Have you or anyone you know been raped?...

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It is difficult to know how others feel about things. But fiction is the answer, find books where the main character was raped and see what they go through. It's much more appropriate than asking. There might even be memoirs or autobiographies if you're not into fiction.

Thanks mgran, for speaking. It sounds bad, I'm sorry. At least it's over though, and some good came of it.

Thanks for answers guys.

Both. But in the moment more physical, afterward more mental.

Oh, ok.

If you do look for books, I recommend Lucky by Alice Sebold. It's not really fiction, it's an account of the author's experience of being raped and beaten when she was 18. It's a very powerful book.

For me, it happened when I was a kid and it's coloured my whole life since - though also, because I was a kid I don't have a clear memory of it. Before reading about AS I thought that was the reason for why I was the way I was and I do believe that some of my hesitance and shyness in social situations is related to low self esteem, which is related to this incident.

Last edited by Dots on 27 May 2010, 3:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Oh, wow. I had some intense and strange dreams. I dreamed I was giving birth in a parking lot and wandering into the store all bloody, trying to find a blanket to wrap it in. I dreamed that I was sitting in a bathtub full of blood and shouting "I killed my baby!" I hadn't thought to connect the dreams to the rape but it makes sense now that you mention the connection. Sometimes I can be so disconnected from what's going on with me. But I remember the dreams because they were so vivid and bloody.

Before learning about AS, I had decided that I was the way I was because of a combination of having been molested for ten years by my grandfather, having my older brother diagnosed with cancer when I was three and die when I was almost seven, and having been "over-psychologized" by parents who started taking me to psychiatrists when I was five until I was fifteen (the same time period as the molestation. At age fifteen I "found my voice" and refused to go to counseling any more and refused to go to family gatherings any more) and treating me like the "identified patient" of our dysfunctional family.

After being diagnosed with AS, I was able to look back and see how all the pieces that hadn't fit into the picture I descibe in the paragraph above suddenly became part of the pattern and everything was explained and nothing was left out. Which is not to say that the above-described events did not also leave their marks on me.

I haven't been, and I don't know anyone who has been. I imagine if it happened to me I would be really angry about it.

I hate when people say things like 'rape victims are just weak' or 'they asked for it' and things like that. It's just untrue and uncalled for, in my opinion.

I agree but people do say this really wrong stuff and do even more hurt.

I wonder, if people could talk about it more, would people say such awful stuff?

Once I walked from the hippie commune where I was living at the time to my post office box which was four blocks away. While out, a guy kept driving around the block and slowing down to say things to me. It was the middle of the day but my path was through residential neighborhoods so there wasn't anyone out on the streets to witness or stop him. I went a block over, out of the residential part, to a pay phone and called 911 and told them I was being stalked and was frightened and while I was on the phone and watching the way I thought he would come, he sneaked up behind me and grabbed me so hard he left fingernail claw marks on me through my clothes and then ran away. Of course I screamed and the woman on 911 made me stay on the phone until cops showed up. They gave me a ride home and a few of the other people who lived there were out on the porch and kind of freaked out about me being driven home by a cop so they asked what had happened and I told them.

Now on that day I was wearing a loose, flowing cotton dress that had long sleeves and a neckline at my collar bones and a skirt that came down to my ankles but the guy on the porch said, "well, you WERE wearing a red dress" as if that somehow justified what the guy had done to me! Fortunately, I didn't have to respond because the three women sitting on the porch with him jumped all over him, saying what a horrible comment that was. But I was still really shaken that someone could think that I would have asked for something like that to happen, just because of the color of my rather modest clothing!

Stupid. What is he implying? Men are instinctive animals that cannot control themselves?

I wish I had thought to say that! I'm pretty sure that's not what he was thinking when he said it. Probably something more along the lines of "red dress" being some sort of "code" for being a slut or sexually easy. But you're right, what he was REALLY saying was that men are no better than bulls charging at a red cape in the bullfight ring because that's what their instincts tell them to do.

its times like these anyone can say its ok to have an abortion.
people shouldnt be forced to go through that sort of physical and mental agony if its not their choice and the circumstances of rape just make it more clear and people shouldnt be forced to feel guilty about their choices when the main life it truely effects is their own

I know a woman who was a child of rape and knowing that REALLY messed with her head and she had a lot of emotional difficulties based on knowing where she came from.

I know anywhere from 1-5 people who have been raped or sexually abused. I try to understand, but I can't which is a problem b/c I've noticed I'm something of a rape victim & mental illness magnet... Its pretty bad when I can tell when people are not lying & the few who have confided in me were definitely hurt. One thing I hate is being told by 2nd hand sources (another person) that so&so was raped... I feel its something that should be told by the victim themselves. (Plus I can't be sure if its a lie when it comes from someone else) *sigh

I wish I would get raped.
By a girl.