[HN Gopher] The impact of sexual abuse on female development: a ...
___________________________________________________________________
The impact of sexual abuse on female development: a longitudinal
study
Author : PaulHoule
Score : 256 points
Date : 2022-01-13 14:14 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
| 123abcthrowaway wrote:
| Ozzie_osman wrote:
| I think I remember reading (maybe in the book WEIRD) that in
| Western societies, as the "rule of law" spread and as society
| became more individualistic overall, murders shifted from being
| between strangers or weak acquaintances (ie a dispute, a robbery,
| etc) to being intrafamily (ie killing a spouse, parent, etc). Ie
| 200 years ago, it was unheard of, but now most murders are like
| that.
|
| Abuse might be different, I couldn't find data (and im guessing
| that data on abuse would be harder to find than on murders).
| Chris2048 wrote:
| > 200 years ago, it was unheard of
|
| That doesn't mean it didn't happen - I assume it happened more
| in the past and just almost never reported.
| winnit wrote:
| Why would you assume that one type of killing was reported
| more than another kind? From the evidence I have gathered
| from primitive societies existing today without conventional
| legal apparatuses, they find the concept of murder within the
| society almost unthinkable and have no memory of such events
| taking place. On the other hand, it is not typically seen as
| murder to kill an outsider.
| willyt wrote:
| A lot of old fashioned nursery rhymes and children's
| stories are about evil step-parents?
| folli wrote:
| I assume there was (and partially still is) a very strict
| taboo on intrafamilial murder and abuse. It's very hard to
| hide a murder nowadays, but just looking at abuse, we know
| there are a lot of unreported cases even in a modern
| society. It must have been much worse in more 'primitive'
| societies.
| Chris2048 wrote:
| Who would report it? If parent kill their child they are
| unlikely to, if someone else kills their child they are
| likely to.
|
| > From the evidence I have gathered from primitive
| societies
|
| What evidence are you referring to? Also, again
| "unthinkable" is different from it not happening. In fact,
| it makes it even more likely to be covered up, if people
| don't care to investigate, or otherwise want to know.
| ksdale wrote:
| On the other hand, I think it was common in a lot of places
| for a long time for families/clans to settle disputes
| internally - if someone was killed and everyone agreed it
| was justice, then it wouldn't end up reported/remarkable.
| This is probably the category that most intrafamily
| disputes would fall into.
| bluGill wrote:
| I would assume that it happened but was passed off as an
| accident and not murder. That is a man runs crying to town
| "my wife is dead!", cries at the funeral, and gets
| community support as a man grieving his wife - she is dead
| because he poisoned her, or ensured she would get hit by
| those falling rocks that look like an accident, but if you
| don't have modern investigation you have no way of knowing
| that. (it can go the other way too of course)
|
| There are lots of ways to kill. Some will be investigated
| more than others.
| heresie-dabord wrote:
| Also, during this period, the population moved from rural
| dwellings to cities, where there are (usually) more jobs and
| more written rules and policing.
|
| But note that in the period in question, the human population
| has increased by a factor of 7.[0]
|
| The population of the planet has more than doubled since
| 1970.[0]
|
| More people in cities. And more voices, more disagreements,
| and more misfortunes to report.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population#Past_popul
| ati...
| lr4444lr wrote:
| Murders we tracked, or murders committed? Without the rule of
| law, perhaps scores were settled in ad hoc village or clan
| courts without reporting to the outside world.
| cafard wrote:
| Isn't intrafamily killing more or less a staple of ancient
| literature? Cain/Abel, Romulus/Remus, Clytemnestra/Agamemnon,
| etc.
|
| There is quite a high local murder rate at the moment, but most
| of that seems to result from drug-business disputes, or simply
| the availability of firearms to settle neighborhood disputes.
| archy_ wrote:
| It was. Every time I hear people grumble about criminals
| walking free (which, admittedly, is infuriating) and that we
| should be allowed to settle things "like we used to", I think
| back to how disputes between families could be so bitter that
| you might not even be able to leave your own home. And these
| disputes could last for generations.
|
| Rule of law certainly has its benefits.
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| Under Roman law, the paterfamilias (i.e., the eldest adult
| male of the extended family) had the right to kill any other
| family member, at his pleasure. He could also control who (or
| even if) they married, sell them into slavery, etc.
| morsch wrote:
| "Over time, the absolute authority of the pater familias
| weakened, and rights that theoretically existed were no
| longer enforced or insisted upon. The power over life and
| death was abolished, the right of punishment was moderated
| and the sale of children was restricted to cases of extreme
| necessity. Under Emperor Hadrian, a father who killed his
| son was stripped of both his citizenship and all its
| attendant rights, had his property confiscated and was
| permanently exiled."
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pater_familias
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| Yeah, it obviously changed over time, and is no longer in
| effect today.
|
| Hadrian was quite late in Roman history, far closer to
| its collapse than its founding.
| tome wrote:
| > far closer to its collapse than its founding
|
| Sorry, this isn't really an important point, but I found
| it quite implausible so I checked. Hadrian ruled until
| 165 years after the founding of Rome. It continued for
| another 257 years.
|
| Roman empire: 27 BC - AD 395 (as a unified entity)
|
| Hadrian: was Roman emperor from 117 to 138
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadrian
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Empire
| int_19h wrote:
| Roman Empire was a direct continuation of the Roman
| Republic (indeed, for most people living at the time,
| they didn't even perceive it as a breaking point). It's
| certainly not a valid date for the "founding of Rome".
| morsch wrote:
| German Wikipedia refers to this authority as "closely
| watched" for abuse by public officials; there being
| reports of such abuse, but only a few of them; and it
| being a "mostly symbolic" right. There are fifteen cases
| of killings known to us, and in almost all of them, the
| punishment would also have been due to other legal
| constructs.
|
| None of this contradicts anything you said, I'm just
| adding some context. Roman heads of family obviously
| weren't habitually killing relatives all the time.
|
| https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patria_Potestas
| agumonkey wrote:
| If anybody knows studies on the neurological impact of sexual
| abuse very early on, feel free to spam me :)
| [deleted]
| known wrote:
| derbOac wrote:
| Study of this topic is critical, but designs of this sort are
| useless without biometric controls (for example, twin or family
| or genomewide marker controls).
| SuoDuanDao wrote:
| Does this objection require that there be markers that
| predispose someone towards being a survivor of sexual assault?
| There probably are, but I'm sure that's not politic to say.
| derbOac wrote:
| So I'm being downvoted, which I expected because of the
| subject matter, but I've done research in this area and many
| of the correlates they talk about are associated with
| familial and other ecological factors that tend to cluster
| very locally.
|
| I don't even personally believe that sexual abuse is _not_
| associated with the things they claim, but statistically
| speaking, you have many of these things clustering together
| (sexual abuse, pubertal acceleration, psychiatric
| challenges), and controlling for things in the way they did
| is grossly insufficient. A lot of this stuff is very
| broadband.
|
| Let's say you have some stressors from the environment
| (impoverishment, heavy metals, pesticide exposure, whatever
| it is). Controlling for demographic and socioeconomic factors
| will help address this, but the only way to do it
| convincingly is to look at these variables within-family,
| preferably controlling for genetic relatedness as well.
| Otherwise something like, say, chemical exposure is likely to
| affect children as well as the adults around them in a way
| that might be specific to a certain household.
|
| Not being very precise in your designs does as much damage to
| isolating confounding environmental causes and effects of
| sexual abuse per se as anything else.
| vivekd wrote:
| I would agree with you. They did control for some factors,
| and that seemed to be the point of the study, but my first
| reaction to it was it seems like the controls they used
| seemed insufficent. It is a shame you were being downvoted
| - I expect that from other places but not from hacker news.
| blunte wrote:
| Am I misunderstanding this, or is there a word missing from a key
| sentence in the abstract?
|
| "There was also a pattern of considerable within group
| variability."
|
| How does this get published with an obvious mistake in the
| abstract?
| pdonis wrote:
| "Within group variability" is a term of art in statistics.
| Someone not well versed in the jargon would probably write the
| sentence as "There was also a pattern of considerable
| variability within the groups studied."
| kwantam wrote:
| It's not wrong per se, but it _is_ poorly written: "within-
| group variability" is preferred (by most style manuals) because
| the hyphen makes clear that "within" modifies "group".
| zaroth wrote:
| Read it this way;
|
| There was also a pattern of considerable within-group
| variability.
| blunte wrote:
| Thank you. Now I finally get it. That hyphen makes a big
| difference.
| jl6 wrote:
| Violence against women and girls is endemic, and the scale is
| shocking. We must do everything possible to promote safeguarding
| and protect womens spaces.
| ejiwgnalsocn wrote:
| [trigger warning]
|
| I'm a woman. I was physically and sexually abused by my father as
| a child. The impact it's had on me is painful to describe. I was
| working as a software engineer in the tech industry and was
| constantly experiencing PTSD symptoms being surrounded by men --
| though by no fault of their own, it was totally because of what
| my father did to me.
|
| It's been a frustrating journey. The sexual abuse happened to me
| at such a young age that I didn't realize until now, in my 30s,
| that I was molested. I feel completely robbed of my life -- to
| feel constant panic, anxiety, and depression for no fault of my
| own. It's been an expensive journey of therapy and various
| treatments to try to reach a stabilizing baseline. It's been an
| embarrassing journey -- as a software engineer, I am extremely
| competent. I just cannot work with men, apparently..
|
| I'm glad studies like this are coming out to validate experiences
| of fellow incest survivors. A book instrumental in my
| understanding and healing also: _The Body Keeps Score_.
|
| Thanks to whomever read this. I wrote it mostly to experience
| sharing my story publicly, and reducing to myself the shame that
| exists of being a child abuse survivor.
| loceng wrote:
| I was drugged unconscious by a gay man in my early 20s, and
| "thankfully" I became conscious at the beginning of whatever he
| had planned; it took me months to even realize something had
| happened due to whatever drug he dosed me with fucked up my
| memory.
|
| I had used MDMA recreationally years later and I knew that had
| helped my PTSD some, but it was only when I did a session years
| later in a therapeutic setting, just myself and the
| facilitator, was I able to fully connect to, sit with, and
| process what happened to me; literally the stimuli of what I
| would/should have felt then was able to process - as if it was
| stuck, once processed allowing my body to no longer think it
| was in that situation (so heightened stress state, heightened
| baseline stress reduced greatly).
|
| MAPS.org (Multi-Disciplinary Association of Psychedelic
| Studies) relatively recently did clinical trials with 100
| treatment resistant participants, to treat veterans with MDMA-
| assisted psychotherapy. They had an average of 17.5 years of
| treatment resistant PTSD. After 1 year, 80% of the placebo
| group had no improvement, 20% had some. With just 2-3 sessions
| where MDMA was given, after just 1 year, 80% of participants no
| longer qualified for PTSD diagnoses - and 20% had some or none
| - a complete reversal. From my experience it's true - it just
| allows you to connect to overwhelming/overriding stress that
| short-circuits your system, allows it to flow and essentially
| melt away - though it can take talking about it to put the
| experience into words, to process it, to help by breathing
| through it, etc.
|
| All this to say that even if you have ever done MDMA
| recreationally, e.g. gone out dancing with a partner or
| friends, I'd recommend anyone who hasn't done it in a different
| context, a "safer" or quieter/therapeutic environment, where
| you're not using music and other people to distract from
| yourself - then I'd recommend people look into doing it; there
| will slowly be legal clinics opening up, though I've not kept
| track of who's leading that at the moment or where the progress
| is. E.g. there may be more depth to the experiences that you'll
| be able to process with the help of MDMA causing more serotonin
| to release at once than it can on its own, and the only way to
| know is to try.
| bena wrote:
| I just listened to a podcast where they were talking about
| this. And that's pretty much what they said.
|
| Basically MDMA and/or psilocybin allow you to essentially
| disassociate from the the emotions of the event. You're able
| to talk about and work through the events without also being
| overwhelmed by the emotions of the event.
|
| But yeah, it's not just popping shrooms or pills and you're
| magically healed. It's about being in that setting with
| someone who can therapeutically work you through the trauma.
| You still need to do the work, but MDMA and/or psilocybin can
| greatly facilitate the process.
| cjaro wrote:
| The Body Keeps the Score is honestly a must-read, but it can be
| deeply challenging. Reading that book helped me uncover even
| more childhood trauma that I wasn't really actively processing
| or recognizing as abuse until then. So it was an extra
| challenge on top of the trauma I was already dealing with.
|
| And for what it's worth, I also am a SWE, and I also struggle
| working around men. 90% of the time, the men I work with are
| awesome, supportive, nice, etc. But the trauma informs that 10%
| where I feel invalid, not seen, objectified... all that fun
| stuff. It's challenging and I don't think trauma has ever been
| brought up as a challenge in the workplace when there's no
| trauma directly _in_ the workplace, if that makes sense. I
| certainly haven 't directly connected it before this.
| willchang wrote:
| As a man, is there anything I can do or avoid doing in the
| workplace to make it easier for coworkers like you? Let's
| assume I don't know and don't suspect anything specific about
| my coworkers. I just want to know if there's anything that
| would be pretty easy to implement, that would make a
| difference.
