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SuperDepressed

Tag Archives: sexual assault

Memories, September 2018, 1

11 Tuesday Sep 2018

Posted by SuperDepressed in Uncategorized

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"nice guys", abuse, asd, autism, autistic spectrum disorder, Domestic violence, intimate partner violence, relationships, sexual assault, social cues, toxic relationships

He poked me in the face, that first day. D___ had chuckled at something he had said, and I caught D___’s eye and smiled a little, trying to walk a balance between them, and he poked me–4 or 5 times, just under each eye, not quite hard enough to bruise–and I “slapped” his face (not hard enough to leave any mark, never mind a bruise) and told him that if he ever did it again, we were over.

There was the time we were having a good-natured, playful argument, and he picked up a pizza and “playfully” rubbed it into my face. I stood up, walked silently to the shower, and didn’t speak for several minutes. It was in jest, and he hadn’t struck me; it didn’t count, did it?

The times (plural) he followed me from room to room, shouting at me, and when I refused to engage, he loomed over me, using his extra 9 inches of height and exponentially stronger voice to full advantage. One time, he even admitted he was trying to goad me into hitting him.

The same in the car, the raving at me for anything and everything, too many times. Shouting at me for not being a better navigator, until I was sobbing in helpless fury, while he was driving us somewhere. Handing me his phone despite my protests that I can’t read maps–he never offered to show me how, because he’s rubbish at reading them as well, but his vanity won’t let him admit it–and then snatching it back, shouting, “Don’t touch anything!” when I tried to zoom in, to read the street signs.

The car again, ignoring first my pleas to let me out, and later, my warning that if he didn’t either let me out or stop screaming at me, I’d hit him. Eventually I did–the same way I did it the first time, when he poked me, not leaving any signs I had touched him–and he blacked my eye. It was swollen nearly shut for a week, and purple and green for 2 weeks on top of that.

I won’t talk about the time we “had sex” that I mostly don’t remember, when I’d had 100 mg of Sertraline, 300 mg of tramadol hydrochloride plus paracetamol and ibuprofen in the 12 hours before going out, and 4 glasses of red wine in 4 hours, but he was perfectly sober… I remember coming to underneath him, which is so unlike me–why wasn’t I on top, especially drunk, disinhibited?–but I do remember flirting with him in the other room, even brushing my foot across his (fully clothed) crotch, and asking someone else if I should have sex with him… I must have consented, even propositioned him, after an entire summer of explaining over and over again that I wanted to be friends and turning down his advances, AND already having fought off the unwelcome advances of another friend, who told me he needed a friend to talk to, led me around the corner from the doormen of the club, and forced his teeth and tongue into my mouth while he held me, struggling, against a brick wall.

I’m sure that if I’d wanted to say no–after repeatedly begging these 2 “good friends” of mine (and longer-term, better friends of each other) to just BE MY FRIEND over the course of several months–I would have done.

I think he thinks I miss him, and that’s why I had to stop talking to him. I think there’s some part of him that thinks I’m not over him… that might be true enough, but not in the way he thinks.

The only thing I’m not over, is how I could have allowed myself to be used, so many times, and still believed all the bullshit he spouted at me. Was I born that naïve, or did I learn it, somehow? All the signs were there, and he wasn’t the first man to work up to blacking my eye, over a period of months/years… I do not know what I will do, if that ever happens to me again.

Sometimes, statistics are true. Some conditions (ASD, in my case) make you so much more vulnerable than you realise, at the time.

Comment Too Long, Sexual Assault

16 Tuesday Jan 2018

Posted by SuperDepressed in Uncategorized

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Tags

date rape, insecurity, me too, party girl, sex, sexual abuse, sexual assault, that girl

I read an article and was replying to a comment underneath that asked “Why are so many of you having humiliating, painful sex? We didn’t do it like that in my day,” (rough paraphrase) and I wrote too much. Here is my reply:

For me, it was because when I was a (fat, shy, Star Trek book-reading, nervous) teenager, with bad skin and a flat chest who never wore make-up, NO ONE at my school wanted to date me. One of my male friends ditched me (we’d been really good friends since we were 13 or so) because he just kept being so embarrassed by people linking our names together (years later, he apologised for that and other things, and he’s a great guy now, and he was pretty good then, but… no one wanted their name linked with mine). I asked out more than one guy, never got asked out myself, and until my senior year of high school, never got a yes.

