When someone has been sexually assaulted they feel very vulnerable. They are often afraid they will not be believed or that they will be blamed for the assault. One of the best things you can do is acknowledge how difficult it was to say something and that you are honored they trusted you enough to talk about what was done to them.
Sexual violence is shockingly common in our society. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), nearly 1 in 5 women in the U.S. are raped or sexually assaulted at some point in their lives, often by someone they know and trust. In some Asian, African, and Middle Eastern countries, that figure is even higher. And sexual assault isn't limited to women; many men and boys suffer rape and sexual trauma each year.
Things That Do and Don’t Cause Rape
Fact: Date rapists often defend themselves by claiming the assault was a drunken mistake or miscommunication. But research shows that the vast majority of date rapists are repeat offenders. These men target vulnerable people and often ply them with alcohol in order to rape them.
Fact: Just because you've previously consented to sex with someone doesn't give them perpetual rights to your body. If your spouse, boyfriend, or lover forces sex against your will, it's rape.
It can be extraordinarily difficult to admit that you were raped or sexually assaulted. There's a stigma attached. It can make you feel dirty and weak. You may also be afraid of how others will react. Will they judge you? Look at you differently? It seems easier to downplay what happened or keep it a secret. But when you stay silent, you deny yourself help and reinforce your victimhood.
Reach out to someone you trust. It's common to think that if you don't talk about your rape, it didn't really happen. But you can't heal when you're avoiding the truth. And hiding only adds to feelings of shame. As scary as it is to open up, it will set you free. However, it's important to be selective about who you tell, especially at first. Your best bet is someone who will be supportive, empathetic, and calm. If you don't have someone you trust, talk to a therapist or call a rape crisis hotline.
Even if you intellectually understand that you're not to blame for the rape or sexual attack, you may still struggle with a sense of guilt or shame. These feelings can surface immediately following the assault or arise years after the attack. But as you acknowledge the truth of what happened, it will be easier to fully accept that you are not responsible. You did not bring the assault on yourself and you have nothing to be ashamed about.
Try to anticipate and prepare for triggers. Common triggers include anniversary dates; people or places associated with the rape; and certain sights, sounds, or smells. If you are aware of what triggers may cause an upsetting reaction, you'll be in a better position to understand what's happening and take steps to calm down.
Be smart about media consumption. Avoid watching any program that could trigger bad memories or flashbacks. This includes obvious things such as news reports about sexual violence and sexually explicit TV shows and movies. But you may also want to temporarily avoid anything that's over-stimulating, including social media.
One of the principles underlying our new offences is that they should not be gender specific. However, the offence of rape is clearly understood to be non-consensual penile penetration perpetrated by a man, on a woman or a man. The anatomical differences between men and women must sensibly direct that the offence of Rape should remain an offence that can only be physically performed by a man (although women can be guilty as accessories to the crime).Footnote 16
This seems to suggest that the British Government wanted two separate offences because it is believed that a woman cannot physically rape a man. Indeed, it is a common misconception that, due to the mechanics of sex, it is just impossible for a man to be raped by a woman; the thought is that if a man and a woman have sex, the man must be sexually aroused and so must be consenting. However, even setting aside cases such as where the woman has duped the man as to her identity, men can, and often do, display physiological signs of arousal, including erection and ejaculation, when they do not want to have sex,Footnote 17 just as women can lubricate and orgasm during rape.
Moreover, this is clearly the wrong way to think about consent. A man having an erection ought not to be enough for a woman to reasonably believe that he is consenting to sex, particularly if it is quite clear that he does not want it or is not in a state in which he can give consent. Indeed, if we were to accept that a man could not physically be raped by a woman for this reason, we must also accept that displaying physical signs of sexual arousal is akin to consenting to sex. Therefore, we would also need to conclude that if a woman displayed physical sexual responses during rape, then she was not raped, which, of course, we would not want.
If, as I have argued, a woman could have sex with a man without his consent, the justification for not considering this to be rape would need to be on the basis that there is something different, and indeed worse, about being forcibly penetrated than being compelled to penetrate another person. The very same act occurs (non-consensual sexual intercourse); the difference is simply which gender the perpetrator is. Therefore, having different crimes depending on the gender of the perpetrator could be because being raped by a man is worse than being raped by a woman. However, as I shall argue, if we want a definition of rape that includes any case of a woman or a man not consenting to sex with a man, such a definition would also have to include any case of a man not consenting to sex with a woman.
Nonetheless, the PPC might be justified because penile penetration is more physically and psychologically damaging than being forced to penetrate someone else. This would then justify the retention of the PPC of rape in order to differentiate rape from other kinds of less harmful sexual assault, such as a woman forcing a man to have sex with her.Footnote 20
Furthermore, it might be argued that even if, in general, men are less harmed by forced sex than women are, the offence should still be classified as rape if it is similar enough in kind to what we understand as the wrong of rape. Though the amount of hurt caused by any offence ought to be taken into account when deciding how that offence should be punished, it should not always be considered when defining an incident as an example of a particular offence. Stealing five pounds from a millionaire will not harm her, and this might be taken into account when punishing the thief, but the act would still be classified as theft. What we need to know is what, at root, is the wrong committed by the offence. For example, we might say stealing is wrong, at root, because it denies someone of her right to her property. How wrong it is, and what the punishment for the offence should be, will then depend, in part, on how much hurt or harm it causes the victim (in addition to many other factors, such as the motivation of the offender, whether there are any mitigating factors, etc.).
Of course, a problem with this view of rape is that men are raped too. However, one obvious argument for rape being a gendered crime is that women are much more likely to be raped than men. Consequently, rape affects many more women directly, but also indirectly, through the fear of being raped. UK crime survey data from the year ending March 2017 showed that 3.1% of women compared with 0.8% of men had been sexually assaulted and 0.9% of women compared with 0.1% of men had been raped in the last 12 months.Footnote 33
should have known, but temporarily forgot that she was always at risk, that in fact the risk followed her everywhere she went, that it was inescapable. To have believed for even a moment that she was not in danger, for whatever reason, is felt to be the cause of the attack.Footnote 42
This is all true. It is undeniable that, generally speaking, men do not feel the threat of being raped or sexually assaulted by women with anything like the force that women feel the threat of rape and sexual assault by men. However, it does not deny or belittle the suffering of female victims of rape to acknowledge that men can be victims of rape by women, just as it does not belittle the suffering of black victims of racism to acknowledge that white people can also be victims of racism by black people. This does not mean that racism is the same in both cases. As I said, the social and historical context affects how it might be experienced and how we, as a society, should view it. Nonetheless, we would not think it appropriate to make racism be, by definition, something that people of certain ethnic groups cannot do.
Furthermore, my motivation for arguing that rape law should be gender neutral, in addition to being a matter of fairness, is that, perhaps paradoxically, it could have some good consequences for women, as I will outline below, in that it would be a recognition that sexual intercourse does not consist of a woman being penetrated by a man.
See, for example, Westmarland and Gangoli (2011). On p. 112, Westmarland and Gangoli discuss a judgement made regarding the rape of a nine-year-old girl whereby the judge noted that the girl would never be able to get married due to the loss of her virginity.
And so, you know survivors of sexual assault. You know many of them, in fact, an astounding, upsetting number of them. It is not only normal to know multiple sexual assault survivors, it is normal in our culture for women to be afraid of rape and on the defensive around men for gigantic portions of their lives. And so, even for women who have never and will never be raped, it is a fear-inducing, triggering reminder that our safety is never fully in our own hands. 2ff7e9595c
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