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| Ensure that there is more than one woman around in your
| company. Ensure your workplace policies are friendly and
| flexible for people who need mental health days, address
| family time, get pregnant, need sanitary equipment, parent
| children or other dependents, etc. Ensure all the women at
| your company have opportunities to work with and have women
| co workers, or women friendly gatherings like lunches, and be
| open to feedback to change policy accordingly once you have
| enough women coming together during their talks that they can
| suggest changes collectively.
|
| Being the sole woman in a company of men when means your
| superiors are men, your peers are men, and the only recourse
| you may have if any of them act inappropriately towards you
| is to report it to another man.
|
| Edit: respect boundaries and consistently remind that if they
| have a boundary they are free to enforce and you will respect
| that. Boundaries come in the form of more than "please don't
| x". They are also "I prefer x" or "can we y".
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > consistently remind that if they have a boundary they are
| free to enforce and you will respect that.
|
| The clearest and most effective way of doing this is to
| proactively _establish_ and _propose_ safe boundaries for
| the other person 's benefit. This is the underlying dynamic
| behind many rules-of-thumb of ordinary courtesy and
| politeness (often wrongly dismissed as some sort of
| useless, obsolete 'traditionalism'). Not everyone is so
| assertive and comfortable with themselves that they should
| be expected to verbalize their boundaries to you, or even
| to understand them proactively.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Mike Pence rule. Don't _ever_ be alone with a vulnerable
| person without a neutral third party being present, it wreaks
| havoc on the threat-detection instinct. As the saying goes,
| "you're not paranoid if someone _really_ is out to get you. "
| deanCommie wrote:
| Shocking that this is getting upvotes.
|
| The only way to treat this as gospel is to never be present
| with another woman alone.
|
| That the tech industry is so inept with opposite gender
| interactions that they have adopted tactics from religious
| zealot evangelicals is APALLING.
|
| Treat people as humans. Regardless of gender or sexuality.
| tasha0663 wrote:
| As much as it sounds like an overreacting CYA tactic, it
| does at least have the side effect of creating safe
| spaces.
|
| I might find the intentions dubious, but I can't argue
| with the results.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Ironically, the tech industry has provided an alternative
| solution - cameras recording everything everywhere. Dash
| cams to provide proof of what happened in collisions,
| workplace cameras to reduce liability for employers and
| also helps protect employees, home cameras also for
| liability reduction as well as protection against police
| lying about what happened...etc.
| jhgb wrote:
| Costs vs. benefits and all. It's hardly unreasonable if
| you're risk-averse.
| tomp wrote:
| The whole premise of the workplace is to _not_ treat
| people as humans, but as coworkers.
|
| Sex is one of the most essentially human things.
| "Professional" behaviour excludes sex.
|
| So "treat people as humans" is decisively _not_ clear
| advice for cases like this.
| tremon wrote:
| That's a very dehumanizing statement to me. I would never
| want to work at a place that doesn't treat its employees
| as humans. That doesn't mean I condone sex at the
| workplace, but I would not accept to be treated as less
| than a full human being.
|
| Humans are not automata, and I don't aspire to be one,
| not even for "just" 8 hours a day.
| deanCommie wrote:
| The way you are expected to interact with humans in the
| VAST MAJORITY of situations is closer to how you are
| expected to interact with coworkers in a professional
| setting, than to a speed dating event or a crowded bar
| after midnight.
|
| We're not having orgies in the street. In modern society
| you are expected to treat humans in the vast majority of
| situations without "sex" being relevant to the topic of
| discussion, whether it's on the street, in the grocery
| store, on the tram, or in the library.
|
| Acting like this is not clear feels like an exercise in
| pedantic loophole seeking to justify sexual harassment.
| ("How are people even supposed to meet each other if I'm
| not allowed to <blank> to women in <blank>?")
| tomp wrote:
| False dichotomies galore.
|
| First of all, the "VAST MAJORITY" of human interactions
| are irrelevant (cashier, bank clerk, passing people on
| the street). Given how much time you spend with
| coworkers, they'd qualify as friends, or acquaintances at
| least.
|
| Also, there's a large gap between "professional
| behaviour" and "orgies in the street" or "sexual
| harassment". For example, I don't mind talking about
| menstruation or condoms with friends (who I'm _not_
| having sex with, nor have /would I ever try) but I don't
| think those would be appropriate topics for most
| workplace situations.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| Your life must be quite different from mine. My casual
| conversations with my friend group - who are 20s and 30s
| liberals, mixed gender - are not office appropriate. I
| would certainly not bring any of the regular political
| debates into work either.
|
| The amount of sex related conversation in my friend group
| is, from my perspective, normal but entirely
| inappropriate for work. Even my female barber talks about
| her sex life during haircuts.
|
| At work I keep my sarcasm set to near zero, avoid
| politics, religion, and sex, and generally keep a narrow
| focus. Work is an artificial environment, but my
| coworkers don't get to choose me. It is on me to behave
| in a way that is beyond reproach.
| golemiprague wrote:
| Mezzie wrote:
| He asked how to make things easier for his vulnerable
| coworkers, not how to cover his ass.
|
| Honestly, my suggestion would be to be open about your own
| experiences and the impact they've had on you. (Not
| necessarily abuse, but just offhand comments like 'oh, it's
| silly but I can't stand yelling because my dad yelled a
| lot' or 'I don't drink because my family's had issues with
| it', etc.) Be open and clear that a.) you don't judge
| people for being 'weird' and b.) you accept things other
| people need even if you don't need them.
|
| Don't be overly emotional about it. Just accept their human
| needs in the same way you would if a coworker had a
| disability. Oh, that person needs more space between us?
| Alright. Not any different than a hard of hearing coworker
| who needs me to speak up a bit, or a visually impaired
| coworker who uses zoom on their computer.
|
| My saying, "Hey, I have a bit of anxiety so I'm going to
| gather myself for a moment; do you think you could step
| back and give me some space and we could try to pitch this
| conversation a bit quieter?" shouldn't be much different
| than my needing a stepstool. I'm short. It happens.
|
| If you treat the people around you as individuals, then
| people understand they can ask you for what they need.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > Honestly, my suggestion would be to be open about your
| own experiences and the impact they've had on you.
|
| I'd imagine that many people would disagree with this.
| Dwelling on people's supposed 'weirdness' is not a
| healthy attitude (least of all when the 'weirdness' is
| our own) and would not be seen as "open" or "accepting"
| by many, but more of a signal of entitlement. If you
| think that the other person would benefit from something,
| just behave accordingly without dwelling on it, and
| people will hopefully realize that they can ask you for
| these things with no fuss.
| sp332 wrote:
| This can disadvantage those people in other ways though.
| Just trying to get work done, it helps to be able to drop
| into someone's office without arranging for a chaperone. Or
| stopping by somewhere without checking the number and
| gender of people who will be there ahead of time.
| bzbarsky wrote:
| One principled solution would be to apply the rule to
| everyone you interact with.
|
| In practice that's likely quite difficult.
| ars wrote:
| > it helps to be able to drop into someone's office
| without arranging for a chaperone.
|
| You can leave the door to the office open at all times.
| Or use a glass wall or door so people can see in, but
| maybe not overhear.
| Syonyk wrote:
| Billy Graham was the originator of the concept in his
| ministry [0].
|
| Not only does it help prevent things from happening that
| could be a problem later, it helps prevent even accusations
| of such, if it's well known that the person involved holds
| to this rule and expects others to hold them to it as well.
| Say what you will about Pence, love him or hate him, nobody
| is accusing him of sexual misconduct - and that's the point
| of the rule.
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Graham_rule
| ars wrote:
| It's much much much older than that, see:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yichud
|
| It doesn't prevent abuse by a close family member though.
| Syonyk wrote:
| Interesting, I'd assumed there was history before Graham
| (it's an obvious enough thing), but wasn't aware of the
| details. Thanks!
| bittercynic wrote:
| Fellow man, here, but I think I have something of value to
| add:
|
| Learning to be open and friendly, and developing a sense for
| when someone doesn't want to talk to me has been an important
| part of growing up. I try to identify signals that a person
| wants to end their interaction with me, and respect their
| wishes immediately and in a friendly way.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Being "open and friendly" is no good when someone literally
| has shell shock(!) (aka PTSD) from interacting with people
| like you. You'll need to behave in such a way as to
| demonstrate to them that they can _intuitively_ and
| _securely_ trust you not to be an immediate physical
| threat, nor to pose any in the foreseeable future.
|
| The quick rule-of-thumb is to be courteous and respectful
| but also establish _very_ firm physical boundaries, even
| erring towards being _less_ friendly as opposed to more.
| You also need to _proactively_ signal that you will stop
| interacting with them at the slightest sign of their
| discomfort; keeping interactions short and to the point is
| an obvious way to do this, even though this outwardly looks
| "rude" and "unfriendly"!
| Mezzie wrote:
| Developmentally caused PTSD and shell-shock/war/later
| event PTSD have some differences.
|
| For instance, those of us with developmentally-caused
| trauma often view _every_ person as a threat, because we
| were abused by our caregivers. (In my case, my mother.)
| This is because we need our abusers to survive, so we 're
| used to abuse being a necessary part of life and
| something that can happen at any time/during mundane
| interactions. We don't feel like _anyone_ is safe. The
| only person my nervous system trusts is my baby sister.
| Trying to get me to recognize you as safe isn 't going to
| work, because nobody is safe to me.
|
| I realize that not everybody is a danger and my feelings
| are the result of my failing the parental lottery and not
| a commentary on every person I meet, which means it's my
| responsibility/job to retrain/calibrate my 'who is safe'
| sensors. It just takes practice and some patience
| sometimes.
|
| People refusing to interact with me because they have
| different genitals than me isn't going to help,
| especially when most of my hobbies are male-dominated. It
| just conveys 'Ha, you're not a proper girl, so you don't
| deserve friends. Go learn to like clothes and boys if you
| want to hang out with people'.
|
| Now, if _you 've_ been burned in the past by people using
| their mental illnesses to blame you for not understanding
| social cues, or had that used against you in the past,
| and you don't feel comfortable in mixed-sex interactions,
| that's fine, but that's a need of YOURS, not the women.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > Trying to get me to recognize you as safe isn't going
| to work, because nobody is safe to me.
|
| This makes plenty of sense, but then I'm not sure why
| you're expecting others to be _physically friendly_ with
| you. Having a "friendly" interaction with someone
| generally presupposes some degree of physical quasi-
| intimacy that would seem to be quite incompatible with
| "not feeling like _anyone_ is safe " to be around. This
| doesn't mean you can't be friendly in many other ways of
| course, but these interactions will nonetheless be quite
| different from what folks might otherwise expect.
| Mezzie wrote:
| This is very interesting to me because this might be a
| huge sex socialization difference: I'm friendly,
| including physically, with people I would rather not be
| at least occasionally.
|
| There's a couple of reasons for this:
|
| 1.) If you're a young, small, female, people will be in
| your space whether you want them there or not. Keeping it
| "friendly" makes sure that it doesn't turn violent.
| (Note: This isn't just from men: My go to example of a
| person disrespecting my space was a woman in undergrad
| who, upon meeting me for the first time, picked me up
| because I was so small and 'cute' to her.) Luckily, I'm
| over 30 and an old hag now! 10/10 do recommend. V.
| helpful!
|
| 2.) As a female, I'm expected/allowed to offer comfort to
| people, and that includes physically, so I'll do things
| like hug my friends when they're sad if they like hugs
| because I still want to support them even if I have PTSD.
| Or I hug and take care of my little sister because I know
| touch is important for her mental health and I value
| that. I also occasionally offer childcare/ have nieces
| and nephews or am in gatherings with children, and they
| touch.
|
| I generally let people, and people know that I/Aunt
| Mezzie needs some quiet sometimes.
|
| I also have MS and malfunctioning nerves; I view them
| similarly. "Wow, my brain has a lesion and now I can't
| feel my feet what." and "Wow, I'm traumatized and now I
| can't relax around people I like what."