When someone finally noticed me, I was so pathetically grateful that I didn’t even care whether I was in the mood or not. I had genuinely expected to die a virgin, untouched and unloved and unwanted, for about 5 years by this point… Obviously, I then married the first guy who had sex with me (and moved 4,000 miles away from home, age 19) and the first year of my first marriage, I actually wound up cheating on my husband with a guy I didn’t even like in that way (who left bruises on me and told me I liked it, and I just let him) because he was the only one who would talk to me every day, and who seemed to want to have sex with me.

I did not like him sticking 4 fingers in my rectum and telling me that he could just tell that I was the kind of girl who was up for that. I did not like him jerking off on me and telling me I was a dirty little whore. I did not like him giving me a backrub for 10 minutes and then demanding a blow job because “fair is fair”. I didn’t like him not taking no for an answer multiple times a week, and coercing me into blowjobs, because “well why did you come over then/I gave you a lift to work/I bought your dinner didn’t I” etc.

However, I was still overweight, still had acne, my husband had all but stopped having sex with me 6 months into our relationship and the thing I had KNOWN would happen had (the idea that any man would want me had been proved to be a mirage, no one would ever really love me and want me) so I’d take what I could get. Even if that was continual humiliation while being told I liked it (that’s the bit that really gets me–it’s less what he did, it’s the fact that he kept insisting that I’d done it all before, was “that kind of girl” and knew the score, when actually, I’d been raised in Bible Belt USA, had suffered the loneliest of adolescences, and had married my first sexual partner).

I’m 34 now. The last time I let someone do things to me because I didn’t say no was last year: my stepdad had died the month before, we were friends of friends at a wedding, I was hanging around after everyone else had gone to bed because I was trying to get alone with another guy, and when guy-I-wanted-to-talk-to went to the bathroom AFTER walking me up to my room (because I’d lain down drunk in the middle of the floor downstairs–it took both guys to get me up said stairs and to my door) friend-of-friends helped me back downstairs and we had sex.

At one point I had my eyes closed and was counting to ten because he was hurting me, and he didn’t think to stop… still not rape. I was falling down drunk, but he was pretty drunk as well. I’m more upset that he won’t add me as a friend on Facebook, so I can talk to him about what went wrong, and ask him whether he *really* couldn’t tell that I was trying to hang out with the other guy. As to why all that happened… he and I were both former fat kids, drunk at a wedding (and in my case, I’d just had a relationship come apart at the seams, like, literally the week after my stepdad’s death) and we just wanted to feel like someone liked us. It was the first time I’d done that in about 5-6 years, in my own defence, but… the ability to feel so shitty about yourself that you’ll do anything to alleviate it is still obviously a part of me.

Since I’ve unburdened my entire soul here, I have to end on the happy note; that guy I was actually trying to get close to, I sent him a message after he walked in on me and other guy, and asked him to come to my room. I told him what happened, and he got it, that it wasn’t a thing I’d wanted, but rather, a thing I didn’t know how to avoid–he slept (fully clothed) in my bed that night, we became proper friends after that weekend (having known each other 2.5 years, but superficially) and I kid you not, we got married 7 months later after a whirlwind courtship.

A couple of nights ago, we were doing some kinky stuff and afterwards it occurred to me–I hadn’t even bothered to shave my legs or armpits, or put on mascara, before doing all manner of things to him (handcuffs and insertables were in play). I felt sexy, I felt powerful, he felt desired, he felt loved, we both had a crackin’ time, and I’d not even bothered to “prep” for sex. The next day, we were talking about it, and it occurred to me that he’s maybe the first person I’ve ever had sex with, just because I wanted to, and AS MYSELF, not some version of me that I’m desperately hoping will be sexy and intriguing and skilful enough to hold a man’s attention.

And THAT is why we have sex that’s humiliating and painful and all manner of shameful–because deep down, we believe that we’re supposed to, and if we don’t do it like this, maybe no one will ever want us again. Loneliness. Fear. Wanting to look like a party girl. Insecurities about how we look/feel. Being so shy that we regularly get too drunk at parties, and forget how to say no. Realising we have actually become “that girl” in our circle of friends, and (this is so fucked-up) wanting to live up to our wild reputation.

