The Perfect Victim

Did you know that according to Popular Science, roughly 5% of women who are raped experience an orgasm during the assault? And that’s actually a pretty low statistic because I’ve read other studies that that statistic at a much higher percentage.

I personally know for a fact that it does happen simply because I've worked with some very confused women in my groups that have suffered through that experience. These women have had a really difficult time being able to deal with the trauma of their assault, due to the confusion that comes along with experiencing what is usually perceived to be a pleasurable thing during such a traumatic experience.

These women typically take longer to move past their trauma because they are even more unsure of the roll they played in the situation than the women that didn’t orgasm. Even in the most violent of attacks, the cases that 99% of society would call a "clear cut rape case," if that women experienced an orgasm during the attack there is a high probability that she will carry more shame about the attack than if she didn't orgasm and the rape was less clearly defined.

That right there is incredibly sad because studies have proven that an orgasm during rape is due to the brain confusing the adrenaline rush of fear with the adrenaline rush of pleasure, and when you add in the fact that there is manual nerve stimulation taking place, sometimes the body just does what it’s designed to do regardless of what we want it to do.

So if a woman has an orgasm during a rape event, does that make her any less of a victim? Does that make her trauma any less real?

No, of course not.

Sometimes things happen during trauma that are difficult to understand, but a lack of understanding does not discount the trauma, but for the victims, they often don’t know that because no one talks about stuff like this. 

Women who have experienced situations like this often don’t feel comfortable talking about it because if a victim wants to remain a victim, then she had better look like a victim, otherwise we might deem her "not actually a victim."  

In fact there is so much sad truth to that statement that orgasm during rape has been used as a rape defense countless times over. I read a case study not long ago where the judge dismissed a rape case saying that because the woman had an orgasm, that at some point she must have started liking what was happening to her.

When the police were interviewing me about my rape, they asked me if I had an orgasm and I couldn't understand the relevance of the question until I realized that they were trying to gauge how "rapish" the rape had really been.

That is the exact reason why women don’t talk about stuff like this, because you are apparently only a victim if you look exactly the way that people believe a victim should look.

Apparently I’m the wrong kind of domestic abuse victim, or so some of you seem to think.

According to some of the emails I received and a few comments on the blog, I am a disgrace to “real” abuse survivors, the ones who escaped their abuse and tended to their wounds with drugs and self harm, not with a happy-go-lucky blog. Those are the real victims, those are the ones that were really hurt, but me, nah, it couldn’t have been that bad if I am as perky as I am.

Sorry, but I’m not buying that.

I’m not accepting that for myself and I’m not accepting that for the millions of other women out there that don’t look exactly how people think a victim should look.

I could see from the comments section of the post “The New Government Conspiracy” that some of you were appalled by what I had done to my husband and simply couldn’t understand why, if I had been so abused, was I poking fun at my husband? One commenter (who was actually very sweet) said that as an abuse survivor she felt offended that I was portraying domestic abuse victims in the way that I did, basically said that she felt destroyed by her own abuse and didn't understand how I could not be. I got a few emails of the same variety and so I wanted to address this topic, because really, what does a domestic abuse victim look like?

We’ve already talked about how hard it can be to spot the victims, how oftentimes we are shocked to find out that who we thought was a strong, happy woman, was actually being abused.

So if we can’t see many of the victims, then how do we know what they look like? Is there some kind of checklist that we should pass out to women who are being abused, letting them know how to act so that we can find them? Maybe a pamphlet we could mail out to homes across the country so that we would have an easier time spotting the victims?

Would it look something like this?

Must be covered in bruises all the time

Must be soft spoken

Must be obedient to their perceived abuser at all times

Must appear unmotivated to leave the relationship or save herself

If she has left the relationship, she must remain traumatized 24/7 for an extended period of time

Must suffer from some form of depression, addiction, or other incapacitating mental affliction during her recovery period

That would be a little ridiculous, don’t you think?

And yet that’s what many of you have done to me, and that’s what many women just like me are going through on a daily basis due to the preconceived notions that society is forcing upon us.

My reaction to being abused was not always to fall completely apart.

Sometimes my reaction was to fight for control in whatever way that I could; even if that involved making my husband think his hair was falling out. (You also have to remember that my marriage and these events spanned ten years, it wasn't as condensed as it probably feels when you read about it here. There were times that were more or less abusive than other times meaning that there were times when I knew to shut the hell up and times when I felt like I had a little wiggle room).

