This is a very slippery slope. I am thinking along the lines of a child or teenager being manipulated into sex. Most adults have the maturity and experience to cope with “rebound” sex. (Oh geez, that was a mistake. Time move on.) Children (anyone under 18 for the discussion’s sake), lack the experience and maturity to handle sex.
These are strictly my definitions. Rape is a very difficult topic. It has emotional and political implications. Since this has nothing to do with the OP, I will retire from this discussion. Maybe someone will open a thread on this in Great Debates.
No, I don’t think you are trying to be rude. This is, of nessesity, a very emotional subject. I see your point about children, of course.
But it does have quite a bit to do with the OP, unfortunately. We can’t give a good answer to the question without defining the terms, and- as you have very astutely said “*Rape is a very difficult topic. It has emotional and political implications”. * Sometimes it appears as if some people have re-defined rape to prove their political point.
Please don’t take my posts as being a smart-ass or rude either. I mean, I think that if you do catch an adult woman (or even a man) at just the wrong time emotionally, it can be very unfair. I did think I had been unfairly manipulated (and I am a guy), so if a woman pushed “unfairly emotionally manipulated” into “rape” I could see her point.
I didn’t see anything you said as rude. You had a very valid point. Even as a rape survivor, I have a hard time defining what rape is. (Once, when reading about a young woman being assulted after getting drunk at a party, I thought “Well, she should have been more careful.” :eek: I felt , really bad.)
This thread points out the political aspect of sexual assult. Why look for a specific group? Being labled a “rapist” has a huge effect on a man, whether the statement is true or not. African-Americans were lynched due to the preception that they may “defile” white women. (My computer is being stuborn, but I can provide a cite.)
lexi’s explanation is very similar to what I went through when I was 13. On one occasion an older boy who was bigger and heavier than me presented it as mere play, until he had me pinned down with his weight and I struggled but could not escape. Then I discovered too late that it wasn’t play. On other occasions he and another older boy had me cornered and coerced me to go along with their scheme, we were in the middle of the woods in the night, I couldn’t see any way to escape or any way to say no, so I gave in.
Do not underestimate the power of denial. I was raised in a very conservatively Catholic religious upbringing. In those days you just did not talk about anything sexual at all, no wonder priests were able to predate on kids for so many years and counting on religious shame to silence their victims. There was too much shame and silence all around the whole subject. I did not feel I could tell my parents, as that would have implicated me in something shameful and I blamed myself for allowing myself to be trapped in that situation. I told the story as I remembered it a few years ago in an IMHO thread, and the unanimous response of the other Dopers in that thread was that I had been raped. The outrage and support that Dopers expressed for me there allowed me to begin confronting my past and dealing with it.
This thread made me cry. I suppose it is because I still am not certain what other people would think of my own experiences. I refer to them as “rape” and “incest,” but the hostility of the general population, which I thought was nearly mythical, still seems to exist.
Why are we blamed when we remember? I didn’t go to a therapist to help me … I was just standing on top of my toilet smoking an (in my household) illicit cigarette, when the memories came back …
I’ve never been the same
Sadly,
Dracona (who is still trying to figure out what happened to her)
Thanks for explaining; I hope I didn’t come across as confrontational or demanding; I just couldn’t grok what you meant without the detail you’ve supplied here.
What hostility are you talking about? Nobody here has been hostile.
Maybe you’re talking about the recovered memories–that’s only a reference to a very specific “memory recovery” method preached by a book that turned out tons of false positives through psychological wording tricks.
Nobody would blame you for remembering what happened later.
perhaps it was only the flippant remarks without substance for the continuance of the discussion. Or maybe it was simply the fortunately unitiated’s need for details in order to proceed with said discussion.
Very likely. I suffered from flashbacks for years, but I disregarded them thinking that they were only false memories. The memories were very real, unfortunately.
Thank you. Some of us who have just started to remember are very thin-skinned. It doesn’t make for an attractive person, but it is often impossible to avoid.
I’ve no disregard for anyone who has posted here … but I’d like for anyone who is ignorant to become aware: Sometimes memories DO resurface. And they aren’t false memories originating in quackery psychology.
I apologize for the poor flow of my post. My head is swimming, and I should not have read/posted on this thread.
