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Nevertheless, Im quite sure I have had more contact with rape/assault victims than you.
And I'm quite sure you haven't. Howzat?
How many years have you spent representing victims of torture and assault, including sexual assault, from all over the globe? (Just for instance, how many of your clients had their husbands abducted by the military, and won't "admit" to you, or themselves, that they were the victim of multiple rapes by the men who took away their husbands, because to do so would leave them no option but to drink Drano as their friends in the same situation did?) That will be 13 years, in my case. How many medico-legal programs to assist such people have you assisted in setting up? How many people have you taught and trained to provide legal representation for such people? And really, that's just part of the formal, professional tip of my own personal victim-contact iceberg.
What strange compulsion is it that some people feel to speak to other people as if they were morons? Might the fact that I said that the incident I described happened 30 years ago have been your first clue to the probability that I'm not really a wet-behind-the-ears undergraduate of some sort?
The point I was trying to make is that a victim's refusal to acknowledge the role of self defense in their experience is either a sign of denial or repressed feelings. Refusing to come to terms with an assault is more destructive than the assault itself. No, Im not a psychiatrist, but I play one on tv
And you evidently do it very badly. My advice would be that you stop doing it at all, and simply do what you're paid to do, which is apparently to teach what you call self-defence.
I pay someone $130 an hour for assistance in "coming to terms with" the aftermath of a series of traumatic experiences at intervals over many years, up to and including last year. (Hmm, I wonder ... how would your "self-defence" training have enabled me to avoid 3 months of psychological abuse at the hands of the staff, while literally tied to a bed in the children's ward of a religious hospital in 1960, at the age of eight? SHIT HAPPENS.) He, the recipient of my cheques, has a Ph.D. and about 40 years in professional practice.
I ACKNOWLEDGE the role that "self-defence" played in the incident I spoke of. I did ignore small warning signs, of the sort that had never before indicated real danger, that I would better have paid more attention to; and ultimately, nonetheless, I SAVED MY LIFE, by remaining alert and clear-headed and taking action. Exactly what more do you want? I can't even decipher what you mean by "a victim's refusal to acknowledge the role of self defense in their experience", for pity's sake, but I think I've covered all possible bases.
The fact that you are sick to death of listening to people speak to your experience is a warning sign, but I digress.
The fact that you would say such a thing is more than a warning sign. It's a great big billboard emblazoned with the words I'm totally ignorant of what I'm talking about, but that isn't going to stop me from making appallingly incivil and unethical comments to and about strangers. I mean, I assume that you're given some instruction in the ethics of dealing with individuals whom you believe may have a need for psychotherapy, and I would think that you might therefore have been quite aware of how unethical it was to say what you said.
What I'm sick to death of is people attempting to use my experience, MY LIFE, to advance their own agenda. Just in case that wasn't perfectly clear. People are not objects, and I am not a means to anyone else's end. And by the way -- your attempt to use me and my experience to advance your agenda, as evidenced in that very statement of yours, also demonstrates your utter lack of sensitivity to individuals who do have post-traumatic symptoms -- you know, like the ones you work with -- since heightened sensitivity to intrusions on "self" are precisely one of those symptoms, and a considerate person in your position does not act to trigger the feeling of threat-to-self in people with such symptoms intentionally, and ensures that s/he is sufficiently knowledgeable to avoid doing it through ignorance.
Me, I don't take it personally. I know you're no threat to my self, and I don't perceive you as any such thing. My objection is philosophical and ideological -- your intrusion on my self is water off my own back, but others are not as aware and equipped to deal with such intrusions; and I will not tolerate anyone being objectified, as a means to an end, on principle.
The foundation you request is in your last 2 paragraphs: ... . That sounds like, if you had it to do over again, you would continue hitchhiking, the dangerous behavior I mentioned, because you are not willing to give up too much.
To begin with, you have completely failed to address my actual question, which was what foundation you had for alleging <my> fervent denial of <my> responsibility in the matter. Alluding to my refusal to restrict my life unduly out of fear of something happening to me and calling it a "fervent denial of ... responsibility in the matter" is simple nonsense. Well, not all that simple; kinda complexly distasteful, actually.
I was responsible, to a large extent, for the situation I was in: my statement that The situation could have been avoided, at several points ... well, I dunno; were you actually implying that you thought I was saying it could have been avoided by someone else?? Honestly, I do hope not. I was, of course, NOT responsible for the violence that was committed against me.
