Coping Mechanisms

[Trigger warning: Rape discussion.]

Chrissie Hynde recently caused quite a lot of controversy when she talked about the gang rape that happened to her when she was 21. She said some things about rape in general that made people angry (and things I found tired and typical, but she old so what do you expect?), but what really seemed to piss people off the most was the way she processed what happened to her. She felt she was responsible. She was hanging around with Hells Angels, using drugs, and going places alone with them. She chalked the whole thing up to experience and a lesson she hoped not to repeat.

Now, is that the way most people who have responded to this? Honestly, who knows? And really, it doesn't matter how MOST people would respond. This was Hynde's experience and how she processes it and how she chooses to deal with it is her business and her right.

This is something that's been on my mind ever since the Ashley Madison scandal and it was revealed that Josh Duggar was one of the clients. For like five minutes people focused on him, then suddenly the focused shifted to his wife and why she wasn't leaving him. I think people wrote more articles about that than they did about him. Everyone seemed so shocked that a woman with several young children, no education, no job, and a brand new baby wouldn't leave her husband. Really?

In both cases, I saw this repeating pattern with people's comments. Hynde would get no sympathy from them. Anna Duggar would get no sympathy from them, not unless she did A, B, and C. That's fine. No one will force you to feel sympathy. I don't think either of these women asked for it. In Duggar's case, she had no choice in the information coming out. In Hynde's case, she was talking about events of her life and asked for no one to feel one way or the other.

Maybe the issue is our own fear. The idea of being gangraped by bikers who are threatening to beat you to death and burning you with matches is pretty horrifying. To most people, the whole concept of Anna Duggar's life seems horrifying. We cope with this horror by internalizing how we things we would handle it, the things we'd say, the ways we would react. We want to believe we'd be stronger and braver and not fall into the same oppressive paths that we believe other people take. And when people DO take those paths, we feel betrayed, and on some level, we feel even more terrified.

Here's the thing though, part of Feminism is accepting that women make their own choices for their own reasons. We may not like those reasons. We may not believe in those reasons, but if we just go around screaming 'you're wrong!' at every other woman out there, we're policing them as much as everyone else. Victims are not obligated to take up arms to fight against what happened to them. Their only obligation, if any at all, is to themselves and finding a way to cope with their new reality.

Everyone is going to heal in a different way. Some people get angry. Some people want to burn their bridges, even the ones they're standing on. Some people try to view the whole thing as their fault and their responsibility because it makes it seem like if they do all the right things next time, maybe it won't happen again. Some people drink. Often the paths to healing are messy and awkward.

What we need to remember is that recovery is unique to each of us. How we process the wrongs done to us is unique to us. No one has the right to tell you how you SHOULD feel or what you SHOULD do or how you SHOULD move forward. Anyone who is doing that is at the very least a concern troll and often a manipulative bastard. Ignore them. This happened to you. You process it as you need to. And if that loses you their sympathy, so be it. Someone who will only offer you conditional sympathy isn't worth being around.