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > If you're a young, small, female, people will be in
| your space whether you want them there or not.
|
| It's precisely when you're "young, small" etc. that this
| is _not_ OK. These people are not being "friendly" to
| you, they should know better. And you're quite free to
| remove yourself physically from the interaction if they
| keep invading your boundaries.
|
| > so I'll do things like hug my friends when they're sad
|
| At least then you're initiating and thus controlling the
| interaction, with an acquaintance who's OK with it. It's
| not anything that you should be _forced_ to do, but
| having one 's boundaries be actively transgressed upon
| would likely be more stressful.
| [deleted]
| nmhancoc wrote:
| Hey just wanted to say thanks for sharing your story. Not that
| you owe it to anyone, but I hope the public presence of people
| working through these issues will help the next generation of
| survivors to have a more easily found path forward.
| wnolens wrote:
| Thanks for sharing. It really does make a difference.
|
| Most people's guess as to the rate of occurrence of this kind
| of abuse would be off by an order of magnitude or more.
|
| In the past 5 years I've become privy to so many dark
| experiences of close female friends and family. What used to be
| an outlier experience is now almost.. common? More than one
| woman I've dated has had to preface intimacy with a harrowing
| experience. It's been hard for me to deal with this knowledge
| about people I love, but nevertheless is the truth and must be
| told.
|
| Take care. I hope the remote work world has helped.
| MaysonL wrote:
| A former colleague and lover of mine was abused at home as a
| teen, and got married quite young in order to escape the
| situation. She did manage to have a quite successful career,
| ending in the C-suite at a major company.
| Mezzie wrote:
| I'm also a woman in my 30s, and you're not the only one.
|
| My PTSD isn't sexually related (I was neglected +
| emotionally/physically abused, but not sexually), but working
| was so difficult for me until I got my current, WFH job. I
| didn't realize how much being in a state of constant physical
| distress was taking a toll on my wellbeing. It's _exhausting_ ,
| and I wish you all the best.
| fullstop wrote:
| I'm interested in this, but find it very difficult to read
| because of the topic.
| tomcam wrote:
| Yep. Gift that keeps on giving. Was gotten to myself as a kid
| and 50+ years on it's still hard to read this kind of thing
| fullstop wrote:
| My freshman biology teacher was extradited to Australia and
| jailed for this, although I did not suffer any abuse. The
| church knew of his behavior and moved him around rather than
| dealing with the problem, and this definitely clouds my view
| of the Catholic church. Given the topic, their entire
| organization is a patriarchy.
|
| It's hard for me to read because it is difficult to picture
| these girls being abused, knowing that my wife and daughters
| could very likely have to deal with this during their
| lifetime. It's just depressing.
| tomcam wrote:
| > my wife and daughters
|
| yeah exactly
| datavirtue wrote:
| All institutions protect themselves first. Jehovah's
| witnesses have strict rules that forbid warning a new
| congregation if an abuser gets thrown out and moves onto
| another. They will not contact authorities nor will they
| warn anyone else as they ship them off to another region
| for a fresh start.
|
| It was/is an abusers' paradise. All numbers of criminals
| mask themselves in piety because it is easy to gain
| acceptance because the existing adherents are literally
| mandated to accept/forgive all new people who are "seeking
| the truth."
|
| I have seen the same thing happen in numerous
| organizations. The Catholic church is the tip of the ice
| berg.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| There are many men who suffer through sexless marriages for 20,
| 30 years or more because their partner was victimized as a child.
| (I'd assume that some women also have similar problems because
| their man was abused.)
|
| Such a man can work really hard to please and love a woman and
| try to create feelings of safety. They might blame themselves,
| thinking that it's because of that argument they had this
| morning, or yesterday, or last week, or two years ago, or the
| time the bed collapsed when they were having sex 25 years ago.
| But no, the woman doesn't feel safe because of something that
| happened 40 years ago that didn't have anything to do with them.
| The need for safety is a bottomless pit. Maybe the woman sees
| that the man is trying really hard and fakes a response but it's
| not real and the man sees that and it never blossoms into real
| mutual satisfaction.
|
| It' s completely frustrating because the woman has adjusted well
| to being asexual. Perhaps she could struggle through three years
| of therapy to attempt to change, but it is unlikely to be
| effective because she's not doing it for herself. The man, on the
| other hand, might be willing to plumb the depths of hell or storm
| the gates of heaven to change things but it's pushing on a
| string.
|
| (If the man has been traumatized by child bullying and subsequent
| sexual invisibility, rejection and being shut out from dating in
| high school they can be re-traumatized continuously by this
| demonstration that they are unlovable.)
|
| I was reading about how the actor Danny Masterson had drugged and
| raped women, stealing their sexuality not just from them but from
| their partners. Thus a single act of abuse affects not just the
| direct victim but their lovers, their children, and many others
| in the community.
|
| In the past two years we've seen a normalization of doing things
| over video and there has been an explosion in things like
| camgirling and OnlyFans -- many of the performers are people who
| had their sexuality distorted by abuse and I'm sure than many of
| the men who become victims of it (paying $1000 for a jar of
| farts, spending $80 for an Aella video) have themselves been
| victimized ) or are suffering because their partner or potential
| partners were abused.
| greenonions wrote:
| It seems rather insensitive to ruminate on future men's loss of
| sex because of sexual abuse.
|
| Perhaps the men in these sexless relationships should analyze
| if they are capable of sustaining this relationship,
| considering sex is so important to them and they are not
| receiving it.
|
| This entire comment does not consider the women's suffering and
| loss in any capacity due to abuse. Maybe it is the case that a
| similar complete lack of consideration is present in the
| perpetrators of abuse.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| It's not in the "future", it is a lived reality of many men
| and women today because of something that happened in the
| past.
|
| Some women can be high functioning in every other aspect of
| their life and be rather well adjusted to being asexual.
|
| In theory a woman could benefit from several years of therapy
| and hard inner work but it is going be much less fruitful if
| they are doing it because of somebody else.
|
| A man can be completely dedicated and loving towards a woman
| who isn't responsive, want to grow old with them, be giving
| love in many ways and be very willing to give more and very
| motivated to work towards change but face the reality that
| anything they do is "pushing on a string"
|
| It's a cruel reality that Aella's sexuality is worth $103,000
| a month but that a man's sexuality is worth negative. A man
| who comes clean in public about their experiences and
| feelings inevitably attracts insensitive comments and abuse
| simply because of their gender. It is one of the many double
| binds that we face that we're told on one hand that we're
| supposed to open up emotionally but we get consistently
| punished when we do so.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > It seems rather insensitive to ruminate on future men's
| loss of sex because of sexual abuse. > This entire comment
| does not consider the women's suffering and loss in any
| capacity due to abuse.
|
| It doesn't indeed.
|
| Because pain isn't a zero-sum game. At a funeral, the grief
| of a friend doesn't take anything away from the grief of the
| widow.
| pessimizer wrote:
| I disagree. If the men are doing what you suggest, and find
| that they _aren 't_ capable of committing to a sexless
| lifetime and leave, that's even more misery heaped on the
| victim of abuse.
|
| Pretending like one pain cancels another out is
| counterproductive. Pain causing pain doesn't just stop there,
| it's nonlinear.
|
| Also suggesting that someone is basically an abuser for
| mentioning the pain of the families of abused people is more
| than counterproductive, it's gross.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I posted this article and it's an issue I became aware of
| because of my personal connection. I know it is a lot
| bigger than the suffering I've felt.
|
| Although I think the experience of ordinary men is
| invisible and often systematically erased (such as by
| people like the one you are replying to) I am not going to
| say that the paper omits the impact that sexual abuse has
| on partners because the kind of longitudinal study that
| paper is doing is stupendously difficult. (Read it and
| they'll tell you why!)
|
| Anything that hurts one person's mental health has an
| extended effect on the community. If a sexual abuse victim
| flakes out at work because of mental health issues that
| hurts their employer. She might well cause suffering to her
| female friends. I've also seen that a woman's ability to
| enjoy pleasure in her own body or with other woman as a
| lesbian can also be impaired because of sexual abuse.
|
| A study like that can only scratch at the surface of what a
| crime like that does to society as a whole.
| greenonions wrote:
| Indeed the suffering from abuse can reach everyone around
| them. And the suffering of partners is very real, as a
| loving intimate relationship is one of life's great joys.
|
| I suppose that I was struck by the above comment mostly
| because it is so focused on the suffering of abused
| women's partners as to be jarring in the context of the
| OP. These sensibilities are my own however, and I should
| not judge so hastily
| greenonions wrote:
| #1 My point is not to suggest that men should leave, but to
| recognize that they actually value the relationship more
| than sex. From this standpoint, I would hope, they can use
| this foundation to build an intimidate relationship for
| themselves and partners. #2 This is true. #3 I did not
| intend to insinuate that poster is also an abuser, though
| clearly from my post there is, which poster did not
| deserve.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| Dudes who leave sexless marriages are really hurting their
| partner financially, emotionally, and mentally, so the idea
| that doing this is not "considering the woman" is asinine.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I'm not naturally inclined to say good things about Focus
| on the Family and Christian therapists but after 20 years
| of suffering with this I came across a YouTube video by a
| Christian therapist who said point blank that if you are
| suffering in a sexless marriage almost certainly your
| partner was a victim of abuse.
|
| I spoke to my wife about this one sleepless night and she
| said "well, are you really ready to hear about it?"
|
| Conventional therapists do the ordinary thing they do with
| a high failure rate. So often I see couples who are acting
| really cute doing the things they were told to do in
| couples therapy then I come around a few months they are
| depressed and I can swear I can smell a dead rat somewhere
| in the apartment. Next time I hear they broke up.
|
| Conventional therapists think that is par for the course.
| Christian therapists think that means the devil wins and
| they see it as a personal failure, so they try harder.
|
| I know nothing about the person who you are replying to but
| I can only image she's part of a throwaway culture were it
| is normal to abandon people because they aren't meeting
| your needs at this very moment and I have no idea if she's
| experienced the kind of deep attachment to another person
| that is possible, or that a mature person can be deeply
| frustrated in a situation but also be 100% committed to
| their family. As much as I've been angry and sad,
| understanding this situation has only deepened my
| relationship and increased my commitment even though I am
| planning to take actions that the Christian therapists
| would completely disapprove of.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I don't know where you get that.
|
| The suffering of the woman is real. So is the suffering of
| the man.
|
| It only adds and doesn't subtract. I don't need to reiterate
| on the suffering of the woman because that is described very
| well in the article (which i posted!)
|
| You're being insensitive, treating me as a man the way that a
| black person might get treated in the 1950s south USA. Sexual
| pleasure is one of the great things about being alive in this
| world. If that was destroyed for a woman by female
| circumcision you would see that as a bad thing. If
| circumstances did the same for a man it is not any different.
|
| A man in a situation like that will get told to "leave" and
| that is not a good answer for many. For one there are many
| other kinds of love and a person in that kind of relationship
| might be able to give and receive all of the other kinds of
| love except for that.
|
| So many people try "serial monogamy" and it so often ends in
| tears. In terms of sexuality a man like that might be
| satisfied by a woman with average sexual responsiveness or
| even a standard deviation below the mean. That person is easy
| to find, but be much more difficult to find somebody who has
| all the other good traits of the current partner.
|
| A man like that might have strong loyalty and also feel that
| their current partner deserves to be loved in all the ways
| they are able to receive it even if their partner can't
| receive it. Their partner shouldn't be rejected and left
| alone because they were victimized in this past
|
| An obvious answer is polyamory and the women might well be
| accepting of that but if you were the kid who was bullied in
| school and then rejected, made invisible, and then suffered
| years of self-doubt because of somebody else's crime
| succeeding at polyamory can look like climbing a mountain.
|
| A woman can be very insensitive about this because a woman
| who wants a sexual relationship, snap their fingers, and get
| it. Some men who want that can get it easily but most can't.
| There is a huge focus on a small population of men who are
| abusive, attractive, rich or some combination, the experience
| of the vast majority of men is invisible.
| atombum wrote:
| You're not necessarily wrong but it just doesn't feel like
| the right context to share this perspective, given the
| subject matter of the OP.
|
| This comes off as extremely insensitive and tone deaf to
| me.
| elboru wrote:
| He is OP
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Check your privilege.
|
| Don't assume that I'm automatically insensitive because I
| am a male. I was the person who submitted this article!
|
| I wasn't planning to say anything about my own situation
| when I posted it, I felt embarrassed to do so, but also
| compelled when I saw other people with a viewpoint like
| yours write vicious insensitive comments that I felt
| compelled to speak up about. (I wound up posting to the
| main thread because the comment was deleted)
|
| There is nothing hypothetical about this scenario, it is
| one that I am living. I have stuck with my wife through
| thick and thin and I am completely dedicated and want to
| grow old with her. There are members of my extended
| family (who I love and am proud to know and would hate to
| be separated as much as I would from my wife) who had the
| same experience and suffered dramatically.
|
| Men are continuously told that we need to open up
| emotionally (my mother-in-law felt that way about her
| otherwise upstanding husband) but we're always wary that
| it is another cruel trap where we get punished for
| showing emotions.
| hnarayanan wrote:
| Thank you for stating this.
| bongoman37 wrote:
| fractallyte wrote:
| fullstop wrote:
| > I seriously wonder if this is why we ended up with a
| patriarchal 'civilization'. Simply because so many women are
| silently traumatized.
|
| Men are also, in general, significantly stronger physically.
| 1980phipsi wrote:
| Patriarchal civilizations only began to outcompete non-
| patriarchal ones with the relatively recent advent of grain
| agriculture. There were many hundreds of thousands of years
| where men were stronger physically and patriarchy wasn't
| dominant (I mean that some civilizations were patriarchal and
| others were non-patriarchal).
| fullstop wrote:
| Right, this rings a bell from an ancient civilizations
| class that I took decades ago. I wish that I remembered
| more from that class, but it's been so long. I guess it's
| time to crack open the text books that I kept.
| quartesixte wrote:
| Always a fascinating Alt-History scenario to me: what if
| the patriarchal societies didn't win out early on? How
| drastically different would history had become?
| elliekelly wrote:
| There's a fantastic (and quite funny!) French film "I'm
| Not An Easy Man"[1] that sort of explores this idea but
| from the perspective of what society would look like
| today if gender roles were flipped. I think it's
| available on Netflix.
|
| [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_Not_an_Easy_Man
| bananamansion wrote:
| thanks for the recommendation
| SuoDuanDao wrote:
| Funnily enough, I wrote a short erotic story in which the
| protagonist gets transported from the sort of world
| depicted in that film to ours. In my telling she
| leverages her sexual aggression and insight into male
| psychology to become a successful Twitch streamer.
| datavirtue wrote:
| They didn't early on. They won out late and we are still
| very much steeped in it. The line was crossed during the
| "one true God" push where the sun god (single god)
| creator cults gained state-derived power.
| SuoDuanDao wrote:
| there's an interesting documentary on a modern-day
| matriarchy, gave me a good idea of what one can imagine
| in such a situation:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_l9D7tEixc
|
| Different in regards to what is probably the relevant
| question, economic history? Military? Human Genetics? I
| don't imagine much would look the same.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| ironmagma wrote:
| Please don't presume to speak on behalf of male sexual abuse
| victims. I assure you, the psychic hurt very well can be
| forever.
| Thoreandan wrote:
| mods: (2011) should be added to title.
