JOSH: Hello, and welcome to Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg, the podcast about ideas that matter. I'm Josh Castle, the producer of the podcast, and I'm so glad you've joined us today. In this episode, Spencer and an anonymous sexual assault victim discuss feelings of safety and danger, gray areas of consent, negative cultural tropes, and the experience of repeated victimhood. A quick word of warning: In this episode, the topics of child abuse and rape are discussed, so if those topics are particularly sensitive to you, then please take care when listening. And now here's the conversation between Spencer and our anonymous guest.

SPENCER: Welcome.

ANON: Thank you, Spencer.

SPENCER: Have you been the victim of sexual abuse?

ANON: I have, yes. Actually, many times over my lifetime.

SPENCER: And that was by different people, right?

ANON: Yes, different people. Exactly.

SPENCER: Do you want to tell us about one of those stories?

ANON: Sure. Yes. So one way to categorize it is to make a divide between people who are strangers and people who were known to me and sometimes even trusted and loved. So the very first one was somebody I didn't know how old he was, but he was decades older than me and very unprepossessing physically. The first episode I can remember was definitely during prepubescence, so maybe age 10 or 11, and it continued over the course of many years. He was somebody who was almost like family and very much loved and trusted within my family. It literally happened behind closed doors, and one of the things I remember feeling was total disgust, anger, shock, lack of control. We talk about some of these aftereffects, like PTSD. I noticed that it was, and this holds with all the instances of sexual abuse that I'd gone through. The aftereffects took place without any delay. Almost instantly, feeling off, feeling disgusting, feeling worthless, feeling dirty, and then a heightened sense of fear, as though there was impending danger at every moment.

SPENCER: How did he actually manage to do it? Was it that, because he was trusted by your family, he was able to get access to you, and nobody was there?

ANON: He was a friend of the family, known to the family for a long time, much older than me and very unattractive. It happened over the course of many years, starting well before preadolescence, and continued until the age of 15. The abuse happened literally behind closed doors. He would catch me alone in a particular room, lock the door, hold me in place, and proceed with the abuse. As it happened, I remember feeling a total loss of control, anger, and maybe some fear as well. I think that these incidents set me up for revictimization because they traumatized me, damaged my psyche, and made me more vulnerable, more anxious, and also set the stage for what my notions were about consent. This man, as I said, was known to the family for a long time, and so he was given free access to the house, and in particular, to me. He was allowed to play a bit of a caregiver and babysitter role as well. I believe it's well known that people who have been victims of sexual assault, especially childhood sexual abuse, are much more likely to be re-abused in the future. I think there are probably many reasons for this, including the fact that these victims are probably more vulnerable in the first place given the past abuse, and so probably come across as more attractive prey to predators who might sense this. It's also known that people sort of replicate traumas, or I think they call it the trauma replication compulsion. When something so bad happens, trauma victims might try to replicate the trauma in order to feel like they are in control and to feel like they can somehow conquer it or make it right. I think that sexual trauma is an example of where this can happen. I believe there's a bilateral attraction between predators and multiple-time victims of sexual assault. Trauma victims, especially when it comes to sexual assault, feel an immense lack of control. By replicating the trauma, they may feel like they're gaining back some of the control they've lost, and I think that can be very powerful, at least subconsciously.

SPENCER: Would you be willing to tell us about another situation, maybe one of a different type, where you experienced victimization?

ANON: This was someone I had just met, a total stranger. We had started talking while I had gone for a walk, and he joined me for the walk. Next thing I knew, he started attacking me. One thing that this makes me want to mention is, "Did I see any signals, or were there any red flags?" If you ask me, the answer is no. He went from friendly stranger to rapist pretty quickly, although I have had trouble recognizing these cues. For example, if someone says, "I'm going to join you for a walk," or "Let's watch a movie," or "Let's listen to music," or "Let's talk," then that's what I assume we're going to do. It's a bit difficult for me to read between the lines. We started walking, and he pinned me down. This was the first time I had ever had intercourse, so it was extremely painful, physically and scary. I tried to escape by saying, "No, please stop," very clearly. There was no gray area with the consent here. Every time I tried to get up, he kept pushing me down. He was very strong, physically, very sturdy, and very muscular. Finally, I managed to get him in a position where I could make a dash for it. If I remember correctly, I was half-clothed, and I ran to a hotel lobby. That was a stranger, and again, it was quite violent. It was very physically painful and very scary. I remember thinking, "Am I going to die here? Is he going to kidnap me? Is he going to kill me?" But strangely, Spencer, this one was one of the least traumatic ones mentally. At that time, it was very scary. I kept thinking, "Am I going to die here? Is he going to kidnap me? Is he going to kill me? Hurt me further, physically?" But I see a pattern here. The ones that have traumatized me the most have been the ones where I knew them, trusted them, and possibly even loved them because I think that betrayal is what really stings for a very long time. This one just didn't feel like such a betrayal because I didn't know or trust him. I didn't love him. I just met him.

