This weekend there was a post asking where to draw the line between not-quite-rape and rape. Another poster replied that she had trouble including her experience in the same category as even worse experiences lived through by other women she knew. I too have had trouble including my experiences of rape with more violent experiences.
The message behind rape is that the victim does not count. My, and others', response has been to question whether our experiences count. I've noticed that the more I've questioned whether a certain experience counts as rape or if it's in some category of not-quite-rape, the more difficult it was to move on. I realized that I felt more shame over that incident than the ones where I had no doubt in my mind what happened.
It was quite eye-opening to realize that my response to being discounted as a person (through rape) was to discount my experience (and in doing so, myself as a person).
0 TrackBacks
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: Is this a common reaction?.
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.feministing.com/cgi-bin/movabletype/mt-tb.fcgi/14815
This is why it is so important not to fall into the trap of comparing stories to those of other peoples. There will always be a story that is worse than yours (by yours I dont mean you personally, I mean anyone with an experiance), but that does not mean that yours has any less meaning or is any less difficult.
Rape is any unwanted violation, plain and simple. Having to go through trying to label and place what happened to you must have been awful. And certainly would take away from what you experianced, if I went through that I would probably start to feel guilty about my reactions and how I was dealing with the experiance.
I have never myself been a victim of rape, so I will use another example I can relate to, I hope that is alright. I used to be anorexic starting when I was 11 years old, and still carry scars and side effects from it today, years later. I used to put my story up against all others that included hospiialization and even death/near death, because my experiance was not as terrible. I felt guilty and shamed to even acknowledge that what I experianced was an eating disorder at all, or to acknowledge that the effects physically and emotionally that I still carry were a result of my disorder and really mattered at all. It wasnt until I was able to realize that even though other survivor stories were much worse, I did have anorexia, I did fight it, and I deserved to not be shamed into silence just because it wasnt as bad of a story as others.
No matter how horrific your story is, what happened to you is no less real and no less terrible. And we shouldnt be judging who had the worst experiance, we should be working together to help eachother overcome whatever that experiance was to become stronger. Your experiance counts because it hurt you, because it was something you did not want. No matter the details, it counts.
I hope no one is offended by my using another example that doesnt relate to rape. Im very sorry if you are offended. I just cant stand when people pretend to understand something that they have not experienced themselves. Im very sorry.
There is a difference between sharing stories, which is absolutely vital, and comparing stories. I wonder how many of us start by thinking "at least it wasn't as bad as that..."
How much of this is cultural, in that our society greatly attacks and smears all but the victims of the worst assaults (and sometimes even then)?
As for attempting to understand through a parallel experience, why should that be offensive? There is a great amount of guilt/dehumanization in eating disorders as well as sexual assault.
Im very new on here and a bit nervous ^^. I think the same, ive heard too many conversations with friends both saying "well it wasnt as bad as..." or even arguing over who "gets" to have it worse than the other, which I think is simply horrible, where we live in a society where people WANT to have it 'worse'.
As far as thinking "at least it wasn't as bad as that..", I think people use that as a defense mechanism. Because if they can find another story that is more graphic than theirs, then they can tell themselves that their experiance "at least didnt have as much of an impact as this one would have", giving them a little more control but also denial over the gravity of their situation.
Victims get so much heat when they shouldnt get any, and should get only support and understanding. The first thing out of peoples mouths is "well she shouldnt have been doing this.." or "shouldnt have been wearing this.." For one, clothing has nothing to do with sexually assualt. The oldest rape victim was around 83.
I doubt she was wearing anything revealing. This is definatly cultural, but I think it goes further than that. Its a concept ingrained in a lot of people, many of which dont even notice. Much of it centers around fear I believe. Becasue if people have something to blame a victim for (such as her clothing or being out at night alone), then they can tell themselves that it wont happen to them if they wear covering clothing and dont go out alone at night. If they dispelled their victim blaming, then that would be admitting that they dont have control over a possible assualt.
One of the worst comments I can remember hearing would be a few months ago when a man who raped a 4 year old girl got sentenced to 1 year in prision, and one of the reasons for the short sentence was that the victim was unable to remember details, kept changing the exact events, and at one point ran out of the room to avoid talking. SHE WAS FOUR YEARS OLD. Obviously she would be doing these things, yet the artical placed blame on her (I'll try to find it, it angered me so intensley..the author was blaming it all on a little child)for what happened and for the sentence being so short.