The culture around talking about it feels like it's full of assumptions as to who is "allowed" to talk about it, and it includes people who sound like their feminist discourse could slip into saying I'm not a woman (and thus not allowed to talk about anything "feminine" let alone rape) because of the trans thing. I have enough lingering issues about my own femininity that I just don't want to go wading into something like that. Not with people who sometimes seem to have ended up with "I was raped" being a huge part of their identity in a way that seems terribly counterproductive. (On the other hand it took me about fifteen years to recover from the trauma of my father's unexpected death on my twelfth birthday; some stuff can take a loooong time to process and not everyone does their processing in as involuted a manner as I did...)
Also, you are the first person I know who has ever said "I have been raped", and I get the sense that you're at a point where you've mostly processed it. A few people I know have told me about sexual encounters that could probably be labeled "rape", but they did not couch it in that term - instead, it was stories of Really Bad And Regrettable Sex with Regrettable People who they'd really rather not ever interact with again. With a power imbalance involved. I have simply not had a reason to have a conversation about it with anyone I'm actually already talking with, nor any reason to get involved in a conversation (argument) with a stranger!
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regna
(no subject)
Date: 2009-08-18 03:53 am (UTC)The culture around talking about it feels like it's full of assumptions as to who is "allowed" to talk about it, and it includes people who sound like their feminist discourse could slip into saying I'm not a woman (and thus not allowed to talk about anything "feminine" let alone rape) because of the trans thing. I have enough lingering issues about my own femininity that I just don't want to go wading into something like that. Not with people who sometimes seem to have ended up with "I was raped" being a huge part of their identity in a way that seems terribly counterproductive. (On the other hand it took me about fifteen years to recover from the trauma of my father's unexpected death on my twelfth birthday; some stuff can take a loooong time to process and not everyone does their processing in as involuted a manner as I did...)
Also, you are the first person I know who has ever said "I have been raped", and I get the sense that you're at a point where you've mostly processed it. A few people I know have told me about sexual encounters that could probably be labeled "rape", but they did not couch it in that term - instead, it was stories of Really Bad And Regrettable Sex with Regrettable People who they'd really rather not ever interact with again. With a power imbalance involved. I have simply not had a reason to have a conversation about it with anyone I'm actually already talking with, nor any reason to get involved in a conversation (argument) with a stranger!