|
| Professors Noll & Trickett have published more recent work as of
| 2016 (Trickett passed away that year.)
| tomcam wrote:
| Can testify it does a number on male development too
| xbar wrote:
| Thanks for being willing to say this.
| javajosh wrote:
| Interestingly, there's another child comment, flagged and dead
| [edit: it has been resurrected], that says simply, "Sh...no-one
| cares about men." It's not a great comment, as it lacks
| substance, but it reflects something real and important.
|
| Sexual abuse is to women as police violence is to black people.
| These classes of people are affected more (far more - perhaps
| 2x?) than others, but that doesn't mean others aren't affected.
| A broader class of victim lets you draw lines more clearly: BLM
| isn't about police vs black people, it's really about police vs
| not-police. Sexual violence isn't about men vs women, its
| _also_ about abuse of power, over children. Children includes
| boys and girls of all colors, of all religions, of all sexual
| orientations.
|
| Abuse of power knows no gender or race. Mothers abuse their
| sons. Teachers abuse their students. The more we allow the
| culture to ignore some abuse to make other abuse more
| narratively appealing, the more we abandon those victims that
| don't fit the protected class, and the worse we do at actually
| identifying the problem itself. This is a great moral and
| practical failing, an example of the potency of left-wing
| "other"ing.
|
| The culture does not want to hear from victimized men,
| especially straight white men. It is okay to withhold empathy,
| because SWMs are "powerful", they always have been and they
| always will be, and are to blame for most, if not all, of the
| worlds problems, especially abuse of power in all its forms,
| they say.
|
| We've been encouraged for years to express vulnerability,
| expressing more of a softer, feminine side. Now, we are
| punished for it, and then we get some unwanted appellation like
| "men's rights advocates", which is a liberal code for right-
| wing anti-feminist reactionaries working nefariously to
| maintain the status quo.
|
| The dead comment is right: no-one cares about men. I will go
| further and say that its a deeply evil thing, and I fear for my
| 2-year-old son. This is a real fear, not a construction, and it
| should be okay to share the concern in a public forum without
| being attacked for saying something I'm not. But I know it will
| happen, anyway, because you cannot fight the tide.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| It is about power, and in the US African-American and women
| (and LGBTQ and others) are widely discriminated against, and
| thus widely lack power. White people are much safer around
| police because they have power in the legal system (generally
| speaking about the entire country); they can protect
| themselves. An African-American teenager complaining about
| police abuse isn't likely to get far. Women complaining about
| sexual assault or harassment are routinely dismissed -
| literally, as a politically correct (by their politics)
| practice of some males I know.
|
| The parent reads like the ever-present 'reverse
| discrimination' complaint, but it's not the same.
| Discrimination and prejudice are about power. If the abuser
| doesn't have the power, they are a lot less dangerous.
| int_19h wrote:
| > White people are much safer around police because they
| have power in the legal system (generally speaking about
| the entire country); they can protect themselves.
|
| This is true statistically, but I think OP's point is that
| statistics should not be used to dismiss individual
| experiences. Daniel Shaver was white, for example. Cheye
| Calvo was a white _mayor_ when his house was raided
| (speaking of power!).
|
| Thing is, police has too much power relative to the vast
| majority of citizens. The delta varies drastically between
| different population groups, but it's "too much" for all of
| them.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| Even if the kinda of abuse that women experience tend to be
| far worse in magnitude, men in many parts of america
| (including myself) are almost universally mutilated at birth.
| I believe that this is abuse, and the current culture of
| laughing at circumcision or "intactivists" has led me to
| agree that no one gives a shit about men or the issues that
| they experience.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Maybe they just don't agree with you, and see it as
| potential cover for discrimination against a minority
| religion?
| busterarm wrote:
| > The dead comment is right: no-one cares about men. I will
| go further and say that its a deeply evil thing, and I fear
| for my 2-year-old son. This is a real fear, not a
| construction, and it should be okay to share the concern in a
| public forum without being attacked for saying something I'm
| not. But I know it will happen, anyway, because you cannot
| fight the tide.
|
| As men, our expected place in society is to contain our
| emotions. To be silent. Our traumas are not ours to share.
| The social costs of doing otherwise are unbearable. Society
| has no tolerance for our victimhood. ...The Audacity!
|
| So yes, exactly. No one cares about men.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| This is the other side of the same coin. All the
| patriarchal bullshit gender roles that we were all raised
| with. The damage that women have suffered was more
| immediately obvious, but it hurts everybody.
| neogodless wrote:
| The initial comment here adds to the discussion of the impact
| on female development, without making a grandiose claim that
| _no one_ cares.
|
| Both your comment and the flagged comment make that claim.
|
| It seems much more so the case that people can care about how
| bad actions affect both female and male victims than the
| hypothesis you propose.
|
| And, in fact, straight white men can be in a position of
| power, and have advantages, and also be able to share stories
| where they are victims, and find support. These things do not
| have to be black and white and contradictory.
|
| Who the victim is and how they are affected does not speak
| about who the transgressor is, nor does it do so in
| inflexible, absolute terms. So the effects of being a victim
| can be explored without going into a "victim mentality" as
| someone who does not happen to be the primary focus of this
| article.
| javajosh wrote:
| _> people can care about how bad actions affect both female
| and male victims than the hypothesis you propose._
|
| They can, but that doesn't mean they do. It is _dangerous_
| to be caught caring about men or boys. Consider this recent
| SNL skit "man park": https://youtu.be/9XOt2Vh0T8w?t=131.
| I've linked to the part where a woman is saying something
| sympathetic to men, and then panics that she'll be caught
| on camera saying it. This is after showing men in a dog
| park. E.g. equating them to dogs.
|
| Note that my comment was NOT triggered by the OP's study,
| but rather that a comment was flagged and killed stating
| something that I think is obviously true, but quite
| inconvenient for some people to read.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > It is _dangerous_ to be caught caring about men or
| boys.
|
| Not at all in my experience. Comedy skits aren't
| evidence, or we could have some very interesting
| discussions!
| LNSY wrote:
| same. My abuse was very early, which it tends to be for men. My
| abusers weren't removed from my life until I was six, and even
| then were brought back over and over again. I am 40. I became a
| successful software developer. Then I finally couldn't ignore
| what happened to me. It was a brutal 3 years of therapy and
| trying to find my way out of the emotional pain I felt.
|
| I am just now getting my career on track, but I am essentially
| starting from square one again. As a programmer your primary
| tool is your brain, and when it simply isn't working...
|
| What, to me, is positive, is that we are talking about it. Just
| being aware of this pain and not replicating it is what is
| needed to shift the world.
| nobodyofnote wrote:
| Thank you very much for sharing this. Me too. Like yours,
| mine occurred early. Like you, I was exposed to my abuser
| many times afterward.
|
| As a boy, I carried my shame in silence, and learned early to
| dislike and avoid extended family gatherings, masking my
| avoidance in a blanket of "family sucks/is boring" cynicism.
|
| As an early teen entering puberty, I grew increasingly
| disturbed about had happened. I tried to force the feelings
| away, almost ritually, but grew increasingly mired in
| confusion about what was wrong with me. Why did I (despite
| the fact that I was but 5-6 years old at the time) not take
| action? Did this mean I enjoyed being abused? Did this mean
| it wasn't abuse? Did the fact that I didn't stop the abuser
| mean I was not heterosexual? I began bombarding myself with
| pornography, almost as a salve against the uncertainty and
| doubt about who I was.
|
| It wasn't until nearly 40 - and in the context of therapy to
| try to prevent the most important relationships of my life
| from falling further apart - that I had even considered the
| fact that I'd survived abuse. I felt ashamed to even think
| about accepting that statement, as I knew many others had
| suffered so much more serious forms of long-term abuse.
|
| Only now have I come to marginally accept that decades of
| suffering internalized shame, fear, pain and mistrust deserve
| to be called survival.
|
| I now have children who I love with all my heart. I cannot
| fathom inflicting such suffering upon them - or anyone else,
| for that matter. I will never be able to entrust them to the
| care of close family or friends. It's a constant internal
| struggle when they ask about sleepovers with friends. Such
| trivial things as "going over to someone's house" trigger
| immense uncertainty and fear, which I do my best to not
| burden my children with. I don't know if I will ever truly be
| able to shed the thick cloak of cynicism - largely a defense
| mechanism - that has and continues to impede my ability to
| relate meaningfully to the world and the people around me.
|
| I hope I can - and I hope that awareness grows, so that other
| people aren't exposed to a similar experience.
| PebblesRox wrote:
| Kidpower is my favorite resource for how to talk about
| personal safety with kids and teach them skills to help
| them stay safe with people. The Safety Comics are a good
| place to start:
|
| https://www.kidpower.org/books/safety-comics/
|
| And I also learned a lot and had some big mindset changes
| from reading the giant Kidpower Book for Caring Adults,
| which really goes in depth and is good at breaking things
| down into simple practices.
|
| https://www.kidpower.org/books/kidpower-book/
|
| I really like the mindset of teaching kids how to be safe
| in a positive way (i.e. without scaring them about
| potential dangers) and the serious-business approach to our
| responsibilities as adults.
| nobodyofnote wrote:
| Thanks for sharing these resources!
| Mezzie wrote:
| > I now have children who I love with all my heart. I
| cannot fathom inflicting such suffering upon them - or
| anyone else, for that matter. I will never be able to
| entrust them to the care of close family or friends. It's a
| constant internal struggle when they ask about sleepovers
| with friends. Such trivial things as "going over to
| someone's house" trigger immense uncertainty and fear,
| which I do my best to not burden my children with. I don't
| know if I will ever truly be able to shed the thick cloak
| of cynicism - largely a defense mechanism - that has and
| continues to impede my ability to relate meaningfully to
| the world and the people around me.
|
| My heart aches because you sound so much like my mother.
|
| What I will say is that as her child, one thing I
| appreciated _so much_ is that I _never_ had to worry if my
| parents would believe me if something happened. Your kids
| will have you always in their corner and that makes such,
| such, such a difference. So much of my mother 's turmoil is
| related to _her_ mother not believing her + the victim-
| blaming. You 're helping and shielding your kids just by
| being who you are, even if you don't want to worry them.
| nobodyofnote wrote:
| Thank you for saying this. You're very much right; part
| of my fear was that - like other members of my family - I
| wouldn't be believed (or worse, blamed as an
| "instigator"). Things my children will never have to
| experience, to be sure.
| tomcam wrote:
| 20 years of therapy never helped me unfortunately
| zapdrive wrote:
| dang wrote:
| Please do not take HN threads further into flamewar. There's
| more than enough suffering to go around, but this is not the
| way to open up a thoughtful conversation.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| Mezzie wrote:
| I'd be interested to see this _study_ repeated with male
| victims. I think each sex has its own issues when sexually
| victimized:
|
| - Females, of course, can get pregnant, and our assaults are
| more likely to be physically painful.
|
| - Males have zero social support and are far more stigmatized
| for being victimized, and they also have less of a support
| network/are more isolated than females on average. They also
| have fewer resources available since sexual assault is seen as
| only happening to females. Fewer shelters, hotlines, etc.
| tremon wrote:
| That's a very unfortunate phrasing. You may want to
| explicitly add "this _study_ " in your first sentence.
| Mezzie wrote:
| Oh dear God, thank you.
| baggygenes wrote:
| Fascinating and important study, but I have a hard time
| understanding how they missed a blatant spelling error in the
| abstract...
| wffurr wrote:
| This is the author's manuscript. The published, edited version
| does not have that particular error:
| https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/development-and-psyc...
| [deleted]
| wffurr wrote:
| Published 2011 - date tag?
|
| https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/development-and-psyc...
| Karawebnetwork wrote:
| Appendix A summarizes all the findings reported in this paper:
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/articles/PMC3693773/#A...
| gadders wrote:
| I had a quick skim of the report. This so fucking sad. Figure 3
| is heartbreaking.
| throw8932894 wrote:
| I seen study[1] that claimed similar results (early puberty,
| depression...) but from lack of male figures in childhood.
| Another study showed similar results in macaque monkeys.
| Evolutionary explanation was that group needs to be repopulated
| faster.
|
| [1] https://news.berkeley.edu/2010/09/17/puberty/
| drewpc wrote:
| The ways the research team engaged the study participants over 23
| years is admirable, creative, and fascinating to understand.
| ars wrote:
| This is troubling for the statistical validity of this:
|
| "At the time of study entry, comparison families were not
| informed that the study involved sexually abused females; rather,
| they were told that the study was of "female growth and
| development." At the end of the initial interview, however,
| caregivers were told that the study pertained to sexual abuse"
|
| If you tell people you are surveying a particular thing, they are
| more likely to report things in line with what you are expecting.
| vivekd wrote:
| I was wondering about this. That is a problem given that it
| seems the whole point of the study was to control for other
| factors to ensure that the trauma reported wasn't the result of
| something else - like more vulnerable or victimized women being
| more likely to suffer sexual abuse.
|
| Not sure what to make of it. I think earlier onset of puberty
| is one effect that likely wasn't falsely reported. I'm not sure
| about the others.
|
| I'd be nice if we could have a study that controls for
| reporting bias, but I wonder if research ethics would allow it
| - espically when working with young children.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| I find this to be the most telling stat:
|
| "In a few cases (N < 5) families were dropped from the comparison
| group because some history of sexual abuse was ascertained."
|
| So roughly 5% (<5 of 84) of the control group were discovered to
| have themselves been abused and needed to be dropped from the
| study. I was once in a law lecture on medical ethics. We were
| discussing genetic testing of newborns and how this could detect
| incest/abuse. A medical doctor in the class was dead against such
| testing. In his experience, amongst pregnant teenagers (17 and
| younger) about 10% were pregnant by their own fathers/brothers.
| His opinion was that our society is not ready to deal with this,
| that such abuse is far more common than anyone is willing to
| admit. He actually said: You better build some more prisons
| before you start testing babies for this. The OP study seems in
| line with his numbers.
| pawelmurias wrote:
| Why should locking up child abusers be controversial?
| sacred_numbers wrote:
| That was my thought at first as well, but thinking about it
| more, if abusers find out that genetic testing is routinely
| happening they will just not allow the victim to receive
| medical treatment at all, which would be worse for the victim
| than the status quo. Worst case scenario they would get rid
| of the evidence completely, either by forced back-alley
| abortion or murder.
| vasco wrote:
| This seems like a second order effect that is surely much
| lower than fixing the first order effect of protecting
| underage pregnant women and arresting their abusers. Surely
| some abusers would prevent women from getting help, but we
| shouldn't deny help to those that we can, that just seems
| utterly crazy to me.
| dralley wrote:
| "First, do no harm".
