The impact of sexual abuse on female development: a longitudinal study • Hacker News Board

Re: The impact of sexual abuse on female development: a longitudinal study

#111

Post by klipt » Thu, Jan 13, 2022, 6:09 PM UTC

sandworm101 wrote: post #92

klipt wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting how she assumed none of the men would be raped. Newer CDC stats (since ~2010 when they started asking men if they've ever been "made to penetrate" by a woman) show that female-on-male rape happens a lot more often than people think. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/11/the-unde...

I had that discussion with her. She was actually an open lesbian, part of the early gay marriage push in new england. At the time (early 2000s) there were some states with old laws that also made female-on-female rape physically impossible. Canada recently abolished "rape" as a distinct crime, instead placing it on the far end of a sexual assault spectrum. I think this is probably the best way forwards.

That's part of the solution, but we also need to challenge societal gender biases that assume men can't be victims. If you look at the CDC stats something like 1/3rd of people victimized in any year are men, but if you look at crimes reported to police it drops to something like 1% of victims being men. It implies men are much less likely to report being raped to the police.

Re: The impact of sexual abuse on female development: a longitudinal study

#112

Post by javajosh » Thu, Jan 13, 2022, 6:09 PM UTC

neogodless wrote: post #95

javajosh wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly, there's another child comment, flagged and dead [edit: it has been resurrected], that says simply, "Sh...no-one cares about men." It's not a great comment, as it lacks substance, but it reflects something real and important. Sexual abuse is to women as police violence is to black people. These classes of people are affected more (far more - perhaps 2x?) than others, but that doesn't mean others aren't…

The initial comment here adds to the discussion of the impact on female development, without making a grandiose claim that no one cares. Both your comment and the flagged comment make that claim. It seems much more so the case that people can care about how bad actions affect both female and male victims than the hypothesis you propose. And, in fact, straight white men can be in a position of power, and have advantag…

>people can care about how bad actions affect both female and male victims than the hypothesis you propose.

They can, but that doesn't mean they do. It is dangerous to be caught caring about men or boys. Consider this recent SNL skit "man park": https://youtu.be/9XOt2Vh0T8w?t=131. I've linked to the part where a woman is saying something sympathetic to men, and then panics that she'll be caught on camera saying it. This is after showing men in a dog park. E.g. equating them to dogs.

Note that my comment was NOT triggered by the OP's study, but rather that a comment was flagged and killed stating something that I think is obviously true, but quite inconvenient for some people to read.

Re: The impact of sexual abuse on female development: a longitudinal study

#113

Post by ars » Thu, Jan 13, 2022, 6:09 PM UTC

This is troubling for the statistical validity of this:

"At the time of study entry, comparison families were not informed that the study involved sexually abused females; rather, they were told that the study was of “female growth and development.” At the end of the initial interview, however, caregivers were told that the study pertained to sexual abuse"

If you tell people you are surveying a particular thing, they are more likely to report things in line with what you are expecting.

Re: The impact of sexual abuse on female development: a longitudinal study

#114

Post by PaulHoule » Thu, Jan 13, 2022, 6:10 PM UTC

greenonions wrote: post #101

PaulHoule wrote: post #74

There are many men who suffer through sexless marriages for 20, 30 years or more because their partner was victimized as a child. (I'd assume that some women also have similar problems because their man was abused.) Such a man can work really hard to please and love a woman and try to create feelings of safety. They might blame themselves, thinking that it's because of that argument they had this morning, or yesterda…

It seems rather insensitive to ruminate on future men's loss of sex because of sexual abuse. Perhaps the men in these sexless relationships should analyze if they are capable of sustaining this relationship, considering sex is so important to them and they are not receiving it. This entire comment does not consider the women's suffering and loss in any capacity due to abuse. Maybe it is the case that a similar comple…

I don't know where you get that.

The suffering of the woman is real. So is the suffering of the man.

It only adds and doesn't subtract. I don't need to reiterate on the suffering of the woman because that is described very well in the article (which i posted!)

