Not sure if a single anecdote is worth anything at all, but I am a woman, and I experienced what is legally and culturally considered rape at least twice (arguably 3x), and it really didn’t bother me very much (though I think different versions, e.g. more violent ones or one perpetrated by people I looked up to, would have been much more damaging). One of the people who technically raped me (it was a very drunken screwup with, I believe, no malevolent intent) is still a friend of mine. I feel scared about people finding this out about our friendship, mostly on his behalf.
Notably, I think it was way less traumatizing than several experiences I have had for which I’ve never been able to garner 1/10th as much sympathy; a trusted close friend failing me in a time of need, a painful and embarrassing medical experience, a pet dying.
I share the view of the OP that there’s something off here; I think the combination of a pretty wide range of disparate acts being considered rape/sexual abuse + rape/sexual abuse being considered among the worse experiences a person can have, is pretty unhealthy for the reasons described and some others. I also think it drains social energy from recognizing other kinds of trauma people can experience and helping them with it.
I am a bit surprised about one of them still being a friend of yours. Do you in a sense forgive him because I don’t know it wasn’t too painful or him being not aware of what he was doing? My intuition was kind of the amount of trauma might be about the amount of pain. If it’s really painful one can of cause get very traumatised as you also point out, it would have been diferent if it would have been very violent
(Idk why I’m replying to this 2 years later). I forgave him for what I think are pretty normal reasons to forgive someone. A combination (1) of he’s been a good friend in many respects over the years and so has a bunch of “credit” and I wanted to find a path to our relationship continuing, (2) nothing like that ever happened again so I believe it was really aberrant and unlucky or he took it really seriously and changed, (3) like I said above it wasn’t that harmful to me and seemed less harmful than a lot of stuff a lot of other people do so it seemed like it should be in the “forgivable actions” reference class.
If I’d been the only woman in the world I probably would have forgiven him more quickly but I felt some need to punish him extra on behalf of the women who would have suffered more from what he did to men than I did.
Not sure if a single anecdote is worth anything at all, but I am a woman, and I experienced what is legally and culturally considered rape at least twice (arguably 3x), and it really didn’t bother me very much (though I think different versions, e.g. more violent ones or one perpetrated by people I looked up to, would have been much more damaging). One of the people who technically raped me (it was a very drunken screwup with, I believe, no malevolent intent) is still a friend of mine. I feel scared about people finding this out about our friendship, mostly on his behalf.
Notably, I think it was way less traumatizing than several experiences I have had for which I’ve never been able to garner 1/10th as much sympathy; a trusted close friend failing me in a time of need, a painful and embarrassing medical experience, a pet dying.
I share the view of the OP that there’s something off here; I think the combination of a pretty wide range of disparate acts being considered rape/sexual abuse + rape/sexual abuse being considered among the worse experiences a person can have, is pretty unhealthy for the reasons described and some others. I also think it drains social energy from recognizing other kinds of trauma people can experience and helping them with it.
I am a bit surprised about one of them still being a friend of yours. Do you in a sense forgive him because I don’t know it wasn’t too painful or him being not aware of what he was doing? My intuition was kind of the amount of trauma might be about the amount of pain. If it’s really painful one can of cause get very traumatised as you also point out, it would have been diferent if it would have been very violent
(Idk why I’m replying to this 2 years later). I forgave him for what I think are pretty normal reasons to forgive someone. A combination (1) of he’s been a good friend in many respects over the years and so has a bunch of “credit” and I wanted to find a path to our relationship continuing, (2) nothing like that ever happened again so I believe it was really aberrant and unlucky or he took it really seriously and changed, (3) like I said above it wasn’t that harmful to me and seemed less harmful than a lot of stuff a lot of other people do so it seemed like it should be in the “forgivable actions” reference class.
If I’d been the only woman in the world I probably would have forgiven him more quickly but I felt some need to punish him extra on behalf of the women who would have suffered more from what he did to men than I did.