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Because a doctor's duty is to their patient, not the justice
| system. Breaking up the family might not be the best thing
| for the pregnant girl or newborn. I'm not saying they
| actively cover up abuse, but doctors know not to ask
| questions they don't want answered. Blanket genetic testing
| determinative to determine parentage is very dangerous
| knowledge.
| usaar333 wrote:
| I'm dubious that this lacks societal benefit overall. Even
| if we buy that breaking up the sexually abusive family is't
| the best thing (already dubious), there's strong second
| order effects of this disincentiving abuse.
|
| Automatic genetic testing also has other advantages of
| preventing future paternity disputes.
|
| Honestly, this would be an interesting thing for a single
| state to run an experiment with and see how behaviors
| change.
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| While society would no doubt benefit from outing abusers,
| teen births as a whole are a tiny portion of births. 10%
| of a small number is a small number.
|
| Given women cheat at the same rates as men, blanket
| genetic testing would break up a significant amount of
| families. That's why some countries (France for example)
| ban paternity tests.
| spamizbad wrote:
| Aren't doctors mandatory reporters in the United States?
| suifbwish wrote:
| Their primary directive legal or not is to uphold the
| oath they took to do no harm. If reporting would cause
| them to violate this ancient creed then it is for they to
| decide what they will do.
| emodendroket wrote:
| Sure, if they want to risk being stripped of their
| license, they can flout the law.
| pfortuny wrote:
| That law (in this case) is so difficult to enforce that
| it matters very little.
| [deleted]
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Mandatory reporters, not mandatory investigators. If they
| have no knowledge of the abuse they have nothing to
| report. If the girl says that her boyfriend is the
| father, the doctor isn't going to run extra tests just to
| prove her wrong. There is no medical advantage to the
| patient in such testing. Doctors are not cops.
| fullstop wrote:
| The only controversial thing I can think of here is when it
| comes to the definition of abuse. People are on the sex
| offender registry for public urination, although I suspect
| that this happens more often with repeat offenders.
| throwanem wrote:
| Locking up child abusers isn't controversial. Finding out the
| vast majority of them get away with it scot free seems like
| it would be controversial as hell.
| NoImmatureAdHom wrote:
| "In a few cases (N < 5) families were dropped from the
| comparison group because some history of sexual abuse was
| ascertained."
|
| I think you are misinterpreting. First, they say:
|
| "...information was obtained about any possible unwanted sexual
| experiences of the comparison females _or other family members_
| "
|
| So interpreting it as 5 of 84 women is incorrect. It's min 5
| people of 84 _families_. Given a mean family size of perhaps
| 3.5 (if by "family" they mean "nuclear family", though I bet
| they include anyone you know about really--Uncle Bob would
| count, and one report per family with reports) it's more like 5
| out of 294 people, or _1.7%_. And I don 't think they share
| their exclusion criteria, which isn't a good sign. And there's
| a significant selection bias given how they recruited (in a
| newspaper, for people who have the free time and/or low wealth
| enough to want to do a study, and in particular on female
| growth and development).
|
| I think your comment is getting attention because you're
| offering an idea that people like, and some anecdata to back it
| up. It's a classic problem of the modern world, things that
| people _want_ to believe get a lot of attention, out of
| proportion to their actual frequency. I think you, and others
| here, _want_ to believe the situation is worse than it is, or
| worse than the data here warrant believing, because you 're
| going to get rewarded for acting as if the appealing idea is
| the case. I don't mean you are sitting there, consciously
| _thinking_ that, but the rewards (here some updoots on HN)
| shape your behavior behind the scenes anyway. This is how we
| get news that paints a grotesquely distorted view of the world:
| people want to hear about how a crazed soccer mom murdered all
| her kids in the bathtub, and critically it is _profitable_.
| They don 't want to hear that everything was fine in Peoria, IL
| last night.
|
| I would bet a lot of money that the picture you paint with the
| study's numbers is substantially false. For one, your
| interpretation of the numbers they give is wrong. Second, the
| study doesn't appear well done. It's a little old, but it also
| has a lot of indicators that it isn't of high quality (e.g.,
| lots of "p<0.05", but no "p<0.001"--see p curves). I haven't
| read it in detail and won't because my spidey senses say it's
| not worth it based on what I've seen skimming.
| woah wrote:
| > I haven't read it in detail and won't because my spidey
| senses say it's not worth it based on what I've seen
| skimming.
|
| Wow thanks for this extremely well researched and
| authoritative opinion
| NoImmatureAdHom wrote:
| I don't make any claims on the basis of authority, the math
| in the comment speaks for itself.
| tomcam wrote:
| That whole comment was chilling AF
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Chilling but also a little reassuring. If you are a victim,
| knowing that a large percentage of the population has also
| been abused can help recovery. It says that it is very
| possible to be a victim and go on to a normal life.
|
| Want something very chilling? First year criminal law lecture
| on rape. Professor says "We have about a hundred people in
| this room. None of you future lawyers have criminal records.
| Statistically speaking, about fifteen of the fifty or so
| women here are victims. And probably fifteen of the men are
| rapists." Also see the opening sequence of the movie
| _Copycat_ (1995) where Sigourney Weaver 's character does a
| similar trick regarding serial killers.
| wpietri wrote:
| There is some evidence that the proportion for the men is a
| bit different. According to one study, it was about 6% of
| men. About 2/3rds of those men committed multiple rapes, ~6
| each. Details here:
| https://yesmeansyesblog.wordpress.com/2009/11/12/meet-the-
| pr...
|
| Intuitively, that makes sense. If people figure out how to
| get away with something, some of them are going to keep
| doing it. E.g., if I think about the people I knew in high
| school, most didn't shoplift, but there were a couple who
| did it a whole bunch.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Alcohol. We can get into the definitions of consent, but
| suffice to say that there are a large number of rapes
| committed by drunk highschool kids. Many wake up, regret
| everything about what happened, and never allow
| themselves to get into such a situation again.
| klipt wrote:
| Interesting how she assumed none of the men would be raped.
| Newer CDC stats (since ~2010 when they started asking men
| if they've ever been "made to penetrate" by a woman) show
| that female-on-male rape happens a lot more often than
| people think.
|
| https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/11/the-
| unde...
| sandworm101 wrote:
| I had that discussion with her. She was actually an open
| lesbian, part of the early gay marriage push in new
| england. At the time (early 2000s) there were some states
| with old laws that also made female-on-female rape
| physically impossible. Canada recently abolished "rape"
| as a distinct crime, instead placing it on the far end of
| a sexual assault spectrum. I think this is probably the
| best way forwards.
| klipt wrote:
| That's part of the solution, but we also need to
| challenge societal gender biases that assume men can't be
| victims. If you look at the CDC stats something like
| 1/3rd of people victimized in any year are men, but if
| you look at crimes reported to police it drops to
| something like 1% of victims being men. It implies men
| are much less likely to report being raped to the police.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| or male-on-male rape
| klipt wrote:
| That too, but the CDC stats suggest that female-on-male
| is more prevalent than male-on-male, although they call
| female-on-male "made to penetrate" and only call male-on-
| male "rape" which confuses people into thinking the
| opposite.
| tomp wrote:
| Are people (and law professors in particular) stupid enough
| to apply this "1-on-1" logic to other crimes as well (e.g.
| " _n_ people victims of burglary " => " _n_ thiefs ") or
| only to rape?
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > Chilling but also a little reassuring. If you are a
| victim, knowing that a large percentage of the population
| has also been abused can help recovery.
|
| "Misery loves company" is indeed a common attitude, but I'm
| not sure it's especially healthy.
| Mezzie wrote:
| It's not about loving company.
|
| I'm traumatized from childhood abuse (but not sexual
| abuse), and knowing how many people are neglected/abused
| by their caregivers lets me know that:
|
| a.) There is nothing about me that caused the situation.
| Since I'm a very strange human, that's good to know: They
| weren't abusing me because I was too hard to parent or
| because I didn't act like a normal child.
|
| b.) "This too shall pass." Trauma has impacts on my life,
| but, with the example of others, I can move on and make
| decisions that help address the damage.
| wpietri wrote:
| I think "misery loves company" is distinct. One of the
| many harms of sexual abuse is shame. Not coincidentally,
| shame is a tool of abusers and authoritarian power
| structures that protect abusers. For victims of abuse,
| knowing that they're not alone is a path out of shame and
| self-blame. It can help them put blame in the correct
| spot: not on what they wore or how they acted, but on the
| abusers and the abusers' support systems.
| Maursault wrote:
| "Misery loves company" is the antithesis of The Golden
| Rule, a formulation of which is "do not believe that it
| is so that you will find happiness in the misery of
| others," (I believe Seneca may have said this, but can't
| find the citation). I believe it is not the sadist
| notion, "misery loves company," that eases victims' pain,
| but instead "being in good company." I think "misery
| loves company" is a cynical twist of "being in good
| company," which is similar to left-handers learning of
| famous left-handers, or a depressive learning that
| Lincoln suffered from depression, reducing or eliminating
| feeling alone or isolated and disconneted.
| tremon wrote:
| The Dutch equivalent of "misery loves company" is
| "gedeelde smart is halve smart", which roughly translates
| to "a burden shared is a burden halved". I've never
| before interpreted that phrase in any other way than an
| acknowledgement that personal problems are easier to bear
| if you have someone to confide in. I certainly wouldn't
| interpret it as a cynical comment on codependency.
|
| But maybe I've always misinterpreted the English phrase.
| Is there a different English saying that's closer to the
| Dutch meaning?
| PebblesRox wrote:
| Maybe "many hands make light labor?" Though that one
| seems more specific/literal than the Dutch version.
|
| The phrase "misery loves company" makes me think of this
| Calvin and Hobbes strip, so I guess it has cynical
| connotations for me:
|
| https://mobile.twitter.com/Calvinn_Hobbes/status/12171067
| 859...
|
| Though I wouldn't apply this phrase to the situation of
| victims feeling comforted by the knowledge that they're
| not the only ones.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| That is not at all the point.
|
| It helps to know that you are not the only one who has
| suffered injustice.
| ascar wrote:
| While that story might be intimidating I can't help but
| think it's statistical nonsense and discredits the
| professors integrity.
|
| Starting from the assumption that general population
| numbers apply to a group of law students (I assume that he
| doesn't have statistics about rape among law students) on
| to the assumption that there is a 1 to 1 relationship
| between rape victims and rapists. I would assume there to
| be more victims than offenders.
|
| Just seems a rather weird move to tell your first year
| students a significant number of their fellows and friends
| are either victims or rapists just to make a point about
| unsolved rape.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> I would assume there to be more victims than
| offenders.
|
| Why? Women who have been abused are often abused by more
| than one person.
|
| >>just to make a point about unsolved rape.
|
| _She_ was making multiple points, several of which had
| nothing to do with rape. It was about criminality. Why we
| punish crimes the way we do. The strain on police
| /judicial resources. Diversionary programs. The
| prevalence of plea bargaining. and and and. A first year
| law lecture is a very nuanced thing.
| thatcat wrote:
| What's her point other than that our system is
| ineffective and incredibly wasteful?
| chefandy wrote:
| It sounds like the professor made it clear she was
| speaking in terms of population averages. So unless you
| can find empirical evidence that those statistics _don
| 't_ apply to that slice of the population, then there's
| absolutely no problem with what she said. She didn't say
| "15 of the men in this class are rapists."
|
| Law students aren't learning to be statisticians,
| epidemiologists, or policy wonks. Emotionally moving
| people to act upon a collection of documented facts-- be
| it in trial or a contract negotiation-- requires
| persuasive speaking and strategy. She made the breadth
| and consequences of rape palpable to her students not
| only by giving it a face, but giving it _their faces._
| Since this poster, years later, immediately recalled that
| story when prompted, I reckon it was thoroughly
| compelling.
| fiestaman wrote:
| The odds that a group of 100 law students would perfectly
| represent the overall population are astronomical.
|
| You cannot extend population-level averages to a group of
| people without first proving that group is representative
| of the population.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Perhaps everyone in the room knew that. Perhaps it was
| even said. Were you there?
| erosenbe0 wrote:
| Uhh lawyers and law students can have criminal records.
| Commonly.
| astura wrote:
| Certain criminal convictions (like rape) prevent you from
| being accepted by the bar. Most people don't go to law
| school when they know they are ineligible to actually
| practice law (even if a law school actually accepted a
| convicted rapist).
