Posted by Tamar on April 19, 2005, at 14:29:10
In reply to exhausted but better. **possible trigger**, posted by B2chica on April 19, 2005, at 9:25:17
Congratulations on your courage! It’s so hard to get that stuff out, and I’m very familiar with the feelings of disgust and shame, so well done for fighting the nasty voices!
I thought about definitions a lot when I was talking to my T about what happened to me. I couldn’t use the R word for a long time. And then when I started reading about it, it seemed to me that the distinctions were purely legal ones, based on historical ideas about people’s behaviour. That’s why in law (in some countries) forced oral sex is considered to be less serious than rape (because there’s no risk of pregnancy). But in terms of people’s experience, it’s impossible to make distinctions. It’s no worse to experience rape than to experience forced oral sex or molestation. They’re all bad. The only purpose of different words is to describe different (equally nasty) events. Therefore a lot of people use the term sexual assault, no matter what exactly happened, so as not to minimise the consequences for the victim.
Something that helped me was a thing I read somewhere. One woman said to another: “Even if you danced naked in front of him, he had no right to assault you.” In other words, no matter what the provocation, men are not allowed to behave violently or take advantage of women. It helped me to realise that there is absolutely no excuse for sexual assault – and that it is NEVER the fault of the person who was assaulted.
(((((B2Chica))))) Keep taking care of yourself.
Tamar
poster:Tamar
thread:486364
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20050409/msgs/486480.html