I've promised a post about dual violations here before (in line with my evil deancas scholarship), so here's the official post about it.

(NOTE: I'm intentionally using the vague and general term "violation" here as a euphemism for physical, psychological, emotional, and sexual violence. At no point am I ever gonna explicitly describe such violence, but I am going to constantly allude, mention, and refer to such acts. Please feel free to scroll away if necessary.)

Thesis on Dual Violations. Fiction provides a great avenue for us to explore dynamics in special cases where both receiver and perpetrator of the violation are victims. This is not to say that they are similarly or equally victimized, only that they are both victims.

There are typically three ways for this to happen:

coercion, where the main driving agent of the violation is an external force, forcing itself onto at least one of the parties (e.g. posession, blackmail, etc.);

compulsion, where the main driving agent of the violation is internal, even if what started the causal chain was initially external (e.g. rage spells, sex pollen, etc.) and;

imitation, where one party is mimicked and the violation is done through that image. This is a very specific kind of violation—the main thing that comes to mind are fics where a shapeshifter imitates the victim’s loved one and performs the violation in that body.

The violations done to the primary victims are, of course, very obvious. But what I think we rarely engage with is the violation and trauma of the unwilling perpetrator. When the possession is over or when the spell finally lifts, what happens then? How do you deal with the consequences of having committed such an awful violation (or in the special case of imitation, having your image permanently tarnished in the eyes of the victim)?

Therefore, explorations on dual violations function as thought experiments on guilt. Note how in our categorization, all the names are in the point of view of the perpetrator-victim: you are either coerced to commit the crime, compelled into doing it, or imitated as doing it.

Below the cut, we're going to explore specific tropes in fics and how they fall into these categories.

COERCION

Coercion, where the main driving agent of the violation is an external force, forcing itself onto at least one of the parties.

We can generally categorize fics of this kind into two types:

Takeover. The Self/ego/personhood of the active party is taken over (e.g. one is possessed/mind-controlled and is forced to violate the other), and;

Gunpoint. The selfhood of the active party is intact (e.g. the active party is blackmailed/held-at-gunpoint to either (a) do the violation or (b) let themselves be violated).

Out of all the categories we will discuss here, perpetrators of violence under takeover coercion are typically those we deem blameless; there is usually nothing they could have done to stop the violation from happening.

In gunpoint coercion, on the other hand, although they are forced into restricting circumstances, the active party is doing it "with their own hands" and is not being actively controlled into doing so. They have at least a sliver of agency and control of the situation, unlike in cases of possession/mind-control. This means that we typically assign them with at least some degree of moral responsibility over the violation.

Note how we further subdivided gunpoint coercion. In fact, both coercion and compulsion violations can be divided into this binary: (a) being forced to do the violation, or (b) being forced to have the violation done to you.

To make sense of this, we're going to look at an example of Type B Gunpoint Violation. First things first, it's important to consider that the recepient of the violation can in fact also be the active party behind the violation. Let's see how this works through this example:

Person X is blackmailing Person Y into having sex with Person Z and making them believe it's consensual.

The thesis on dual violations argues that both Y and Z are victims here, with Y being forced to endure rape and Z being tricked into raping someone.

COMPULSION

Compulsion, where the main driving agent of the violation is internal (even if what started the causal chain was initially external).

We can generally split this type into two:

Corruption of the Mind. This is where something drastically alters the self/persona/mentality of a party (e.g. a personality-altering spell, a memory corruption spell, etc.);

Corruption of the Heart. This is where either foreign wants/desires are forced into a party or preexisting desires are warped and exploited (e.g. love potions, certain sex pollen or heat/rut fics, etc.)

Compulsion violations can often be more revolting than coercion violations, especially since we can often blame a third party for the latter. A lot of the time, perpetrators under compulsion are still themself, only warped.

In Supernatural fics, the violations done by Demon!Dean and MarkOfCain!Dean would typically fall under compulsion, because (1) no one is possessing him or forcing him to do these things, and (2) Dean is basically still Dean under these conditions, except his values and priorities are distorted.

Like earlier, compulsion violations can happen in two ways: being compelled to do the violation, or (b) being compelled to have the violation done to you.

IMITATION

Imitation, where one party is mimicked and the violation is done through that image.

This is a very specific kind of violation—the main thing that comes to mind are fics where a shapeshifter imitates the victim’s loved one and performs the violation in that body. Or perhaps by possessing a corpse; the mechanics doesn’t really matter. The point is that both parties here are violated and their relationship is horribly damaged due to this violation.

Imitation is a special case; some of you might wonder as to why it needs to have its separate category. This is because it doesn't neatly fit into any of our earlier categories. The main thing that sets it different from the rest is the fact that the "perpetrator" here doesn't actually perform the violation themself but is only mimicked by the one who actually does the violation.

We have been using the term perpetrator-victim to describe the perpetrators in dual violations; in the case of imitation, the -victim half of the term gains more weight—their image has been violated and their relationship with the primary victim has been terribly damaged.

Concluding remarks

The essay provides us with a powerful categorization system that can help us analyze fiction about special cases of dual violations. I do not claim it to be comprehensive; in fact, I might have missed other examples of dual violations that don't fit this current system. If you have any suggestions, please feel free to share!

(If anyone is interested in the list of destiel darkfics that prompted this analysis, DM me so I can warn you about stuff before reading.)

Haphephobia talk

BIG TRIGGER WARNING: brief mentions of rape/coercion, mentions of suicidal ideation, self harm, physical and mental abuse, as well as dehumanization. This one is kinda heavy.

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Hi again! Currently horizontal on my couch because I have full body aches from the second covid shot and my head is killing me, but I expected this to happen as it’s normal for the second vaccine to knock you out for a day or two.

Anyway, I had a realization earlier that I write both Gild Tesoro of “One Piece”, as well as Death from “Darksiders” with Haphephobia - which is “a fear of touching or being touched”. While I write them with this phobia, it manifests within them differently, and I figured I would share some differences, and headcanons for both characters (it’s been so long since I’ve talked about my sassy depressed Nephilim husband; I miss you, Death ❤️❤️). Also with Death, I ship him with an OC I created, named Zemira. I don’t think I’ve shared a lot about her on tumblr, but I’ll be making a whole post about her another time; just know I’ll be mentioning her occasionally.

So I’ll be talking about Death’s haphephobia first, it’s a little more heavy (deadass trigger warning here for the brief mentions of rape. Skip this part if you need to):

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So I must start out with the obligatory mentioning of that accursed chapter from The Abomination Vault:

Death and War have to seek out Lilith and gain information from her. Death is viciously adamant for War to stay outside & away from that woman, but war protests and wishes to come in with him. Death, nearly resorting to beating his brother into submission, demands him to stay outside, and War finally relents.

When the eldest Horseman goes in to see Lilith, one of the first things she says to him is something along the lines of “this isn’t a social call, is it?”. I truly forget what else is mentioned, but there are a few times where Lilith tries to mention things of a (supposed) sexual nature towards Death, and he abruptly and angrily cuts her off. The one thing I remember Lilith saying to Death was her saying that Death was always a “sensitive boy” which makes my stomach fucking churn.

What is heavily implied in this scene, to me, is that Death and Lilith at some point in the past, had sexual encounters with one another that Death is very much extremely embarrassed and ashamed of, and with Lilith’s ability to seduce any being regardless if they want to partake or not, it’s safe to say that Death could have possibly been coerced into said sexual activity. Lilith’s ability to seduce is described almost like a date-rape drug to me, it causes people to fall under some kind of spell or go into a trance; what is a big uh-oh to me is when Death describes that War would be weak to Lilith’s wiles, or her tricks. So she is definitely capable of coercing people in any way to get what she wants. Also fucking keep in mind that Lilith refers to Death as her SON, which adds a whole new level of “what the fuck” to that situation; it’s just icky.

I feel that Death, because of this run in (or run-ins) with Lilith, developed a massive fear of being touched, which is backed up in canon in Darksiders 2. He does not allow anyone to physically touch him under any circumstance; when Death arrived in the Makers’ realm, Eideard touched his chest where the amulet pieces are embedded. Death recoils quickly and with a venomous growl, states: “Don’t touch me!”

Then of course when he goes to visit Lilith, she touches his chest as well, and he physically pushes her hand away from his body. She also refers to herself as Death’s mother, and Death angrily states: “You are not my mother!” Also from the moment Death sets foot in Lilith’s domain, he is not thrilled to be there, and acts very different towards her; more defensive, more on guard it seems.

So this headcanon stems from all of that; he will not let anyone touch him, it’s just that severe. Where my OC comes in, I actually have a story on AO3 titled “Haphephobia” and it shows how Death & Zemira try to get past this aversion to touch, so 1.) Zemira can give him affection and 2.) Death can allow himself to be loved. I’ll link it here:

https://archiveofourown.org/works/29860320/chapters/73476759

Death cannot even bring himself to hold her hand in the very beginning. So Zemira started there, holding his hand, physical closeness, and very slowly, started working to larger forms of touch. Obviously this gave Death massive amounts of anxiety, so this is why the process is extremely slow. It makes it even more important to go slow because Death tries to hide any weak emotions, so the physical and mental stress he puts himself under is tenfold.

I think that’s all for Death. His Haphephobia is extremely severe, from the specific traumas he has experienced, possibly being forced into sexual activity with his god damn “”mother””, as well as hiding his sensitivity and kindness (my headcanons for why he does that is a whole other post waiting to be written) and just not believing he is deserving of such love and care.

Ok, now for Tesoro (specific Trigger warnings here for mentions of self-harm, suicidal ideation, physical/mental abuse)

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So I just recently realized that I wrote Tesoro with symptoms of Haphephobia; also compared to Death, it isn’t as severe or debilitating, but no less harmful to the person going through it.

For Tesoro I think it was sparked by a mix of guilt and insecurity, obviously as well as his past abuse from both his mother and the Celestial Dragons. But in Film Gold it’s obvious that he doesn’t have an issue with being touched, I’m referencing the scene with the pool girls. I think in canon, he’s on high alert when someone goes to touch him, especially if it’s someone he is not familiar with, or does not like. It’s more of an automatic thing that he learned to suppress over time, especially because he absolutely craves attention and affection, and his fear of touch gets in the way of that.

