讀報筆記，What People Misunderstand about Rape

我在紐約時報上看到一篇文章，標題是What People Misunderstand About Rape，內容在討論為什麼很多人被性侵的當下，並沒有做出任何反應(像是馬上與對方搏鬥，或至少是逃跑、掙扎)，反而會楞/傻在那裡。原文很長，我把我自已覺的重點的部份剪貼在這邊，給有興趣的朋友們參考。

作者列舉多項相關研究，來說明這是演化下，生物自然產生的反應。文章的結論，是要說明為什麼我們常識的觀念是錯的: 很多人認為，性侵受害者在面對性侵時沒有逃跑、沒有掙扎，那就表示她當時是願意與對方發生性關係的。因此，一個沒有掙扎、搏鬥的人，不能算是受害者。但是，如果我們看看身手矯健的小鹿，晚上在看到車燈的時侯，也不一定會馬上逃跑，，我們就可以知道，其實生物在遇到危險的時候，會需要停下來思考、評估，到底怎麼樣的反應，才是最有利的反應。而即將被性侵的人，也會需要知道現在逃跑，是不是會讓對方覺得沒面子、明天就被fire、從此無法在業界生存、或是在朋友圈裡，會有各種難聽的臭名，你怎麼解釋也沒用…。

難道身手矯健的小鹿沒有馬上跑走，是因為牠想被車撞嗎?

此外，在面臨巨大危險的時侯，各種生理反應(激素/荷爾蒙)會開始發作，造成很多人當下會有許多不正常的生理反應，包括聽不到、看不到、或是感覺不到許多在正常情況下，能感受到的事物。因此，被性侵時楞住、傻住，並非不正常，而是演化下，動物很正常的反應。

最後，就算受到最嚴格的訓練，也不一定能消除這種天然的本能反應。我剪貼部份的倒數第三段，是在說Dr. Hopper幫一位Marine 作證的故事。辯方說控方在軍隊裡受過嚴格的訓練，可以打敗任何敵人，因此，不可能被強暴。Hopper 說明，她受的訓練，是要她去與敵人戰鬥、服從上級，所以她上級性侵她時，她的訓練並沒有任何作用! 她只是禮貌地請對方不要這樣。因為她的文化制約裡，面對上級正確的態度是尊與與服從，而不是打敗對方。

在我們的社會裡，卻把她的態度/反應，解讀為是一種對攻擊/性侵的歡迎--這十分不合理。

Trigger Warning, Sexual Assault

[skipping the first few paragraphs of description of actual sexual assault during a military exercise] "...

“I felt like I wanted to scream or yell or push him,” she told me. “And I don’t even know why, but my body just wouldn’t react.” At some point after he finished, she could move again. (The woman asked to remain anonymous because she fears retribution.) The man left her side, and she fell back asleep, though she doesn’t remember when. In the morning, she ate breakfast and immediately threw it up.

...“No one expects to be a victim of such a situation,” she said. “But everyone imagines how they would react, and I had always imagined I would fight and get away.”

She was ashamed of herself for not doing anything. “Because it’s not really who I am,” she said. “I don’t even know why, but my body just wouldn’t react.”

The weeks that followed the rape were exhausting — the demands of training on top of the stress of the assault. She spiraled into depression and lost 20 pounds. Friends had to feed her bites of bread to make sure she was consuming enough calories. She was terrified to fall asleep. “I felt like I couldn’t trust my own body,” she said.

...

What is tonic immobility? It’s an extreme response to a threat that leaves victims literally paralyzed. They can’t move or speak. For more than a century, scientists have studied similar phenomena in animals, and over the years they have been named and renamed — animal hypnosis, death feigning, playing dead, apparent death and thanatosis, an ancient Greek word for “putting to death.” Tonic immobility is a survival strategy that has been identified across many classes of animals — insects, fish, reptiles, birds, mammals — and draws its evolutionary power from the fact that many predators seem hard-wired to lose interest in dead prey. It is usually triggered by the perception of inescapability or restraint, like the moment a prey finds itself in a predator’s jaws.

...

A few years later, the psychologists Susan Suarez and Gordon Gallup argued in a 1979 article in The Psychological Record that tonic immobility evolved in humans, as in other animals, as a defense against predators. They then noted how often rape convictions fell apart because victims didn’t resist. “It seems ironic,” they wrote, “that victims should be legally penalized for exhibiting a reaction that has such adaptive value and may be firmly embedded in the biology of our species.”

...

The human brain’s first response to danger is almost always to stop all movement to better evaluate a threat. Within a fraction of a second, other physiological changes are happening to prepare the body to engage in lifesaving behaviors. Sometimes this leads to fighting or fleeing, but much more commonly in sexual-assault victims, it continues as freezing, during which the brain assesses the assault while generating potential options for responding. Victims are motionless, with a slow heart rate, and attentive to threat.

...

Hopper also added a crucial nuance: At some point during rape, most victims revert to habits, usually passive or submissive ones, that have been conditioned by culture or abuse. Many women, for example, have been socialized to be nice to men, to avoid offending their egos and to avoid retaliation. “And these are actually among the most common brain-based responses that people have while being sexually assaulted,” he said. “We usually don’t think of these habits as involuntary, but they absolutely are.”

...

Hopper once testified at a trial regarding the rape of a young Marine by a senior officer. The woman said the Marine attacked her one Saturday night after a party, holding her down and forcing off her clothes. The defense argued that the Marine’s military training would make it impossible for her to be raped. Hopper testified that even well-conditioned habits don’t necessarily carry over from one context to another. It’s why the military spends a lot of money training soldiers in realistic environments. Hopper explained that the Marine was not fighting an enemy on a battlefield, so her military training didn’t kick in. Instead, she responded the way she always did when she wanted to end unwanted advances from men: She politely asked him to stop.

...

In many states, prosecutors must still show that sexual contact was forced or was met with verbal or physical resistance to prove that the victim didn’t consent. Moriah Schiewe, a licensed attorney in Oregon, says tonic immobility remains “a blind spot in the legal system.”

“If we think of resistance as a ‘No’ statement or fighting back,” Erin Murphy, a professor at the New York University School of Law, told me, “tonic immobility is not going to work to give you a nonconsensual encounter, because in those situations the physical shutdown is not usually interpreted legally to be a ‘No.’” Murphy thinks there are still jurors who believe that women are responsible for freezing and who can’t recognize rape unless there was physical resistance.

#freezing

#tonicimmobility

#blackingout

#no-good-choices-freezing

#dissociativeresponse