How is rape harmful?

[AlP]

While rationally I understand how rape can be a damaging act to the female psyche, I can't help but feel a cold arrogance towards the victim-like mentality that these women go through. I find it hard to empathize or sympathize with these women have been damaged by rape, and as much as I try not to, still sometimes roll my eyes in exasperation.

I am shocked by how much the woman feels she has to go on feeling sorry for herself or continue berating herself for something that, rationally, can be explained quite easily. The man was either hard up but otherwise amorous, or was simply a loser trying to take out his frustrations of having no power on someone he percieves as weaker than him. In fact, it strikes me as strange that the woman doesn't strike back by twisting the man's fear of having no one: "So, you can't get any girls? Oh, poor baby, is that cause your dick is so small? You're not a real man. It's a good thing I'm a lesbian...ect"

And then there's the 15-year long trauma period. That just reeks of low self-esteem. I try to sympathize, of course. If I know a woman who's been raped, I rationally can understand where she's coming from, but after a week of listening to her self-loathing, honestly wish that she'd see herself not as a victim, but as the wonderful, beautiful, sexy proud woman she deserves to be.

I'm afraid you don't understand just how much damage rape actually does. I like to think of myself as a fairly rational person. For example, I think that science is our best tool for understanding the natural world we live in. But an experience like rape damages people. It causes serious mental illness. It prevents them from thinking rationally. And rape isn't the only thing that causes that. Any kind of trauma can hinder people from thinking rationally and I'm sure there are others I don't know about. Mental illness.

I was raped when I was 9. I developed post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The symptoms of that disease persist to this day (22 years later). Those include (in order of severity) dissociation, depression, flashbacks, alcohol abuse, auditory hallucinations and hyper-vigilance. Dissociation is the worst symptom. I have two minds. A person who is lucky enough to only have one mind cannot possibly imagine how debilitating that is to have someone you hate living in your head. And the events that caused that lasted about 15 minutes. I imagine even torture isn't that bad.

Because it might interest some folks I'll tell you what actually caused the damage in my case. It wasn't the rape. That might surprise some people. The physical invasion of my body was bad but it wasn't enough to do that level of damage. What actually caused the damage in my case was the attitude that my society has towards rape. The problem with being a rape victim is you feel personally responsible for it (especially if you are a young child). You know rape is wrong and you feel like you are responsible. Let that simmer for 20 years with no psychiatric help and it does a whole lot of harm.

This will seem strange coming from a rape victim. You won't understand if you haven't been raped as a child. I honestly think if I lived in a society that accepted pederasty I would actually be better off. It's the attitudes of society that actually does the harm over time, more so than the rape itself. I'm not suggesting we change our society so that adults can have sex with children. That is obviously wrong. But I think it's interesting to note what does the damage and work that into the solution.

[SSY]

Interesting. You mention the attitude society has towards rape, are you talking about blaming the victim? I would be interested to know how this manifested in your case, though am mindful that you may not want to relive it.

In particular, you said you felt responsible for it, was this caused by a direct societal influence or do you think the lack of counselling was enough for these feelings to arise?

[AlP]

In the society I lived in (the UK) and now live in (the US), the attitude towards rape seems to me to be one of profound disgust towards the rapist. This is quite justified. Perversely, rape victims tend to translate that to profound disgust towards the rape itself, which they, irrationally, feel partly responsible for. I don't think I am unusual in that respect, I've heard similar things from other rape victims. Feeling responsible for the rape is not the fault of our society's attitude towards rape. And specifically, I have not found that the attitude of society is to blame the victim, although if you look at some of the previous posts on this thread, you might see that to a small degree. It's really just part of the psychology of the rape victim.

If I could suggest how society might change to be kinder towards the rape victim, I would say that it should be quite explicit about directing its disgust towards the rapist rather than the rape itself and to be more explicitly supportive of the rape victim.

In my case, I think the lack of immediate counseling and treatment following the rape was also a major contributing factor to the symptoms I now have.