So in a way, he did learn how to work through it, but it wasn’t proper or healthy, and because of that it’s still there in the back of his mind. I also believe that he doesn’t like people pinning him by the wrists/hands/arms or holding him down in any way, or being bound (sexual or non sexual, he does not like it). It triggers severe panic and flashbacks, so, it’s a big no.

In terms of if he were to be around Stella, it becomes heightened. It’s not that he’s afraid of her; he knows her well. He is afraid for her sake, that he would hurt her in some way simply by allowing her to touch him. All through his life, Tesoro was made to feel like he wasn’t worth the space he took up in his existence. His mother did not love him, the one person that could have given him some form of gentle gesture. She instead hurt him, screamed at him, made him feel worthless. Then we all know about the celestial dragons; they didn’t even see Tesoro as a human, and that mixed with the beatings from both the celestial dragons and his mother, he is weary to allow others to get close.

After Stella died, In his heart of hearts Tesoro genuinely thought that he was unloveable, mainly because of his mother. The one woman who brought him into this world didn’t care about his dreams or his well-being, so then how can anyone else? Then, when he found the single person that cared about him, she was whisked away from him without a second thought. Tesoro feels doomed to observe yet never experience the love and kindness that the world had to offer.

That mixed with Haphephobia makes him very cautious of others, and in the case of Stella, vehemently afraid. He loves her, and she loves him in return; Tesoro knows this full well, (we’re headed to the “if Stella survived” AU) after they reunite he is so afraid to touch her and it’s painful to him when she touches his body. It’s another source of frustration and anger because he knows that he is still in love with her, but his own body is trying to push her away. He would tear open his body for the apprehension to leave, to finally feel the comfort he yearned for within Stella’s embrace. No more fear, no more being brought to tears because he felt he didn’t deserve her kindness, no more guilt.

Both he & Death feel unloveable but for different reasons:

Death feels unloveable because of the atrocities he has committed, specifically the Nephilim Genocide & the creation of the Grand Abominations. He feels knee-crushing amounts of guilt for taking part in such events, and he puts up a facade of being an uncaring monster, when he is very much the opposite. He has kindness to give, yet is afraid to show it because of that idea that he is to be seen as nothing but an attack dog for the Charred Council. But this is also the same Nephilim who was so tired of making things that took life, and chose to make something that gave life instead, and gifted said item to his sister, Fury. This is the same Nephilim who took his own life to prove that his youngest brother War did not start the apocalypse. He cares so deeply, has insurmountable love to give, yet feels incapable of doing so.

Tesoro thinks he is unloveable because the world conditioned him to view himself as such. The extreme abuse he suffered told him that he is trash; an afterthought whose only use is as a punching bag or a wasted body to rend flesh from. Ants had more worth in this world than he, and Tesoro knew it. All it took was Stella, one person, for him to see that he is worthy of such a thing, that nothing that went on in their pasts was his fault, and that he does deserve to be given gentle touches, soft reassuring hugs, feather-light kisses, and that he is able to be loved.

Analysis of abuse

I told myself that this is where I was going to use this site to do my B I G A N G E R Y P O S T I N G so I might as well stay true to it.

Editing in some precursor TWs: I detail acts of abuse, sexual assault and manipulation below with the intent of analysing what allows those things such prevalence in society. If that’s uncomfortable for you I respect that and wish you a good evening/day : )

Through recent events in my life, developments concurrent with my own ability to criticise myself being at its highest, I’ve started reevaluating a lot of what behaviour is and isn’t abusive. This is predictably an incredibly uninspiring and unproductive exercise, most abusive behaviour is actually just abusive behaviour. But in paying attention to the attitude, aftermath and the vigour of abuse from abusers seems to dictate more than the actual behaviour itself.

Hot take for the post: All people will be guilty of abuse at some point or another in a relationship, and unknowing abuse is still abuse.

I’ve said this to a lot of people and it feels like almost all of them become apprehensive and feel a need to guard themselves and their friends in that situation. A few lines of reasoning appear; What about mentally ill people? What about when your partner won’t communicate abuse? What about in early relationships where you actually couldn’t know better? What about when the person has no control?

At the end of the day abuse is one thing and one thing only and that is the mistreatment of something or someone. I think an important standard to have set for yourself in your personal relationships--or at least a healthy and safe one--is to be able to identify patterns of abuse where they are. An important secondary one is to be able to identify the source of that abuse.

Some trauma victims engage in abusive behaviours as a way of meeting a standard of self-protective coping they’ve developed for themselves. I can say that their intentions aren’t even predominantly bad, just self-sufficient in the ways they’ve learned how to be. I can attest to that personally and also say that it’s something I’m working on. I have found myself doing strange things in fits of panic, things that are extremely worrying too. I can also say that almost every one of my significant others has, at some point or another, engaged in abusive behaviour of varying severity ranging from sexual violence and physical violence to a downright flagrant manipulation of emotion.

I’ve had exes try and separate me from my entire social life. I’ve had exes accuse me of things they themselves have done to me. I’ve had exes try their absolute hardest to convince me to commit suicide after a breakup, or sometimes close to one. Contrary to those actions; I would not consider all of them to be abusers.

I think a differential classification between abusers and people who engage in abusive behaviour is slight, pedantic and something I’ve done mostly to benefit myself but I also believe my reasoning behind it is sound. I believe an abuser is someone who engages in abusive behaviour with the added circumstance of no remorse, no willingness to change, or a complete indifference to how they’ve treated someone else.

I have two anecdotes I can use to separate these two types of people:

In 2013 I dated a girl named S, she was extremely sweet, very cute, and had a habit of emotional manipulation. She would buy affection and feel entitled to sexual interaction afterwards, if she didn’t get it a fight would ensue. When I explained to her that I was depressed she’s condescendingly disregard my state of being and respond that I’m “Always depressed, and pretty bad to be around like that”. I would consider that strong of an amount of emotional neglect, coupled with the desire to purchase the ‘right kind of partner’ to be abusive. I would, however, not consider her to be an abuser. Years later I presented her with what she had said to me, how she treated me, the precedents she set in that relationship, and told her I found it abusive. Her reaction was one of legitimate guilt, an actual desire to make things right. Over a few months I saw her actually change as a person slowly but surely, she didn’t just internalise that she had done something wrong (a distinguishing moral characteristic that separates abusers from people who inadvertently engage in abuse); she sought to fix the personality traits and habits that led to that pattern of behaviour. We had disagreements and a falling out anyway but that happens! And it’s okay. Not everyone you don’t like in this world is abusive, sometimes you both look at each other and just think “wow what an asshole” and stop talking.

My second anecdote is extremely recent, fresh in my mind, and one that can showcase what I did wrong too.

In 2018 I dated a boy named T. T raped me. T gaslighted me. T hit me, spit in my face, mocked me for being neurodivergent, mentally ill, having an ED, and for my history of self-harm. He enabled the abuse of other people around me too, for example his sister who would verbally abuse or berate me any time I came into contact with her.

Before I go any further into this anecdote let me explain what I did wrong too, that’s fair and I’m mature enough to work on my problems and also admit to them openly; In that relationship I was insulting. When an argument was started and an insult was thrown my way I wouldn’t just double down on retaliation I would metaphorically nuke the opposition out of existence. It took one or two insults to set me off to a degree that I feel incredibly guilty for, and had no right reaching. I yelled a lot, in my family we do nothing but yell and for all that I like to tell myself that I’m better than my family, more often than not that isn’t true. In arguments I would yell and I would shout in situations where a calm tone of voice not only was doable but was outright beneficial. I had issues with respecting personal space which is made even worse by the fact that at the age of 21 I’ve spent 14 years trying to cultivate the most dominant and intimidating physical presence in the room at any given point in time. I internalised reactions to abuse and turned them into different forms of abuse. I would make A feel trapped in some spaces, my physical demeanour would come off threatening. This is something I can happily say I rectified over the course of that relationship once it was brought to my attention but I still have no excuse for my behaviour, and will never do anything but admit to it wholly.

Let’s return to him, though; During an argument one day where I mentioned feeling a lot of disdain towards T for how he’d treated me, he pointedly asked “What did I ever do to you?”.

The response you could guess was coming; You raped me.

T’s response, significantly harder to guess but one that still haunts me to this moment: “I could tell people the same thing about you, how would you like it?”. In this relationship not only had T sexually assaulted me twice, coerced me into sex I didn’t want a half dozen other times, and made me extremely unsafe around him. He knew I’d been abused as a child. Not only abused, but disbelieved as well. When reporting the abuse of a close family friend to my family I was called a liar. I was smacked by my mother. Over the course of a long conversation that I don’t particularly want to remember the details of I was told that one day someone would say the same thing about me and I “wouldn’t like it too much then”. T knows this. T knows this and several different points in time he made it his mission to exploit that knowledge.

This sent me into a panic attack which resulted in T leaving for a week.

When he left, I went to a nonbinary support group we frequent and asked an organiser for help. I wanted him blocked from returning to that environment because I wanted to begin cutting him out of my life as quickly and efficiently as possible. I needed him gone, so I told an organiser everything that had happened. They said okay. That they believed me. But that they were going to contact T to tell him what was up.

As you can imagine I said: or how about fucking don’t, dude. This was ignored. T was contacted. He returned and began 6 months of cruel manipulation. He would trigger PTSD episodes, panic attacks, he’d hit me, yell at me and after all of this he would play the role of victim no matter what happened. Even if the retaliation was just me saying “You’re being abusive” this was somehow, in his mind, an act of aggression. These would become more flagrant around friends, in isolated situation with specific people. He’d started trying to divide me from my friends. Doing nothing with me but then constantly taking every opportunity to demand that I separate myself from my friends. Any situation that could be twisted into my friends being the ones making me unhappy would result in me being told I shouldn’t talk to them anymore, if I railed against that it would result in an argument where I was mocked for being mentally ill or neurodivergent. This sounds like hyperbole but this was a consistent pattern over the course of six months as well as a pattern of physical abuse and sexual coercion and manipulation.

Many, many more things happened but this isn’t an autobiography. The reason I give such excruciating detail to T’s behaviour is that he never felt remorse for any of it. Never changed any of it. When it came time to face the repercussions of what he’d done, T flipped it on me to the best of his ability. He took great strides to make me look abusive, to make me look deranged or unstable. I would consider T, regardless of his excuses and manipulation (or perhaps because of them) to be the quintessential abuser. Someone whose pattern of abuse is so hardwired into their daily existence that they see it as natural, that anyone disagreeing or disavowing that behaviour is the abuser. Even when confronted with the facts of their behaviour not only are things just not their fault the abuser says that those behaviours are healthy. That the victim is wrong. That nothing can be done, or if it can be done it’ll take so many years.

