Rape Survivors: Anonymous poll

Discussion in 'Ethics, Morality, & Justice' started by Tiassa, Jun 3, 2008.

?

Have you survived rape or other sexual abuse?

Poll closed Aug 31, 2008.
  1. I am a female / assailant was male

    5 vote(s)
    20.8%
  2. I am a female / assailant was female

    0 vote(s)
    0.0%
  3. I am a male / assailant was male

    1 vote(s)
    4.2%
  4. I am a male / assailant was female

    5 vote(s)
    20.8%
  5. Other

    2 vote(s)
    8.3%
  6. I have survived multiple rapes or assaults

    1 vote(s)
    4.2%
  7. I have never been raped or otherwise sexually abused

    13 vote(s)
    54.2%
Multiple votes are allowed.
  1. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    37,884
    Read this post carefully before engaging this topic or its poll.

    Your honest answers are appreciated. The poll is anonymous for the benefit of rape survivors who wish to remain unknown.

    Anyone wishing to disclose information for context is free to do so. Do remember, however, that this is Sciforums, a place where "decency" is often considered a profane word.

    The poll allows multiple answers. Four of the answers pertain specifically to your sex and that of the assailant. There is a selection for other; if you need that explained, you will probably be advised to think about it for a few minutes and see what you can come up with. An option accounts for multiple assaults, and those who wish to note their good fortune in never having endured sexual abuse or assault may do so.

    Your good faith is required in order to participate in this topic. Members wishing to skew the poll or denigrate the topic with false answers and incidents should avoid doing so and just stay the hell out of the way.

    This thread is not the place to argue the point and accuse one another of lying. Members suspecting false stories should direct their concerns to me via private message. Members who do not believe a given incident qualifies as rape or sexual abuse are expected to keep it to themselves.

    This topic and poll are intended to gather and present information. Members are expected to behave with dignity if they intend to participate.

    Any questions should be directed to me via private message.

    Violations of these ground rules will be regarded severely.
     
  2. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  3. Bells Staff Member

    Messages:
    24,270
    I was sexually assaulted several years ago by a man I had considered a friend and someone I had viewed as being one of my most trusted and loved friends.. We were out to dinner with some other friends on a Friday night after work and I went back to my car to get my sweater. He accompanied me because he didn't think it was safe for me to go back to the dark car park on my own, then proceeded to try to push me into the back seat of my car, grabbed me in places I would rather not say, and tried other things I would rather not go into. I managed to get away by jamming my car keys into his genitals, pushing him off me and running back to the restaurant for help. My injuries could be considered minor. Deep gouges on my upper inner thighs and bruises to my chest and neck. I still have faint scars where he gouged his nails into my leg, but they just serve as a reminder to not be so trusting, even of people I know.

    The injury to my pride, however, will last forever. I felt like an idiot at the time for not having guessed he was a weirdo, that after being friends for 5 years, how could I not have picked up on something. How could it have been possible in the line of work I was involved in, that I had been so blind to his true nature? No matter how many times I look back on our friendship, there were no signs. He had a girlfriend who was a lovely and intelligent woman. All I can think of when I think of him these days is "what in the hell had he been thinking?"..

    He is out of jail now. I don't expect to ever see him again. You live and learn I guess.
     
  4. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  5. lucifers angel same shit, differant day!! Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    7,590
    i was sexually abused while i was growing up, by a neighbour of mine, it lasted for about 6 years, and when i told the police they took a statement and went to see me mum, who told them that they were not to carry on with the case, and i found out just a few years ago when i was 31 that she was actaully having an affair with him, and that she said it was ok, for him to "try me out" (her words not mine) but he is dead now, and i ahve to live with the emotional scars all my life, i didnt/couldnt trust men again after that, i thought they were all sexual deviants, (hence the reason why i hate my mum so much)
     
  6. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  7. sniffy Banned Banned

    Messages:
    2,945
    I think you two are very brave for doing this.

    I wonder if there was ever a time when you felt guilty or blamed yourself or thought had you done something differently that this would not have happened to you? I say this because there seems to be a school of thought by some here that victims can somehow prevent this sort of thing from happening to them.

    Also, had these thing not happened to you personally; do you think the perpetrator would have gone on to abuse someone else? Speculation I know but still.....?
     
  8. codanblad a love of bridges Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    1,397
    3 dudes have been sexually abused/raped by women? wow. wonder how that went down.
     
  9. Bells Staff Member

    Messages:
    24,270
    I blamed myself in that I had not recognised his true nature until that point. But no matter how many times I have looked back on our friendship and that night, there was never once any indication that he was that type of guy.

    As for preventing it? How could I have? He was the trusted friend who walked me back to my car just before the main course was served because the airconditioner in the restaurant was set too low and I had left my sweater in the car. He wasn't some stranger I had just met. So no, there was nothing I could have done to prevent it.
     