SPENCER: You might think, though, that this could be very traumatic because it came out of nowhere. Imagine someone's walking down the street near where they live, and suddenly, out of nowhere, someone jumps on them and assaults them. Their brain might then learn this association of, "Well, you're never safe. Bad things could happen to you at any time." Some people might imagine that a situation like that could be as traumatic or more traumatic because of its sudden nature and unpredictability. Do you feel like you have insight into why you didn't have that reaction to it, why it didn't cause you to just generally feel unsafe?

ANON: Yes, that's a great question. This example is more in line with the cut-off-the-TV treatment of rape. The idea of the stranger in an alley...

SPENCER: Which is actually a relatively rare form of it. Most rape occurs from people that individuals already know.

ANON: You're absolutely right. I don't know why that misconception prevails, but it's one of the many misconceptions about rape. You're exactly right. Again, Spencer, I would say, from my experience, it was a clear pattern that with the men that I knew, who I was emotionally invested in, whom I trusted and cared about, or I assumed cared about me. Those are the ones that caused the most long-lasting mental damage. As I said, I think it's tied directly to whether I knew and trusted them or not. And again, if there was romance involved, of course, it added another dimension. It's a horrible cocktail of heartbreak and PTSD. Again, I think the fact that this man was a total stranger contributed to some long-term damage and PTSD as well, including, as you said, the concept of safety, but maybe just in terms of relationships, and maybe romantic relationships. I think this one did the least damage.

SPENCER: Do you have another example that is more around a relationship that you'd be willing to talk about?

ANON: Yes, this one was my boyfriend, and we were both adults, and again, this was another instance where there was a deep sense of betrayal because I thought he really cared about me, possibly deeply. We had spent quite a bit of time together, had a lot of mutual interests and deep connections, and had many profound conversations. He asked me to come to his apartment, and I did. I know I wasn't ready for sex, and I didn't want it, but pretty quickly, as soon as we got to his apartment, he started attacking me in his bed. I said, "No." I said, "Stop." Very clearly, there was no gray area regarding consent, and he just kept going. It was also very physically painful and very mentally scary. I remember both freezing and shutting down, but also feeling the fear and maybe the subconscious indication that he was betraying me. He also made some derogatory comments while he was engaging in the rape, and strangely, he would mix that up with very sweet comments, which was quite confusing. After the rape had happened, I actually spent the night at his place, which I know sounds strange, but I guess in spending the night there, maybe it was my way of denying that something so horrible had happened. I still had feelings for him, and I guess I didn't want to believe that he could be this monster capable of doing a rape. It was easier to deny it and blame myself and continue to have feelings for him. I think it's important to draw a distinction here between sexual assault by a stranger versus sexual assault by somebody that you know and trust. In the latter case, it can create some really complex trauma bonding dynamics, denial, blame, repression, and reluctance to report it. There's no way I would have reported it at the time because I hadn't processed it. I had feelings for him. I wouldn't have wanted him to get in trouble. Perhaps you can imagine how when somebody does something wrong to you, and that somebody is someone you have feelings for or care about, it can be difficult to immediately repudiate them, cut them out of your life, report them, or even forgive them. It may take some time to admit to yourself what they did, and again, it can be easier to not face that horrible reality.

SPENCER: This might be hard to have insight on, but I guess what I'm wondering is, why did that event not fundamentally change your sense of safety? Because it sounds like it didn't, compared to other ones. But whereas people might think that event would actually make you feel fundamentally unsafe around men or when you're alone or that kind of thing.