You're being insensitive, treating me as a man the way that a black person might get treated in the 1950s south USA. Sexual pleasure is one of the great things about being alive in this world. If that was destroyed for a woman by female circumcision you would see that as a bad thing. If circumstances did the same for a man it is not any different.

A man in a situation like that will get told to "leave" and that is not a good answer for many. For one there are many other kinds of love and a person in that kind of relationship might be able to give and receive all of the other kinds of love except for that.

So many people try "serial monogamy" and it so often ends in tears. In terms of sexuality a man like that might be satisfied by a woman with average sexual responsiveness or even a standard deviation below the mean. That person is easy to find, but be much more difficult to find somebody who has all the other good traits of the current partner.

A man like that might have strong loyalty and also feel that their current partner deserves to be loved in all the ways they are able to receive it even if their partner can't receive it. Their partner shouldn't be rejected and left alone because they were victimized in this past

An obvious answer is polyamory and the women might well be accepting of that but if you were the kid who was bullied in school and then rejected, made invisible, and then suffered years of self-doubt because of somebody else's crime succeeding at polyamory can look like climbing a mountain.

A woman can be very insensitive about this because a woman who wants a sexual relationship, snap their fingers, and get it. Some men who want that can get it easily but most can't. There is a huge focus on a small population of men who are abusive, attractive, rich or some combination, the experience of the vast majority of men is invisible.

Re: The impact of sexual abuse on female development: a longitudinal study

#115

Post by chefandy » Thu, Jan 13, 2022, 6:10 PM UTC

ascar wrote: post #46

sandworm101 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chilling but also a little reassuring. If you are a victim, knowing that a large percentage of the population has also been abused can help recovery. It says that it is very possible to be a victim and go on to a normal life. Want something very chilling? First year criminal law lecture on rape. Professor says "We have about a hundred people in this room. None of you future lawyers have criminal records. Statisticall…

While that story might be intimidating I can't help but think it's statistical nonsense and discredits the professors integrity. Starting from the assumption that general population numbers apply to a group of law students (I assume that he doesn't have statistics about rape among law students) on to the assumption that there is a 1 to 1 relationship between rape victims and rapists. I would assume there to be more v…

It sounds like the professor made it clear she was speaking in terms of population averages. So unless you can find empirical evidence that those statistics don't apply to that slice of the population, then there's absolutely no problem with what she said. She didn't say "15 of the men in this class are rapists."

Law students aren't learning to be statisticians, epidemiologists, or policy wonks. Emotionally moving people to act upon a collection of documented facts— be it in trial or a contract negotiation— requires persuasive speaking and strategy. She made the breadth and consequences of rape palpable to her students not only by giving it a face, but giving it their faces. Since this poster, years later, immediately recalled that story when prompted, I reckon it was thoroughly compelling.

Re: The impact of sexual abuse on female development: a longitudinal study

#116

Post by hnarayanan » Thu, Jan 13, 2022, 6:10 PM UTC

greenonions wrote: post #101

PaulHoule wrote: post #74

There are many men who suffer through sexless marriages for 20, 30 years or more because their partner was victimized as a child. (I'd assume that some women also have similar problems because their man was abused.) Such a man can work really hard to please and love a woman and try to create feelings of safety. They might blame themselves, thinking that it's because of that argument they had this morning, or yesterda…

It seems rather insensitive to ruminate on future men's loss of sex because of sexual abuse. Perhaps the men in these sexless relationships should analyze if they are capable of sustaining this relationship, considering sex is so important to them and they are not receiving it. This entire comment does not consider the women's suffering and loss in any capacity due to abuse. Maybe it is the case that a similar comple…

Thank you for stating this.

Re: The impact of sexual abuse on female development: a longitudinal study

#117

Post by derbOac » Thu, Jan 13, 2022, 6:10 PM UTC

SuoDuanDao wrote: post #78

derbOac wrote: post #17

Study of this topic is critical, but designs of this sort are useless without biometric controls (for example, twin or family or genomewide marker controls).

