Some people have blue eyes and other people have brown eyes. A lot of mind-related traits vary from intelligence to personality to capacity to pay attention. Not everybody even has two chromosomes (see XXY).
If not everyone experiences sexual trauma, let’s not jump to the conclusion that it’s due to culture. There are a multitude of possible reasons. For just one example: they might have different genes.
I definitely have the capacity to experience trauma, and I’m pretty sure that’s genetic, so it’s not fair to me for people to expect me not to experience it. In fact, I think it would be more traumatic for me to experience my natural instinct for trauma and then be told I shouldn’t experience trauma. Telling me I should have experienced less trauma would hurt me too.
If someone doesn’t experience trauma, don’t assume it’s genes, either. It might not be genes or culture. To assume it must be one of these is a false dichotomy. There could be dozens of different possible reasons why that might happen, and we just don’t know.
Point: just because some people didn’t experience trauma when they could have does not mean we should expect for everyone else to stop experiencing trauma. First of all, we don’t even know why some people don’t experience it. This is totally unfair to the victim because victims do not actually know how to stop experiencing trauma.
Second of all, expecting people to reduce their experience of trauma puts the responsibility onto the victim. Sex offenders might be confused by this sort of thinking. They might tell themselves “the victim shouldn’t feel trauma” and then feel good about going off to commit a whole bunch of sex offences, blaming the victims for all the negative consequences. This is how sex offenders think. They create justifications to commit crimes. These are called cognitive distortions.
By arguing in favor of an attitude that can be used as a justification to commit sex offences, you are making us all less safe.
Some people have blue eyes and other people have brown eyes. A lot of mind-related traits vary from intelligence to personality to capacity to pay attention. Not everybody even has two chromosomes (see XXY).
If not everyone experiences sexual trauma, let’s not jump to the conclusion that it’s due to culture. There are a multitude of possible reasons. For just one example: they might have different genes.
I definitely have the capacity to experience trauma, and I’m pretty sure that’s genetic, so it’s not fair to me for people to expect me not to experience it. In fact, I think it would be more traumatic for me to experience my natural instinct for trauma and then be told I shouldn’t experience trauma. Telling me I should have experienced less trauma would hurt me too.
If someone doesn’t experience trauma, don’t assume it’s genes, either. It might not be genes or culture. To assume it must be one of these is a false dichotomy. There could be dozens of different possible reasons why that might happen, and we just don’t know.
Point: just because some people didn’t experience trauma when they could have does not mean we should expect for everyone else to stop experiencing trauma. First of all, we don’t even know why some people don’t experience it. This is totally unfair to the victim because victims do not actually know how to stop experiencing trauma.
Second of all, expecting people to reduce their experience of trauma puts the responsibility onto the victim. Sex offenders might be confused by this sort of thinking. They might tell themselves “the victim shouldn’t feel trauma” and then feel good about going off to commit a whole bunch of sex offences, blaming the victims for all the negative consequences. This is how sex offenders think. They create justifications to commit crimes. These are called cognitive distortions.
By arguing in favor of an attitude that can be used as a justification to commit sex offences, you are making us all less safe.