Silence and Sexual Violence

This began as a com­ment in misia’s jour­nal.

I do believe that sex­u­al vio­lence is under­re­port­ed, espe­cial­ly in men. I don’t believe that 100% of the female pop­u­la­tion has expe­ri­enced sex­u­al vio­lence. I do think the “1 in 4 women” sta­tis­tic is prob­a­bly on the low side.

I don’t know any female who has reached adult­hood with­out at least expe­ri­enc­ing attempt­ed sex­u­al vio­lence. Whether it’s the sex­u­al harass­ment that seems to be accept­ed as “that’s just nor­mal, boys will be boys!” in the school sys­tems or overt rape attempts, every sin­gle one of them has expe­ri­enced some­thing. The vast major­i­ty of women with whom I’m close have expe­ri­enced true sex­u­al vio­lence, but I know that’s like­ly a self-select­ing crowd.

About shame: When I was in a psych hos­pi­tal in 1991, I final­ly acknowl­edged that I was a vic­tim of sex­u­al vio­lence. Dur­ing a “com­mu­ni­ty meet­ing” that includ­ed every­one in the adult ward (not the sub­stance abuse divi­sion), one of the male patients men­tioned his shock at learn­ing how many women he knew had been sex­u­al­ly abused. As peo­ple spoke up, it became clear that every woman in that room had been attacked sexually.

One of the (male) social work­ers actu­al­ly said that all of us had to take respon­si­bil­i­ty for the fact that we had been abused—that it was, in fact, par­tial­ly our fault.

There was a stunned silence fol­lowed by cacoph­o­ny. One of the nurs­es actu­al­ly went to get some high­er author­i­ty, and the meet­ing was end­ed. We nev­er saw that guy again—but then found out he’d just been trans­ferred to the child/adolescent ward!

If some­one can get through the train­ing to be a clin­i­cal social work­er and have that atti­tude, you know it’s awful­ly ingrained in our society.

Because I talk open­ly about what hap­pened to me, I make some peo­ple very uncom­fort­able. I don’t talk about it fre­quent­ly, but if the sub­ject comes up, I am very open about it. The same peo­ple who will back off and dis­tance them­selves, though, often come back to talk to me about it once they find that their child or some­one close to them has, in fact, expe­ri­enced sex­u­al violence.

The sub­ject of chil­dren and sex­u­al vio­lence came up some­how at a poly meet-n-greet a few months back. One cou­ple had brought their 12-year-old son with them, despite hav­ing been told that it was entire­ly inap­pro­pri­ate to do so. I cer­tain­ly did­n’t get graph­ic but did bald­ly state that I was raped as a 3–4‑year-old and that those expe­ri­ences had a major effect on my life. The female in that cou­ple did­n’t leave then, or say a thing to me—but lat­er attempt­ed to get oth­er peo­ple to ostra­cize me for being “inap­pro­pri­ate.” It did­n’t work—I’m one of the founders of the group, and they’re quite new. She tried to make a fuss about not attend­ing fur­ther events because of me—BFD.

Since she did­n’t address me direct­ly. All this infor­ma­tion came to me third-hand. I did­n’t have an oppor­tu­ni­ty to con­front her direct­ly about her atti­tude and hon­est­ly did­n’t judge her worth the effort to do so. I don’t gen­er­al­ly con­tact peo­ple pri­vate­ly when I haven’t had pri­or pri­vate con­tact with them. 

Her atti­tude is far too com­mon, though. Stay silent! I don’t want to think about it! I cer­tain­ly don’t want my kid(s) to know this happens!

Peo­ple who are abuse sur­vivors¹Those who haven’t been able to work through the effects. There’s strong evi­dence that shows that chil­dren who are able to tell some­one about the abuse and who get appro­pri­ate, ade­quate treat­ment recov­er far bet­ter than those who are unable to reveal the abuse in a short peri­od of time, or who do not get the treat­ment they need. (of any kind) are more like­ly than oth­er peo­ple to be vic­tim­ized in some way again because the dam­age affects their abil­i­ty to main­tain healthy bound­aries. The same prob­lem means that their chil­dren are also more like­ly to expe­ri­ence abuse—not nec­es­sar­i­ly from the par­ent, but from oth­ers from whom the child should have been pro­tect­ed. (Note: I’m hav­ing trou­ble find­ing the cita­tion for these sta­tis­tics at the moment, due to brain fog. I would great­ly appre­ci­ate help in that respect.)

If for no oth­er rea­son, abuse sur­vivors should seek what­ev­er help they need to heal in order to be bet­ter par­ents. They are under no oblig­a­tion to take care of them­selves, but dammit, they ARE oblig­at­ed to pro­tect their children.