  10. Randwolf Ignorance killed the cat Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    4,201
    This is the saddest, and most reprehensible type of case - with a trusted friend, in a public area, etc. Especially the violation of trust. Completely unavoidable...

    What advice could you offer to women and their loved ones to help reduce the likelihood of sexual assault, in general? e.g. self defense classes, keeping the doors locked, preserving anonymity in the phonebook, etc....
     
  11. Enmos Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    43,184
    "I have never been raped or otherwise sexually abused"

    Tiassa, your poll has been hijacked. I hope..
     
  12. clusteringflux Version 1. OH! Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    2,766
    Yes, according to the poll, so far there have been more men raped by women than the other wa around. This is an unexpected result, however: where I'm from the a lot women are very large and in charge so I shouldn't be surprised.
     
  13. phlogistician Banned Banned

    Messages:
    10,342
    Don't concentrate on the 'rape' part, the phrasing was;

    "Have you survived rape or other sexual abuse?"

    Maybe more men have been sexually abused, but not raped?
     
  14. Enmos Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    43,184
    lol I don't think so..
     
  15. Bells Staff Member

    Messages:
    24,270
    You answered it yourself. It is completely unavoidable.

    I got off lightly.

    You're more likely to be raped or sexually assaulted or molested by someone you know. Self defense classes is a definite yes, regardless of your gender. Short of never leaving your home and living like a hermit with no contact with anyone, there really is nothing you can do to prevent it.
     
  16. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    37,884
    Curious, but not necessarily unexpected

    I have no accompaniment data to define Sciforums' demographics, but it has long been suspected that men greatly outnumber women in our community. The raw numbers may well be deceiving compared to what they represent as percentages; the three females might well define half of EM&J's most regular female contributors, while the five males would represent a smaller portion. Additionally, the two people who selected Other are of indeterminate sex as far as I can tell. This may or may not balance out the raw numbers.

    There are seven options; the more I think about the poll, the more I come to believe I need at least ten, including multiple incidents as chronic abuse, multiple incidents by diverse assailants, and some sort of delineation between forms of assault, including the Other category.

    Examples: We might distinguish between the close friends of mine (two of four sisters) who were abused over separate periods of years (eight years in one case) by their father, and a girl I met once—a friend of one of the sisters—who had been violently raped on three separate occasions by different perpetrators. Then there's the infamous NYPD jail rape in which multiple male officers sexually assaulted a suspect with a toilet plunger, and I recall reading a hideous story once about several schoolboys raping a retarded boy to death with a mop handle.

    It gets really morbid trying to figure out how many ways my neighbors have been raped.
     
    Last edited: Jun 4, 2008
  17. lucifers angel same shit, differant day!! Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    7,590
    yes i did blame myself for a long time i cried myself to sleep aking myself, "what did i do wrong?" but i now know that i couldn't have seen it coming, i didnt have a crystal ball, i do and i will admit it, sit down at times and ask myself "would i still be me, if i didn't happen, why didn't someone explain to younger people that if they were going through it, then it's wrong" and i am more protective of my children than i should be, to the point where i at times smother them. I am curious of anyone new who comes into my house, i don't trust has well as i should,

    and to answer your second question, i wasn't his first "victim" (i don't like to say victim, because i am free from it now, he his dead) he was abusing his grand daughters,

    -----------------------

    example of what i am like, one day i was out shopping with my younger son, he had just ahd his hair cut, no blade, no hair, he likes it that way for the summer, and this old man in all innocence rubbed his head and simply said "oh i bet that is cool" and i pulled me son away and said that if he touched him again i would scream for help.

    i went home fealing really embarrassed, but after you go through somthing like i did and many other people did it does effect you until the day you die, you ahve to live with it, you can lock it away into the back of your mind but somtimes things happen that remind you of it.
     
  18. lucifers angel same shit, differant day!! Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    7,590
    be careful who you talk to when your out drinking, self defense classes are a good idea but when your a young kid and its someone you trust then its harder.
     
  19. lepustimidus Banned Banned

    Messages:
    979
    I'm not so sure about that. There are a lot of women on here.
     
  20. Asguard Kiss my dark side Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    23,049
    Tiassa, it might have been better to split the last option into gender specific sections. That way you could do a comparision of how many males have been sexually asulted vs havent and how many women have vs havent been sexually assulted.

    As for the poll being hijacked its possable, unfortunatly you cant insure data integrity ANY anominity with the software that sciforums uses. For instance you cant stop trolls from signing up multiple times to vote to swing a poll like this (which is why the OG polls have to be public)
     
  21. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    37,884
    Indeed. This poll is set to run through August. Perhaps in the future, we will have cause to attempt a new poll in order to include new members of our community. In such a case, I would hope to craft a better poll.
     