|
| The school they were teaching at probably disqualified
| anyone with any criminal record from admission.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| By criminal record she clearly mean the sort of things
| that would prevent you from being accepted to the bar/law
| school. Someone with a rape conviction as an adult
| wouldn't be sitting in a first year law lecture. Is is
| normal for law schools not to accept candidates that will
| not be able to become lawyers.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| Was the aim of the lecturer to teach law or to incite a
| random lynching? Or to make the co-students distrust each
| other for no more reason than they would want to distrust
| any other random person?
|
| Go to a sufficiently large rock concert and the lead singer
| would be able to say "statistically at least one of you are
| a murderer!" Which might be "statistically correct" but all
| that would accomplish is for everyone to question his or
| her sanity.
| tomcam wrote:
| I never use the word victim for me anyway. I pretty much
| overachieved in most ways so I could get the fuck out of my
| zip code and never seen those people again
| fullstop wrote:
| My wife was summoned for jury duty, and the case had to do with
| sexual abuse. At jury selection time they ask if a prospective
| juror would have difficulty being impartial because of the
| nature of the case. If you were uncomfortable discussing the
| matter, you could ask to be taken aside to discuss without the
| others in the room hearing it.
|
| Out of a few dozen people, seven women left the room to explain
| why they could not be impartial, some of them returning in
| tears. They weren't gone for a short while, either, many of
| them took 20 or 30 minutes before returning to the court room.
| One of them was called back out of the room at the very end,
| and my wife suspects that she was actively being abused and
| this was an opportunity to seek help without the abuser being
| present.
|
| This isn't something that I have to personally worry about if
| I'm by myself, but it's something that so many women _do_ have
| to worry about all the time. I can 't even imagine the burden
| that women must carry.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| edit: deleted, not worth trying to add any discussion to a
| topic like this.
| fullstop wrote:
| > Seems like a hell of a leap. What are the odds someone is
| being abused concurrent with jury duty vs any other time in
| their life up until that point?
|
| Not really. In abusive relationships, the abuser often
| controls every aspect of the abused person's life and there
| are not opportunities to seek help without the abuser
| knowing. It's why there are sometimes signs in the
| bathrooms of women's health clinics informing the patient
| to initial their sample cup in red marker if they are being
| abused or have something that they wish to discuss in
| private. This may well have been one of her only chances to
| speak with someone without an abuser knowing.
|
| She was the _only_ one called back when the selection was
| complete. I 've been called for jury duty several times and
| this has never happened while I was there.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| We've all heard that cliched phrase about the word
| "assume."
|
| This happened in a courthouse, not a hospital. I think
| the context of the discussion behind closed doors could
| have just as easily been "that is so bad you really need
| to consider reporting it" or even something more mundane.
| In any case, seems a little farcical to assume that meant
| she was actively being abused though it certainly seems
| like a decent one of many possibilities.
|
| I'm not saying your theory isn't plausible. I'm saying
| you're getting tunnel vision on the first plausible thing
| you came across.
| fullstop wrote:
| I think that you may have misunderstood me. The woman
| left the room to discuss the matter, returned to the
| court room in tears, and was called back _again_ after
| the selection process was completed.
|
| I hear hoofbeats and I don't think that it's zebras.
| throwanem wrote:
| A notable trait of courthouses is that they are very
| frequently attended by law enforcement officers to whom
| such a report could be made.
|
| Especially given how little interest court personnel
| typically take in individual panelists, why _assume_
| everyone with whom you 're putting so much effort into
| arguing is so probably wrong in our analysis of what this
| interaction likely was?
| throwanem wrote:
| Why not? It's not as if the exemption questionnaire on the
| back of the summons has a checkbox for it.
|
| I've been called for jury duty any number of times. Not
| once has anyone ever called me, personally, out of one room
| and into another - always as part of a group of selectees
| heading to a courtroom or voir dire or whatever. Between
| that and everything else, it doesn't seem like a leap at
| all.
| emodendroket wrote:
| Abuse is often ongoing for long periods of time, so I don't
| know that it's necessarily implausible.
| Mezzie wrote:
| > This isn't something that I have to personally worry about
| if I'm by myself, but it's something that so many women do
| have to worry about all the time. I can't even imagine the
| burden that women must carry.
|
| Not just women, but children. I was aware that I could be
| sexually assaulted/harrassed and what to do about it by the
| time I was 5, and I started getting uncomfortable comments in
| person around age 11. I'm also exceptionally lucky and have
| never actually been assaulted.
|
| Not particularly relevant to most people here, but some of
| you will have daughters, so.
|
| Edit: Also relevant potentially to your colleagues and co-
| workers, since one reason I stopped participating in tech
| spaces while I was a teenager (I still coded, just only alone
| or anonymously) was because I felt unsafe being a 13-14 year
| old girl who was the only female in a room/space with dozens
| of men, some of whom were 2-3 times my age. I don't think I
| can overstate the danger alarm bells, especially given how
| rampant homophobia was back then and I was also gay.
| astura wrote:
| >I started getting uncomfortable comments in person around
| age 11.
|
| Agreed with this, I (woman) started getting regularly cat-
| called on the street every time I left my house around
| 12-13.
|
| I was a young looking child to boot.
| ericbarrett wrote:
| One of my high school friends told me her first creeper
| catcall was when she was 10. A guy in a pickup rolled
| alongside her for two blocks saying disgusting things and
| trying to convince her to get in the cab.
| brnaftr360 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| tasha0663 wrote:
| > 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.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| 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.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| 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.
| int0x2e wrote:
| This is well off the main thread here so please feel free
| to ignore my request, but as a loving parent of a 3 year-
| old girl, I worry about when/how do we explain to her what
| is and isn't okay for adults (and other kids) to do around
| her, and how she can protect herself, seek help or
| otherwise handle a situation.
|
| Since you mentioned you were aware of the danger when you
| were as young as 5 - when and how would you suggest one
| could help let their daughter know about these risks
| without inducing some much fear and anxiety that will end
| up making her avoid too many positive experiences?
| heresie-dabord wrote:
| A complementary anecdote, I think worth adding here. I (male,
| white) served on a jury that comprised six women. The trial
| was a charge of sexual assault.
|
| Every one of them had a personal tale of assault to tell. It
| was as tense in the deliberations as you can imagine... like
| 12 Angry Men [1] but even more harrowing.
|
| I am convinced that the only reason we were able to arrive at
| a just verdict is because one of these jurors also had the
| courage to discuss the case of her beloved relative who was
| _falsely_ accused of rape and was exonerated only many years
| later, after his life had been destroyed.
|
| We were able to focus on the evidence. But it was _not_ an
| easy deliberation.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12_Angry_Men_(1957_film)
| TigeriusKirk wrote:
| Similar experience here. In the last few months I was in the
| selection pool for a domestic abuse case. The judge asked if
| anyone had personal experience with domestic abuse and then
| asked each juror who raised their hand if they wanted to
| discuss it in private. Some gave a brief version of their
| story in the courtroom, usually it was their parents while
| they were growing up. Some preferred privacy, which the judge
| said they'd come back to later.
|
| The jury selection was completed without ever calling those
| people in for private explanations. No one who had raised
| their hand for that question was selected.
|
| As far as impartiality goes, I certainly felt some bias
| against the accused just based on the nature of the crime and
| his courtroom demeanor. But I was resolved that I would keep
| that in mind if I was selected and treat him as fairly as
| possible despite that. Impartiality is the ideal, and you
| usually have to make the effort to make it happen. In some
| circumstances where you have personal experience with similar
| crimes, that may be too much to ask.
| cortesoft wrote:
| When I was in a jury pool for a murder trial, I remember
| being shocked at how many people raised their hand when the
| question of whether they had personal experience with murder
| was asked. I figured barely anyone would raise their hand,
| but so many people had either had a close family member
| murdered, or were themselves accused of murder at some point.
| I really realized how sheltered my life has been.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| People lie to get out of jury duty especially trials
| expected to be long and/or shocking.
| int0x2e wrote:
| The US is an extremely violent place. On most violent crime
| categories, it ranks highest among developed nations.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| If they came back in tears and were removed from the jury,
| then the system worked. A clearly impartial potential juror
| was removed and a past victim was saved from a horrible
| experience of sitting through such testimony. But what about
| those who have been abused but aren't in tears? This came up
| very recently. One of the Ghislaine Maxwell jurors discussed
| _his_ history of being abused with other jurors. The question
| becomes then whether anyone who has been abused can ever be
| impartial about abuse. To say that they cannot, imho, does
| victims a great disservice.
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-59884806
| kmonsen wrote:
| If you remove any jurors with history of abuse, do you not
| remove all the people that have life experience that could
| be relevant?
|
| With a jury of only lets say strong white males that have
| never been abused or abuse adjacent, but have had several
| experience where they felt woman didn't give them enough
| respect are we that would seem a lot worse to me. Obviously
| this sounds like an extreme example, but the reality is
| that such a large part of the population has been the
| victim in abuse situations that you are going to disqualify
| into a situation similar to this.
| tomp wrote:
| I'm a white male who's never been sexually abused but I
| can clearly see that's wrong.
|
| This, and being more objective / less emotional (due to
| not seeing it personally) would probably make me a better
| juror in such a case than someone who's personally
| experienced it.
| kmonsen wrote:
| I don't know, I am also a white male and I feel I cannot
| understand how abuse really works. Of course this might
| just be me being dense, doesn't say anything about you or
| anyone else.
| not2b wrote:
| With no experience of abuse, you might more likely to be
| persuaded by arguments like "why didn't she report it
| earlier" than people with actual experience, who know
| exactly why.
| kazinator wrote:
| I think the whole concept of random citizens being pulled
| in for jury duty is idiotic.
|
| Jurors should be professionals who are trained in being
| jurors: who, for one thing, thoroughly understand topics
| in critical reasoning such as fallacies, and cognitive
| biases.
|
| They should be properly paid, and so are not sitting
| there on a Saturday morning, socking it to the defendant
| out of spite for being dragged out of their regular lives
| without adequate compensation.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| That system exists. They are called bench trials. No
| defendant is forced us submit to a jury. The defendant
| doesn't want a jury because he thinks that it will "sock
| it to him" on a Saturday. He wants a jury because he
| thinks that his fellow citizens will see that the
| government is improperly accusing him of a crime. The
| defendant has the right to a trial by people who are not
| part of the same government that has accused him. The
| fact that the jurors don't want to be there, that they
| have lives away from the court, is exactly what the
| defendant wants.
| mavhc wrote:
| Among the small share and number of federal defendants
| who went to trial in fiscal 2018, those who opted for a
| bench trial - that is, one in which the verdict is handed
| down by a judge - fared better than those who opted for a
| jury trial. Around four-in-ten defendants who faced a
| bench trial (38%) were acquitted, compared with just 14%
| of those who faced a jury trial.
|
| https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-
| tank/2019/06/11/only-2-of-f...
| istjohn wrote:
| I have to imagine the defendants who opt for a bench
| trial have reasons for making that choice that don't
| necessarily apply to the defendants who choose a jury
| trial.
| kazinator wrote:
| > _exactly what the defendant wants_
|
| Only if the defendant is a fool. People being the way
| people are, are just as likely to resent the defendant as
| the root cause of why they have to be there at all as the
| are to resent the system (and side with the defendant out
| of spite for the system).
|
| The latter will likely only happen in a trial that is
| between the defendant and the system (i.e. the state).
|
| In, say, a criminal trial in which the victim isn't the
| state, reluctant, resentful jurors will sock it to the
| defendant. If there is any uncertainty in the decision,
| that sentiment may sway it.
|
| Resentment of the jury duty concept will predispose
| jurors to cave in to their social prejudices. Oh, he must
| have done it; he's a tattoo-covered, prematurely-aged
| chain smoker with three gold teeth. Everything about this
| guy says "criminal". Fuck this asshole for making me be
| here on a Saturday.
|
| Time is an issue. People who are impatient and just want
| something to be over will not do a good job of sifting
| through things to get to the truth, which takes time and
| patience.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| I assume defendants are getting expert advice from
| attorneys when they make this decision. They should
| theoretically know _way_ more about this than you or I.
| MrLeap wrote:
| A professional Jury opens up avenues for corruption.
|
| Maybe someday we can simulate human brains well enough to
| run the markovs on governance ideas to see if it's worth
| it.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > A professional Jury opens up avenues for corruption
|
| Wouldn't the same logic reject professional judges and
| attorneys?
| kazinator wrote:
| Well, the existence of a jury system is a form of that
| rejection.
| kmonsen wrote:
| Norway just removed jury duty, and if I remembered
| correctly the last case that had jury duty the actual
| judges put the jury verdict aside as they all agreed the
| jury had misunderstood the law.
|
| Of course judges are not always good as well. In the US
| they are often elected by a blood thirsty population. If
| they are not elected that has other issues in that the
| will of the people is not held by the judges.
| bzbarsky wrote:
| Why was the jury required to understand the law? That's
| not a reasonable expectation for random people off the
| street.
|
| In the US, juries typically decide questions of _fact_
| that are not already agreed upon by both parties (i.e.
| are in dispute). Judges handle questions of law.
| mywacaday wrote:
| Rightly or wrongly its not about disservice to a victim
| turning up for jury duty its about disservice to the
| accused. Imagine if you were wrongly prosecuted for for
| abuse, found guilty and then discovered that three members
| of the jury had themselves suffered the same abuse you were
| accused of, you'd immediately look for a re-trial.
| rectang wrote:
| > _If they came back in tears and were removed from the
| jury, then the system worked._
|
| Not true, since no _abusers_ came back in tears and were
| removed from the jury.