We can draw these lines in the sand as much as we want but let’s ask ourselves what contributes to these systems?

In T and I’s relationship we had a mutual friend named X; X always had excuses for T. Because T was afab, and I was not. If T was hitting me, slapping me and screaming at me I was expected to just leave, even if there was no option. If I hit T back once to get away I was immediately the abuser. Why? Because T was afab. And I am not. If T raped me while I slept it was because, well, in X’s words “consent is such a grey area”. Between this, the unconditional support from a twin sibling with a bone to pick, and a stunning lack of resources and social acceptance for amab people who are victims of abuse. It isn’t difficult to stretch our imagination to such an extent that we can see what causes this system. Because it takes no imagination, the contributing factors to this are laid out plain and bare in front of us; Only about half of abuse victims are seen as valid. And even more so, less than half of abuse types are valid. Sexual entitlement is a fundamental part of all cultures where men are present, be they trans or cis. Sexual entitlement removes the need and steps of obtaining consent while in a relationship because it is seen as “natural”. “Of course your significant other wants to have sex with you 24/7! And if you want it you should take it! Don’t even ask, champ, just go out there and grab it”. This attitude lends a toxic credence to the belief that consent is a “grey area”. It isn’t. Consent is a yes or no question, if you can’t get a yes or a no then do nothing.That’s final.

Just as well, the psychological aspect of physical abuse is completely unspoken of around amab people. Amab people know what they face if they retaliate to abuse. We know what the response from the legal system is. We know what repercussions we face if we defend ourselves, if we retaliate, if we leave. I know how I look in the eyes of the world, and no amount of being a pacifist will dethrone the birthright of complacency and resilience I’ve inherited. If I am hit I “deal with it, not like it could hurt that much” (spoiler; it does, physically and mentally). If I’m shoved “he’s so small, it’s not like he could send you flying”(spoiler; not the point and he has knocked me down).

And this is just what I can vouch for as an AMAB person myself, I am completely unable to even imagine what AFAB people have to put up with. But the psychological aspect of being hit, shoved, screamed at, degraded and raped and at the end of it all just being told “Well it’s not that bad really” destroyed me. It broke my will to leave my abuser. There is a social and political structure in place to demand a level of resilience from people that they cannot feasibly provide based solely on how they were born. In an equal society, or any society that strives to BE equal, we cannot expect that from anyone. We cannot expect victims of abuse to suffer their abuse and continue happily singing their song. When we place that expectation on anyone. When we place an expectation of “Don’t hit back” on anyone. When we place an expectation of “don’t ask for help” on anyone. We have all contributed a significant amount to perpetuating systems and structures that churn out abusers at a remarkable and terrifying pace, with remarkable and terrifying success. The continued existence of people like R. Kelly and Chris Brown is enough proof anyone could ask for that the current systems that have existed up until this point serve a multi function; To enable abusers the full control and automation they need to perform any abusive acts they could want to perform. To face no repercussions in the aftermath of that abuse, be they social and or political. And instill a deep sense of unequaled fear in the victims of abuse who seek to escape their situations.

When we fail to distinguish the difference between an abuser and a person making an abusive mistake--When we fail to distinguish an abuser with the appropriate connotations applied to their actions. We have opened the door for them to pass undetected through everyday life. Unless there is a significant and unified focus on deconstructing and disabling the perpetuated existed of structures that enable abuse, we have in turn enabled the continued presence and existence of abusers in safe spaces. We have enabled them to continue existing undetected in everyday life, unafraid of the consequences of their actions.

Think critically on systems of abuse and contribute where you can in dismantling them.

Do Women Abuse? My Story by Rayanne Irving

Do Women Abuse? My Story by Rayanne K. Irving  I will never forget the earth shattering, panic inducing moment when my own body appeared to have betrayed me – yet again. Roughly six months after escaping from the sex slave trade I was sitting on my mother’s couch in the middle of the night, awake and alone, watching the movie,  “Bastard Out of Carolina” .  During one scene – the stepfather pulled the main character, a little girl named “Bone”, onto his lap in the car consequently raping her. Now, most people’s reaction to this harrowing storyline would be of outrage, disgust, disbelief.  My body’s reaction however was entirely of a different nature.  Privately, my body became aroused – stimulated by the sight it was processing. Such a purely primal response, initiated by the unthinkable, was an unimaginable assault on my very sanity.  And my 17-year-old logic terrified me.  Was I a sexual predator because I had become physically turned on by the rape of a little girl?  Truth for me, was that I had never taken part in sober, consensual intimacy. All I had known was coercion, rape, and prostitution up until that point in my life. The very act of my body responding to such a degree of violence despite how I mentally felt about rape and sex, shook my already collapsing core of character and integrity.  That dirty little secret was to be the first of many “triggers” that would eventually, over time, rise to the surface for me. Marred by these “quirks ” I possessed yet tried so hard to hide, sparked the recognition that I was indeed more dysfunctional than I consciously knew. This begs the question: why did my body respond to the very things I consciously believed I loathed?  Probing deeper to investigate the nature of my new paradoxical personality radically helped to change not only my own recognition of self, but also to find acceptance in my ever-shifting mental clarity. My journey opened me up to the expression of compassion for the oftentimes devastating, as well as maddening experience, it means to be ‘human’.  Personally, I feel there is much left to interpret pertaining to the female sexual predator, largely due to a case of the ‘predator’ existing in a complex field of varied degrees. Often going unnoticed, underreported, or worst of all, flat out denied. The simplified dictionary definition would have the word ‘predator’ described as a person who looks for other people in order to use, control, or harm in some way. Then there is the  sexual predator definition:  “A sexual predator is a person seen as obtaining or trying to obtain sexual contact with another person in a metaphorically “predatory” or abusive manner. Analogous to how a predator hunts down its prey, so the sexual predator is thought to “hunt” for his or her sex “partners.”  The majority of public opinion regarding the ‘typecast’ sexual predator has long been saturated in judgment, reducing these individuals down to vile and sick human beings in possession of no moral consequence. Yet objectively lurking behind that stance, has also been some not so subtle double standards. Such as, to be raped is often rationalized as the responsibility of the victim (ie what did she wear, how was she behaving, who was she hanging out with). Another and mayhap far more damaging standard was that rape was generally, as well as during archival times lawfully, considered a crime only committed against women by men. The delusion that women could not be predators and men could not be raped was spoon-fed to the masses by way of gender stigmatization.  Encompassing the subject of rape was the common visual association being only that of ‘penetration’. Due to gender stamping, grossly overlooked was the hard hitting actuality that overpowering to steal gratification was not the pinnacle in all abuse cases. Rather just in the reported ones. Emotional manipulation, deception, intimidation, fear, guilt, physical impairment, mental incapacity, manual stimulation and more kept the ever rising number of shame and guilt ridden victims quiet, especially boys who were raised to be men; thought incapable of being raped. To be male was to be the aggressor, the conqueror, virile, and therefore treated as invulnerable.  The human body (male and female), when placed under extreme stress, fear, or stimulus, has been known to respond physically by attaining erection and even orgasm, regardless of any true arousal. The physical responses can lead to confusing emotions that, left to grow under the tier of shame, can even call into question one’s sexual orientation. All of this allows for the female predator to slip into myth. If you look at rape throughout history, it has absolutely nothing to do with gender, the way a person dressed, the way they spoke, or even where they happened to be at the time. Rape was and is used as a way to extract submission. A way to exercise one’s dominance and power. Not just over another human being but more often than not – over the perpetrators’ very own life.  One of Psychology’s longest standing debates is that of Nature vs. Nurture. The argument takes place around whether a human’s development is predisposed in his DNA, or if the majority of it is influenced by environment and life experiences.  But what if we took out the word versus, asserting instead that Nurture creates Nature and Nature configures Nurture. Existing in harmony, they are always transforming one another.  I think that we can all agree the brain is the most complex, and often times mysterious organ in the human body. While the brain controls everything we do, not all action is conscious or voluntary. When the dynamic interplay between mind and body becomes compromised, in extreme cases it can destroy one’s whole outlook and experience of the world.  Scientifically it has been proven that trauma, at any age, is capable of compromising communication between the limbic system (the emotional brain and home of the amygdala) and the cortex system (responsible for memory, perception, attention, awareness, thought and consciousness). When a synaptic transmission is shut down due to trauma the amygdala fires up, becoming overly reactive, as you are no longer able to find reason, organize or problem solve in the manner that involves conscious perception. The amygdala engages the survival mechanism of fight or flight; creating emotional memory through perception alone. Emotional memory is subconscious, therefore incapable of introspect i.e. ‘act now think later.’ Sometimes, or during repetitive (also referred to as complex) trauma, the brain can become ‘stuck’ in the flight or fight mode. Adaption to the intricate interpretation of information regarding its surroundings includes normalizing the outlook concerning it’s circumstantial habitat while also relying solely on the emotional memory (triggers) to act as an early warning system and ensure survival.  We’ve all heard of muscle memory; we know that muscles are capable of storing ranges of physical motion. Were you aware that muscles can also store emotions, even misinterpreted ones? Emotional memory or perceptions of an experience are carried by the neurones in our brain and stored on a cellular level in our body. These emotions can create blockages of energy atop our main organs, causing stress and imbalances. If a stressor becomes ongoing, the body will attempt to ‘adapt’. Adaptation can include the borrowing of other energy resources and the releasing of hormones until all other energy is depleted. When the compensations become unsustainable, unidentifiable illnesses and more psychosomatic conditions can arise.  In summary, consistent abuse and enormous amounts of stress lead only in one direction: exceeding normal homeostatic limits, thus initiating corresponding compensations. Change in your brain and body chemistry can lead to specific, subconscious behaviour drawn from implicit memory in order to adapt to the constant stressors. Beginning an actual physical reorganization of its own wiring, entering you into a state called allostasis – the point were you find a new way of ‘being’, ‘escaping’ or in extreme cases, ‘surviving’.  You cannot have Ying without Yang, Light without Dark or Nature without Nurture, so why would the term ‘predator’ be so much more commonly appointed to man and not shared equally by the female?  To answer the question of my seventeen year old self, did my physical response to rape make me a sexual predator? No. I recognize now that rape, the act or sight of it, at that time, set off physical and mental triggers accumulated from living in a constant state of flight or fight during my time ‘in the life’.  However, having been personally recruited into the sex slave trade by a 15-year-old girl, and lastly pimped by a 30 something year old Madam taught me this short, if unscientific lesson.  Prey can learn to become Predator in an extreme act of self preservation.  If a woman, or anybody really, who comes from generational abuse, who was raised with abuse or exposed to it at any one time seeks to end the cycle of being or feeling victimized, they could or would turn into a predator and use dominance to claim back what could be seen as a portion of control over their life, even by way of becoming an accomplice, an instigator or dominant by sexually exploiting others.   Do you want to share our story of female abuse?  Email us    securely.