I think you really ought to read this and the pages it links to. The skepticism is based on the prevalence of a psychological practice in the 1980s which all too often involved planting false memories in the patient’s head, either directly or by creating doubts out of thin air. Recovered memory therapy has claimed peoples’ livelihoods and torn families apart. Given that Shoshana has mentioned that she’s a psychologist, it’s rational for some to wonder whether–depending on her age, of course, which I personally don’t know–she herself could’ve been a victim of same. Of course, it’s also rational to dismiss that speculative possibility altogether, because as a psychologist she would’ve found out that therapy method was bunk before any of the rest of us did. But either way, I don’t think anyone would have walked away assuming it was a false memory if she had decided not to say anything. (Although the curious requests for information could’ve been worded with a better escape route.) And even if it were a false memory, AFAICT nobody here on these Boards considers patients of recovered memory therapy to be guilty of any sin, and in fact IME they’re universally regarded as blameless victims, even by the falsely accused.
Just to be sure we’re talking about the same thing, this quote:
was not saying that your memories were false. It was saying that the skepticism some Dopers may feel when they see somebody say that they didn’t remember a sexual assault until their adult years is based on our experiences with the unfortunate therapeutic practices mentioned above. For someone familiar with recovered memory therapy, the speculation is there in the back of their minds if it can be reasonably assumed that the person in question could have been a youngish adult in the 1980s. Nobody, especially not me, was saying that that was the case with you; it’s clear (to me at least) that your memories have nothing to do with that whole phenomenon. I don’t think anyone here is trying to judge anyone who remembers sexual assault later in life, either.
You have nothing to apologize for. If you feel like this thread makes you uncomfortable nobody will blame you for leaving it. I’ve had to do that several times before in threads of different subject matter.
I appreciate your desire to fight ignorance and to assist a deeply hurting stranger. However, my memories were not recovered via any psychological therapy or trigger.
I was 19, perched like a bird on the tank of my toilet in my mom’s home, blowing my cigarette smoke into the exhaust fan, when my thoughts strayed to astroturf.
And then I remembered being held down as a young child, threatened with burning with cigarettes in an effort to get me to perform.
And then, an entire host of memories began to seep back into my recollection.
I never told anyone because I was afraid of the “recovered memory” stigma and disbelief.
I’ve never insinuated that they were. I hope I’m making this clear. I don’t think your memories were recovered by any therapy or trigger and never did, and I’m pretty sure nobody else here has, either.
I don’t think there’s any stigma or disbelief. Your case sounds to me like a perfectly normal recovery of a repressed event. I was trying to give you some background as to why people asked questions about another Doper’s experiences, becuase I thought you may not have known. Apparently, you did know. Please again understand that I’ve never accused you of having artificial memories.
[QUOTE=fetus]
And even if it were a false memory, AFAICT nobody here on these Boards considers patients of recovered memory therapy to be guilty of any sin, and in fact IME they’re universally regarded as blameless victims, even by the falsely accused.
[QUOTE]
That is very similar to what my husband told me last year. I can to him sobbing like a fool and told him that I had LIED to him.
In reality, it was a very small distortion of truth. I had embellished an initial memory of …
*** for those easily triggered, skip this, it is not an important post. I MEAN IT. ***
having had been drugged by my biological father, and then having him have his pit bull rape me – as exhibition for the enjoyment of aquaintances who paid him back in drugs …
The first recollection came to me as an all-out gang-bang of mythical proportions.
The reality was shitty enough, but my memory exaggerated it to being beyond belief. Eventually I realized that the all-out gang-bang, at least, did not happen.
Regardless, the times that I spent thinking otherwise and assuming I was having flashbacks (which I later would TRULY have) caused my husband to say:
“It doesn’t matter what’s real if you are responding as if it is true.”
I know, sweetie. I think I am in the midst of an emotional flashbacky thingie or else just tired and unable to be arsed enough to respond to multiple points in a post in my own single, cohesive post.
I’m debating whether to use this board as my personal IM, as is the only way I can make all my points clear, or whether just to go to bed and let it all slide
You guys have been nothing but good to me. All I want to do is relate my own experience(s) that are relevent to this thread. It is, however, a difficult endeavor, and I may be over-zealous at the moment
For example … I have most likely terminally hijacked this thread and I’m only a third done with what I wanted to say.
I might should stop. This isn’t Dracona 's therapy hour :smack:
yeah, i’m outtie. if you guys could revive this thread, that would be great. I laugh sometimes about how easily I kill threads, but this one needs to stay alive a bit more.
fetus you are the kindest doper I’ve met so far. massive cool points to you.
Actually, I would imagine that the overwhelming majority of subgroups within the broad category of rapists do it prone. I’d think it would be devilishly awkward to do it supine.
