I have heard these sorts of stories from far too many women. I don’t know how people can keep turning a blind eye to this. The level of victim blaming that keeps coming up is absolutely nauseating.
I’m so sorry that happened to you.
It’s helpful for me (just to provide one more perspective from a kindred spirit) when people share such things, and especially their journeys out of the darkness. We’re only as sick as our secrets. Thanks for sharing.
This is a pervasive issue not at all limited to sexual assault. I read an article years ago written by a man who realized in a sort of epiphany that he didn’t really trust his own wife’s perceptions. Not that he would consciously think that, but whenever she was upset about something at work,
“Well maybe you just misunderstand the situation.”
“Well it’s probably not as bad as all that.”
Like he just sort of assumed that her perceptions were not accurate and that he had more insight into what she was directly experiencing than she did.
On the subject of assault and harassment, and women’s perceptions, I just want to say, I’m not sure if men know this, but… it’s really obvious when a man has sexual intent, welcome or otherwise. Besides the obvious physical indicator, the body language and the energy of a man changes and it is really immistakeable, at least to me and I can’t believe I am alone in this. So to say to a woman, oh this must be a misunderstanding, is really not to understand women’s experiences at all. Maybe because I know many men have trouble reading women’s signals, they assume the reverse must be true. Well, I’ve never had any trouble reading a man’s signal. Surely there are women who have a harder time clocking when a man is interested, but in that case I think the error would be in not realizing you’re being hit on vs thinking you’re being hit on when you’re not. So when a woman says she is being harassed or groped and the guy is all, “This was just a big misunderstanding,” I find the odds of that vanishingly small. We know the difference.
I would be remiss in not mentioning how common it is for men to be sexually assaulted. This is not my area of expertise so I can’t speak too much on it, but I do recall an article I read a long time ago indicating that in self-report surveys, when the definition of rape was expanded to include being forced to penetrate someone, as much as 1 in 7 men reported sexual assault. Now that’s one study, but it is suggestive of an unmet need. Obviously this is a whole different set of issues as men are assumed to want sex all the time and get garbage about how they should just be grateful they got lucky. But it’s the other side of this coin, this assumption that men and women and our wants and needs are so different.
It’s not just women and girls. It happens to many male victims of sexual abuse as well. Certainly happened to me.
I don’t often share this here. I know I fall into the trap of “Well, it wasn’t that bad. Other girls had it worse.”
My father molested me on three separate occasions as a teen. And really, it wasn’t that bad. Other girls have had it worse.
But I have never reported it. I have rarely ever even talked about it. I told my husband on the eve of our wedding, after we’d been together for 20 years.(I was not in a hurry to marry).
What’s the point of reporting? And I guess that is also the point of my post. In most cases, there doesn’t really seem to be any point in reporting. The cop that literally bellied up to my car last year when I wasn’t even speeding, the cop that wanted to know belligerently why I was in his town, who softened when he learned what organization I work for that his girl is also part of, that is the kind of cop that women have to report to.
And we love rape as a society. We made Kavanaugh one of the highest justices in the land. We love “grab her by the pussy”. White women voted for him in fucking droves (other women too but in particular white women).
Rape kits sit untouched and unprocessed for years. In jurisdictions where they finally started getting them done they found so many serial rapists.
So, no. There probably isn’t a point to reporting it. Not when so many men and women seem to think it’s just what you do. This is one of the most depressing personal beliefs I have and I am normally a Pollyana in many things.
I started getting harassed by men when I was nine fucking years old. I know how men act when they are horny. Spice_Weasel is right, we know.
Where I work we center victims’ autonomy, as rape/sexual assault are such flagrant violations of personal autonomy, throughout the years advocacy work has evolved to recognize that it’s critical for survivors to have choices about what they do after a sexual assault. So if someone contacts our Crisis Line and says, “I’ve been sexually assaulted,” the first step is educating them on what WE can do, in this case, the options of a medical forensic examination, counseling, legal advocacy. Every person who receives a medical forensic examination receives the assistance of a trauma-informed first response advocate who is with the client and explains the process at every step. The examiners are certified Sexual Assault Nurse Examiners trained in providing medical forensic exams specifically for this purpose. After the exam is complete, they get to decide what to do next. Speak to a legal advocate if you are considering reporting it to discuss the pros and cons of such a move. Decide what you want done with your rape kit (I think it can be held up to a year but don’t quote me on the exact length of time.) Discuss what might happen if you pressed charges. Explain how difficult it is to process rape cases. If you do decide to go forward, and your case is selected for trial, we will provide expert testimony about typical responses of sexual assault victims, evidence collection and what it does or doesn’t prove, and generally anything that will help clarify for a relatively ignorant jury what all of this means. And then clients also have the options of obtaining a PPO and attending individual or group counseling to work through their personal trauma. All provided free of charge.
This is based on a model called the Family Justice Center, where all needed services are co-located in one place. Victims don’t have to go through the trauma of explaining what happened over and over to a dozen different agencies. They don’t have to deal with ignorant professionals.
(It goes without saying I wish I had had this when it happened to me. Just some guidance, any guidance and the ability to choose how I disclosed and when would have gone a long way.)
We are also deeply engaged with advocacy work with local law enforcement, prosecutors and court systems. We educate these elements of the justice system and help them develop policy that is more survivor friendly, as well as providing them resources and our services as a referral agency. Most of the clients we see for sexual assault medical forensic examination (as well as domestic violence strangulation) come from hospitals and police departments with whom we have established relationships.
This is really the kind of work that it takes to make things better, and I feel good being a part of this, and I work in this facility that is 24,000 square feet and cost $8 million to construct, so whenever I feel like we are not making progress, I remind myself that a gazillion people in my community donated so much money to this cause. We are really not alone.
