nightgigjo, I was listening, too.

Your story helped me to clarify what I hate about the term “gray rape” — the term that sparked this thread. I know that the details of any rape differ from those of any other, at least a little. Maybe the perpetrator is a stranger, or a friend, or someone you’re dating, or someone you pick up in a bar. Maybe there’s one perpetrator or several. Maybe there’s a weapon used, or a beating, or a drug slipped into a drink, or emotional and psychological coercion. Maybe the specific acts the perpetrator forces on the victim, by whatever means, are different. I understand that every victim’s experience of violation and their way of coping with it is different. But it’s all rape, and the phrase “gray rape,” as many people have probably already said better than I am right now, belittles the very real consequences of being sexually violated.

The impact on your life — and on mine, and on the lives of many others on this thread — isn’t somehow lessened by the fact that the perpetrators were people who purported to love us rather than strangers in alleys with knives.

Your story helped me to clarify what I hate about the term “gray rape” — the term that sparked this thread. I know that the details of any rape differ from those of any other, at least a little. Maybe the perpetrator is a stranger, or a friend, or someone you’re dating, or someone you pick up in a bar. Maybe there’s one perpetrator or several. Maybe there’s a weapon used, or a beating, or a drug slipped into a drink, or emotional and psychological coercion. Maybe the specific acts the perpetrator forces on the victim, by whatever means, are different. I understand that every victim’s experience of violation and their way of coping with it is different. But it’s all rape, and the phrase “gray rape,” as many people have probably already said better than I am right now, belittles the very real consequences of being sexually violated.

The impact on your life — and on mine, and on the lives of many others on this thread — isn’t somehow lessened by the fact that the perpetrators were people who purported to love us rather than strangers in alleys with knives.

There are many comments I could respond to, but this is where I’ll begin. This will be long, but I feel I need to add this to the discussion.

I want to apologize for posting something this long. I’d post it to my blog, but my husband reads it, and I can’t quite deal with telling him all this yet; I don’t have the strength to show this pain in front of him, or to deal with his pain on my behalf.

(Note: this also contains POTENTIAL TRIGGERS — caveat lectrix/lector.)

people who were abused as children are more likely to end up abused as adults simply because they don’t recognize the “warning signs” soon enough.

Or their experience, having a ‘trustworthy’ person violate them, and their objections negated by the person’s ‘trustworthiness’, they acclimated to ignoring any instinct and going on other people’s opinions/the person’s own representations of themselves.

One of the most obvious predatory behaviors is not taking “no” for an answer, physically overpowering the victim.

Or browbeating the victim into acquiescence/submission. Or using coersion. Or saying “don’t worry, I won’t hurt you”. Or by using any means available to them to achieve acquiescence/submission from the victim.

My abuser was psychological — if I got upset about anything relating to him, he used psychobabble and 12-step talk to convince me I was crazy. He did this in just under two months’ time. It took my sister not recognizing the person I’d become in that short time to realize that I was in a sick situation, and got myself out. (I am not digging on 12-step talk — I’m in a 12-step program, so he used my own language against me.)

This was three years ago.

My rapist was my boyfriend. He loved me. He ‘wouldn’t hurt’ me. He also didn’t take crawling away from him and shaking my head ‘no’ when we were making out as indication I didn’t want to go any further. He didn’t consider my tears to signal that I was afraid of sex and not ready. He *did* consider my willingness to make out with him again as a green light for penetration.

From the time he started kissing me again, tears running down my face, to the time I realized we were having sex, I don’t remember anything.

This was twelve years ago.

It took my experience with the abuser to realize I had real problems.

It still took another year for me to realize what had really happened.

It took four months for me to actively seek help.

It took another few months of working with a therapist for me to call these incidents ‘rape’ and ‘abuse’.

It took another year for me to not feel like calling my experience ‘rape’ didn’t somehow diminish the trauma a friend experienced repeatedly at the hands of her stepfather.

I still have flashbacks. I get claustrophobic during sex. I can’t kiss during penetration. I can’t kiss without feeling I am expected to perform. I disconnect mentally at the first sign of discomfort. I try to force myself to have sex when I’m not ready, to prove my power over the trauma. I avoid sex for as long as I can. I spend eight to twenty-four hours mentally preparing myself for sex with a man I trust as much as I am able, who has been working to earn my trust for two years. I watch incessantly for signs of potential abuse in him. I pick fights when I have sexual energy I can’t make use of because I’m too off-kilter to enjoy sex. I don’t know if I have really had an orgasm more than twice in my life that I can remember. I’ve tried to re-enact being raped to see if I could stop it. I’ve engaged in bondage to remove responsibility from myself for sexual acts. I cannot think about vaginal penetration as ‘making love’ without serious mental work and emotional stability. I’ve taken all the precautions ACG mentioned, plus some, and have never felt safer because of them, even though I’ve never been accosted in an alley. I’ve felt paranoid to be anywhere, with people or without, daylight or dark, in my home or in public, because I was afraid of being raped. I’ve refused friendship with men out of fear they would rape me. I cannot work for a man. I am afraid to be alone with any young to middle aged man in a position of authority. I sometimes have to sleep alone because I can’t stand being touched.

