Yes, people don't like being victims. But some other people are SO insistent on making others perpetual victims "for their own good" I guess, that they don't get the psychological damage THEY do is far greater than the fucking rape!
I've had all of this BS I can handle, so here are my thoughts... as a freaking WOMAN who has some actual personal experience with this. Because, gotta say... I'm kind of tired of a bunch of MEN deciding how I do or should feel about an event that happened to ME.
I've been raped under the definition of rape that keeps expanding. (not alcohol, but definitely one of those gray areas where it definitely felt like rape and wasn't consensual that made me feel horrible for awhile and broke down trust in a relationship, but which I recovered from), and I would like to say that I agree with Ted.
Look, I understand the people who are fighting this battle and so concerned with women's rights, I do. With idiots like Todd Aiken out there making it seem like if you get pregnant you couldn't have been raped, then yes, this is a serious issue and women need to be protected. BUT the problem with lumping all the statistics together and then defining it all as the WORST scenario isn't only that it's dishonest (intellectually and otherwise), it's that those of us who have been victims of less horrific forms of rape are being cloaked in this group and being told: "Rape is the most horrific thing that can ever happen to a person. It ruins your life forever and you can never recover or be whole or feel safe again. It destroys you."
What is up with this INSISTENCE on traumatizing me or making me FEEL more traumatized than I would have felt otherwise? Why is it if I don't feel knife-wielding violent stranger rape PTSD trauma over what in my mind IS a lesser form of rape, I'm suddenly "repressing"?
Those statements just aren't true for every single rape victim in the less horrific types. I understand rape is rape and I understand it is NEVER okay or justified. And I understand the desire not to create a slippery slope where rape is okay in XYZ circumstances. But at the same time, why should I have to be a perpetual "broken victim" for the "rape culture" industry which INSISTS on dehumanizing me far worse than the man who had sex with me without my permission ever did?
It's dehumanizing and patronizing to speak to me as if I am some perpetual broken doll based on ONE experience in my life that was NOT the worst rape experience that could have happened. Women have a right to define their own experience and their own feelings about an experience and their own freaking trauma level with regards to that experience.
Lumping me in with the worst, most graphic and horrible examples of rape and then defining rape, ALL rape as being the emotional effects of that worst case scenario, but applied back to all of us... even those of us who feel we are not broken or damaged now at ALL... it's just wrong.
Ted is right, and I don't get how such hysterics can even exist for any woman who has had an experience like mine. i.e. one that didn't ruin her forever. I refuse to be a martyr to this cause.
I am not a "victim". I am not a "survivor". What I am is pissed the hell off that so many will not rest until they force that label upon me simply because I had a bad day one day where a bad and nonconsenting sexual experience happened.
I DEFINE MY EXPERIENCE. So no, you and every other "well-meaning and concerned citizen" don't get to define me as some broken victim of rape to suit your agenda by conveniently lumping everything together and lumping my experience in with being beaten up and raped in an alley.
It's so dishonest and Sh*tty. Stop doing it.
Rape is so much about political agenda these days. And there are legal degrees to every crime. Look, if I steal a woman's lipstick and she has a mental breakdown over it, should I be charged with a higher crime than I'd be charged with if I stole a lipstick from someone who wasn't so emotionally reactive about the whole thing?
The law is meant to be reason free from passion. We have to have levels to crimes and not act like in something with such a WIDE definition that it's all equivalent. If I was the woman who had been beaten and raped at knife point in an alley, I would be even more traumatized by the fact that a woman who had had a MUCH lesser experience than mine was somehow able to claim the same level of damage and trauma as me. It just disrespects those who have suffered true horror in their lives.
Not all rape is created equal. Period. It's ALL wrong. None of it is OKAY. But not every situation is equally traumatizing. But all women are different. I'm sure there are some women who would have been far more traumatized by my experience than I was. But should the level of punishment for a crime or the level of seriousness of a degree of a crime be determined by how one individual feels about the crime happening to them? I really don't think that it should.
Because we DO live in a rape culture... but it's not the same rape culture the feminazis want us to believe we live in. We live in a rape culture that INSISTS everything is some evil and violent conspiracy against women and that women have this HUGE risk of being the victim of violent rape and that if they ARE in some way raped in this ever expanding definition, that even if it's a lesser form, they are wrong about their own emotional reactions and repressing and just don't want to "think of themselves as a victim" so they need therapy until they have a breakdown for something that wasn't THAT traumatic for them to begin with.
Seriously STOP.
If you REALLY care about women, and our feelings about anything at all, then just stop. Stop telling us how we are supposed to feel about the things that happen to us. Honestly the way my situation is talked about by people who act like they know and don't, is far worse than the original situation was to begin with.