http://www.drjohnaking.com/the-voice/do-women-abuse-a-female-survivors-story/

Do Women Abuse? My Story by Rayanne Irving

Do Women Abuse? My Story by Rayanne K. Irving  I will never forget the earth shattering, panic inducing moment when my own body appeared to have betrayed me – yet again. Roughly six months after escaping from the sex slave trade I was sitting on my mother’s couch in the middle of the night, awake and alone, watching the movie,  “Bastard Out of Carolina” .  During one scene – the stepfather pulled the main character, a little girl named “Bone”, onto his lap in the car consequently raping her. Now, most people’s reaction to this harrowing storyline would be of outrage, disgust, disbelief.  My body’s reaction however was entirely of a different nature.  Privately, my body became aroused – stimulated by the sight it was processing. Such a purely primal response, initiated by the unthinkable, was an unimaginable assault on my very sanity.  And my 17-year-old logic terrified me.  Was I a sexual predator because I had become physically turned on by the rape of a little girl?  Truth for me, was that I had never taken part in sober, consensual intimacy. All I had known was coercion, rape, and prostitution up until that point in my life. The very act of my body responding to such a degree of violence despite how I mentally felt about rape and sex, shook my already collapsing core of character and integrity.  That dirty little secret was to be the first of many “triggers” that would eventually, over time, rise to the surface for me. Marred by these “quirks ” I possessed yet tried so hard to hide, sparked the recognition that I was indeed more dysfunctional than I consciously knew. This begs the question: why did my body respond to the very things I consciously believed I loathed?  Probing deeper to investigate the nature of my new paradoxical personality radically helped to change not only my own recognition of self, but also to find acceptance in my ever-shifting mental clarity. My journey opened me up to the expression of compassion for the oftentimes devastating, as well as maddening experience, it means to be ‘human’.  Personally, I feel there is much left to interpret pertaining to the female sexual predator, largely due to a case of the ‘predator’ existing in a complex field of varied degrees. Often going unnoticed, underreported, or worst of all, flat out denied. The simplified dictionary definition would have the word ‘predator’ described as a person who looks for other people in order to use, control, or harm in some way. Then there is the  sexual predator definition:  “A sexual predator is a person seen as obtaining or trying to obtain sexual contact with another person in a metaphorically “predatory” or abusive manner. Analogous to how a predator hunts down its prey, so the sexual predator is thought to “hunt” for his or her sex “partners.”  The majority of public opinion regarding the ‘typecast’ sexual predator has long been saturated in judgment, reducing these individuals down to vile and sick human beings in possession of no moral consequence. Yet objectively lurking behind that stance, has also been some not so subtle double standards. Such as, to be raped is often rationalized as the responsibility of the victim (ie what did she wear, how was she behaving, who was she hanging out with). Another and mayhap far more damaging standard was that rape was generally, as well as during archival times lawfully, considered a crime only committed against women by men. The delusion that women could not be predators and men could not be raped was spoon-fed to the masses by way of gender stigmatization.  Encompassing the subject of rape was the common visual association being only that of ‘penetration’. Due to gender stamping, grossly overlooked was the hard hitting actuality that overpowering to steal gratification was not the pinnacle in all abuse cases. Rather just in the reported ones. Emotional manipulation, deception, intimidation, fear, guilt, physical impairment, mental incapacity, manual stimulation and more kept the ever rising number of shame and guilt ridden victims quiet, especially boys who were raised to be men; thought incapable of being raped. To be male was to be the aggressor, the conqueror, virile, and therefore treated as invulnerable.  The human body (male and female), when placed under extreme stress, fear, or stimulus, has been known to respond physically by attaining erection and even orgasm, regardless of any true arousal. The physical responses can lead to confusing emotions that, left to grow under the tier of shame, can even call into question one’s sexual orientation. All of this allows for the female predator to slip into myth. If you look at rape throughout history, it has absolutely nothing to do with gender, the way a person dressed, the way they spoke, or even where they happened to be at the time. Rape was and is used as a way to extract submission. A way to exercise one’s dominance and power. Not just over another human being but more often than not – over the perpetrators’ very own life.  One of Psychology’s longest standing debates is that of Nature vs. Nurture. The argument takes place around whether a human’s development is predisposed in his DNA, or if the majority of it is influenced by environment and life experiences.  But what if we took out the word versus, asserting instead that Nurture creates Nature and Nature configures Nurture. Existing in harmony, they are always transforming one another.  I think that we can all agree the brain is the most complex, and often times mysterious organ in the human body. While the brain controls everything we do, not all action is conscious or voluntary. When the dynamic interplay between mind and body becomes compromised, in extreme cases it can destroy one’s whole outlook and experience of the world.  Scientifically it has been proven that trauma, at any age, is capable of compromising communication between the limbic system (the emotional brain and home of the amygdala) and the cortex system (responsible for memory, perception, attention, awareness, thought and consciousness). When a synaptic transmission is shut down due to trauma the amygdala fires up, becoming overly reactive, as you are no longer able to find reason, organize or problem solve in the manner that involves conscious perception. The amygdala engages the survival mechanism of fight or flight; creating emotional memory through perception alone. Emotional memory is subconscious, therefore incapable of introspect i.e. ‘act now think later.’ Sometimes, or during repetitive (also referred to as complex) trauma, the brain can become ‘stuck’ in the flight or fight mode. Adaption to the intricate interpretation of information regarding its surroundings includes normalizing the outlook concerning it’s circumstantial habitat while also relying solely on the emotional memory (triggers) to act as an early warning system and ensure survival.  We’ve all heard of muscle memory; we know that muscles are capable of storing ranges of physical motion. Were you aware that muscles can also store emotions, even misinterpreted ones? Emotional memory or perceptions of an experience are carried by the neurones in our brain and stored on a cellular level in our body. These emotions can create blockages of energy atop our main organs, causing stress and imbalances. If a stressor becomes ongoing, the body will attempt to ‘adapt’. Adaptation can include the borrowing of other energy resources and the releasing of hormones until all other energy is depleted. When the compensations become unsustainable, unidentifiable illnesses and more psychosomatic conditions can arise.  In summary, consistent abuse and enormous amounts of stress lead only in one direction: exceeding normal homeostatic limits, thus initiating corresponding compensations. Change in your brain and body chemistry can lead to specific, subconscious behaviour drawn from implicit memory in order to adapt to the constant stressors. Beginning an actual physical reorganization of its own wiring, entering you into a state called allostasis – the point were you find a new way of ‘being’, ‘escaping’ or in extreme cases, ‘surviving’.  You cannot have Ying without Yang, Light without Dark or Nature without Nurture, so why would the term ‘predator’ be so much more commonly appointed to man and not shared equally by the female?  To answer the question of my seventeen year old self, did my physical response to rape make me a sexual predator? No. I recognize now that rape, the act or sight of it, at that time, set off physical and mental triggers accumulated from living in a constant state of flight or fight during my time ‘in the life’.  However, having been personally recruited into the sex slave trade by a 15-year-old girl, and lastly pimped by a 30 something year old Madam taught me this short, if unscientific lesson.  Prey can learn to become Predator in an extreme act of self preservation.  If a woman, or anybody really, who comes from generational abuse, who was raised with abuse or exposed to it at any one time seeks to end the cycle of being or feeling victimized, they could or would turn into a predator and use dominance to claim back what could be seen as a portion of control over their life, even by way of becoming an accomplice, an instigator or dominant by sexually exploiting others.   Do you want to share our story of female abuse?  Email us    securely.

http://www.drjohnaking.com/the-voice/do-women-abuse-a-female-survivors-story/

Victim or Survivor?

*FOREWORD: Retrospective on my own experience. Will not include details on actual incident as I know how overwhelming it can be reading victim/survivor stories. I just want to connect with those who want to be informed or are going through/have went through similar things that you’re not alone.*

———————————————————————-

I think I was a victim of abuse.

I say this as a literal interpretation of something that transpired in my childhood. I was only 10 and this person was someone older I trusted. I didn’t know better at the time and I think that’s where it’s hard for some people to understand that as the younger person, you’re less equipped to make an informed decision about things of which you have no knowledge of.

Abuse, molestation, rape; they all don’t have to be done under the influence or through physical coercion. Sometimes, it’s just knowingly taking advantage of someone who doesn’t know better.

For a time I actually didn’t have any recollection of the things that happened to me. I blocked it all out. The memories didn’t come back to me until I was 17-ish. Suddenly it was all there and a lot of the delayed emotional fallout ensued.

I struggle with a lot of things. The person is someone I love and are still in contact with (it’s family), though I keep my distance (as much as possible). I don’t think they even remember what they did and I can’t bring myself to hate them. I know for a fact I wasn’t drugged or physically forced, so I blamed it on myself, I felt I was weak. I started to think I may have wanted it. I didn't know what to think. It created a cycle of confusion and self-loathing that only harbored my most self-destructive tendencies.

But I also think I am a survivor.

It’s an ongoing battle to confront all my problems, but I’ve learned a lot. I learned to communicate. I learned that the things that happen to me aren’t always a reflection of the person that I am, that sometimes, things just happen and are by no means an indication of what I deserve. I learned to love myself  and that outside opinions shouldn’t affect my self-worth. I learned to hold others accountable for their own actions. I learned to live with the knowledge that some things are out of my control and that all I can do is allow myself to be the purest form of me: free of any outside influence or guilt.

So I know I am both. I’m a victim and a survivor, and do not feel any smaller for it.

———————————————————————-

PS: Never hesitate to talk about it with someone you love and trust. But don’t feel compelled to do so hastily. Everyone has their own journey and process, so everything will happen in its own time.

Don’t blame yourself or belittle your own feelings; you are entitled to your anger, sorrow, confusion. You are allowed space and time to process your emotions.