Does this objection require that there be markers that predispose someone towards being a survivor of sexual assault? There probably are, but I'm sure that's not politic to say.

So I'm being downvoted, which I expected because of the subject matter, but I've done research in this area and many of the correlates they talk about are associated with familial and other ecological factors that tend to cluster very locally.

I don't even personally believe that sexual abuse is not associated with the things they claim, but statistically speaking, you have many of these things clustering together (sexual abuse, pubertal acceleration, psychiatric challenges), and controlling for things in the way they did is grossly insufficient. A lot of this stuff is very broadband.

Let's say you have some stressors from the environment (impoverishment, heavy metals, pesticide exposure, whatever it is). Controlling for demographic and socioeconomic factors will help address this, but the only way to do it convincingly is to look at these variables within-family, preferably controlling for genetic relatedness as well. Otherwise something like, say, chemical exposure is likely to affect children as well as the adults around them in a way that might be specific to a certain household.

Not being very precise in your designs does as much damage to isolating confounding environmental causes and effects of sexual abuse per se as anything else.

Re: The impact of sexual abuse on female development: a longitudinal study

#118

Post by SuoDuanDao » Thu, Jan 13, 2022, 6:14 PM UTC

elliekelly wrote: post #40

quartesixte wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Always a fascinating Alt-History scenario to me: what if the patriarchal societies didn’t win out early on? How drastically different would history had become?

There's a fantastic (and quite funny!) French film "I'm Not An Easy Man"[1] that sort of explores this idea but from the perspective of what society would look like today if gender roles were flipped. I think it's available on Netflix. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_Not_an_Easy_Man

Funnily enough, I wrote a short erotic story in which the protagonist gets transported from the sort of world depicted in that film to ours. In my telling she leverages her sexual aggression and insight into male psychology to become a successful Twitch streamer.

Re: The impact of sexual abuse on female development: a longitudinal study

#119

Post by kmonsen » Thu, Jan 13, 2022, 6:14 PM UTC

sandworm101 wrote: post #82

fullstop wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife was summoned for jury duty, and the case had to do with sexual abuse. At jury selection time they ask if a prospective juror would have difficulty being impartial because of the nature of the case. If you were uncomfortable discussing the matter, you could ask to be taken aside to discuss without the others in the room hearing it. Out of a few dozen people, seven women left the room to explain why they could…

If they came back in tears and were removed from the jury, then the system worked. A clearly impartial potential juror was removed and a past victim was saved from a horrible experience of sitting through such testimony. But what about those who have been abused but aren't in tears? This came up very recently. One of the Ghislaine Maxwell jurors discussed his history of being abused with other jurors. The question be…

If you remove any jurors with history of abuse, do you not remove all the people that have life experience that could be relevant?

With a jury of only lets say strong white males that have never been abused or abuse adjacent, but have had several experience where they felt woman didn't give them enough respect are we that would seem a lot worse to me. Obviously this sounds like an extreme example, but the reality is that such a large part of the population has been the victim in abuse situations that you are going to disqualify into a situation similar to this.

Re: The impact of sexual abuse on female development: a longitudinal study

#120

Post by fullstop » Thu, Jan 13, 2022, 6:14 PM UTC

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #110

fullstop wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Seems like a hell of a leap. What are the odds someone is being abused concurrent with jury duty vs any other time in their life up until that point? Not really. In abusive relationships, the abuser often controls every aspect of the abused person's life and there are not opportunities to seek help without the abuser knowing. It's why there are sometimes signs in the bathrooms of women's health clinics informing th…

We've all heard that cliched phrase about the word "assume." This happened in a courthouse, not a hospital. I think the context of the discussion behind closed doors could have just as easily been "that is so bad you really need to consider reporting it" or even something more mundane. In any case, seems a little farcical to assume that meant she was actively being abused though it certainly seems like a decent one o…

I think that you may have misunderstood me. The woman left the room to discuss the matter, returned to the court room in tears, and was called back again after the selection process was completed.

I hear hoofbeats and I don't think that it's zebras.