.
Both you guys have nothing to be ashamed or sorry about. hugs
I see nothing for either of you to apologize for. HQ, I think you’re to be admired – you managed to move on with your life, and I respect that a lot. It’s the best way to get back (though a prison term is close) – once you move on, the criminal no longer owns you – and it is very hard to reach that point.
Clearly.
As I read the linked thread, my blood started to boil in anticipation of the imagined people taking offense and giving you the impression that you made a misstep, somehow. I’m glad that they never materialized. I would be deeply disturbed if they did.
It’s good that we can talk frankly about ugly things here.
Practically every rape story I’ve heard from people I know, (and there have been far too many of them,) has come up only after the relationship has become quite intimate. That’s natural enough, in the real world – but I think that phenomena leads most people to underestimate how common sexual violence actually is.
God knows I’ve disclosed a few things here that I wouldn’t dream of bringing up with people I work with, or whatever. It’s good to have an outlet, and it’s good to be able to talk to people about stuff like this. I can count the number of real-world acquaintances I’ve talked to about these things on one hand. After almost twenty years. It’s a lot easier to talk about in the context of a quasi-anonymous message board, somehow.
Don’t apologize.
Ahem.
I believe that was the basis of the objection to the post. Not the fact that she talked about being raped; she’s not the first Doper to share such an experience. It was the fact that the thread was about social trauma at parties. Not violent trauma at parties. And as I said upthread, the reveal in the last paragraph was like a sucker punch.
Master Wang-Ka once posted a story about witnessing the lead-up to a gang rape (not the rape itself; he was evicted for not wanting to participate), but because he’s known for telling funny stories, he was careful to put a disclaimer: “Warning: NOT funny. Disturbing.” in the thread title. I just wish HQ had put a similiar warning at the start of her post, maybe in the post header. I don’t think the tone of the thread was, as you say, intimate enough that the post belonged there, unless HQ alerted readers that she was going to depart from that tone. Plenty of people have started their own threads, saying, “I didn’t want to hijack the other thread, so here’s my story.”
And again, I don’t see anyone telling HQ that she should be ashamed of having been raped, or having gotten over it. And certainly AP doesn’t have to be ashamed of coming to her friend’s aid. But again, I think that’s a strawman. Yes, it’s good that we can talk frankly about ugly things here. But not in every thread.
As I said in my OP, I didn’t know I was going to post it until it was too late. It just came spilling out, after years of not thinking about it. If I had taken the time to think about what I was doing, there wouldn’t have been reason to post a warning, because there would’ve been no post at all.
I apreciate the comments, even the negative ones. But I was not looking for comments when starting this thread. I just wanted to give my apology, and give everyone a chance to read it. I think anyone who is interested has had a chance to read it by now, so I 'm going to have it closed.
Eh, I don’t see much of an offense there, Rilch. Trauma is trauma, and there’s a gradient of it.
I think the idea that people are obligated to keep their trauma to themselves if it’s too extreme is poisonous. Some of the other examples already given were pretty harrowing. There was already a tale of a naive girl being taken advantage of sexually (if consensually,) and another poster volunteered that they were routinely violently assaulted while people stood around and laughed. Neither of these are things we can be expected to laugh about.
Before people who have horrific things happen to them can be expected to get over it, everyone else has to. Shit happens.
If that anecdote were posted in a thread that was specifically supposed to be light-hearted and funny, then I’d totally agree with you. But it was a thread about bad experiences. So it was a really bad experience. No foul, there.
I don’t know. My own experiences aren’t anywhere near as far along that gradient as HQ’s is – inappropriate touching by stepfather, and much later, repeated rape by someone I was in a relationship with. The last I didn’t even really conceptualize as rape until it was long past, because my ideas about what rape was didn’t admit the possibility of the usual gender roles being reversed – never mind if you’re held down and forced by someone who has a fifty pound advantage over you. The fear and shame associated with that fucked me up big-time for years, until I came to terms with it by talking it through. Now it’s just something that happened. :shrug:
I can’t really bring myself to agree that people ought to bite their tongues about rape unless it’s clearly off-topic – and I don’t think it was in that thread. Then again, yesterday I made a post in the Cafe thread about The Rose that, in hindsight, may have been an off-topic overshare, so maybe my judgement isn’t the best, there.
YMMV, of course, but I still don’t think that Hillbilly Queen has a single thing to apologize for.
It’s no wonder that people often feel persistant shame over things they had no responsibility for, if they are constantly made to feel as though they shouldn’t acknowledge they happened.
Rape is as common as dirt. It’s much more pervasive than people generally know. It’s better if we effing well destigmatize it, as far as the people it happens to are concerned. Until we do, there’s just going to be more of it.
Are you claiming that I think she does? Because I don’t.
No, I just mean that I think this thread ought never to have come up, really. It shouldn’t be an issue.
I (believe I) see where you (and one or two others?) are coming from, about the anecdote not fitting the tone of the thread. I just disagree, and think it was perfectly appropriate.
It’s a pretty minor difference of opinion, in the grand scheme of things. (Come to think of it, I don’t recall ever being in anything like less-than-perfect accord with anything you’ve ever posted… That’s something, there. :))
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Ha! I’m glad we squeezed that in before the thread’s closure. (Where is that darned mod, anyway? :tap tap tap:)
I’m out the door and off to the land of limited internet access for few days, so I’m sure it’ll be wrapped up before I get another chance to look in.
Closed at the request of the OP.
And because, frankly, I’m all magical and stuff.