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Someone misusing you sexually 19
posted Thursday, 24 July 2008
Mamasan
As much as pop culture disappoints me most of the time, every so often, something good comes out of it. One of the things that I like because it makes one think, is a question that was raised in the movie _The General's Daughter_: What is worse than rape?
Their answer was: betrayal.
When someone is raped by a stranger, it's an extremely traumatic experience. It isn't just a theft of sex, but a theft of boundaries, of a sense of body ownership, and many other things...but if it is some screwed up stranger, one usually has a much easier time recovering than they do when they're raped by someone they know and trust. There is something different going on with acquaintance rape than there is with stranger rape, psychologically...and that is the betrayal. That can shatter a person who otherwise might have survived a stranger rape with similar success as someone who was mugged and shot or stabbed.
To someone who was raped by an acquaintance, everything that happened between them and that person up to that point becomes unreal. They no longer trust their own feelings anymore. Loving someone becomes a potentially physically dangerous thing to do.
In this day and age, with more awareness of STD's, not to mention more crazy follks and drama to be dealt with, deceitful pursuit of sex or associated benefits takes on a similar psychological threat to rape. It is also potentially physically dangerous as well. Sexually and romantically deceitful people also have a similar mentality to rapists. They feel their victims were asking for it, and they have done nothing wrong by exploiting them.
Personally, I try to avoid sexually deceitful and exploitive people because even during the act itself, it feels more like a rape than sex. I've had situations of jumping out of bed as soon as they're done, throwing their clothes at them, and waiting by the door. Every time that's happened, they've asked the weirdest question...am I angry with them. I just tell them "no, but I know I'm not going to hear from you again, or until the next time you're horny and have no other options. Would you like some coffee? No? Okay bye."
I don't play a player. I just shut them down before any real damage gets done...most of the time. The times I haven't been able to anticipate what was going to happen, have been when the person wasn't just deceiving me, but themselves as well.
So where me and certain other posters here may disagree from time to time, I understand alot of their negative attitude to "The Game". Their rational mind might tell them that they're no worse for the wear, but their emotional side is feeling like they've been violated...and since this brand of violation is legal, and in some cases people get rewarded for fooling their partners, they have every right to be afraid.
The only way I got past my crap was by confronting it for what it really is. It came to me during meditation awhile back in my late teens, and helped me form a kind of policy for surviving the sexual "jungle". Someone deceiving me to gain access to my body is a violation. I have a right to be angry and disgusted about it. My being a decent person doesn't give someone else the right to harm me...and it would make it alot harder for me to remain a decent person if I truly believed that I deserved to be mistreated simply because I was vulnerable.
Because I confronted these things for what they are, I stopped being afraid to be vulnerable...and when someone harms me, I put myself out of their reach to do it again...and I don't mince words with them about what they did or what that makes them.
When people don't realize what a monstrous thing was done to them, it's hard for them to resist becoming monsters themselves.
...and I suspect that my beliefs about these things are partly why most people think I'm alot younger than I am. I'm told that even though I'm down to earth and blunt, I have an innocence about me. I suppose that if someone never becomes cynical enough to believe their being crapped on was a good thing, they won't become hostile enough to do the same to someone else. Acceptance doesn't mean complaicance.
So know your enemy...know it in its most raw form, and though you have to tone down the rhetoric when talking to the average person about it, don't sugar coat it with yourself. In your mind, a violation is a violation. Someone misusing you sexually is very not okay. Your being lucky to have survived the experience does not change the intention of the person who tried to or stole from you. Just because they didn't beat you half to death first doesn't mean they didn't otherwise try to soften you up for the tootsie pop.
Being aware makes exploitive people alot easier to avoid, or at least get rid of once you figure out what they are...and it also makes it easier to heal yourself afterwards. You know what emotions you have to deal with on the face, and not lurking in the background where they might come up later and mess up something good you have going with someone worthy
As much as pop culture disappoints me most of the time, every so often, something good comes out of it. One of the things that I like because it makes one think, is a question that was raised in the movie _The General's Daughter_: What is worse than rape?
Their answer was: betrayal.
When someone is raped by a stranger, it's an extremely traumatic experience. It isn't just a theft of sex, but a theft of boundaries, of a sense of body ownership, and many other things...but if it is some screwed up stranger, one usually has a much easier time recovering than they do when they're raped by someone they know and trust. There is something different going on with acquaintance rape than there is with stranger rape, psychologically...and that is the betrayal. That can shatter a person who otherwise might have survived a stranger rape with similar success as someone who was mugged and shot or stabbed.
To someone who was raped by an acquaintance, everything that happened between them and that person up to that point becomes unreal. They no longer trust their own feelings anymore. Loving someone becomes a potentially physically dangerous thing to do.
In this day and age, with more awareness of STD's, not to mention more crazy follks and drama to be dealt with, deceitful pursuit of sex or associated benefits takes on a similar psychological threat to rape. It is also potentially physically dangerous as well. Sexually and romantically deceitful people also have a similar mentality to rapists. They feel their victims were asking for it, and they have done nothing wrong by exploiting them.
Personally, I try to avoid sexually deceitful and exploitive people because even during the act itself, it feels more like a rape than sex. I've had situations of jumping out of bed as soon as they're done, throwing their clothes at them, and waiting by the door. Every time that's happened, they've asked the weirdest question...am I angry with them. I just tell them "no, but I know I'm not going to hear from you again, or until the next time you're horny and have no other options. Would you like some coffee? No? Okay bye."
I don't play a player. I just shut them down before any real damage gets done...most of the time. The times I haven't been able to anticipate what was going to happen, have been when the person wasn't just deceiving me, but themselves as well.
So where me and certain other posters here may disagree from time to time, I understand alot of their negative attitude to "The Game". Their rational mind might tell them that they're no worse for the wear, but their emotional side is feeling like they've been violated...and since this brand of violation is legal, and in some cases people get rewarded for fooling their partners, they have every right to be afraid.
The only way I got past my crap was by confronting it for what it really is. It came to me during meditation awhile back in my late teens, and helped me form a kind of policy for surviving the sexual "jungle". Someone deceiving me to gain access to my body is a violation. I have a right to be angry and disgusted about it. My being a decent person doesn't give someone else the right to harm me...and it would make it alot harder for me to remain a decent person if I truly believed that I deserved to be mistreated simply because I was vulnerable.
Because I confronted these things for what they are, I stopped being afraid to be vulnerable...and when someone harms me, I put myself out of their reach to do it again...and I don't mince words with them about what they did or what that makes them.
When people don't realize what a monstrous thing was done to them, it's hard for them to resist becoming monsters themselves.
...and I suspect that my beliefs about these things are partly why most people think I'm alot younger than I am. I'm told that even though I'm down to earth and blunt, I have an innocence about me. I suppose that if someone never becomes cynical enough to believe their being crapped on was a good thing, they won't become hostile enough to do the same to someone else. Acceptance doesn't mean complaicance.
So know your enemy...know it in its most raw form, and though you have to tone down the rhetoric when talking to the average person about it, don't sugar coat it with yourself. In your mind, a violation is a violation. Someone misusing you sexually is very not okay. Your being lucky to have survived the experience does not change the intention of the person who tried to or stole from you. Just because they didn't beat you half to death first doesn't mean they didn't otherwise try to soften you up for the tootsie pop.
Being aware makes exploitive people alot easier to avoid, or at least get rid of once you figure out what they are...and it also makes it easier to heal yourself afterwards. You know what emotions you have to deal with on the face, and not lurking in the background where they might come up later and mess up something good you have going with someone worthy