Women like me, we hear things much like what many of you have emailed me. “If you were really that abused, you wouldn’t have been antagonizing him the way you did.” While I can accept that you will never understand how I felt, I can’t accept your reasoning.

I know why I did what I did. I know that there were times that I didn’t care if he killed me, I really didn’t. I felt too weak to take my own life, so if he was going to take it for me then the least I could do was have a little fun while I was going down. But mostly, I wasn’t about to give in to him completely. I couldn’t seem to get out, but I wasn’t about to lay down and die either.

So I fought to keep hold of myself in whatever way I could. I spent my days picking up the shards of my broken reflection and attempting to piece them together into anything that would reflect the person I wanted to be, and when I would finally catch a glimpse of myself, I would see a woman that I liked. I saw a woman that wasn’t giving up, wasn’t giving in, and sometimes, yea I found it in ways that I think are funny.

But to many of you, I was less abused because I decided to fight in my own way instead sitting down quietly or turning to drugs and self harm to soothe my soul.

Then when I finally got out, I think I was little further ahead of where I might have been if I had completely lost myself to him. Sure, as you have seen from this blog I have had a lot to deal with, but I came through it with at least a part of myself still intact with a willpower to gain control over my life, and I would like to think that I’ve benefited from that.

But apparently it makes me less of a victim because I didn’t completely die inside, which begs the question, "how do you measure how traumatic an event really is?" 

How can someone measure and judge how worthy the label of abuse is, if everyone reacts differently when faced with abusive situations?

If a woman’s boyfriend calls her fat, ugly, breaks up with her, and then 6 months later she commits suicide, did she suffer more abuse than the woman who was beaten, degraded, and sold as a sex slave for years until she was rescued, just because that woman was then able to pull her life together and work through a recovery?

Who was more abused?

We can’t really measure that now can we?

We can only measure abuse, by abuse, not by a person’s reaction to it.

Being told that I am a disgrace to abused women because I didn’t roll over and die is not only hurtful, but it's ridiculous.

This is the only life I will ever have and I lost 28 years of it to people that hurt me. Would I really be better off if I looked back and saw nothing but pain? Is it so wrong that I would want to hold onto the times where I laughed? Should I have never been able to recover from my life falling down around me? Is the fact that I was so traumatized that I started a nonprofit so that other women wouldn’t have to go through what I went through, not proof enough that I was deeply affected?

If another victim survives and then personally never helps another victim, does that mean she doesn't know how painful abuse is, or that she doesn't care about anyone but herself?

Of course it doesn't. Just as if she were to have a harder time than me in her life after abuse, that wouldn't make her any less of a survivor.

I know that many of you call me an inspiration and you also know that I’ve always said don’t look to me for perfection because I will fail you, I’m only human.

There is no right or wrong way to be abused just the same as there is no right or wrong way to recover from it. Hell look at the advice they hand out on what to do if you are kidnapped. “Don’t aggravate your kidnapper, just go along with what they tell you, you don't want to anger them. On the other hand, maybe you should fight like hell because you need to get away.”

That’s helpful, NOT.

While I’m pleased that so many of you have found guidance here, portraying a perfect victim was never what this was supposed to be about. I’ve said it from the beginning and every moment since then, that this is the story of a broken person trying - and sometimes failing – to build the life I’d like to have. This is my story and I’m not going to change it or sway it to fit some kind of societal agenda, because I’m tired of buying into the crap that society is selling. Yes, there are MANY victims that are much like what you would expect them to be, and then there are many that are not.

I just so happen to be one of those women.

This is my life, this was my past, and this has been the experience of many other women as well. I don't think trying to mold myself into being the "perfect" survivor is helpful to anyone because people need to see the entire spectrum of behaviors that accompany abuse, and sometimes they were exactly like what I did. When women are able to see that their behavior and reactions in no way discredit the amount of abuse they suffered, that has been the only way that many of them were able to start healing.

I’m not the perfect victim and I never will be. I refuse to mold myself into being who you think I should have been, just so that you have an easier time accepting that I was abused. I think greater harm comes not from you hearing things you don't want to hear, but from women not hearing things that they need to hear.

I’m not the one hurting victims, some of you are by further silencing them simply because you believe that if they didn’t react a certain way, then they really weren’t abused.

That if they had an orgasm, that they really weren’t raped.

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If You Liked This, Read These!

"I'm Not What You Were Expecting."

"Happy Same Old Crap Day"

"Abuse Firsthand"

Photo Credits:

Girl With Duct Tape

Feet under curtain

Broken Mirror

Rape (Head)