(A positive postscript to my tale of woe: My grandmother eventually apologized. It took her years but my Aunt basically argued with her until she finally understood it. My grandma was like, “I don’t understand why she didn’t tell anyone?” and my Aunt said, “I never told you your boyfriend molested me. I’m telling you now. This is why.” And she gave me a very sincere apology and now that she lives closer to my Aunt, we all go down as a family and meet with my Aunt and Grandma and have a lovely time together.) My other grandma, it bears mentioning, was perfect from the start of the whole thing, but she is kind of a saint in my eyes.
True. Although we don’t always know, but the point is that those genuinely ambiguous situations where we honestly wonder “was he being creepy or not? I thought so but…” are situations where actual assault and harassment did not occur.
Once a woman is not suspiciously silently wondering but actually saying to somebody “Shit! Do you know what that fucking asshole did/said to me??!?”, it’s a pretty sure thing that she was correctly interpreting his assholish assaulting/harassing behavior.
And see- that is another issue. If people wont report, then abusers get away with it.
Mind you, maybe there is little point in reporting very old incidents. But recent ones need to be.
In some jurisdictions, but by no means all.
It’s still bad, but not as bad as it used to be-
and it is getting better. Some areas have eliminated the backlog. Others lag behind.
Right. Still not perfect, but at least America is working on it. Some areas have a long way to go, however.
stories like this make me wish we are the last generation of humans. are there no good parents? do all able adults see children and the disabled as property to exploit?
Mmm, no. Hard disagree here. No matter how old the incident is, if the victim is ready to come forward, and believes that this will help them, they absolutely should.
Whether it’s possible to punish the perpetrator or not, every victim has the right to accuse their abuser, and to share their story.
To put a more optimistic spin on it - we are among the first generations where people actually call this stuff out (sometimes, not often enough). That you are disgusted by this shows that we are today better off than we were in the past, where this sort of thing would have been unremarkable. It wasn’t so long ago that in much of the world a man who is the head of a household wielded absolute power, powers of life and death, over his little domain.
Awful and tragic stories upthread and I really don’t believe that things have improved. One thing that I have never understood (I started a thread on it a few years ago) is why, in institutions like universities and churches, those organizations seem to be allowed to handle them internally. This seems to have been the default position in universities and churches when it would be unacceptable and illegal elsewhere. If a woman got raped at my workplace it wouldn’t be reported to the manager or director, after which some sort of internal finessing would take place, so why is it that it’s acceptable in schools and churches?
I think another thing is that we males have to understand this (I posted this in “When does a kiss merit 1-4 years in jail?”):
"I think, for some of us males who don’t seem to get it, they should try thinking of it this way.
The other half of the population is, on average, made up of people who are significantly bigger, stronger, and heavier than you, and an unknown percentage are essentially hunting for someone like you to penetrate sexually, or at least (and this is absurd btw) only groped or hugged or kissed. And, every time you go out, you have to be aware of your surroundings, in terms of that population and potential threats."
So IMO most women probably feel under some potential threat almost all the time and we men have to get a grip on ourselves.
This is kind of rambling so I don’t know if it is particularly meaningful but I think that society has a hell of a long way to go, if we ever get there, before we can say that attitudes towards rape have changed.
One of the underappreciated aspects of the anonymity of the Web. You can unburden your soul to us because we are “imaginary” - you’re not going to see us on a street corner or meet us in a bar; even if you did, you don’t know what I look like and I don’t know what you look like - there’s no way of knowing. No “embarrassment” with us over your ordeal (although, why should you be embarrassed at all anyway? You are the victim - it wasn’t your fault.)
This is one of the things that the Catholic Church has right - the anonymous confessional. You can unburden yourself, and the priest (alegedly) does not know who you are. Even if he does, he cannot tell anyone (other than God, but they know already).
And you are special in that you had the strength to get out of the situation and tell the authorities (even if they treated you like crap). You are special in that you realize that it is systemic problems in our society that allow things like this to happen and to keep happening. And you are special in that you are trying to change the system and help other victims.
Of course there are good parents, and always have been; or at least parents doing the best they can who see their children as humans to be helped, and don’t exploit or rape them.
But the children of such parents are probably not likely to come into this thread just to say ‘my parents weren’t like that’. I feel very odd about effectively doing that.
I do think that things have changed – I see things reported now, sometimes with actual consequences to the perpertrator(s), that would simply never have been reported when I was in my 20’s. I don’t think they’ve changed anywhere near enough.
I know a lot of good parents. And this is obviously not hard data but there was a question in the Polls Only thread asking how good your parents were, and the vast majority reported them as either average or above average. Only a small percentage said they had terrible parents.
I’m slowly getting used to the idea that I’m a good parent. Mom guilt is real. But with some therapy I’m starting to feel like I’m doing a good job with my kid. It helps that he’s been growing and improving so much, and I know it’s at least partly from effort we’ve been putting in.
thanks for the replies. my post was perhaps too hyperbolic.
I agree with what’s been said, a lot of dynamics have not gotten better or have improved unevenly , but there is more awareness and some issues are not taboo that were before.
Thank you, your remark is very wise, and it helps.
I just want to say, as a woman, I don’t really feel this way. I know some women do, but I really don’t tend to worry about random men I encounter. I was harassed a lot as a young teen, so I know how some of them can be, but I’m just fundamentally not afraid of men. I spent most of my time with boys growing up. I’ve latched onto a number of safe men in my life, my husband being the ultimate example. I am really happy to have a boy of my own. He’s still young but he’s gentle like his father.