Agree or Disagree?
Book: Recovery
Author: Helen Benedict
Recent studies have shown that the speed with which you recover from rape depends primarily on two things: how you regard what happened to you and how supportive the people close to you are. The circumstances of the rape - who did it, how brutal it was, where and when it happened - don't seem to affect how fast you get better.
How I regard what happened to me:
Fuck him. I looked for a gun in his room that night. I would've killed him, you know. I am dirty, contaminated, disgusting and weak.
My support network after my rape:
I didn't have one. My rape is a secret. My parents still don't know I was raped. Three solid years flew by before I uttered the words to anyone. It was during sex with a friend of mine. Just before he entered me, I made him stop.
My circumstances:
WHO DID IT: Teammate of best friend's boyfriend.
BRUTALITY: It could have been much worse and violent. He didn't beat the shit out of me (I had my dad for that, remember?) but he was very angry, powerful and determined. He did whatever he could to get me right where he wanted me. His behavior and attitude throughout the night all made sense when he was raping me.
WHERE: His house. In his bedroom.
WHEN: My birthday. My party was at his house.
The circumstances of the rape don't seem to affect how fast you get better.
What the fuck does that mean??! Don't ALL of your circumstances affect your recovery?
Author: Helen Benedict
Recent studies have shown that the speed with which you recover from rape depends primarily on two things: how you regard what happened to you and how supportive the people close to you are. The circumstances of the rape - who did it, how brutal it was, where and when it happened - don't seem to affect how fast you get better.
How I regard what happened to me:
Fuck him. I looked for a gun in his room that night. I would've killed him, you know. I am dirty, contaminated, disgusting and weak.
My support network after my rape:
I didn't have one. My rape is a secret. My parents still don't know I was raped. Three solid years flew by before I uttered the words to anyone. It was during sex with a friend of mine. Just before he entered me, I made him stop.
My circumstances:
WHO DID IT: Teammate of best friend's boyfriend.
BRUTALITY: It could have been much worse and violent. He didn't beat the shit out of me (I had my dad for that, remember?) but he was very angry, powerful and determined. He did whatever he could to get me right where he wanted me. His behavior and attitude throughout the night all made sense when he was raping me.
WHERE: His house. In his bedroom.
WHEN: My birthday. My party was at his house.
The circumstances of the rape don't seem to affect how fast you get better.
What the fuck does that mean??! Don't ALL of your circumstances affect your recovery?
posted by The Missing Link at 5/13/2006 11:11:00 AM
7 Comments:
I have never seen a blog about rape, I'm sorry it has to exist, but if it helps you to vent, maybe its a good thing.
no excuses no reason he was a asshole and i would have looked for a gun also, well done for not giving up oon your blog, we were missing you
ML - glad to see you back! :o)
Very good post. I agree with you, all circumstances affect rape and recovery. That's just psycho-babble bullshit by a "professional" who knows everything...
WE are the experts on how, what and if something affects us.
much love
I neither agree nor disagree.
I don´t think I can given that i know nothign about those studies and even less about how the conclusions are reached. I can only think that is a matter of statistics, and statistics is a tricky subject. One can conclude quite different things from the same statistics.
(With a lot of cases in his hands of women reporting to being molested in their childhood, Freud concluded that they were delusional).
What I would say, but I haven´t done any study on it, just from experience(I should say I have no experience of rape), is that the circunstances in which you find yourself afterwards are crucial. I mean how people around you react to it, how much support or criticisim you have, I think can make a huge difference on one´s recovery.
I know my family and friends reactions did put me down, and still does.
On a different matter, there is one thing that you said about how you regard what happened to you, that made my heart shrink when I read it. "I am dirty, contaminated, disgusting and weak."
I know is common, I have felt (or mayby I should i do feel) the same way. This is a common terrible effect that being abused has, that we do seem to turn it into ourselves.
You ARE NOT, dirty, disgusting, contaminated or weak.
I know this about myself, but I still feel different to what I know.
So, I felt I couldn´t read that and let it pass.
Take care.
ML!!!
Welcome back.
Hey. Haven't been commenting myelf because I guess I felt that I was "dwelling" or feeling like a "victim" because of a lot of crap that was going on. So, I've been rather out of the loop lately. Really glad you're still blogging and agree with a lot of what you say in this post. For me, processing the trauma was the ONLY thing (and I've tried lots of stuff) that led to much recovery. Continue to wish you all the best.
wtf really...
welcome back though :-)
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