You are you and you alone have the power to decide who that is; no one will ever be able to take that away from you.

On recent events

I’ve spoken to some people about Carmen’s recent actions and, although being a target of her has been incredibly draining and terrible for my health (both mental and physical!), I wanted to say some things about the way she’s escalated her language and the claims that she’s making lately.

It has not escaped my notice that since I abandoned my more public blog and stopped writing things explicitly for wider distribution about abuse and sexual violence, I have not been a major target of Carmen’s, but that since I did these things, she has ramped up her harassment of people who associate with me (catandkitty and clownyprincess, among others) significantly. I do not think this is a coincidence. 

It has also not escaped my notice that regarding catandkitty, Carmen has basically constructed a new version of events to justify her continued harassment, which she outlines here:

she entered a discussion between ace survivors about how they were raped by partners who guilted them into sex, and catandkitty entered the conversation to remind everyone present that withholding sex is abusive.

like.

that is *not* the context in which you say that.

the only reason someone would say that to a group of rape-by-coercion survivors is if they were attempting to defend the rapes being discussed.

and guess what?

making posts about torturously abusive partners who abuse by denying sex, and then tagging it “ace” when the post didn’t mention aces at all?

shows that you’re trying to associate violent abusers and rapists who deny sex to abuse, with asexuals who are sex repulsed.

it is an attempt to paint asexuals being sex repulsed as an act of abuse, which works as an AMAZING justification for pressuring asexuals into sex (you’re abusing me if you don’t consent!).

IE, it’s a defense of rape.

like. all you people can do is call me a liar, call me disgusting.

but you can never prove i’m wrong. lmao

Well, okay, allow me to prove that you’re wrong.

First of all, I’ve already addressed the idea that catandkitty (and myself, at my old blog missvoltairine) “entered into” the “chronological middle” of a discussion that was specifically about asexual peoples’ experiences of sexual violence. It’s not true. The conversation that sparked our responses took place over several days and across multiple threads. The crux of the discussion was not “is it okay to rape an asexual person”, but rather, “when and how is it okay to talk about issues of sexual compatibility in relationships?”. Multiple people took a stance that expressing any kind of dissatisfaction with your sex life with your partner was, essentially, rape by coercion, and multiple other people, including myself and catandkitty, spoke up in response to THAT specific idea by pointing out that a rapist could just as easily manipulate someone being unable to express sexual dissatisfaction in a relationship as they could manipulate someone with the idea that they were somehow “owed” sex. We both illustrated this point with personal anecdotes from our own separate abuse histories. 

So the claim that catandkitty was responding, specifically and directly, to several other rape survivors talking about their own abuse, in order to "defend” the sexual violence they had experienced, is a lie. Catandkitty and myself were both responding to a set of ideas that we were seeing repeated in a number of different places. We both made original posts on the subject, instead of reblogging a specific discussion chain, for this reason. Neither of us commented on anyone else’s sexual abuse. Both of us very clearly only discussed our OWN abuse, and the tactics our abusers used.

Catandkitty’s own post on the subject is what Carmen references constantly, now claiming that it was tagged “aces” and “asexual” in an attempt to frame asexual people as inherently sexually abusive. This is an outright lie - the initial post, found here, is tagged with some additional commentary:

#please take explicit notice that this expressly includes sex-repulsed people #the term human need does not in any way harm you #it also doesn't assume you want any particular activity! #you're all about as smart as rocks it's incredible

Catandkitty later reblogged her own initial post to add clarifying details about where she was coming from, specifically - this is where she talks about her own abuse, and the phrase “withholding sex” first comes up (which was initially what a lot of people took issue with, and has now been reframed, as in Carmen’s post above, as “saying no to sex” - this may seem like an academic distinction but “withholding sex” is a phrase used in advocacy circles - it’s in Why Does He Do That?, I learned about it doing anti-rape advocacy work - to describe a specific phenomenon of abusers repeatedly shutting down and shaming any expression of sexual desire or agency in their victim, and then leveraging that later when coercing them into sex they don’t actually want; “saying no to sex” has very different connotations and was not coined in the same way/with the same intentions, and as such it evokes a very different dynamic). You’ll notice that this post is ALSO not tagged with “aces” or “asexual”! It is tagged with the usernames of two people - one of whom accused catandkitty of being a rapist directly, and another of whom was a minor whose blog became the epicenter of a series of people making claims along the lines of “any ultimatum in a relationship is abusive”. (The latter blog, certifiedacehet, has since been deleted and that content was purged, but I have linked to asexualnataliaromanova’s claims about catandkitty before, I believe they’re still up.) It is also tagged “ace tumblr” and “ace discourse”, which, I mean, you could argue implicated all asexuals, but you’d be very obviously wrong. These are tags that are consistently used for discourse, and it’s clear that that is why catandkitty used them.

So the statement that catandkitty tagged a post about her rapist with “ace” and “asexual” is also a lie. This just literally never happened.

I’m disturbed by this dishonesty on a few levels. Ultimately, I think the false claim that catandkitty speaking about her abuse was and is incompatible with the idea that asexual people have also experienced rape imposes a hierarchy of sexual violence where in order for one survivors’ experience to be believed and respected, it is understood that another survivors’ experience must be denigrated, weaponized, and (explicitly or implicitly) positioned as false. This is cruel, dishonest, and dangerous. A non-asexual person talking about their experience of rape is NOT an attack on the idea that sexual violence against asexual people is unacceptable. It never was. Not from me, and not from catandkitty. However, this framing also is pretty notable in how it is completely exclusive of the possibility that an asexual person could ever be abusive! The very idea that an asexual person could be abusive to a partner is consistently positioned as an attack on all asexuals - even when no one in the original conversation went there in any capacity at all. 

I find this difficult because one of my abusers was asexual. This is not a detail I wish to elaborate on, and I want to be very clear that I’m not bringing it up as proof that asexuals are inherently abusive. Abusers can be anyone! They can be members of literally any group. The idea that a specific identity precludes everyone within that identity from being abusive serves abusers and silences their victims. Taking the abuse history of someone like catandkitty and claiming that she’s wrong for discussing it at all because of how it reflects on asexuals - when her abuser was not asexual and she never said he was! - is an incredibly shitty way of perpetuating this idea. No survivor should be pressured to stay silent about their experiences for the sake of “the cause”. Not only is this terrible for survivors, it is terrible for movements, as it enables abuse and its destructive effects within specific groups. 

To spread that idea through blatant lies... is so damaging, to ALL survivors, that I can’t not say anything about it.

The Evil of Gay “cures” in Russia

The sordid history of pathologizing homosexuality has many dark chapters. For decades men, women and children were electrocuted, poisoned, drugged, castrated and even lobotomised by Frankenstein-like Freudians and money swindling quacks.  All this torture and nonsense, labelled Gay Conversion Therapy, was an attempt to “cure” the “disease” of homosexuality. The motivations of people for seeking it were varied.Children obviously can be forced by their parents or church leaders. Adults are bending to social pressure ranging from placating their families, avoiding prison or out of actual fear of being murdered. This is where the current situation in the former Soviet Union comes in. 

Russia is experiencing a disturbing boom in those seeking or being conscripted in to conversion therapy. This snake oil mainly comes in the form of hypnosis and bizarre varieties of religious cleansing, analogous to a Catholic exorcism. There’s money to be made by these quacks and conmen too. Multiple costly appointments and more than a little blackmailing to keep the patient list private. To clarify, homosexuality is not officially classified as a mental disorder in Russia.  Being gay was taken off the list of recognised psychiatric conditions in 1999.Yet demand in the gay-hostile environment is soaring.LGBT people are being subjected to cruel Pavlovian response sessions and the malpractice of cognitive behavioural therapy; associating arousal with pain and nausea. Imagine a cross between Clockwork Orange and some Orwellian nightmare. 

A recent BBC investigation into the rise of conversion therapy there interviewed psychotherapist Yan Goland .He claimed he "cured" 78 gay men and 8 trans people using a combination of psychoanalysis, hypnotherapy and pressuring the patient/victim in to having heterosexual intercourse. And there are hundreds more charlatans, extortionists and well-meaning homophobic professionals.As well as the men in the white coats there are the ones in the funny hats and dresses. The Russian Orthodox Church enjoys levels of power in Putin’s Russian unseen since the time of the Czars.  Homosexuality is something these highly respected clergy views as a cancer in Gods creation. Also, Protestant pastors run an organisation called "Vosstanovleniye" the Russian for “rehabilitation/resurrection" using similar medieval mumbo jumbo. Gays are hit with canes, saturated with cold water and made to swallow holy water. They are locked in solitary confinement religious cells, screamed at with biblical verses and sleep deprived. All classic examples of brainwashing and psychological torture used to extract false information. Those exposed to these medieval rituals are inevitably left mentally broken, self-hating and suicidal. 

Russia is certainly not the only place soliciting this damaging mental and physical hocus pocus. However, Putin's laws created a perfect storm of criminality and fear likely to force LGBT folk to submit to this sickening suffering. Other nations take a different approach to invalidate Queer identities. In Iran Ayatollah Khomeini issued fatwa decades ago allowing gender reassignment surgery. The result might seem like an act of tolerance. It fact it was to eliminate homosexual men. Gays in Iran are forced with the choice of death or sexual reassignment surgery to become Trans women, regardless of their identifications. There is a disturbing cottage industry in the US which includes summer camps for kids “to pray away the gay”. One of the biggest masterminds behind the American gay cure movement is Alan Chambers whose religious quasi-cult “Exodus International” has over 260 ministries promising to rid you of those pesky fag demons for a sizable fee. Paradoxically Chambers admitted that “99% of recorded cases this cure does not work”. Amnesty International and the UN have cited a sickening culture of “corrective rape” to “cure” lesbians in Africa and parts of Asia. I think the disgusting term is self-explanatory of the process used.

Unpalatable as it sounds, is there any actual proof that sexual orientation can be altered by these therapies?  The answer is a resounding no. Decades of empirical study have shown homosexuality is not a disorder and cannot be cured. Therapies are almost universally seen as unethical, unscientific and ineffective. Not to mention it is a major breach of the Hippocratic Oath. Earlier this year The Irish Council for Psychotherapy stated that “efforts to try to change, manipulate or reverse sexual orientation and/or gender identity change through psychological therapies with different theoretical frameworks are unethical ……this is usually pursued via non-scientifically proven and potentially harmful techniques.” This opinion mirrored the 2007 report from the Royal College of Psychiatrists in the UK which stated "Evidence shows that LGB people are open to seeking help for mental health problems. However, they may be misunderstood by therapists who regard their homosexuality as the root cause of any presenting problem such as depression or anxiety. Unfortunately, therapists who behave in this way are likely to cause considerable distress. A small minority of therapists will even go so far as to attempt to change their client's sexual orientation…. there is no evidence that such change is possible." 