|
| Or do you consider abusers impartial but abuse victims
| biased?
| deanCommie wrote:
| I find the very premise of trying to find an "impartial"
| jury very strange. It makes sense at first pass, but falls
| apart soon after.
|
| Are these not to be a jury of my "peers". Are not all
| humans biased in one way or another. If being abused
| creates bias, why wouldn't NOT being abused also not create
| bias. We don't have perfect access to information.
| Sometimes in order to be considered impartial, jurors are
| basically expected to have no familiarity with basic
| fundamental news stories. Are people so disconnected from
| reality really "peers"?
|
| Ultimately, I guess, it's the best we can do.
| not2b wrote:
| The "peers" part is obsolete. In the old English system,
| a peasant was tried by other peasants, a noble by other
| nobles. There's no longer a notion that some people are
| your peers and others aren't.
| 300bps wrote:
| _Are not all humans biased in one way or another_
|
| This appears to be binary thinking. There are nearly
| infinite degrees of bias. Strong emotions are one way to
| ensure that someone is heavily biased. That's what the
| jury system is trying to avoid.
|
| So someone who has never been abused can still be biased
| in literally any way. But the presumption is that without
| having such an emotional personal experience with it
| means they are less likely to be heavily biased. They'll
| be more likely to be swayed by the testimony in court
| rather than their experience outside of the court room.
| woodruffw wrote:
| Impartiality in a jury trial context doesn't refer to the
| absence of biases (we all have them and truly getting rid
| of them is an impossible task), but a conscious effect by
| the jurors to discharge their office without _prejudice_
| , i.e., without allowing their biases to manifest as
| judgments independent of the evidence presented in court.
|
| Put another way: there wouldn't be a point in
| deliberation if we didn't have biases. Our justice system
| trusts and (weakly) attempts to enforce the gap between
| those biases and prejudices that would actually interfere
| with the court's duty.
| jerf wrote:
| And to put it another way, the job of a juror is to
| convict or exonerate the person on trial, not to convict
| or exonerate their own abusers by proxy.
|
| Vulcans might not have a problem with this, but humans so
| obviously do that pretending otherwise is impractical.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| I've served on a few juries. From my experience, the
| average person thinks its much easier to get out of it
| due to biases than it actually is.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| If you're accused but innocent and provide a good case
| for your innocence, but a juror provides a crying
| testimony that no one believed them in the jury room,
| leading to you being sentenced, you'd probably think
| differently.
|
| Sure, we can't get a perfectly impartial jury. But
| someone with a past trauma probably won't be able to
| judge the case for its merits.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| If we are removing all jurors who have been abused because
| they are 'not impartial', aren't we left with a collection of
| people who are totally ignorant?
|
| The jury has to judge how a reasonable person would act in a
| certain situation, who is lying and who is telling the truth.
|
| Off one end, we have victim blamind and rapists walking free,
| off another end, uk had "serial liar" who invented false rape
| allegations and sent 9 innocent people to jail.
| naasking wrote:
| > The jury has to judge how a reasonable person would act
| in a certain situation, who is lying and who is telling the
| truth.
|
| And they should do this by weighing the evidence
| impartially, not emotionally.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Exactly. The juror's ignorance or lack of direct
| experience with the alleged offense does not make him
| less able to evaluate the evidence. It is the
| prosecution's job to present the evidence with enough
| clarity to remove reasonable doubt.
| int0x2e wrote:
| But it does play a part if the jurors lack critical
| context. If no one on the jury can understand how a
| victim of sexual assault could be frozen during an
| attack, they might fall into the trap of thinking things
| like "how could it have been rape if she never said
| 'no'?" or alternatively, they could cling to some things
| like a male victim being aroused and assume that means
| the act was consensual. One could argue that this could
| simply be explained by the prosecution via expert witness
| - but I think we all know the Dunning-Kruger effect well
| enough by now to understand how that won't work in all
| cases.
|
| I don't know if we should (or even can) aim to have a
| victim included on any set of jurors, but removing them
| altogether seems like a very bad strategy.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| I think it _is_ up to the prosecutor and expert witnesses
| to deal with that. The presumption is that the defendant
| is innocent. If the prosecution can not make a convincing
| case to an _impartial_ jury (not an expert jury), then
| the defendant goes free. It 's not perfect, but it seems
| better than the alternatives.
| jeffbee wrote:
| The whole jury system in founded on ignorance. Both sides
| don't want anyone who was a cop, knows any cops, has
| studied the law, or was ever arrested. Often, people with
| any kind of higher education will be dismissed. Last time I
| went to jury duty they asked anyone who had ever been party
| to any legal matter to leave. It's pretty wild.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| I feel this case goes even further than the examples
| given. Not very familiar with US system, but suppose we
| had a case of a bar braul, would we ask anyone who has
| ever had a fight to leave?
| fatbird wrote:
| One of my philosophy professors was excluded from jury
| selection, and happened to run into the lawyer who
| excluded him shortly after in the bathroom, and asked
| why. The lawyer said it was because he wrote
| Philosophical Quarterly on his questionnaire, and that he
| routinely excludes people like my professor who are
| highly educated.
|
| Why? my professor asked.
|
| Because you don't listen to the lawyers or the judge, he
| was told. "Big brain" people try to play Matlock and
| solve the case themselves, or invent theories in their
| imagination, or get into absurd arguments in the jury
| room. They screw up the whole process that's designed to
| bring a high level of rigour and fairness to the
| situation--what should and shouldn't be considered, how
| the law applies, etc. They're wild cards that turn trials
| into a game of chance instead of an orderly adversarial
| confrontation that's heavily regulated.
|
| People mock jurors routinely, especially the ones who
| explain their reasoning in interviews afterwards. But
| studies routinely find that judges agree with the jury's
| verdict about 80% of the time.
| int_19h wrote:
| It sounds like he's basically saying that jury should be
| pro forma, rather than actually mattering.
| fatbird wrote:
| No, because it's an adversarial process where the jury
| has to choose between the two sides. On each particular,
| one side wins and the other loses. Their decisions
| matter.
|
| But here's the thing: their decisions, ideally, should be
| made on the basis of the evidence presented to them,
| their judgement of the credibility of the witnesses, and
| the instructions of the judge in how to map the facts as
| they determine them, to the law as described to them.
|
| We shouldn't be okay with a juror voting guilty because
| of the defendent's race; we shouldn't be okay with
| someone who says "I'm just going to flip a coin"; I'm not
| sure it's a bad thing to exclude people who, in the
| experience of the lawyers trying the case, don't pay
| attention and invent their own rationales out of whole
| cloth and make an irrational decision by the standards of
| the legal reasoning the trial is supposed to provide.
| denismenace wrote:
| What assures them that non "Big brain" people won't do
| the same thing? I think for most people it would more
| interesting running through the scenarios in your head,
| instead of listening to other people (lawyers) speak.
| fatbird wrote:
| Their experience, I guess. I know that, of the university
| professors and professional engineers I know, they are
| some of the smartest and also some of the dumbest people
| I've ever met. It's like they invent new ways to be
| wrong, sometimes. I can easily imagine any of them in a
| jury room talking complete nonsense about who did what
| and why and how the law shouldn't be that way or mean
| that and so they have to acquit--anything but actually
| listen, follow along, and apply the judge's instructions.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| I see what they mean, but still doesn't seem good. I
| would assume "big brained" witness especially defendants
| are told by their lawyers to shut up for similar reasons,
| too.
| fatbird wrote:
| Hans Reiser would almost certainly be free today if he
| hadn't overruled his lawyer and taken the stand in his
| own defence.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Defendants often don't testify at all, it's impossible
| for them to be impartial and generally they can only hurt
| themselves. They have the presumption of innocence and
| they don't have to say a word to establish that.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| Good points
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> Both sides don't want anyone who was a cop
|
| Except for cops. Cops certainly like to have fellow cops
| on their juries. There is an old joke about removing
| Manhattan jury cases to Staten Island. All the NYPD cops
| seem to retire there. So if the case involves potential
| police wrongdoing or even just police testimony, one side
| wants a Staten Island jury as many jurors will have at
| least some familial connection to the police.
| alasdair_ wrote:
| The same thing happens with national security cases being
| tried in Virginia. This is one of the main reasons
| Snowden is unwilling to return to the US - the jury would
| be massively rigged against him.
| vkou wrote:
| Is it any more 'rigged' than many of jury trials that do
| go through?
| Mezzie wrote:
| Or, you know, _abusers_.
|
| Which I consider a larger problem. Since so much abuse is
| hidden, the _perpetrators_ also can sit on juries related
| to sexual assault cases. Delightful.
| bArray wrote:
| > So roughly 5% (<5 of 84) of the control group were discovered
| to have themselves been abused and needed to be dropped from
| the study.
|
| I hope this is accidental bias, or a statistical anomaly. It
| could be for example that this is overrepresented from the
| pooled community. I think it would also be important to somehow
| scale/categorize the level of abuse (physical vs non-physical,
| penetrative vs non-penetrative, etc).
|
| If it really is 5% (1 in 20 girls) then this would outrank
| something like COVID in terms of importance.
|
| > The comparison sample (n = 82) was recruited via
| advertisements in community newspapers and posters in welfare,
| daycare, and community facilities in the same neighborhoods in
| which the abused participants lived. Comparison families
| contacted study personnel and were screened for eligibility,
| which included having no prior contact with protective service
| agencies and being demographically similar to a same-aged
| abused participant. At the time of study entry, comparison
| families were not informed that the study involved sexually
| abused females; rather, they were told that the study was of
| "female growth and development."
|
| I wonder whether this still ended up being a self-selecting
| group. I can imagine a scenario where a young girl has an awful
| experience growing up, wants to see change in the upbringing of
| females and becomes somewhat engaged in related activities.
|
| > He actually said: You better build some more prisons before
| you start testing babies for this.
|
| I don't think a lack of facilities to deal with a problem is a
| good reason for not addressing it. At the very least we need to
| understand the scale of the problem, even if the problem
| remains unaddressed for the time being.
| NoImmatureAdHom wrote:
| Your intuition is correct, 5% isn't correct. From another
| comment I made in this thread:
|
| "In a few cases (N < 5) families were dropped from the
| comparison group because some history of sexual abuse was
| ascertained."
|
| I think you are misinterpreting. First, they say:
|
| "...information was obtained about any possible unwanted
| sexual experiences of the comparison females or other family
| members"
|
| So interpreting it as 5 of 84 women is incorrect. It's min 5
| people of 84 families. Given a mean family size of perhaps
| 3.5 (if by "family" they mean "nuclear family", though I bet
| they include anyone you know about really--Uncle Bob would
| count, and one report per family with reports) it's more like
| 5 out of 294 people, or 1.7%. And I don't think they share
| their exclusion criteria, which isn't a good sign. And
| there's a significant selection bias given how they recruited
| (in a newspaper, for people who have the free time and/or low
| wealth enough to want to do a study, and in particular on
| female growth and development).
| v64 wrote:
| > If it really is 5% (1 in 20 girls) then this would outrank
| something like COVID in terms of importance.
|
| If you want more information on this, Besser van der Kolk's
| The Body Keeps the Score, considered to be one of the
| definitive books on the study of psychological trauma,
| discusses this in Chapter 10, "Developmental Trauma: The
| Hidden Epidemic".
|
| While I don't have the book in front of me to quote explicit
| statistics, the chapter references a number of research
| studies backing up the conclusion of the doctor in
| sandworm101's comment.
| pfortuny wrote:
| Wanted to say the same thing.
| [deleted]
| sandworm101 wrote:
| We don't have hard numbers on kids, but we have some very
| solid numbers from young adults.
|
| From 2020 Statistics Canada study of university students:
|
| https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/85-002-x/2020001/article.
| ..
|
| >> One in ten (11%) women students experienced a sexual
| assault in a postsecondary setting during the previous year.
| About one in five (19%) women who were sexually assaulted
| said that the assault took the form of a sexual activity to
| which they did not consent after they had agreed to another
| form of sexual activity--for example, agreeing to have
| protected sex and then learning it had been unprotected sex.
|
| >> Less than one in ten women (8%) and men (6%) who
| experienced sexual assault, and less than one in ten women
| (9%) and men (4%) who had experienced unwanted sexualized
| behaviours spoke about what happened
|
| Given that last stat, we should take whatever number we have
| for reported assaults' and multiply it by at least ten to
| cover all the unreported events.
| drevil-v2 wrote:
| >> One in ten (11%) women students experienced a sexual
| assault in a postsecondary setting during the previous
| year. About one in five (19%) women who were sexually
| assaulted said that the assault took the form of a sexual
| activity to which they did not consent after they had
| agreed to another form of sexual activity--for example,
| agreeing to have protected sex and then learning it had
| been unprotected sex.
|
| Is there a baseline for what constitutes sexual assault? Or
| is it entirely subjective?
| sandworm101 wrote:
| As this is from Statistics Canada, they would be using
| the government definitions, which include rape on the
| sexual assault spectrum.
|
| https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/rp-pr/cj-
| jp/victim/rr14_01/p10...
| drevil-v2 wrote:
| Obviously rape would be at one end of the spectrum but
| what's the distribution of incidents over the entire
| spectrum?
|
| They say in that report you linked in the OP that they
| include "behaviours such as unwelcome sexual comments,
| actions or advances" which are entirely subjective.