The fact that I may CHOOSE to run risks that others choose to avoid CANNOT be interpreted as a "fervent denial of responsibility". It is plainly EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE. Jesus H fucking christ on a stick. I said I'm not willing to give up too much to attempt to eliminate risk -- who the hell did you think I was assigning responsibility, for the consequences of what I said *I* was or was not willing to do, to??
So it sounds like, as I've really already made perfectly clear, you have no basis for saying what you're saying and yet you're going to keep saying it anyway.
The fact is, I did not hitchhike two yards in my life, after that incident. A decent and intelligent person might have actually asked the question, instead of pretending to be able to intuit it from something said that had nothing to do with the question. And in fact, I regard my subsequent non-hitchhiking as an overreaction to what happened to me, a voluntary restriction on my life that was unnecessary in real terms, but necessary for my peace of mind.
If I had it to do over again, I would have continued hitchhiking? If the incident had never happened? Yeah, of course I would have. Probably not for very long, simply because by 1974 the world had changed and the 60s were over and the people who had used to pick up hitchhikers had got jobs, I suppose, and the rides were damned boring and annoying for the most part. But in actual point of fact, I do not know of a single incident in my lifetime, in my province, in which a hitchhiker was killed by a ride, so I guess the risk just wasn't what you seem to think it was. And once again: your notion of what the risk was, your assertion that I was engaged in "dangerous behavior", and your assessment of my assessment of that risk, is just the uninformed opinion of a person who, I'm quite sure, wasn't even born at the time and has never set foot in the part of the world we're talking about.
But if you had it to do over again, you would continue hitchhiking -- what the fuck does *that* mean? How likely is it that I would still be hitchhiking, no matter what had or hadn't happened? Good grief.
Situational awareness is 90% of the battle, but until victims overcome the fear of being helpless and hapless, they are still victims.
I have never had any fear of being helpless or hapless, either before or after any of the events in which I was a victim. And yet ... that seems to be my problem, per you.
Prospective fear is indeed a problem. At one women's safety public meeting I participated in, back in the days when you were presumably in diapers (and after the incident I have spoken of), what was being said by various women crystalized in my mind thus:
If I go out on the streets at night, there may be a man near me.
If a man is near me, he may follow me.
If a man follows me, he may speak to me.
If a man speaks to me, he may touch me.
If a man touches me, he may rape me.
If a man rapes me, he may kill me.
Ergo, I must not go out on the streets at night.
That is the internalization of the threat that women have lived under throughout human history, the fear that is instilled in women to keep us compliant and fearful and dependent on men for protection ... from men.
The only way to break it is to say:
If I go out on the streets at night, there may be a man near me.
SO WHAT?
Unless THAT is part of this "situational awareness" -- that 99% of the situations we are in, in our lifetimes, do NOT contain threats to our safety -- then the fear is simply being reinforced. I will not live in fear, and I see no reason for any other woman to live in fear.
But exacerbated prospective fear is not the only problem caused by traumatic, frightening experiences. The conditioned response of fear to situations is at least as problematic -- the perception that something is a threat, with the corresponding fight-or-flight response that is prompted more frequently in a person with that conditioned response. I know, because I'm one of them. People with post-traumatic stress don't "over-react" to threats: they "over-perceive" things as threats, and react perfectly normally to the level of threat they perceive.
And that makes them a danger to themselves and others in many situations. When it is dealt with by the "never again" decision -- nobody's gonna hurt me again, and I have an unrealistic, exaggerated sense of when I am likely to be hurt -- the victim's quality of life is not enhanced. S/he is constantly on guard for perceived threats, and constantly suffering that conditioned fear response to situations. That is not pleasant, for the individual or anyone else in the vicinity -- and exaggerated fear is certainly not helpful, and in fact counter-productive, in dealing with situations in which genuine threats are present.
"Never again" is a bandaid over an open wound, and one too often sold by the same people selling the ideology and objects that people think will enable them to carry out this "decision" never to be victims again.
So whether it's ignorance or ideology that is the driving motivation, I do not trust anyone who enables, let alone promotes, that response. Especially when the someone is busy demonstrating how much more important the ideology is to him/her than things like ethics and facts.
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