The World Health Organisation called LGBT conversion therapy “a serious threat to the health and well-being - even lives of affected people”. The only accredited scientific paper which seemed to go against this trend was by Dr Robert Spitzer in 2003. However, since then Dr Spitzer has acknowledged his evidence was  “fatally flawed” and his conclusions were completely incorrect. He went as far as begging the LGBT for forgiveness, saying “I owe the gay community an apology”. Other studies citing a cure and LGBT as a syndrome are discredited Freudian theories, falsified pseudoscientific results and religious dogma. The overwhelming scientific evidence points to homosexuality being a natural and constant part of not just the human species but across the animal kingdom. Advances in neurology and genetics are coming every closer to showing detectable congenital differences in the brains of gay people and genetic models showing why LGBT people are adaptive and may be a necessary part of the passing on of DNA. One uncomfortable fact must not be ignored. There are LGBT people who sincerely want to be heterosexual. Should we impede their free will to seek help? After all, we would consider it immoral to prevent a Trans person from the right to medically alter themselves to match their identified state. I would ask LGBT people who want a “cure” to ask themselves these questions. Do you feel that your own individual homosexuality is discordant with your identity or do you think all homosexuals are sick? Do you want to because your family, friends, state or religion make you feel this way? Do you want to prevent yourself being bullied or fit in better to society, marry and have children? If your answer is yes to any of these things than I would suggest that this “cure” is not really your choice. It is coercion. You are not sick, the society pressuring you is. 

As unscientific as it is unnecessary, gay conversion therapy attempts to manipulate society in to a definite hierarchy putting male heterosexuality firmly at the top. Anything challenging heteronormative values is subversive and must be destroyed or discredited. Categorising being queer as a disorder is analogous to native peoples feeling their cultures were inferior to those of their colonial masters. That effect still resonates today. When the voodoo, whether it be psychiatric or religious, inevitably fails to alter sexual orientation it is the child or adults “fault”. Guilt at disappointing parents or culture, fear of angering God mixed up with all the natural confusion and self-hatred of young people frequently leads to substance abuse, self-harm and in many cases suicide. And there are serious implications in the wider culture which tolerates this butchery. If you can deceive heterosexual society into believing homosexuality is an illness or a choice then it’s a slippery slope towards coercing, criminalising and persecuting LGBT people without conscience.

A Story Of Sexual Assault In Marriage · Divorced Moms

 Sexual consent in marriage or a relationship takes on a very gray hue compared to the traditional views of sexual assault. Incredibly, researchers estimate that 10 to 14 percent of married or formerly married women have experienced at least one forced sexual assault in marriage by a husband or ex, according to the National Online Research Center on Violence Against Women.

Walking down the aisle does not give your husband blanket consent to have sex with you at any time. No still means no.

Sexual experiences should be enjoyable for both parties! That’s the whole point, right? (Well with the obvious exception of procreation.) Marriage starts out (usually) because you love each other. Sexual intimacy takes things to another level. But what happens when one partner isn’t in the mood?

In any long-term relationship, there will be times when one partner wants sex and the other doesn’t. It’s part of the natural rhythm of life. A loving relationship has something called sexual communal strength, which is each person’s motivation to meet their partner’s sexual needs. Sometimes, the person who isn’t in the mood delights in seeing their partner happy by meeting their needs, so they oblige because they too gain pleasure. This is still a mutually beneficial situation.

Unfortunately, sometimes this can turn negative. When coercion is involved or when a person ignores their own needs, we enter the territory of unmitigated communion. Those mutual benefits are missing. As you can imagine, this can lead down a slippery slope of dissatisfaction, resentment, and negativity. (And yes, marital rape.)

Sexual coercion is defined as unwanted sexual activity that happens when you are pressured, tricked, threatened, or forced in a non-physical way.

That means that using guilt, continually asking after being told no, yelling, calling names, and threatening to withhold something else from you if you don’t submit are all acts of non-consensual sex and toe (and often cross) the line of rape. Yes, even in marriage.

Sexual Assault in Marriage: Forced Consent via Coercion is Not Consent.

Lack of consent, while you are sleeping or drunk, is not consent either.

Legitimate consent is the presence of an enthusiastic “yes” (verbal or non-verbal) void of manipulation, threats, or head games, not just the absence of a “no”.

My Story

After the drinking began, this part of our relationship began to go downhill. I disliked being close to him more and more. His actions annoyed me, his breath disgusted me, and his constant hounding made even the idea of sex less desirable.

I would say no. I would say I was too tired. I would use the kids as an excuse, anything to avoid a fight or him getting angry.

At first, I wanted to protect his feelings. I would oblige as often as I could bear, but I would spend the entire time just hoping and praying one of the kids would start to cry. Often they did and I was saved.

Over the years it got worse. Every pop of a beer can, every drunken sway was another nail in the coffin our relationship in general, never mind in the bedroom.

But he never saw that. He saw a spiteful, cold woman who didn’t desire him.

I saw in him a selfish, addicted man who put himself before all others.

I would give in to avoid the badgering and fighting. It was often easier to submit and just get it over with.

I would shudder at his touch at least half the time. I can’t say I never got any enjoyment out of it, of course. There were some decent times over the years but it got harder as time went on. I couldn’t always escape in my mind enough to give in to the moment. I would imagine I was with other men. A few of my favorite TV characters got me through the nights over the years.

Sometimes he’d notice and give up. Sometimes he didn’t care.

Was that really consent?

Was saying “no” the first five times in an evening but eventually giving in consent? Was saying “fine” or “I guess” truly consent? What about saying nothing? What about drawing back when he touched me?

Was this really enjoyable for him? How could a man who insisted he loved me treat me in this way and be perfectly ok with it?

Sexual Assault in Marriage

It’s absolutely mind-blowing that 10 to 14 percent of women who are or have been married have been assaulted by their partner, don’t you think?

Why might it be this way, you wonder? For starters, marital rape wasn’t even a crime in all 50 states until 1993. That means that until then, women were still treated more like property than free citizens. In the United States. In a lot of our lifetimes, or at least our parents’.

And still it continues, not just in gen X or Y, but millennials too, even though we grew up in a changing world that appeared to set women free.

There is something fundamentally wrong, in my opinion, with a culture that essentially allows this to go on still. How is it ok to coerce someone into the most intimate act between two people? And even more disturbing is: why would someone want to have sex with an unwilling “partner”?

I’ve heard stories from many women in my single moms’ community of sexual manipulation and coercion.

“With my ex, no wasn’t an option he accepted often. Woke up to him on top of me more times than I can count.”

“I was guilted all the time and made to do things I wasn’t comfortable with because I didn’t want him going somewhere else to get his needs met. He did anyway though.”

“You can’t deny me the right…”

“If you don’t, I will…”

“Since I have to beg for sex you’ll see how it feels to beg for something that you need.”

“If you won’t have sex with me, I’ll find someone who will.”

The back rubs that could never just be.

The constant insistence where you just finally give in to make it all stop.

Drawing the Line

I recall the day I told him NO, forcefully, and with confidence.

And I told him I wasn’t doing it anymore. At all. Maybe ever.

We’d been trying to save our marriage. He’d gotten sober to appease me once he realized I had one foot out the door, but none of it felt genuine or real. (And it wasn’t, as he has told me since then.)

I did it unwillingly for years and years and completely disrespected myself in the process.

I had a lot to think about and I didn’t need to be doing something I was regularly coerced into overshadowing it all.

You see, I still wondered if it was my fault. If there was something I had to change inside me…could change inside me…that would make me want him and love him again.

Months later he tried to make things better by sending me several links to articles that tried to imply what a horrible human I was for not having sex. They included such gems as “letting Satan into our relationship” and that “God was crying” over it. (His addiction had nothing to do with any of this, of course.) He made it clear that he was unwilling to let me try to heal at my own pace, and that he was seeing my harnessing of my power as a betrayal to him rather than something I owed myself.

I had always thought that his nastiness over sex was more related to his drunkenness but it wasn’t — he actually meant it. No matter how much I tried to get past the barrier and negative association I had with him and sex it was all about his comfort and not mine in the end.

He couldn’t accept that when I set a boundary of no sex while I sorted out the future of our marriage that it was his fault. He tried to use guilt, religion, obligation, anger, and more to make me change my mind.

In the end, the only way for me to break my chains was to set myself free.

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Do Women Abuse? My Story by Rayanne Irving