  22. jessiej920 Shake them dice and roll 'em Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    1,678
    When I was 15 years old I was date raped by a man 10 years my senior. I blamed myself for it all. I was young and stupid and I kept letting this man make me drinks all night. It wasn't until I woke up on the bed with him having sex with me that I realized what was happening. I felt like it was my fault because I hadn't been coherent enough to say no. For years I couldn't bring myself to use the word 'rape'. But the whole experience was violent and terrible. I can still remember him laughing at me when he got up and finished. I didn't understand at the time. This guy was supposed to be my friend. I trusted him. The next day I woke up on my friends floor with absoloutly no idea what had happened and then puked my guts out for 12 hours straight. This was why I was pretty sure he drugged me, that, and at one point in the night, before I blacked out, I went inside to use the restroom and saw him digging through his parents medicine cabinet. I don't know why this didn't click with me then, other then that I was already pretty out of it. I was so sick and I had no recollection of the incident except brief flashes. I still run into this guy occasionally, out at bars or in the video store or just random places that I would never expect to see him, but evey time I do it makes me nauseous.
     
  23. superstring01 Moderator

    Messages:
    12,110
    As to the "men being the target of sexual abuse", I can see how it would almost be at a parity with females. Setting aside the issue that Tiassa pointed out (men possibly outnumbering women on this website), the fact is when boys are sexually abused it gets exposed to the light of day far less than it does with girls.

    In his [amazing] book, "Real Boys" William Pollack (widely acclaimed and considered to be the companion piece to "Reviving Ophelia" by Mary Pipher) talks about this very issue at length. In our current society we perceive girls as the ultimate target of sexual assault/abuse so much that we tend to overlook the abuse inflicted upon boys. This is a result of the fact that we still carry the misinformation of sexism in that "girls are inherently weaker/more fragile" and "boys are more emotionally/physically resilient". The natural result of that is in how we see and accept sexual abuse in boys:
    • Boys have a huge rate of being sexually assaulted by other boys, more so than girls are by other girls. Because boys associate more with boys until they are well into their teens, and because they are actively and passively taught to be stoic and unemotional, boys are more likely to not come forward regarding abuse by another boy. There is the humiliation at the very taboo nature of the issue and the fact that boys are -- simply put -- expected to "suck it up" and deal with it.
    • Boys are given longer leashes than girls and because of this can find themselves in far more complicated situations in their environment. Although this trend is changing, the fact still remains that boys are easier targets because of a lack of vigilance in keeping them safe, in comparison to the level of vigilance that is invested in girls. A predatory teenage boy or adult neighbor tends to have an easier time targeting boys than girls since the mid 80's.
    • When a boy is the target of sexual advances of another boy/male adult, the taboo isn't just in the sex, but in the homosexuality of the affair. Because of this, parents react very much in the 50's/Victorian ways of their fathers, whereas with girls (because of the looser sexual and ideological times we live in, coupled with the "fear" that girls are weaker, and coupled with the "knowledge" that girls are the common target) the matter is pursued far more effectively when the target is a daughter than a son.
    • Lastly when the boy is the target of sexual advances of another girl the matter is usually brushed-off because girls are rarely perceived as the predator and it's usually brushed under the carpet far easier than if it were boy-on-girl behavior. When the abuse is adult female on boy, one only needs to turn on the TV to see the very reality that our society just doesn't see boys a victims when sexual advances are made on them by women. And, to a certain degree, we all know why: males see sex as predatory matter (think predator in terms of the "seeking" and not in the weird "sexual predator" way) and females see sex as non-predatory. Although prepubescent boys are certainly subject to the same scarring from sexual abuse, the fact is, in most cases where an adult female abuses a boy near or in puberty, the result is more often exhilarating than fear or shame. It is important to note, however, that just because most boys will react with exhilaration at sexual activity more than a girl would, society cannot have two separate policies in dealing with this activity. Just because the initial event doesn't create painful memories, doesn't mean that there isn't corruption and or emotional scarring involved.

    If you look at all the issues involved in sexually abused boys and the ever-present coverage of sexual predators, it's impossible to say who's abused more, but it stands to reason that if there isn't an absolute parity, the numbers cannot be far off.

    In boys-cum-men, the results of sexual predation rarely manifest in the same way it does for females (though, this is not always the case). Whereas in females there is generally a closing-up (anti-social behavior, sexual averseness) accompanied by a physical dysmorphia (obesity, anorexia, etc.) and the pursuing a counterpart who exhibits abusive behavior (sexually & physically abusive Male/Female lovers). In boys, however, it often times manifests itself in aggression, anger, hyper-social behavior and, like in females, a pursuit of others to continue the cycle of abuse (often times weaker adult women and young girls & boys).

    ~String
     
    Last edited: Jun 5, 2008

Share This Page