Content warning: sexual abuse, rape, arguably trivialising thereof.
When I was 11 an older boy used to pull me behind a door in one of the school corridors, trap me there, shove his hand down my pants, and touch my penis.
This happened about once a week for a couple of months, until I moved to a different school (for non-related reasons).
I knew it was taboo, but I didn't yet know about sex, and didn't really understand why. I never thought about it again till a few years later when he sent me a letter apologizing. My parents were extremely curious about what the letter was but I burnt it before they had a chance to read it.
I never told anyone about this until now, and even now I'm writing this pseudonymously.
Not because I'm ashamed or embarrassed. I'm not - I didn't do anything to be ashamed of. But because I'm fine.
I really am. I don't think this made any lasting impact to my life. I'm happy, well adjusted, married, successful etc. I just don't really think about what happened very much, but then again I rarely think about anything that happened to me when I was 11.
And yet I feel like society is telling me that I ought to be broken. That I've been sexual abused. That recovering from this will be a difficult painful process, probably requiring therapy. And I fear that if I tell someone that, they'll treat me like that's the case, and I might end up believing it about myself.
From a purely objective perspective, non-violent rape doesn't seem quite as bad as society makes it out to be.
It's obviously unpleasant and frightening, but we treat rape as one of the worst things that can possibly happen. We expect "rape victim" to become someone's whole identity. We expect them to need intensive therapy to put themselves back together.
And I'm sure for plenty of people that's true. But for plenty of others it's true only because we expect it of them. People fill the social role that's been made for them, even when that's not ideal for them.
I don't know what to do about this. How do we communicate that sexual abuse is really not ok, without making victims of it feel like it's worse than it actually is?
But at the very least, when you hear somebody's abuse story don't jump straight into treating them like a victim. Find out how they feel about it, and if they don't feel like it was that bad, there's really no need for you to make them feel like it was worse.
I think the critical difference is that while marital rape might not be a legal crime, and might not be seen as wrong by people who aren't subjected to it, it's obviously wrong for the person suffering it, and obviously identifiable as coercive and abusive even to the perpetrator.
The spectrum then becomes (recognized as wrong x feels wrong) -> (not recognized as wrong -> feels wrong) -> (recognized as wrong x doesn't feel wrong) -> (not recognized as wrong x doesn't feel wrong).
I think people are only talking about quadrant 3 when saying "sexual abuse attitudes could be [bad]." And that is, like you point out, something that people experience differently, and depends on the specifics of the case rather than the category. It's a near certainty that some of the cases described in this comment are in fact nonconsensual and traumatic, for example. But if someone who did not experience trauma from that practice emigrated to the West and was told over and over again that something deeply traumatic happened to them, this seems like an instance where the problem could be "created out of thin air" as you put it.
Overall, though, the question is whether quadrant 2 or quadrant 3 is bigger, and I think it's very likely that quadrant 3, while existent, is not as large as quadrant 2. Thanks for pointing this out.
Content warning: sexual abuse, rape, arguably trivialising thereof.
When I was 11 an older boy used to pull me behind a door in one of the school corridors, trap me there, shove his hand down my pants, and touch my penis.
This happened about once a week for a couple of months, until I moved to a different school (for non-related reasons).
I knew it was taboo, but I didn't yet know about sex, and didn't really understand why. I never thought about it again till a few years later when he sent me a letter apologizing. My parents were extremely curious about what the letter was but I burnt it before they had a chance to read it.
I never told anyone about this until now, and even now I'm writing this pseudonymously.
Not because I'm ashamed or embarrassed. I'm not - I didn't do anything to be ashamed of. But because I'm fine.
I really am. I don't think this made any lasting impact to my life. I'm happy, well adjusted, married, successful etc. I just don't really think about what happened very much, but then again I rarely think about anything that happened to me when I was 11.
And yet I feel like society is telling me that I ought to be broken. That I've been sexual abused. That recovering from this will be a difficult painful process, probably requiring therapy. And I fear that if I tell someone that, they'll treat me like that's the case, and I might end up believing it about myself.
From a purely objective perspective, non-violent rape doesn't seem quite as bad as society makes it out to be.
It's obviously unpleasant and frightening, but we treat rape as one of the worst things that can possibly happen. We expect "rape victim" to become someone's whole identity. We expect them to need intensive therapy to put themselves back together.
And I'm sure for plenty of people that's true. But for plenty of others it's true only because we expect it of them. People fill the social role that's been made for them, even when that's not ideal for them.
I don't know what to do about this. How do we communicate that sexual abuse is really not ok, without making victims of it feel like it's worse than it actually is?
But at the very least, when you hear somebody's abuse story don't jump straight into treating them like a victim. Find out how they feel about it, and if they don't feel like it was that bad, there's really no need for you to make them feel like it was worse.