Everyday Victim Blaming

challenging institutional disbelief around domestic & sexual violence and abuse

Incredible guilt and shame (content note)

Omg, just came across this. Been trying to process this all... Crying.
I was never able to think of it in any other way than it being me..
You just explained a whole different aspect of it!

Okay, so here it goes...this is not easy, but I'll try.
Courage, right?!

The thing about arousal, excitement and even orgasm...
I was abuse by my uncle from about 4-5 yeats of age until around 18 years old.
It happened during the later years, when I was an older teenager. After I was done doing to him what he wanted me to do, most often give him oral, he would strangle me, choke me and gag me (that in itself is still a HUGE issue for me!) and force me to keep my eyes open and look at him.
He'd push his fingers in that soft spot on my chest above the sternum. Most often to the point that I retched which seemed to turn him on even more... He would then be on top of me, there was no escape. He would give me oral and do all sorts of other things to me.
It would happen that I would get aroused sometimes because of what he did to me and every now and then I would even get an orgasm too.
That was the worst! No matter how hard I tried not to, it didn't help. Nothing worked. I couldn't help it. It just happened. I think part of it is because I couldn't move (away) the way I wanted to/would have needed to.
And of course he noticed it and that was confirmation to him that I liked it too. And that's what he kept telling me...
And I somehow believed him, because otherwise I wouldn't reach orgasm, right?!
Because by then I knew just enough about sex to confuse me even more. And it's not like I could ask anyone.
I think that is one part I still struggle with very much.

The guilt and shame and dirty feelings and confusion about that are deep and dark. And so disturbing.
How could I have let this happen? A physical response from me that in no way matched what was going.
I can't seem to forgive myself for not being able to avoid climax while such a monster raped me time and again...

 

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2 thoughts on “Incredible guilt and shame (content note)

  • T says:

    I’m so sorry. Sometimes our bodies respond physically when we don’t want them to, this doesn’t mean that what was done to us was at all OK or that we wanted it in any way. If someone tickles you it can make you laugh even when you don’t think it’s funny and you don’t want to be tickled, I think think can be helpful to remember when dealing with arousal during abuse.

  • Angie says:

    Thank you so much for your courage in sharing your thoughts. I totally understand why you are struggling, but the thing to hang on to is that everything that happened to you at the hands of this evil man was not your fault. You were a vulnerable young girl, who was effectively a pawn in the power games of this man. Your uncle knew how to manipulate your body into orgasm, because he was a grown man with experience of sex, at its most mechanical. What happened to you was your body reacting to stimuli in a way that was completely beyond your control. He knew that you weren’t enjoying the rape, but by telling you that you were, this in fed into his need for power and control over your body and your emotions.

    I know that saying this won’t just magic your feelings away, so I hope that now you have found the courage to start to speak out, that you might be able to seek some specialist help to process these feelings and thoughts. It is possible to recover from this experience. Take care.