Power management, mobile and firmware developer on Linux. Security developer at Aurora. Ex-biologist. mjg59 on Twitter. Content here should not be interpreted as the opinion of my employer. Also on Mastodon.
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Re: What a horrible approach to this discussion!
Date: 2012-12-09 09:48 pm (UTC)I've had all of this BS I can handle, so here are my thoughts... as a freaking WOMAN who has some actual personal experience with this. Because, gotta say... I'm kind of tired of a bunch of MEN deciding how I do or should feel about an event that happened to ME.
I've been raped under the definition of rape that keeps expanding. (not alcohol, but definitely one of those gray areas where it definitely felt like rape and wasn't consensual that made me feel horrible for awhile and broke down trust in a relationship, but which I recovered from), and I would like to say that I agree with Ted.
Look, I understand the people who are fighting this battle and so concerned with women's rights, I do. With idiots like Todd Aiken out there making it seem like if you get pregnant you couldn't have been raped, then yes, this is a serious issue and women need to be protected. BUT the problem with lumping all the statistics together and then defining it all as the WORST scenario isn't only that it's dishonest (intellectually and otherwise), it's that those of us who have been victims of less horrific forms of rape are being cloaked in this group and being told: "Rape is the most horrific thing that can ever happen to a person. It ruins your life forever and you can never recover or be whole or feel safe again. It destroys you."
What is up with this INSISTENCE on traumatizing me or making me FEEL more traumatized than I would have felt otherwise? Why is it if I don't feel knife-wielding violent stranger rape PTSD trauma over what in my mind IS a lesser form of rape, I'm suddenly "repressing"?
Those statements just aren't true for every single rape victim in the less horrific types. I understand rape is rape and I understand it is NEVER okay or justified. And I understand the desire not to create a slippery slope where rape is okay in XYZ circumstances. But at the same time, why should I have to be a perpetual "broken victim" for the "rape culture" industry which INSISTS on dehumanizing me far worse than the man who had sex with me without my permission ever did?
It's dehumanizing and patronizing to speak to me as if I am some perpetual broken doll based on ONE experience in my life that was NOT the worst rape experience that could have happened. Women have a right to define their own experience and their own feelings about an experience and their own freaking trauma level with regards to that experience.
Lumping me in with the worst, most graphic and horrible examples of rape and then defining rape, ALL rape as being the emotional effects of that worst case scenario, but applied back to all of us... even those of us who feel we are not broken or damaged now at ALL... it's just wrong.
Ted is right, and I don't get how such hysterics can even exist for any woman who has had an experience like mine. i.e. one that didn't ruin her forever. I refuse to be a martyr to this cause.
I am not a "victim". I am not a "survivor". What I am is pissed the hell off that so many will not rest until they force that label upon me simply because I had a bad day one day where a bad and nonconsenting sexual experience happened.
I DEFINE MY EXPERIENCE. So no, you and every other "well-meaning and concerned citizen" don't get to define me as some broken victim of rape to suit your agenda by conveniently lumping everything together and lumping my experience in with being beaten up and raped in an alley.
It's so dishonest and Sh*tty. Stop doing it.
Rape is so much about political agenda these days. And there are legal degrees to every crime. Look, if I steal a woman's lipstick and she has a mental breakdown over it, should I be charged with a higher crime than I'd be charged with if I stole a lipstick from someone who wasn't so emotionally reactive about the whole thing?
The law is meant to be reason free from passion. We have to have levels to crimes and not act like in something with such a WIDE definition that it's all equivalent. If I was the woman who had been beaten and raped at knife point in an alley, I would be even more traumatized by the fact that a woman who had had a MUCH lesser experience than mine was somehow able to claim the same level of damage and trauma as me. It just disrespects those who have suffered true horror in their lives.
Not all rape is created equal. Period. It's ALL wrong. None of it is OKAY. But not every situation is equally traumatizing. But all women are different. I'm sure there are some women who would have been far more traumatized by my experience than I was. But should the level of punishment for a crime or the level of seriousness of a degree of a crime be determined by how one individual feels about the crime happening to them? I really don't think that it should.
Because we DO live in a rape culture... but it's not the same rape culture the feminazis want us to believe we live in. We live in a rape culture that INSISTS everything is some evil and violent conspiracy against women and that women have this HUGE risk of being the victim of violent rape and that if they ARE in some way raped in this ever expanding definition, that even if it's a lesser form, they are wrong about their own emotional reactions and repressing and just don't want to "think of themselves as a victim" so they need therapy until they have a breakdown for something that wasn't THAT traumatic for them to begin with.
Seriously STOP.
If you REALLY care about women, and our feelings about anything at all, then just stop. Stop telling us how we are supposed to feel about the things that happen to us. Honestly the way my situation is talked about by people who act like they know and don't, is far worse than the original situation was to begin with.