Do Women Abuse? My Story by Rayanne K. Irving  I will never forget the earth shattering, panic inducing moment when my own body appeared to have betrayed me – yet again. Roughly six months after escaping from the sex slave trade I was sitting on my mother’s couch in the middle of the night, awake and alone, watching the movie,  “Bastard Out of Carolina” .  During one scene – the stepfather pulled the main character, a little girl named “Bone”, onto his lap in the car consequently raping her. Now, most people’s reaction to this harrowing storyline would be of outrage, disgust, disbelief.  My body’s reaction however was entirely of a different nature.  Privately, my body became aroused – stimulated by the sight it was processing. Such a purely primal response, initiated by the unthinkable, was an unimaginable assault on my very sanity.  And my 17-year-old logic terrified me.  Was I a sexual predator because I had become physically turned on by the rape of a little girl?  Truth for me, was that I had never taken part in sober, consensual intimacy. All I had known was coercion, rape, and prostitution up until that point in my life. The very act of my body responding to such a degree of violence despite how I mentally felt about rape and sex, shook my already collapsing core of character and integrity.  That dirty little secret was to be the first of many “triggers” that would eventually, over time, rise to the surface for me. Marred by these “quirks ” I possessed yet tried so hard to hide, sparked the recognition that I was indeed more dysfunctional than I consciously knew. This begs the question: why did my body respond to the very things I consciously believed I loathed?  Probing deeper to investigate the nature of my new paradoxical personality radically helped to change not only my own recognition of self, but also to find acceptance in my ever-shifting mental clarity. My journey opened me up to the expression of compassion for the oftentimes devastating, as well as maddening experience, it means to be ‘human’.  Personally, I feel there is much left to interpret pertaining to the female sexual predator, largely due to a case of the ‘predator’ existing in a complex field of varied degrees. Often going unnoticed, underreported, or worst of all, flat out denied. The simplified dictionary definition would have the word ‘predator’ described as a person who looks for other people in order to use, control, or harm in some way. Then there is the  sexual predator definition:  “A sexual predator is a person seen as obtaining or trying to obtain sexual contact with another person in a metaphorically “predatory” or abusive manner. Analogous to how a predator hunts down its prey, so the sexual predator is thought to “hunt” for his or her sex “partners.”  The majority of public opinion regarding the ‘typecast’ sexual predator has long been saturated in judgment, reducing these individuals down to vile and sick human beings in possession of no moral consequence. Yet objectively lurking behind that stance, has also been some not so subtle double standards. Such as, to be raped is often rationalized as the responsibility of the victim (ie what did she wear, how was she behaving, who was she hanging out with). Another and mayhap far more damaging standard was that rape was generally, as well as during archival times lawfully, considered a crime only committed against women by men. The delusion that women could not be predators and men could not be raped was spoon-fed to the masses by way of gender stigmatization.  Encompassing the subject of rape was the common visual association being only that of ‘penetration’. Due to gender stamping, grossly overlooked was the hard hitting actuality that overpowering to steal gratification was not the pinnacle in all abuse cases. Rather just in the reported ones. Emotional manipulation, deception, intimidation, fear, guilt, physical impairment, mental incapacity, manual stimulation and more kept the ever rising number of shame and guilt ridden victims quiet, especially boys who were raised to be men; thought incapable of being raped. To be male was to be the aggressor, the conqueror, virile, and therefore treated as invulnerable.  The human body (male and female), when placed under extreme stress, fear, or stimulus, has been known to respond physically by attaining erection and even orgasm, regardless of any true arousal. The physical responses can lead to confusing emotions that, left to grow under the tier of shame, can even call into question one’s sexual orientation. All of this allows for the female predator to slip into myth. If you look at rape throughout history, it has absolutely nothing to do with gender, the way a person dressed, the way they spoke, or even where they happened to be at the time. Rape was and is used as a way to extract submission. A way to exercise one’s dominance and power. Not just over another human being but more often than not – over the perpetrators’ very own life.  One of Psychology’s longest standing debates is that of Nature vs. Nurture. The argument takes place around whether a human’s development is predisposed in his DNA, or if the majority of it is influenced by environment and life experiences.  But what if we took out the word versus, asserting instead that Nurture creates Nature and Nature configures Nurture. Existing in harmony, they are always transforming one another.  I think that we can all agree the brain is the most complex, and often times mysterious organ in the human body. While the brain controls everything we do, not all action is conscious or voluntary. When the dynamic interplay between mind and body becomes compromised, in extreme cases it can destroy one’s whole outlook and experience of the world.  Scientifically it has been proven that trauma, at any age, is capable of compromising communication between the limbic system (the emotional brain and home of the amygdala) and the cortex system (responsible for memory, perception, attention, awareness, thought and consciousness). When a synaptic transmission is shut down due to trauma the amygdala fires up, becoming overly reactive, as you are no longer able to find reason, organize or problem solve in the manner that involves conscious perception. The amygdala engages the survival mechanism of fight or flight; creating emotional memory through perception alone. Emotional memory is subconscious, therefore incapable of introspect i.e. ‘act now think later.’ Sometimes, or during repetitive (also referred to as complex) trauma, the brain can become ‘stuck’ in the flight or fight mode. Adaption to the intricate interpretation of information regarding its surroundings includes normalizing the outlook concerning it’s circumstantial habitat while also relying solely on the emotional memory (triggers) to act as an early warning system and ensure survival.  We’ve all heard of muscle memory; we know that muscles are capable of storing ranges of physical motion. Were you aware that muscles can also store emotions, even misinterpreted ones? Emotional memory or perceptions of an experience are carried by the neurones in our brain and stored on a cellular level in our body. These emotions can create blockages of energy atop our main organs, causing stress and imbalances. If a stressor becomes ongoing, the body will attempt to ‘adapt’. Adaptation can include the borrowing of other energy resources and the releasing of hormones until all other energy is depleted. When the compensations become unsustainable, unidentifiable illnesses and more psychosomatic conditions can arise.  In summary, consistent abuse and enormous amounts of stress lead only in one direction: exceeding normal homeostatic limits, thus initiating corresponding compensations. Change in your brain and body chemistry can lead to specific, subconscious behaviour drawn from implicit memory in order to adapt to the constant stressors. Beginning an actual physical reorganization of its own wiring, entering you into a state called allostasis – the point were you find a new way of ‘being’, ‘escaping’ or in extreme cases, ‘surviving’.  You cannot have Ying without Yang, Light without Dark or Nature without Nurture, so why would the term ‘predator’ be so much more commonly appointed to man and not shared equally by the female?  To answer the question of my seventeen year old self, did my physical response to rape make me a sexual predator? No. I recognize now that rape, the act or sight of it, at that time, set off physical and mental triggers accumulated from living in a constant state of flight or fight during my time ‘in the life’.  However, having been personally recruited into the sex slave trade by a 15-year-old girl, and lastly pimped by a 30 something year old Madam taught me this short, if unscientific lesson.  Prey can learn to become Predator in an extreme act of self preservation.  If a woman, or anybody really, who comes from generational abuse, who was raised with abuse or exposed to it at any one time seeks to end the cycle of being or feeling victimized, they could or would turn into a predator and use dominance to claim back what could be seen as a portion of control over their life, even by way of becoming an accomplice, an instigator or dominant by sexually exploiting others.   Do you want to share our story of female abuse?  Email us    securely.

http://www.drjohnaking.com/the-voice/do-women-abuse-a-female-survivors-story/

Do Women Abuse? My Story by Rayanne Irving

Do Women Abuse? My Story by Rayanne K. Irving  I will never forget the earth shattering, panic inducing moment when my own body appeared to have betrayed me – yet again. Roughly six months after escaping from the sex slave trade I was sitting on my mother’s couch in the middle of the night, awake and alone, watching the movie,  “Bastard Out of Carolina” .  During one scene – the stepfather pulled the main character, a little girl named “Bone”, onto his lap in the car consequently raping her. Now, most people’s reaction to this harrowing storyline would be of outrage, disgust, disbelief.  My body’s reaction however was entirely of a different nature.  Privately, my body became aroused – stimulated by the sight it was processing. Such a purely primal response, initiated by the unthinkable, was an unimaginable assault on my very sanity.  And my 17-year-old logic terrified me.  Was I a sexual predator because I had become physically turned on by the rape of a little girl?  Truth for me, was that I had never taken part in sober, consensual intimacy. All I had known was coercion, rape, and prostitution up until that point in my life. The very act of my body responding to such a degree of violence despite how I mentally felt about rape and sex, shook my already collapsing core of character and integrity.  That dirty little secret was to be the first of many “triggers” that would eventually, over time, rise to the surface for me. Marred by these “quirks ” I possessed yet tried so hard to hide, sparked the recognition that I was indeed more dysfunctional than I consciously knew. This begs the question: why did my body respond to the very things I consciously believed I loathed?  Probing deeper to investigate the nature of my new paradoxical personality radically helped to change not only my own recognition of self, but also to find acceptance in my ever-shifting mental clarity. My journey opened me up to the expression of compassion for the oftentimes devastating, as well as maddening experience, it means to be ‘human’.  Personally, I feel there is much left to interpret pertaining to the female sexual predator, largely due to a case of the ‘predator’ existing in a complex field of varied degrees. Often going unnoticed, underreported, or worst of all, flat out denied. The simplified dictionary definition would have the word ‘predator’ described as a person who looks for other people in order to use, control, or harm in some way. Then there is the  sexual predator definition:  “A sexual predator is a person seen as obtaining or trying to obtain sexual contact with another person in a metaphorically “predatory” or abusive manner. Analogous to how a predator hunts down its prey, so the sexual predator is thought to “hunt” for his or her sex “partners.”  The majority of public opinion regarding the ‘typecast’ sexual predator has long been saturated in judgment, reducing these individuals down to vile and sick human beings in possession of no moral consequence. Yet objectively lurking behind that stance, has also been some not so subtle double standards. Such as, to be raped is often rationalized as the responsibility of the victim (ie what did she wear, how was she behaving, who was she hanging out with). Another and mayhap far more damaging standard was that rape was generally, as well as during archival times lawfully, considered a crime only committed against women by men. The delusion that women could not be predators and men could not be raped was spoon-fed to the masses by way of gender stigmatization.  Encompassing the subject of rape was the common visual association being only that of ‘penetration’. Due to gender stamping, grossly overlooked was the hard hitting actuality that overpowering to steal gratification was not the pinnacle in all abuse cases. Rather just in the reported ones. Emotional manipulation, deception, intimidation, fear, guilt, physical impairment, mental incapacity, manual stimulation and more kept the ever rising number of shame and guilt ridden victims quiet, especially boys who were raised to be men; thought incapable of being raped. To be male was to be the aggressor, the conqueror, virile, and therefore treated as invulnerable.  The human body (male and female), when placed under extreme stress, fear, or stimulus, has been known to respond physically by attaining erection and even orgasm, regardless of any true arousal. The physical responses can lead to confusing emotions that, left to grow under the tier of shame, can even call into question one’s sexual orientation. All of this allows for the female predator to slip into myth. If you look at rape throughout history, it has absolutely nothing to do with gender, the way a person dressed, the way they spoke, or even where they happened to be at the time. Rape was and is used as a way to extract submission. A way to exercise one’s dominance and power. Not just over another human being but more often than not – over the perpetrators’ very own life.  One of Psychology’s longest standing debates is that of Nature vs. Nurture. The argument takes place around whether a human’s development is predisposed in his DNA, or if the majority of it is influenced by environment and life experiences.  But what if we took out the word versus, asserting instead that Nurture creates Nature and Nature configures Nurture. Existing in harmony, they are always transforming one another.  I think that we can all agree the brain is the most complex, and often times mysterious organ in the human body. While the brain controls everything we do, not all action is conscious or voluntary. When the dynamic interplay between mind and body becomes compromised, in extreme cases it can destroy one’s whole outlook and experience of the world.  Scientifically it has been proven that trauma, at any age, is capable of compromising communication between the limbic system (the emotional brain and home of the amygdala) and the cortex system (responsible for memory, perception, attention, awareness, thought and consciousness). When a synaptic transmission is shut down due to trauma the amygdala fires up, becoming overly reactive, as you are no longer able to find reason, organize or problem solve in the manner that involves conscious perception. The amygdala engages the survival mechanism of fight or flight; creating emotional memory through perception alone. Emotional memory is subconscious, therefore incapable of introspect i.e. ‘act now think later.’ Sometimes, or during repetitive (also referred to as complex) trauma, the brain can become ‘stuck’ in the flight or fight mode. Adaption to the intricate interpretation of information regarding its surroundings includes normalizing the outlook concerning it’s circumstantial habitat while also relying solely on the emotional memory (triggers) to act as an early warning system and ensure survival.  We’ve all heard of muscle memory; we know that muscles are capable of storing ranges of physical motion. Were you aware that muscles can also store emotions, even misinterpreted ones? Emotional memory or perceptions of an experience are carried by the neurones in our brain and stored on a cellular level in our body. These emotions can create blockages of energy atop our main organs, causing stress and imbalances. If a stressor becomes ongoing, the body will attempt to ‘adapt’. Adaptation can include the borrowing of other energy resources and the releasing of hormones until all other energy is depleted. When the compensations become unsustainable, unidentifiable illnesses and more psychosomatic conditions can arise.  In summary, consistent abuse and enormous amounts of stress lead only in one direction: exceeding normal homeostatic limits, thus initiating corresponding compensations. Change in your brain and body chemistry can lead to specific, subconscious behaviour drawn from implicit memory in order to adapt to the constant stressors. Beginning an actual physical reorganization of its own wiring, entering you into a state called allostasis – the point were you find a new way of ‘being’, ‘escaping’ or in extreme cases, ‘surviving’.  You cannot have Ying without Yang, Light without Dark or Nature without Nurture, so why would the term ‘predator’ be so much more commonly appointed to man and not shared equally by the female?  To answer the question of my seventeen year old self, did my physical response to rape make me a sexual predator? No. I recognize now that rape, the act or sight of it, at that time, set off physical and mental triggers accumulated from living in a constant state of flight or fight during my time ‘in the life’.  However, having been personally recruited into the sex slave trade by a 15-year-old girl, and lastly pimped by a 30 something year old Madam taught me this short, if unscientific lesson.  Prey can learn to become Predator in an extreme act of self preservation.  If a woman, or anybody really, who comes from generational abuse, who was raised with abuse or exposed to it at any one time seeks to end the cycle of being or feeling victimized, they could or would turn into a predator and use dominance to claim back what could be seen as a portion of control over their life, even by way of becoming an accomplice, an instigator or dominant by sexually exploiting others.   Do you want to share our story of female abuse?  Email us    securely.

