Because of this topic thought would share my direct family experiences of sexual abuse and violence, and what I have learned about it at the end. The important thing to take from this is that adults can move on with life. My sister is happily married 19 years with children, my mother is happy and thinking or retirement. None of us carry the actions of our perpetrators with us anymore, or pass it on to others.
I spoke of my niece and nephew travelling to school alone. Can you imagine how challenging that was for my sister to do that. Her beliefs tell her that she wanted them to learn independence but her past told her to protect them. She chose bravery.
This is what happened in my direct family, within 9 years. At the end is what I have learnt for myself and from family members about healing and what to do after being a victim. I share this so that I can demonstrate the range of life events that we had to learn from.
I am a victim of child abuse (for a few years each time), once when 8, and again when 11, by two separate, unrelated perpetrators (they didn't know each other). The second was caught, thanks to my sister, and his own daughter. The first never was and may have abused as many as 50 children (The stranger danger type monster we warn our children about.).
At 10 I had my first female sexual experience. A friend of my sisters came onto me, technically without consent. I suspect that she was abused also (Predatory child).
From 12 to 17 I became quite a predatory creep, almost raping someone (with my male group of friends) at 17 changed me. By 19 I was beginning to work things out and heal.
My sister (10) and cousin were groped by their grandfather.
My sister was sexually abused later on by the same perpetrator as me when she was 11, my mother's BF. (My sister and I escaped an abusive step mother after my father's remarriage. Physically abusive, her children are some seriously messed up adults, so we got lucky: Even though it was into the care of a predator.)
When my mother was 31, she was hit over the head with a block of wood in the desert, the perpetrator was intending to rape her. I will assume not to kill her, but he most likely would have. She ran across the road bleeding from her head into traffic, and got rescued. When you meet evil and escape it, you don't want to be thinking of meeting any more of them. Believing that they are rare is far healthier.
At 34 I saw her being held by the throat, and threatened by her BF. She looked him in the eye and told him to let her go. I asked her about it, she said that she couldn't risk showing him how scared she was in front of her children.
At 40 she was kidnapped by her child abusing ex, who threatened her children as she slept. He tried to force her in the boot of the car, but she resisted this. She escaped him a few hours later by convincing him to untie her, and then when the opportunity arose to climb down a balcony.
Age 55 she had a boyfriend stalking her, so she confronted him and sent him away.
Since then no more partners for my mother.
This is what we've learnt:
- Women need to be brave when men confront them. Reacting to fear is pointless, and may get you or the ones you love injured.
- Anyone can become a victim. When a perpetrator attacks someone, they have no idea on how the 'victim' will react, attack, freeze or run.
- Do not hide being victimized. It is not shameful to the victim only to the perpetrator.
- You can't measure the injury to someone by the severity of the crime. This means that sometimes people are weak, sometimes people are strong.
- The key to being an adult is that you choose whether to heal or not. Child victims don't have that option, they must wait until they are adults, you can only try your best to equip them for what they will need to do later to heal.
- Never give a perpetrator more of your time than is required to heal, they just aren't worth it: Also never bring innocent people with you or allow your pain to hurt them.
Kitsune's story about not feeling like a victim when assaulted is fine. Sometimes what seems terrible can be easy to integrate. To someone different it can be scarring.
In terms of the rape culture discussion, too many victims are bringing their emotional baggage to innocent people. When you have been a victim of some crime you must be very careful about labeling other people as similar to your perpetrator or other people like yourself as victims.
Do this to someone often enough and they may start to be influenced by it.
Look towards experiments such as the Asch conformity experiment or Milgram's look up experiment, or perhaps the infamous obedience experiment and you will soon realize just how flexible people can be to the influence of others: And especially in groups we can be particularly vulnerable to one scared or malicious individual.
For those of you scared or creeped out by someone, you should listen to that, be ready to act. Just be aware that reacting wrongly to this instinct, especially if you have been a victim in the past can be toxic. Infecting every other woman in the room over a false alarm for instance, can send of wave of distrust through both men and women in that room.
If it happens often enough to this group, it may develop into a rape culture. The same is true of a perpetrator infecting a room, that one malicious individual, but they are out of our control until they do something to expose themselves.
This is one of the reasons that I said women who like and get along with men are so important to other women's emotional security. They know and trust men, men tend to really calm down their impulses in response to such women. In terms of what I said above, they are less influenced by others in such positive company.
Men who know women well act more like interpreters, I am not sure that the reverse works in the same way.
I think this is an interesting topic, even if quite an unpleasant one. When it comes to law/ punishment I can definitely see the argument for an overriding rape culture; as for citizens in general, I think it is pushing it. We do see groups occasionally form this type of culture though.
