Blame the Victim Part 9 – How Rooting out Details Advances Healing

Blame the victim mentality is very subtle. It’s sneaky. It doesn’t ever announce its presence. It just sits there like a black cloud, draining you.

This is because we’ve been taught to accept it much more than we realize we have been.

This is also because we have never been taught to pick things apart that are very subtle. To root out the tidbits of truth in the details.

Take the example of sexual coercion.

This blog post – Sexual Coercion – Is Sexual Abuse ~ Lilly Hope Lucario – points out that there are many different kinds of “Yes’s” But the only kind of Yes that is not going to lead to sexual coercion is an Enthusiastic Yes.

The issue is that we have never been taught to differentiate different types of Yes’s. We have been taught that any kind of Yes – an unspoken Yes, an implied Yes, an extracted Yes – is a Yes.

The Non-Yes Yes’s

We think that all of the following mean Yes:

1. Tentative Yes
2. Yes out of fear
3. Implied Yes
4. Interpreted Yes
5. Not a “No” Yes
6. Timid Yes
7. Conditioned Yes
8. Yes while in the Freeze response, while in Collapse
9. Habitual Yes
10. Extracted Yes
11. Unspoken Yes
12. Yes while crying
13. Yes while trying to get away
14. Yes while praying for help
15. Yes while feeling sick
16. Yes with self-hatred
17. Yes under duress
18. Yes to make it be over with
19. Yes to please another
20. Yes while shaking head No
21. Yes while body is shivering and shaking
22. Yes while dissociated
23. Yes while intoxicated
24. Yes while being powerfully seduced

None of the above is an enthusiastic and freely given yes.

But Non-Yes Yes’s are taken to be Yes’s. Why?

The More Subtle Parts of Sexual Coercion That Get Missed and Should be Blamed on the Perpetrator

In the case of these Non-Yes Yes’s, the person doing the coercion thinks they are Yes because, while doing the coercing:

1. That person isn’t sensitive to nonverbal clues.
2. They aren’t caring.
3. They aren’t patient.
4. They don’t know how to handle their urges in a way that is healthy for all involved.
5. They don’t have maturity regarding their sexuality.
6. They don’t act like a grown adult.
7. They don’t want the other person to have the most positive, best experience.
8. They don’t pay attention to the other person.
9. They don’t ask questions.
10. They are not curious.
11. They don’t engage in a two-way conversation.
12. They are self-centered.
13. They don’t truly listen.
14. They are not protective of the other person’s body, feelings, life.

But we forget all of that.

Because of the “Yes” that wasn’t.

So – the reason I bring this up is because in order to get rid of the Blame the Victim Mentality it’s necessary to become much more aware of subtle nuances than we generally are. It’s necessary to go way beyond how we look at things on the surface and this kind of examination can potentially be somewhat painful.

The greater number of subtle parts we look at, the more things we find to move over from blaming on ourselves to blaming on the perpetrator.

Like, in the case above, after identifying lack of sensitivity we can put that on the perpetrator – it’s that person’s fault for not being sensitive. It’s that person’s fault for not caring, for not being mature, for lacking patience, for not having a two-way conversation, for not listening.

We tend to focus just on the act, but all of these other things are part of the experience. And – it leads to a whole list of things that get placed squarely on the perpetrator as their fault and only their fault. That’s why it’s important to go deeper with it than just the appearance or the surface layer.

” in order to get rid of the Internalized Blame the Victim Mentality it’s necessary to become much more aware of subtle nuances than we generally are.”

Everything in this article is the author’s personal opinion based on her experiences.

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