http://www.drjohnaking.com/the-voice/do-women-abuse-a-female-survivors-story/

Do Women Abuse? My Story by Rayanne Irving

Do Women Abuse? My Story by Rayanne K. Irving  I will never forget the earth shattering, panic inducing moment when my own body appeared to have betrayed me – yet again. Roughly six months after escaping from the sex slave trade I was sitting on my mother’s couch in the middle of the night, awake and alone, watching the movie,  “Bastard Out of Carolina” .  During one scene – the stepfather pulled the main character, a little girl named “Bone”, onto his lap in the car consequently raping her. Now, most people’s reaction to this harrowing storyline would be of outrage, disgust, disbelief.  My body’s reaction however was entirely of a different nature.  Privately, my body became aroused – stimulated by the sight it was processing. Such a purely primal response, initiated by the unthinkable, was an unimaginable assault on my very sanity.  And my 17-year-old logic terrified me.  Was I a sexual predator because I had become physically turned on by the rape of a little girl?  Truth for me, was that I had never taken part in sober, consensual intimacy. All I had known was coercion, rape, and prostitution up until that point in my life. The very act of my body responding to such a degree of violence despite how I mentally felt about rape and sex, shook my already collapsing core of character and integrity.  That dirty little secret was to be the first of many “triggers” that would eventually, over time, rise to the surface for me. Marred by these “quirks ” I possessed yet tried so hard to hide, sparked the recognition that I was indeed more dysfunctional than I consciously knew. This begs the question: why did my body respond to the very things I consciously believed I loathed?  Probing deeper to investigate the nature of my new paradoxical personality radically helped to change not only my own recognition of self, but also to find acceptance in my ever-shifting mental clarity. My journey opened me up to the expression of compassion for the oftentimes devastating, as well as maddening experience, it means to be ‘human’.  Personally, I feel there is much left to interpret pertaining to the female sexual predator, largely due to a case of the ‘predator’ existing in a complex field of varied degrees. Often going unnoticed, underreported, or worst of all, flat out denied. The simplified dictionary definition would have the word ‘predator’ described as a person who looks for other people in order to use, control, or harm in some way. Then there is the  sexual predator definition:  “A sexual predator is a person seen as obtaining or trying to obtain sexual contact with another person in a metaphorically “predatory” or abusive manner. Analogous to how a predator hunts down its prey, so the sexual predator is thought to “hunt” for his or her sex “partners.”  The majority of public opinion regarding the ‘typecast’ sexual predator has long been saturated in judgment, reducing these individuals down to vile and sick human beings in possession of no moral consequence. Yet objectively lurking behind that stance, has also been some not so subtle double standards. Such as, to be raped is often rationalized as the responsibility of the victim (ie what did she wear, how was she behaving, who was she hanging out with). Another and mayhap far more damaging standard was that rape was generally, as well as during archival times lawfully, considered a crime only committed against women by men. The delusion that women could not be predators and men could not be raped was spoon-fed to the masses by way of gender stigmatization.  Encompassing the subject of rape was the common visual association being only that of ‘penetration’. Due to gender stamping, grossly overlooked was the hard hitting actuality that overpowering to steal gratification was not the pinnacle in all abuse cases. Rather just in the reported ones. Emotional manipulation, deception, intimidation, fear, guilt, physical impairment, mental incapacity, manual stimulation and more kept the ever rising number of shame and guilt ridden victims quiet, especially boys who were raised to be men; thought incapable of being raped. To be male was to be the aggressor, the conqueror, virile, and therefore treated as invulnerable.  The human body (male and female), when placed under extreme stress, fear, or stimulus, has been known to respond physically by attaining erection and even orgasm, regardless of any true arousal. The physical responses can lead to confusing emotions that, left to grow under the tier of shame, can even call into question one’s sexual orientation. All of this allows for the female predator to slip into myth. If you look at rape throughout history, it has absolutely nothing to do with gender, the way a person dressed, the way they spoke, or even where they happened to be at the time. Rape was and is used as a way to extract submission. A way to exercise one’s dominance and power. Not just over another human being but more often than not – over the perpetrators’ very own life.  One of Psychology’s longest standing debates is that of Nature vs. Nurture. The argument takes place around whether a human’s development is predisposed in his DNA, or if the majority of it is influenced by environment and life experiences.  But what if we took out the word versus, asserting instead that Nurture creates Nature and Nature configures Nurture. Existing in harmony, they are always transforming one another.  I think that we can all agree the brain is the most complex, and often times mysterious organ in the human body. While the brain controls everything we do, not all action is conscious or voluntary. When the dynamic interplay between mind and body becomes compromised, in extreme cases it can destroy one’s whole outlook and experience of the world.  Scientifically it has been proven that trauma, at any age, is capable of compromising communication between the limbic system (the emotional brain and home of the amygdala) and the cortex system (responsible for memory, perception, attention, awareness, thought and consciousness). When a synaptic transmission is shut down due to trauma the amygdala fires up, becoming overly reactive, as you are no longer able to find reason, organize or problem solve in the manner that involves conscious perception. The amygdala engages the survival mechanism of fight or flight; creating emotional memory through perception alone. Emotional memory is subconscious, therefore incapable of introspect i.e. ‘act now think later.’ Sometimes, or during repetitive (also referred to as complex) trauma, the brain can become ‘stuck’ in the flight or fight mode. Adaption to the intricate interpretation of information regarding its surroundings includes normalizing the outlook concerning it’s circumstantial habitat while also relying solely on the emotional memory (triggers) to act as an early warning system and ensure survival.  We’ve all heard of muscle memory; we know that muscles are capable of storing ranges of physical motion. Were you aware that muscles can also store emotions, even misinterpreted ones? Emotional memory or perceptions of an experience are carried by the neurones in our brain and stored on a cellular level in our body. These emotions can create blockages of energy atop our main organs, causing stress and imbalances. If a stressor becomes ongoing, the body will attempt to ‘adapt’. Adaptation can include the borrowing of other energy resources and the releasing of hormones until all other energy is depleted. When the compensations become unsustainable, unidentifiable illnesses and more psychosomatic conditions can arise.  In summary, consistent abuse and enormous amounts of stress lead only in one direction: exceeding normal homeostatic limits, thus initiating corresponding compensations. Change in your brain and body chemistry can lead to specific, subconscious behaviour drawn from implicit memory in order to adapt to the constant stressors. Beginning an actual physical reorganization of its own wiring, entering you into a state called allostasis – the point were you find a new way of ‘being’, ‘escaping’ or in extreme cases, ‘surviving’.  You cannot have Ying without Yang, Light without Dark or Nature without Nurture, so why would the term ‘predator’ be so much more commonly appointed to man and not shared equally by the female?  To answer the question of my seventeen year old self, did my physical response to rape make me a sexual predator? No. I recognize now that rape, the act or sight of it, at that time, set off physical and mental triggers accumulated from living in a constant state of flight or fight during my time ‘in the life’.  However, having been personally recruited into the sex slave trade by a 15-year-old girl, and lastly pimped by a 30 something year old Madam taught me this short, if unscientific lesson.  Prey can learn to become Predator in an extreme act of self preservation.  If a woman, or anybody really, who comes from generational abuse, who was raised with abuse or exposed to it at any one time seeks to end the cycle of being or feeling victimized, they could or would turn into a predator and use dominance to claim back what could be seen as a portion of control over their life, even by way of becoming an accomplice, an instigator or dominant by sexually exploiting others.   Do you want to share our story of female abuse?  Email us    securely.

http://www.drjohnaking.com/the-voice/do-women-abuse-a-female-survivors-story/