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gayalondiel_bakNaturally, this may be a trigger subject. Thou hast been warned.
I'm well, well behind the times here. I've been determinedly not saying a lot about certain politicians, partly because I do think there was a degree of disproportion in certain reactions and some people would flay me alive for voicing that opinion. I think the only thing I've said thus far was to be cross that all of the media talked about rape victims exclusively in the feminine. Not so, people.*
Anyway, I spent an evening with friends recently and was startled to hear someone who I consider to be very educated and reasoned - not someone I agree with all the time, but someone I respect - voicing the opinion that "violent rape" (for want of a better term, I can't think of one, meaning events where the victim is attacked out of the blue, not in a relationship circumstance, normally relying on violence for the act to succeed) was more damaging to an individual than, say, "date rape". I didn't say anything beyond "I disagree" at the time because I didn't want to start shouting about it, but I do wish to lay out my thoughts. I will try to be brief. (I have emphatically failed)
Violent/attack rape is of course horrendous. The risk of permanent physical injury is very real. The chances of death are quite high. The psychological trauma will last a lifetime. I would never belittle this. It is one of the single worst things that could happen to a human being, to be plucked out of the blue from being a whole person to existing to a stranger as an object of gratification. I can think of little worse. But to say it's worse than date rape is wrong, because while there are similar issues you can't compare apples and oranges. You really can't.
Date rape I can think of two main types - single date rape and relationship rape. There are more, but I don't want to do the whole damned spectrum, I'm just highlighting things. The single date issue - I have never known anyone who dealt with that so I really can't talk about it much. I would guess it falls somewhere between the two others I'm talking about. If drugs are involved, holy hell, I can't think of many things more terrifying than having something happen to you and not being certain what it was, how, and what you need to do. That too could eat at you for the rest of your life. My god.
Relationship rape, though. This is what I'm here to talk about. Being raped in the context of a relationship is not better than being raped by a couple of strangers in an alley. You're less likely to be knifed, less likely to undergo serious physical injury, sure. But think about what's happening. The person who is supposed to care for you more than anyone else in the world is making you into less than a person, something worthless, no more than a possession for their own gratification. They are telling you that you are nothing but a collection of body parts to be used, and you take that onto yourself and carry it around with you. Relationship rape is rarely a single occurrence so you deal with that over and over again - or fail to deal with it - until you may believe with every fibre of your being that you can only be what this person wants from you. It is quite rare AIUI for relationship rape to be the only kind of sex that you have in a relationship, so you have to deal with the blurring of that boundary until you don't know when you consented and when you didn't. I have known women who didn't realise that they had been raped for years after the event because their minds were so twisted into believing that they were consenting to things simply by being there. Some relationship rape involves violence but some doesn't, and in that case the question of "Why didn't I stop them" becomes overwhelming in the psyche of the victim as they try to deal with their "failure" to prevent the assault. I have known a woman who describes her experience as being held by nothing more than the will of her partner, and so still blames herself, over a decade later, because she didn't walk away. Never mind that this was a strong, obsessive, jealous and coercive man who held a sort of thrall over her. She will probably blame herself for the rest of her life.
And then there's the practicalities afterwards. If you do get out of the relationship, you have shared friends. Do you tell everyone and risk taking it all out into the open and fighting it out with the perpetrator? Do you tell a precious few and risk being judged and ridiculed? Do you tell no-one and isolate yourself because you can't see these people anymore because they will be there? There's almost certainly no substantial evidence, you were in a relationship so evidence of intercourse counts for nothing. Even if you can cope with the idea of going to the police, the chance of conviction is laughable. (I believe conviction rates for rape generally were recently given at around 6% by the BBC, although I can't find the page now.) And then the practical. Where do you live? Do you live with them? Do you have to move out? Do they? Are you left in a room where it happened? Yet another friend was in a student house when it happened to her and lived there for almost a year after she kicked the guy to the kerb, sleeping every night in the bed where she was abused. I don't think the psychological effects of that are going to be less than the effects on a victim of attack rape of walking through a park/alley/car park/etc. In short, the specific effects of being in a relationship with someone, and being raped, are enduring, complex in the extreme, and very different to the ones if you know you were attacked by a stranger in the park. No less violating, but differently affecting.
May I reiterate that the point of this ramble is emphatically not that relationship rape is worse than single date rape or violent rape. I'm not arguing that sort of cause, my god. All rape** is horrendous and dehumanising and will probably impact on the rest of the victim's life. But the point that I have seen being made that a violent attack is somehow worse than being coerced and/or forced into doing things you don't want to do by the one person you should be able to trust more than anyone is bollocks. Being raped by your partner can very easily destroy your personality, your mental health, and quite possibly large swathes of the rest of your life. So no. It's not less damaging at all.
*Although technically in these isles rapists are male by legal definition. I take issue with that too, but not here.
**I am not counting statutory rape where the only issue of consent is that of a minor being unable to legally consent even though they do in the fact. That's a whole different kettle of fish.