ANON: Those feelings are still there. That bad thing they did to you, no matter how bad. With romance and romantic feelings, you may not necessarily immediately repudiate them, let them go, report them, hate them, or place them in the bad category. Sometimes, that may also be a defense mechanism. Another thing is, and you'll see this with, say, for example, the Weinstein victims, the Epstein victims, or even in domestic violence cases. A lot of the time, these people go back to their abuser. There are so many reasons for this. Especially if it's someone you knew and trusted and maybe even loved, you might think if I keep seeing them, I can somehow make it okay or make them okay. Maybe if I keep trying, they'll be nice to me, or somehow I can heal this wound. There's a lot of cognitive dissonance there, but I actually learned that it's very common, even if it's counterintuitive. If you Google, "I can't leave my abuser," or "I went back to my abuser," or "I dated my rapist," or "I kept talking to my rapist," you'll see countless articles, Reddit posts, and Quora posts. This is actually very common.

SPENCER: I think you pointed out some really insightful things there. I just want to make sure to dig into them a little bit. One is that it sounds like you almost want to make it not a rape retroactively. Like, "Well, maybe if we end up dating, and he ends up being nice after that, maybe it wasn't rape; maybe it was just a sexual encounter or something like that." If you're able to sort of free yourself from that burden, does that sound like something that was going on for you?

ANON: So astute of you, and something that people just seem to refuse to understand. Actually, if you follow any rape trials or domestic violence trials, the defense will spin that into a reason to call the victim a liar. "Oh, then why did she go back to him? Or, yeah, why did she keep seeing him? That must mean she's lying about it. That must mean nothing bad ever happened." But absolutely right, Spencer. I think that there's this desperate desire to frame it as an act of love, or, as you said, to not have to frame it as a rape, because facing that reality is so shocking and horrible, or even just facing that this person that you loved and trusted did this to you, when you have romantic feelings for them can be horrible, so you're absolutely right there.

SPENCER: The other thing you said, I think, is also very astute, which is that people might imagine if someone they were really attracted to, that they had a really strong feeling for did something horrible like rape them, that they would lose all those feelings instantly. And maybe that's true for some people, but it's definitely not true for everyone. So now you still have all these romantic feelings for this person. You still really like them and want to be with them, but also they raped you, which is incredibly confusing.

ANON: Exactly. As you just said, it's just another bad act. Maybe it's the worst act you can do to someone. But we all know countless examples of Person A doing something to Person B, and maybe Person B forgets them, or there's a time lag until they actually take into account what that person did, or they give them another chance. So this is just another act again. Maybe it's on the worst part of the spectrum, as far as bad acts are concerned. But that's one way to think about it. And another thing, Spencer, is trauma bonding. I'm sorry I forgot to mention this. I think that's a big thing, trauma bonding, or something analogous to Stockholm Syndrome, where, by definition, you form a bond with the person who has traumatized you. And again, it's very self-destructive. It's counterintuitive, but I think it's just a defense mechanism, and it's just in line with everything that we discussed. And I think it happens a lot more often than we think.

SPENCER: Could you explain what a trauma bond really is? Why would trauma cause you to bond with the person who caused the trauma?

ANON: Okay, if we can look at the Stockholm Syndrome, which, to me, is a specific instance of a trauma bond, where I think it means that you are held captive. I guess maybe the defense mechanism over there is, "Well, I can't control this situation. I'm trapped over here. And so maybe to make it better, if I develop feelings for this person, that kind of makes my worldviews or my schemas more tolerable or more consonant."

SPENCER: I could still see a survival component. Let's say someone you know kidnaps you and really traps you. And you're like, "Okay, so you're stuck. There's nothing you can do to escape. What's going to improve your chance of survival? Hating that person or actually developing feelings for that person so that they now have really no reason to kill you?"

ANON: Completely, exactly, totally. Another thing that might happen in the context of trauma bonding is your self-esteem. These things ruin your self-esteem, and the behavior we tolerate, the people we let into our lives, are a function of our self-esteem. So it almost follows logically that if our self-esteem is so low, maybe we're going to keep putting up with this. Even in terms of consent, the more sexual assault you experience, the less healthy your conception of sexual relations is, or even, you may not even be able to distinguish between consent and lack thereof. Sometimes we also accept or maybe even pursue things that are commensurate with our view of ourselves, our self-worth, our self-esteem. So that could be there as well. But I really think that trauma bonding is a way of denial or a defense mechanism. It's our brain's way of protecting us from facing a horrible reality. And I'll tell you this, for many years, I blamed myself. I kept in touch with these guys. I thought I was the bad person, and it was actually easier that way. It was easier to do that than to face, "Oh my God, these guys did this to me, and they're actually bad people. The ugly reality was actually harder to deal with than dealing with all these uncomfortable feelings and confusion." So I can tell you that actually being in denial and blaming myself and thinking these guys were nice was easier.