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| Generally sexual encounters in which there is not
| informed consent between participants is considered
| assault. Someone who consents to sex with contraception
| when the sex doesn't have contraception isn't an informed
| consenting party.
| NoImmatureAdHom wrote:
| It's important to realize the 11% statistic is a statistic
| that includes non-consensual ass-grabbing in the same
| bucket with forcible rape, which isn't informative for most
| purposes and I can only imagine wasn't done in good faith.
|
| Here is from that report, things that constitute "sexual
| assault": "Sexual attack: Forcing or
| attempted forcing into any unwanted sexual activity, by
| threatening, holding down, or hurting in some way;
| Unwanted sexual touching: Touching against a person's will
| in any sexual way, including unwanted touching or grabbing,
| kissing, or fondling; Sexual activity where unable
| to consent: Subjecting to a sexual activity to which a
| person was not able to consent, including being
| intoxicated, drugged, manipulated, or forced in ways other
| than physically; Sexual activity to which a person
| did not consent, after they consented to another form of
| sexual activity (for example, agreeing to protected sex and
| then learning it had been unprotected sex)."
|
| Those things constitute 11% sexual assault number you cite.
| It's important to realize that "sexual assault" to most
| people means rape and things that are pretty close to rape,
| so that's how they'll interpret the 11% number, but the
| criteria include "Touching against a person's will in any
| sexual way, including unwanted touching or grabbing,
| kissing, or fondling;" and I don't see a breakdown by type.
| I would imagine that the vast majority of positive reports
| were in the non-consensual touching bucket. So we're
| looking at a statistic that includes non-consensual ass-
| grabbing in the same bucket with forcible rape. I guess
| I've been sexually assaulted numerous times.
|
| Don't take this to trivialize bad experiences people have
| had, take it as an attack on shoddy methods that are
| clearly designed to stoke fires of indignation rather than
| shed light on a prickly topic.
|
| >Given that last stat... I don't think you're interpreting
| this correctly.
| noptd wrote:
| I agree, bucketing all of those experiences together
| seems extremely misleading.
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| Very seriously: no, that's not an aberration. Sexual abuse is
| at a massive scale and the abuse is highly normalized.
| America still has child brides legalized such that there are
| services to look up states to travel to in order to perform a
| child marriage by age, documentation requirements, fees, etc.
| beebeepka wrote:
| What exactly are you talking about? This sounds an awful
| lot like what some Roma people practice here in the bad
| parts of Europe
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| I mean quite seriously that putting children in romantic,
| intimate relationships is legal in America. Only 6 states
| have banned marrying children. I'm emphasizing this
| because I want to point out the degree in which sexual
| violence is normalized, to the point where 5 percent of
| women in a study who believed they weren't sexually
| abused might realize they have been and be dropped out of
| the study is totally within the bounds of reality.
| Foobar8568 wrote:
| 100% of women who have taken the Parisian subway have been
| sexually harassed at least once a year. 72% while walking in
| Lausanne. Sexual harassment is rampant but we teach kids to
| not snitch or bring problems to their parents/teachers. Same
| in ocmpanies, so as far as I am concerned, 5% seems to be
| fairly low.
| hkt wrote:
| Similar story here except with journalism: I did a course in
| media law where it was explained that victims of sex crimes
| always get lifelong anonymity. Journalists must avoid "jigsaw
| identification", eg giving away details that might identify the
| victim.
|
| This means in cases of incest it is impossible to report the
| incest element because it is too easy to identify the victim if
| you say "x raped his daughter". So it appears in the press as
| though attacks are random, when actually a shocking number (10%
| seems conservative) are in the family.
|
| As a sibling comment says, it is chilling.
| Retric wrote:
| 10% would be of all teen births not all rapes. I suspect that
| 10% pregnancy number would represent a much higher percentage
| of teen rapes.
| wantsanagent wrote:
| Figure 2b also notes that of the original 82 comparison group
| individuals _13_ were dropped due to revelation of abuse.
| ryan93 wrote:
| zapdrive wrote:
| 10%? It's sickening if it's true. If building more prisons is
| what is needed to deal with this actual pandemic, then I guess
| we should start building prisons.
| lmkg wrote:
| Apparently something similar happened when X-Rays started
| becoming routine. Doctors X-raying kids saw evidence that _so
| many_ of them had a history of broken bones from abuse. It took
| a while for the medical community as a whole to acknowledge
| that widespread child abuse was actually occurring, and longer
| to wrangle with the idea that it was something that was within
| their mandate as doctors to do something about.
|
| https://reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/me33bo/did_x_ray...
|
| (Yes it's reddit, but it's Ask Historians. Responses tend to be
| high-quality because their moderation policy embraces
| Sturgeon's Law.)
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| Dealing with abused children is unfortunately common in
| pediatric medicine and is a huge reason for burnout in the
| field, because a doctor will know about neglect happening
| that's not "bad enough" to call someone about, or if they do,
| they know nothing will happen because even the services to
| get kids out of neglectful situations are themselves rife
| with abuse.
| cjaro wrote:
| The veterinary field is the same way. I saw a TON of abused
| pets & animals when I was doing vet tech work. I ultimately
| decided not to pursue vet school.
| EdwardDiego wrote:
| Don't they have mandatory reporting requirements? I know
| they exist in my jurisdiction.
| KarlKemp wrote:
| Good if they actually went where the data led them.
|
| Sigmund Freud famously changed his mind at some point: he had
| so many young female patients with stories of sexual abuse
| that he decided it must be a rather common fetish among young
| girls to make up these stories. He just couldn't believe that
| a third or so of Vienna's upper crust would rape their
| daughters.
| phkahler wrote:
| >> He just couldn't believe that a third or so of Vienna's
| upper crust would rape their daughters.
|
| Well that's why they were his patients. Duh. OTOH he wrote
| a lot about his weird ideas around sex, much of it
| projection - he apparently was the one with erotic feeling
| toward his mother. The only things Freud wrote that I agree
| with turns out were first theorized by someone else.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| There is a similar social issue waiting to blow up regarding
| genetic screening. Estimates are that 10-15% of children are
| from infidelity
| User23 wrote:
| I believe that's the rate for people who seek out a
| paternity test, which is to say are already suspicious. The
| overall population nonpaternity rate is about 3%[1].
|
| As an aside, obstetricians often notice nonpaternity
| because of the child having an impossible blood type for
| the putative father. The ones I've spoken to prefer to stay
| silent when they notice it.
|
| [1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19320216/
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Thank you for the correction.
| astura wrote:
| >Estimates are that 10-15% of children are from infidelity
|
| Extremely Misleading, from the studies I've seen these high
| numbers are percentage of people seeking paternity tests,
| not from the general public as a whole. If you're seeking a
| paternity test you already are suspecting infidelity.
| throwaway6734 wrote:
| I'm surprised genetic testing isn't always performed at
| birth
| onphonenow wrote:
| Parental testing should be mandatory at birth perhaps for
| these issues. Or at least if someone is going to go claim
| child support.
| mdavis6890 wrote:
| The father - and should be - is the one who raises the
| child. It is for this reason that (in the US) "father" of
| record is always the husband unless it is explicitly
| questioned and investigated.
|
| Assuming we're talking about a happy family with two
| eager parents, what is helped by investigating the
| child's genetic "paternity," when the father is right
| there holding the baby?
| onphonenow wrote:
| Because he may be victim of a fraud? ie, the baby is
| someone elses?
|
| Because the actual biological father may want a role in
| his childs life?
|
| Because the state has a bit of interest in accuracy in
| its medical / birth certificate and other records?
|
| Because many births are to single mothers and the absent
| father may have certain financial and other
| responsibilities for the child?
| [deleted]
| avgcorrection wrote:
| > The father [is] - and should be - the one who raises
| the child.
|
| We're implicitly dealing with two senses of the word
| "father" in this context which makes most of your
| sentences seem both commonsensical and ambigious.
| awakeasleep wrote:
| On paternity attestation forms in the usa there is a
| clause saying the marriage/legal father is not the father
| of record if the mother was in another relationship 9-10
| months ago.
| resoluteteeth wrote:
| If it was going to be mandatory it would be much better
| to do it before birth using amniotic fluid. Waiting for
| the child to be born and then suddenly telling one parent
| that it's not their biological child isn't a great idea.
| EdwardDiego wrote:
| Amniocentesis carries a small, but real, risk of
| miscarriage
| bluecalm wrote:
| Well, it's always the potential father that gets the news
| not one of the parents. Maybe it's not ideal to tell them
| once the child is born but it's still better than not
| telling them at all.
| onphonenow wrote:
| That's an interesting idea, but a fair number of families
| don't want to do amniotic fluid testing. Paternity and
| maternity issues are pretty low incidence issues, but is
| VERY rough if it pops up with a 4 year old in the mix.
|
| If you've got wrong dad in the picture, at birth is a
| good time to chase down the right father! Get him paying
| child support if needed. Non-bio dad could still decide
| to stay around if desired - but transparency / honesty on
| the table.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| It can be done with a noninvasive blood test of the
| mother. I am a firm proponent of mandatory testing so
| fathers aren't financially responsible for children that
| aren't theirs (without their knowledge and consent).
| Historically, if a father later determines they're not
| the biological parent, family court will still stick them
| with child support until the child is 18 (or even older,
| sometimes requiring college support).
|
| https://americanpregnancy.org/paternity-tests/non-
| invasive-p...
| mbreese wrote:
| What will that accomplish? If a putative father is
| already suspicious (and doesn't want to be a father),
| sure, then having a NIPT would make sense. But there is
| already an avenue for that. You would want to make that
| mandatory for all pregnancies? Not everyone wants to know
| that information and having a mandatory test could force
| people (fathers) into situations they don't want to be
| in.
|
| Kids are more than a financial responsibility.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| If it's not your kid biologically, and you're not a
| willing participant, it's not your responsibility. Pursue
| the biological parent for support. To do otherwise is
| equivalent to fraud.
|
| We don't force foster kids on people without their
| informed consent. This is no different.
|
| Edit: We agree to disagree. I fall firmly in the
| mandatory testing camp for accuracy of paternity for all
| involved parties. Trust but verify.
| mbreese wrote:
| If you're not a willing participant, then you can still
| have the test. If you're the type where if the kid isn't
| your biological kid, then you wouldn't want to be a
| father to them -- then get a test.
|
| The question is -- should it be mandatory for all
| pregnancies? Willing participant or otherwise. I'm not
| saying no one should have paternity testing. It should
| certainly be available. I just don't think you should
| mandate it.
| onphonenow wrote:
| Wow, NIPP testing is very cool - didn't know about that.
| paganel wrote:
| > In his experience, amongst pregnant teenagers (17 and
| younger) about 10% were pregnant by their own fathers/brothers.
|
| I refuse to believe that. I mean, yeah, the man had direct
| contact with such cases and probably had been in the field for
| tens of years while I'm just a computer programmer but I still
| refuse to believe it.
| throwaway2331 wrote:
| That's because you've been sheltered from most of it; and
| most of the time it's "kept within the family," never made
| public, and simply swept under the rug -- so as to not "break
| apart the family" (at the cost of one victim).
|
| People will allow all sorts of horrendous things to happen,
| if it serves their interests.
|
| Father rapes his daughter? The mother refuses to believe it:
| thinks her daughter is only doing it for attention; doesn't
| want her "perfect" family image to get shattered (plus, daddy
| dearest pays the bills and funds her lifestyle). Same goes
| for extended family.
|
| "It couldn't happen in our family." "You know how teenage
| girls are." "He would never do something like that. I've
| known him for decades."
|
| Cognitively checking-out, because it's not their "problem."
| And other forms of dissonance.
|
| Those are only the stats for pregnancy, though. I'm sure the
| incidence of sexual abuse without pregnancy is higher.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| I'm 64 years old, so I've been around a while. Essentially
| every woman I have ever been close enough with to discuss
| these issues has reported either being sexually abused as a
| child or raped as an adult. As a young man I never realized
| how widespread this is.
| pfortuny wrote:
| Well, it is his expertise. Have you read "the body keeps the
| score"? Really enlightening.
| dkarl wrote:
| I get what you're getting at, that we should trust the
| experts who have professional experience with a problem, but
| on the other hand, he didn't say how he arrived at that 10%
| number, and we don't know if his opinion is an outlier among
| medical doctors. And we do know, because we're witnessing it,
| that his statement is being amplified by non-medical
| professionals for the precise reason that it would be urgent
| and shocking if true. A lot of questionable information about
| Covid was amplified this way, because "a doctor" said it.
|
| Before we take the information at face value, we would expect
| some kind of support for his statement from other
| professionals. There are scientists who study the factors
| relating teenage pregnancy, as well as advocates for sexual
| abuse victims who uncover and publicize facts like these. If
| the information is something that has never been formally
| studied but is something that doctors "just know," there are
| tens of thousands (at least) of medical professionals who
| have regular contact with different populations of pregnant
| teenagers in the United States alone. If there's a widespread
| suspicion that the number might be 10% or more, that would
| mean a lot more than one doctor making an off-the-cuff remark
| in the audience of a law lecture.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| > he didn't say how he arrived at that 10% number
|
| With the recent popularity of genetic testing services for
| health and ancestry tracing, I would think this would be
| easy to tease out of the data. Of course not many people
| will expect to see as part of the report that their father
| is also their grandfather or uncle; I wonder how these
| services handle that?
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| I know it is probably shocking and supremely disgusting to
| realize but it is important to validate when people are
| victims of abuse, because they're already traumatized. It's
| even worse when people try to pretend it doesn't happen or
| refuse to believe it happens to the extent it does because
| it's like being victimized a second time: not only is your
| body taken from you but your experiences are denied from you
| too.
| [deleted]
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