I'm well, well behind the times here. I've been determinedly not saying a lot about certain politicians, partly because I do think there was a degree of disproportion in certain reactions and some people would flay me alive for voicing that opinion. I think the only thing I've said thus far was to be cross that all of the media talked about rape victims exclusively in the feminine. Not so, people.*
Anyway, I spent an evening with friends recently and was startled to hear someone who I consider to be very educated and reasoned - not someone I agree with all the time, but someone I respect - voicing the opinion that "violent rape" (for want of a better term, I can't think of one, meaning events where the victim is attacked out of the blue, not in a relationship circumstance, normally relying on violence for the act to succeed) was more damaging to an individual than, say, "date rape". I didn't say anything beyond "I disagree" at the time because I didn't want to start shouting about it, but I do wish to lay out my thoughts. I will try to be brief. (I have emphatically failed)
Violent/attack rape is of course horrendous. The risk of permanent physical injury is very real. The chances of death are quite high. The psychological trauma will last a lifetime. I would never belittle this. It is one of the single worst things that could happen to a human being, to be plucked out of the blue from being a whole person to existing to a stranger as an object of gratification. I can think of little worse. But to say it's worse than date rape is wrong, because while there are similar issues you can't compare apples and oranges. You really can't.
Date rape I can think of two main types - single date rape and relationship rape. There are more, but I don't want to do the whole damned spectrum, I'm just highlighting things. The single date issue - I have never known anyone who dealt with that so I really can't talk about it much. I would guess it falls somewhere between the two others I'm talking about. If drugs are involved, holy hell, I can't think of many things more terrifying than having something happen to you and not being certain what it was, how, and what you need to do. That too could eat at you for the rest of your life. My god.
Relationship rape, though. This is what I'm here to talk about. Being raped in the context of a relationship is not better than being raped by a couple of strangers in an alley. You're less likely to be knifed, less likely to undergo serious physical injury, sure. But think about what's happening. The person who is supposed to care for you more than anyone else in the world is making you into less than a person, something worthless, no more than a possession for their own gratification. They are telling you that you are nothing but a collection of body parts to be used, and you take that onto yourself and carry it around with you. Relationship rape is rarely a single occurrence so you deal with that over and over again - or fail to deal with it - until you may believe with every fibre of your being that you can only be what this person wants from you. It is quite rare AIUI for relationship rape to be the only kind of sex that you have in a relationship, so you have to deal with the blurring of that boundary until you don't know when you consented and when you didn't. I have known women who didn't realise that they had been raped for years after the event because their minds were so twisted into believing that they were consenting to things simply by being there. Some relationship rape involves violence but some doesn't, and in that case the question of "Why didn't I stop them" becomes overwhelming in the psyche of the victim as they try to deal with their "failure" to prevent the assault. I have known a woman who describes her experience as being held by nothing more than the will of her partner, and so still blames herself, over a decade later, because she didn't walk away. Never mind that this was a strong, obsessive, jealous and coercive man who held a sort of thrall over her. She will probably blame herself for the rest of her life.
And then there's the practicalities afterwards. If you do get out of the relationship, you have shared friends. Do you tell everyone and risk taking it all out into the open and fighting it out with the perpetrator? Do you tell a precious few and risk being judged and ridiculed? Do you tell no-one and isolate yourself because you can't see these people anymore because they will be there? There's almost certainly no substantial evidence, you were in a relationship so evidence of intercourse counts for nothing. Even if you can cope with the idea of going to the police, the chance of conviction is laughable. (I believe conviction rates for rape generally were recently given at around 6% by the BBC, although I can't find the page now.) And then the practical. Where do you live? Do you live with them? Do you have to move out? Do they? Are you left in a room where it happened? Yet another friend was in a student house when it happened to her and lived there for almost a year after she kicked the guy to the kerb, sleeping every night in the bed where she was abused. I don't think the psychological effects of that are going to be less than the effects on a victim of attack rape of walking through a park/alley/car park/etc. In short, the specific effects of being in a relationship with someone, and being raped, are enduring, complex in the extreme, and very different to the ones if you know you were attacked by a stranger in the park. No less violating, but differently affecting.
May I reiterate that the point of this ramble is emphatically not that relationship rape is worse than single date rape or violent rape. I'm not arguing that sort of cause, my god. All rape** is horrendous and dehumanising and will probably impact on the rest of the victim's life. But the point that I have seen being made that a violent attack is somehow worse than being coerced and/or forced into doing things you don't want to do by the one person you should be able to trust more than anyone is bollocks. Being raped by your partner can very easily destroy your personality, your mental health, and quite possibly large swathes of the rest of your life. So no. It's not less damaging at all.
*Although technically in these isles rapists are male by legal definition. I take issue with that too, but not here.
**I am not counting statutory rape where the only issue of consent is that of a minor being unable to legally consent even though they do in the fact. That's a whole different kettle of fish.
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no subject
Date: 2011-05-27 06:31 pm (UTC)*hugs*
no subject
Date: 2011-05-27 07:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-27 07:26 pm (UTC)You are absolutely correct on all counts. When I think what my sister put up with in her first marriage, my blood boils.
no subject
Date: 2011-05-27 10:18 pm (UTC)When you differentiated 'violent rape' from 'date rape', I was somewhat taken aback - how could these be different, apart from (the worseness) that a relationship rapist is part of a network of friends/colleagues/relatives? Nor did it occur to me that some people think that relationship-rapes are always free of physical violence. 'Stranger attack rape' is perhaps a better way of describing it than '(physically) violent rape'?
On the complex issues of consent which are raised by the idea of 'statutory rape' I do like irisbleufic's definition: "All rape is damaging". Not damaging in the sense that an unwanted pregnancy damages, nor in the sense that loss of virginity is damaging to the marriage-price, but damaging.
For what it's worth, with regard to your respected friend: I think s/he may well not have thought through what 'relationship rape' actually entails.
no subject
Date: 2011-05-28 12:12 am (UTC)