SPENCER: In what way was it easier?

ANON: Because in that worldview, everybody's good. These actions didn't happen. These were good guys. Just the horror of it wasn't real.

SPENCER: So it's like the difference between the world is full of these monsters who hurt you versus, "Oh no, if it's just my fault, I screwed up."

ANON: Exactly. It's my fault. I screwed up. The world is full of good people. It's okay, pushing it under the rug, suppressing it. When the Me Too movement came out, I felt a lot of uncomfortable emotions, including anger and confusion. I think it's easier to be in denial and to push things under the rug and to have that kind of conception of the world that everything is okay and nice, as opposed to facing the horrible reality.

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SPENCER: One thing that's kind of tricky to talk about, but I think it's really important here, is the extent to which some of these things can be really clear-cut cases, and some can be gray area cases where it's maybe less clear if a rape occurred. I'm wondering, in this particular instance that you're talking about, do you think that a third party observing would find it really obvious that a rape occurred, or do you think it would be less clear to them?

ANON: Yeah, that's a great question, and it touches on so many things, including the legal definition of consent, which varies by country and even by state. I believe that until relatively recently in North Carolina, they didn't even have the concept of withdrawal of consent. So if he said yes in the beginning, and then if he said stop very clearly, I think the last gentleman that I mentioned would be a clear case, because I said, "No, stop," very clearly, and he didn't listen to me. However, there are lots of gray area cases, and unfortunately, one can still be traumatized and feel violated and feel like there wasn't consent, and that was ethically a horrible thing that they went through, but legally, they have no recourse, so it was not actually illegal. It's really sad because they may still feel just as violated. For example, maybe they're really scared and frozen and really don't want to do the act, but they don't find the voice to say no. That could be one example, but maybe it's showing in their face and body that they're really scared, and maybe they never actually said yes. For example, in New York State, they don't have the concept of affirmative consent, so unless you say no loudly and clearly, I don't think there's any legal recourse.

SPENCER: I was reading about a situation where a victim said to the person, "If you must," which is like, "I don't want to do this, but if you must." You can imagine that would probably be difficult to take to court, but it's also a way of saying, "No, I don't want this."

ANON: Exactly, and I think in the US, in some states, what's interesting is this is not along party lines, Republican and Democrat. For example, I think some states have affirmative consent, which is interesting. Then there are some Democratic states that don't. In states with affirmative consent, my guess is that might not be enough for consent, but in states that don't have the affirmative consent standard, then, yeah, absolutely, because they didn't explicitly protest. Although in my mind, that would be, "Yeah, I don't want to do this." What do you think?

SPENCER: Yeah, that communicates, "I don't want to do this." But then it's like, you can imagine the difficulty of trying to hash that out in court, and is it beyond a reasonable doubt and so on. A lot of these situations, I think, are gray areas, but still, there are tons that are not; there are tons that are just absolute, clear violations. I've had quite a lot of my friends, my female friends, usually tell me about situations where they were assaulted or raped, and many of them were with people they were dating, where they very clearly were raped, but there's enough ambiguity in the situation where it would probably be difficult to take to court. However, I will note that they almost never want to take it to court. I can think of maybe one case out of all the many times I've known people who have been raped or assaulted that they actually wanted to take it to court, which I think is probably really surprising to a lot of people. Almost always, they kind of keep it secret and just tell a few trusted friends.

ANON: Great points that you make, and there are so many reasons. My guess is that if this was an intimate partner violence situation, then it's known that the majority of victims don't want to do anything about it. Also, because the justice system, let's just say, is allowed to re-traumatize victims. For example, if you're trying to take something to court, the defense can ask the victim to list under oath every single person they've had sex with and why that's relevant.

SPENCER: Are you serious? Oh my God, that's...