What was different about it, when you were young? I really want to know.

Things I Wish I Didn’t Know, 1

25 Thursday Aug 2016

Posted by SuperDepressed in Things I Wish I Didn't Know, Uncategorized

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Tags

abuse, attackers, date rape, Domestic violence, intimate partner violence, IPV, not my fault, rape, sexual assault, victims

It’s been a while.

I toyed with the idea of starting a new blog, even bought a domain, but in the end, this is probably my spiritual home. Today’s post is going to be about something that didn’t happen to me, but it really could have, and how/why that freaks me THE FUCK out.

I used to know this guy. Over time, it became clear that because we’d fooled around a couple of times after he’d split with his girlfriend, he couldn’t really be trusted to be alone with me. Even physical games (rough-housing–I don’t mean anything sexual) became about him trying to dominate me, in increasingly humiliating ways, and then being pissed off if I fought back.

Eventually, he spread a rumour that I’d said something about his new girlfriend (I hadn’t–if I had, I’d have owned up to it). He sent me a message in which he told me at least 1 lie that I can prove, and a couple of things that I’m 90% sure are suspect. Without giving me a chance to respond, he blocked me and warned me that if I contacted him in any way, he’d ignore it.

Even people accused of a crime have the right to answer their accuser, legally speaking. And this guy used to say I was one of his best friends.

A couple of months after this, I was complaining about one of the times this former “friend” of mine had pushed me up against a wall and tried to snog me. The friend I was telling then went on to mention a third friend of ours, who had been staying with ex-friend…. apparently, one night after getting outrageously drunk, he followed her up to her room, threw open the door, went inside, and shoved his hand down her pants.

That’s sexual assault.

And maybe if I’d said something about the… more than 5? fewer than 10?… times he’d done similar things to me (albeit, he never got as far as groping my vag, just other parts of me, plus holding me still and laughing while I struggled) maybe he’d have known better. A nice caution from the police might have made all the difference.

The worst bit is, she was staying at his while recovering from a life-threatening illness. She’d been hospitalized several times that year. And she has a history of serious, damaging sexual abuse. She was the epitome of a vulnerable person… and in hindsight, by not telling everyone what I knew about him, maybe even going to the police about it, I contributed to the ignorance that helped put her in that position.

Don’t misunderstand me. It’s 100% on him, that he both did that and continues to deny it now, over a year later. But if I could’ve prevented it, I would have… I just (foolishly) believed him, all the times he said he was sorry and that it wouldn’t happen again. But then, it’s not the first time I’ve fallen for that particular chestnut.

I have a history of being abused, too.

To summarise, the thing I wish I didn’t know: if someone sexually assaults you, no matter how minor the assault is (and there are scales to rate these things, so it’s legit to say some attacks are worse than others) you need to tell people about it. If not the police, at least the people likely to be at your abuser’s mercy. If you don’t, you’re still the victim and you mustn’t feel guilty about it, but… if you can, tell. Tell everyone.

And cut all ties with the abuser calling themselves your friend. Something like 80% of sexual assaults are perpetrated by people you know. They’re predators, they choose to prey on people they suspect won’t report them, won’t call them on their behaviour, due to misplaced loyalty.

It is in no way your fault if something bad happens to you–but please, if you can, get away from people you *know* actively want to hurt you.

Here are some groups who can help you move on:

SupportLine 01708 765200

Confidential emotional support to children, young adults and adults by telephone, email and post.
Website: www.supportline.org.uk

**

CISters  (Surviving Rape and/or Sexual Abuse) 02380 338080

Answerphone 023 80 338080 is usually monitored daily during the week and callers can choose to leave their name and phone number, and we will call them back and will take care when doing so. Or can email admin@cisters.org.uk

The helpline is available to female adult survivors of childhood rape/sexual abuse, and others can call if they have a concern about such issues.  In the case of the latter we will seek to signpost them to appropriate services.

Rape Crisis England & Wales

Rape Crisis England & Wales is a national feminist organisation that exists to promote the needs and rights of women and girls who have experienced sexual violence, to improve services to them and to work towards the elimination of sexual violence. They are a national umbrella body for their network of autonomous member Rape Crisis organisations across England and Wales and was set up to support their specialist work.
Website: www.rapecrisis.org.uk

 

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