There Is Nothing Glorious About Being the Victim of Abuse

When will the shaming stop?

I recently wrote about the importance of consent and how, when it comes to sex, unless we get an enthusiastic yes, we should assume the answer is no.

I knew I was going to get at least one horrible comment. I braced myself, but I still felt the punch when a man left some feedback on my article.

You see, to explain my point, I used my sexual experiences, to be precise, how my partner used psychological violence to get sex whenever he felt like it. I shared how, for years, he pressured me and got me to engage in sexual activity even when I didn’t want to.

It was difficult to share so much, but I knew I had to be vulnerable. To offer the reader just abstract concepts wouldn’t have been enough. I wanted people to feel why consent is of the utmost importance. I needed them to understand how being pressured essentially destroyed my relationship and poisoned my life for years.

However, a certain reader was not impressed.

The comment this reader left was typical of the rape culture we live in. He explained how I had lost myself in my victim mentality. To seal the deal, he added I was blaming other people when I should have just “left” and that I was “now claiming a glorious endurance of years of abuse.”

When I first read those words, I stared at them for the longest time. I wasn’t surprised, and yet, I still felt a punch in the gut.

Here it was, the victim-blaming in all of its splendor. Even though I explained why, despite wanting out of that situation, I had been unable to escape, he nevertheless thought I should have just left.

Wow…how come I never thought of that?

However, my favorite part was the use of the word glorious.

You know, because, when a woman comes forward with this kind of information, everything always goes…

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