I could keep typing things like this for a long time.

This article (as well as some other things I’ve seen/heard lately) have incited these thoughts:

1) I wonder if I didn’t suffer some abuse at an early age, because I remember feeling shame about my sexuality from about age 10, although I have no memory of any trauma before my boyfriend raped me when I was 18.

2) I recognize now one of those famed ‘warning signs’ in my future-rapist’s behavior; he never did respect my boundaries, from the first day I met him, when he tried to physically block me from leaving the room we were in because I didn’t want to hear a certain song again. Our relationship started out as a power struggle based on his inability to accept that I had sovereignity over my body and my actions.

3) He still raped me, and is responsible for the subsequent damage to my sex life, psyche, self-worth and emotional health. His inability/unwillingness to treat me like a human with rights has made the first year of my marriage one of the hardest years of my life for all the wrong reasons. He is a rat bastard who deserves a swift kick in the balls, and if I ever see him again he might get it.

Thank you for listening, if you did. Thank you, Amanda, for the forum in which to share this.

Domestic violence experts will point out that one way that the abusers isolate their victims is that people pick up that “victim” vibe from her and avoid her.

Interesting. I’ve met several people who gave off this “victim vibe”, and I was able to confirm my suspicions with a few of them that they had been abused and/or otherwise taken advantage of in the past. They gave off a feeling of vulnerability…as if one could do anything to them, absolutely anything, and they would be unable to resist. They were also very easy to manipulate. Quite disturbing.

None of those rules address rapist behavior, they just address the person’s status or where you are or what *you* are doing. But it’s not the place you are or what you’re wearing that rapes you. It’s a predator, the rapist. It’s his isolation, pressure, weakening and shaming behaviors. It’s the force he applies.

Predators want you to trust classes of people or situations, rather than observing behaviors. That’s because they can fake their “credentials” or manufacture the situation. But they can’t not indulge in their predatory behavior, because that’s what differentiates the rapist from the non-rapist.

Unfortunately this isn’t always very helpful, either. One of the most obvious predatory behaviors is not taking “no” for an answer, physically overpowering the victim. And of course by the time they do that, it’s too late. It’s like saying a major warning sign that you’re in danger of being raped is that you’ve been raped.

So the important thing is to inculcate into everyone the sure and certain knowledge that these behaviors are wrong and bad, in every situation. Not just sexual; any social or even economic situation in which you isolate someone from others, from sources of help and information and emotional support, anytime you intentionally make someone weak or confused, so you can force them to do something they don’t want to do, is a predatory situation, and wrong.

I was raped as a young teen, more than once. I would love for young teens (and everyone else) to really get the message that these behaviors are totally unacceptable. Because until we do, rapists can do what they do without fear of reprisal, so long as they know the “rules” about where, when and with whom women will be considered “fair game” for rape.

Knowing about predatory behavior might have helped me avoid some of what happened to me. It might not have. Regardless, it probably would have helped me at least recognize what happened as not my fault, but part of a predatory pattern, and I might have felt able to report it.

And anyone who says otherwise borders on rape apology. There’s nothing that women have not already tried, and it one us men who perpetuate the rape culture to STOP DOING IT. Don’t make excuses for rapists.

In any event, my comment sure is irrelevant to the general thread. Apologies.

Everyone does this victim or not victim dance to everyone and from everyone at some point in time.

Being a visibly disabled person who has to wear hearing aids, I got this sort of crap all the time, only it’s of the condescending, isolating kind. I don’t really get the more threatening kinds because I’m usually bigger than the other. So I’m not available to be bullied physically.

I’m also (humbly speaking) an attractive guy (when I’m not very fat), and visibly alot smarter than most other people.

My personality doesn’t suit many other people, because I do not soften my edges much (as much out of bad habits as not playing the game). Thus I am generally not available to be bullied emotionally.

I have found that this combination is incredibly threatening to other people. People genuinly really will automatically assume that I’m only fit to be given alms. A certain subset of people, when they realize that I’m faster than them (even though I’m fat), or smarter than them (even though I’m incoherent much of the time), among other things, will freak out. If a guy with hearing aids is better than you at something you care about (even if it’s not relevant to hearing, like singing), it’s the end of the world for them. It’s not everyone, of course, or even most people, but just enough to put an edge onto your life.

I always smirk at the advice wherepon one is advised to cultivate a flaw, so as to ease insecurity in your audience. Better not be a big flaw, like being black, or female, or disabled, or whatever, ‘cause that would ratchet it straight back up.

I really would like to see more of a direct discussion about humanity’s general need to feel superior to other humanity, and how to ameliorate that innate trait.