[brnaftr360]

There's a considerable asymmetry here between men and women. I'm really curious about sussing it out and understanding how it develops.

At an early age, about 5 or so I was exposed to sex, with peers, male/female. Later I was raped through coercion by two older children at 10-ish, male/female. Additionally none of this was ever reported until adulthood.

As a male I've repeatedly been put in positions that I could describe as uncomfortable (though I don't, usually), pressured intimacy, catcalling, sexually forward girls/men...

Having gotten feedback from female peers in adulthood, I've gotten to wondering about the way that society tends to articulate sex and rape to women. The summary of framing that I've gotten from one of my intimates, is that at an early age women are given the impression that sex is their single lever in a relationship or socially. Sex is the only way which a woman can gain approval. Which, to me, seems like it would drastically amplify the experience of rape. There's also the puritanical considerations of virginity and slut shaming, etc... But I don't know that it's really a running theme in individual women.

And then there's the proactive modality. At the time of my rapes, I was not informed on rape or consent, and so the context wasn't that of violence, but simply commonplace arm twisting, and because it was as such I only ever saw that it could be framed as a traumatic episode much later. On the obverse, having been informed of such things as detestable, as violent, as traumatic and serious and driven to reporting it, I could imagine that it would escalate my feelings, and I suspect so would dealing with it externally with strangers and institutions and perhaps having some artificial narrative constructed by interlopers either directly or indirectly. I mean, consider having to talk to parents, police, social workers and so on it's implies a considerable escalation from the day-to-day. Especially as a child. Of course this seldom happens. I wonder if it's a sort of funeral psychology where you feel compelled to cry and mourn because that's what's implied, even if you don't feel the need.

But as a male having gone through these situations, without the framework being described, but rather having the privilege to describe it myself, it simply never evolved into a trauma. And I think this might be borne out by the statistics wherein boys/men simply do not report rape, just beyond the fact that it may happen less frequently. But having direct perspective on it, I wonder if I'm an oddball, or if trauma resulting from female rape is sort of amplified by the way women are socialized and informed.

[drooogs]

this is the sort of conversation that must be conducted very delicately, but it is something I have also wondered, having had similar experiences myself.

quite a few times I have experienced unwanted sexual advances/touching/groping in public spaces from women I considered friends, in front of our other friends. I don't consider those events traumatic, but certainly uncomfortable at the time. I never knew what to do, so I would just freeze and pretend it wasn't happening. once I actually went through with it and had sex with the person because I felt I had led her on by allowing her initial advances (dumb of me in hindsight).

perhaps one important difference is that I was physically stronger than every one of those people. I could have resisted, but didn't due to (possibly imagined) social pressure. like I said, I don't think there is any lasting trauma over these events; I think of them more as misunderstandings than assaults. but at the same time, all of these women were otherwise quite vocal about feminism, consent, etc. I wonder what they would have called it if I'd done the same things to them.

[throwaway0a5e]

>this is the sort of conversation that must be conducted very delicately,

Only because of the context.

If this were a conversation behind closed doors you could say what you wanted, people could disagree and eventually mutual understanding of people's opinions could be reached despite initial clumsy or imprecise wording.

But this is an internet conversation where if you pick the wrong words, speak too broadly or fail carpet bomb every sentence with carve outs for exceptions and special cases some jerk will swoop in and post a low effort rebuttal for the easy karma and off the rails it goes from there.

[tasha0663]

> at an early age women are given the impression that sex is their single lever in a relationship or socially

I can't speak for all eras and populations, but I suspect that that anecdote is an outlier.

> I wonder if I'm an oddball

If I may be so bold, you seem emotionally detached from the incident. That itself might be a response to the trauma.

[brnaftr360]

I suppose I can't really say, it's something that happened decades ago. Like heartbreak of high school, it's sort of faded away into emotional oblivion, though it never really excited me. I'd say I can pretty readily identify thoughts and feeling of the events, recollect the environment, the people, but being they were so long ago there's no realistic way for me to verify.

[wolverine876]

Your experiences are your own, of course. The rest is theory you created, not fact or evidence. Other males who have been sexually abused certainly have trauma. Look at the victims of the Catholic Church and other well-known situations. I'm sure you can find plenty of research describing it.

EDIT: Also, many comments testify to it in this discussion.

[brnaftr360]

>The rest is theory...

It's a hypothetical, I'm not intent on stating anything as fact.

>Look at the victims of the Catholic Church and other well-known situations.

Part of what I conjectured was that the system itself is potentially traumatic. And that (naive) interventions might hypothetically be damaging. Again, one is potentially braving a number of institutions, not just family, but police, case workers, mental health professionals. Not to mention in the case of familial abuse considerable transitions, up to foster care, itself from what I've heard is frequented by pederasts. Perhaps a window for a form of gaslighting, wherein the victim is induced to believe they're traumatized.

That is to say, that any well-known case, perhaps especially well-known cases would be outside the scope.

[Mezzie]

Honestly, I'm not entirely sure. (And I'm not offended.)

I'm both homosexual and visually impaired (I was legally blind until I was four years old), which overrode a lot of female/sex-specific messages. Women who are attracted to men may have received that message, but that's not the message as I interpreted it. As a young, conventionally-attractive (at the time, I'm old now) lesbian woman, sex was framed to me as something that men were always going to want from me and that I:

a.) could do nothing about this and

b.) got nothing from it; the most I could hope for was that it would be limited to comments

On the other hand, I was online as a kid and both age and sex/gender presentation were pretty fluid and what you're suggesting does track with how people approached sexual topics with me when they knew I was female versus when I was assumed to be a young male person (there are no girls on the Internet, remember).

One thing I find interesting in how male versus female victims discuss their assaults is that both focus on how traumatizing it is to be helpless, but the women who are traumatized usually focus more on the physical helplessness, while men who are traumatized usually focus more on the social helplessness. Neither is to be dismissed.

[zozbot234]

You're assuming that trauma is a matter of "framing", but it's at least as much a long-term consequence of the acute stress reaction that's directly connected to the event. I think it's possible that you experienced somewhat limited trauma, but others are not nearly as lucky.

[brnaftr360]

Oh for sure I agree, like the prospect of dealing with sexual abuse with a direct family member over the length of a childhood adolescence and perhaps adulthood, and the various emergent effects certainly registers as several orders of magnitude more impactful than my experiences. And being that mine was coercive and not forcible, I don't have that direct experience. There's a wide gamut to run and I'm not intent on discounting anybody's experience. I'm more concerned with the amplification of that, y'know? Exacerbating the damage of people who've already been compromised.

As to the long-range effects, I don't really have a high resolution reference point pre- and post-incident, and history being what it is I've no control to compare against so I don't know how, if at all my behaviors are and were adjusted.

[Mezzie]

Agree; I find that such a frustrating part of trauma myself. I'm well aware it wasn't my fault, and I don't blame myself. It doesn't absolve me of the physical effects of all those stress hormones though...