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

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

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

#71

I find this to be the most telling stat: "In a few cases (N So roughly 5% (<5 of 84) of the control group were discovered to have themselves been abused and needed to be dropped from the study. I was once in a law lecture on medical ethics. We were discussing genetic testing of newborns and how this could detect incest/abuse. A medical doctor in the class was dead against such testing. In his experience, amongst preg…

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 not be impartial, some of them returning in tears. They weren't gone for a short while, either, many of them took 20 or 30 minutes before returning to the court room. One of them was called back out of the room at the very end, and my wife suspects that she was actively being abused and this was an opportunity to seek help without the abuser being present.

This isn't something that I have to personally worry about if I'm by myself, but it's something that so many women do have to worry about all the time. I can't even imagine the burden that women must carry.

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

#72
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That whole comment was chilling AF

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…

Are people (and law professors in particular) stupid enough to apply this "1-on-1" logic to other crimes as well (e.g. "n people victims of burglary" => "n thiefs") or only to rape?

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

#73

I find this to be the most telling stat: "In a few cases (N So roughly 5% (<5 of 84) of the control group were discovered to have themselves been abused and needed to be dropped from the study. I was once in a law lecture on medical ethics. We were discussing genetic testing of newborns and how this could detect incest/abuse. A medical doctor in the class was dead against such testing. In his experience, amongst preg…

Why should locking up child abusers be controversial?

The only controversial thing I can think of here is when it comes to the definition of abuse. People are on the sex offender registry for public urination, although I suspect that this happens more often with repeat offenders.

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

#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 yesterday, or last week, or two years ago, or the time the bed collapsed when they were having sex 25 years ago. But no, the woman doesn't feel safe because of something that happened 40 years ago that didn't have anything to do with them. The need for safety is a bottomless pit. Maybe the woman sees that the man is trying really hard and fakes a response but it's not real and the man sees that and it never blossoms into real mutual satisfaction.

It' s completely frustrating because the woman has adjusted well to being asexual. Perhaps she could struggle through three years of therapy to attempt to change, but it is unlikely to be effective because she's not doing it for herself. The man, on the other hand, might be willing to plumb the depths of hell or storm the gates of heaven to change things but it's pushing on a string.

(If the man has been traumatized by child bullying and subsequent sexual invisibility, rejection and being shut out from dating in high school they can be re-traumatized continuously by this demonstration that they are unlovable.)

I was reading about how the actor Danny Masterson had drugged and raped women, stealing their sexuality not just from them but from their partners. Thus a single act of abuse affects not just the direct victim but their lovers, their children, and many others in the community.

In the past two years we've seen a normalization of doing things over video and there has been an explosion in things like camgirling and OnlyFans -- many of the performers are people who had their sexuality distorted by abuse and I'm sure than many of the men who become victims of it (paying $1000 for a jar of farts, spending $80 for an Aella video) have themselves been victimized ) or are suffering because their partner or potential partners were abused.

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

#75
post #33

Can testify it does a number on male development too

Quoted post unavailable.

Please do not take HN threads further into flamewar. There's more than enough suffering to go around, but this is not the way to open up a thoughtful conversation.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#76

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…

> 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. "Misery loves company" is indeed a common attitude, but I'm not sure it's especially healthy.

"Misery loves company" is the antithesis of The Golden Rule, a formulation of which is "do not believe that it is so that you will find happiness in the misery of others," (I believe Seneca may have said this, but can't find the citation). I believe it is not the sadist notion, "misery loves company," that eases victims' pain, but instead "being in good company." I think "misery loves company" is a cynical twist of "being in good company," which is similar to left-handers learning of famous left-handers, or a depressive learning that Lincoln suffered from depression, reducing or eliminating feeling alone or isolated and disconneted.

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

#77

[trigger warning] I'm a woman. I was physically and sexually abused by my father as a child. The impact it's had on me is painful to describe. I was working as a software engineer in the tech industry and was constantly experiencing PTSD symptoms being surrounded by men -- though by no fault of their own, it was totally because of what my father did to me. It's been a frustrating journey. The sexual abuse happened to…

As a man, is there anything I can do or avoid doing in the workplace to make it easier for coworkers like you? Let's assume I don't know and don't suspect anything specific about my coworkers. I just want to know if there's anything that would be pretty easy to implement, that would make a difference.

Mike Pence rule. Don't ever be alone with a vulnerable person without a neutral third party being present, it wreaks havoc on the threat-detection instinct. As the saying goes, "you're not paranoid if someone really is out to get you."

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

#78
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.

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

#79

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…

Uhh lawyers and law students can have criminal records. Commonly.

Certain criminal convictions (like rape) prevent you from being accepted by the bar. Most people don't go to law school when they know they are ineligible to actually practice law (even if a law school actually accepted a convicted rapist).

The school they were teaching at probably disqualified anyone with any criminal record from admission.

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