ANON: Oh yeah, they can do that. Completely unfair. It's also not helpful to me. It's useless, right? It doesn't really mean anything. If the person lies, they're doing this under oath. They have to list every person they had sex with. They do the defense. They use kind of old-fashioned sexist tactics to paint the victim as hysterical and crazy and a liar, and all of that. But yeah, absolutely. So that unfortunately discourages a lot of victims from coming forward, because the legal process itself can be re-traumatizing. Another thing is that reporting is evidence. Sadly, you don't record being raped. Often it comes as a shock or unexpectedly. So I don't know the standard of beyond reasonable doubt, and I wonder how you're going to reinforce that. Then there's also the gray area of consent. There's also rape by deceit. So, if I'm sure this is a classic situation. Somebody says, "Yeah, I'm single," when they're actually married, and the person in question would not have had sex with them had they known they were married, but the person lied about their marital status just to get the sex. Well, is that consent? I think in an affirmative consent situation, you can actually say that because part of affirmative consent includes knowing, voluntary, and enthusiastic consent. But I think in most places, you can't actually do anything about that.

SPENCER: Yeah, that's interesting. I mean, I think we have to accept that there's just a huge spectrum from the most egregious case, where someone knows that they're raping the person and they're doing it on purpose, all the way to the most ambiguous cases where it's really hard to say whether rape even occurred. We just have to grapple with the complexity of it.

ANON: Exactly, yes.

SPENCER: Did you think about reporting this person when this most recent case you were talking about occurred?

ANON: No way. If you would have asked me then, I would have said, and that would have been the best time to report it because I actually had some evidence, which I lost, unfortunately, over text, where I sneakily called him out on it. That would have been the best time to report it, but I didn't. No way, because I have feelings for him, and I wouldn't have wanted him to get in trouble. I wouldn't have wanted to hurt him. I was not even really aware of what had happened. It took me years to see it, for him to see it, and for what it was. So unfortunately, no, no way, not at the time.

SPENCER: So even though you'd said no during it and you didn't enjoy it, you still kind of rationalized it after as something other than rape.

ANON: I knew deep inside me he had done something wrong, but maybe even despite that, I probably didn't specifically categorize it as rape. My brain just refused to accept the idea that he was not a good man for a really, really long time, and I kept focusing on the good, and somehow that prevailed in my mind. The wrong things that he had done, my brain refused to update the conception of him with that information.

SPENCER: You mentioned before that you would blame yourself. What did that blame look like? People might wonder, what would you blame yourself for?

ANON: Sure, so I had kissed him passionately many times. Maybe there was something in me that thought he was entitled to it because we'd gone on so many dates already, and I felt maybe it was wrong for me to make him wait more. Since he was my boyfriend, we flirted, and I certainly gave off signals that I was romantically interested in him, including kissing. So maybe there was a part of me that thought I just had to somehow accept this.

SPENCER: It feels like that's a sort of old trope that the culture would promote, much less so today, thankfully, but in the past, there was some kind of obligation, right?

ANON: 100%, and there are some cultures where, to this day, it's not even implicit; it's just explicit that the men are entitled to it. So absolutely, yes. Sadly, I think that did play a role. Maybe also the idea that he couldn't control himself, or that, again, that's a misconception, an unfortunate misconception. I probably wore short dresses and high heels, so maybe there was something in me that believed the idea that I provoked him, or that somehow this was just the natural course of action, and I had to give him what he wanted.

SPENCER: That's a trope that I've seen coming from certain Christian subcultures is that if a woman is sufficiently provocative, the man can't be blamed for what he does, which is obviously insane, but you definitely see that messaging.

ANON: Yes, this idea that flirting provokes them beyond redemption or one's clothes convey consent, one's behavior otherwise, maybe even one's personal life in the past conveys that they're available for sex. The thing that's really strong, but it's important to look at the legality of it, which, of course, will vary by state and by country. But at least in most places in the US, I believe that even if you flirted with them, if you say no, stop and then they don't listen to you, then they have crossed the line legally. I think there's a lot of guilt and self-blame associated with this issue that a lot of victims feel. "I think it's my fault. I provoked him. He was unable to stop himself. It was all my fault."

SPENCER: You sound uncertain, even now. You said the way you say that, "Oh, well, if I say no, then I guess it's bad." But you actually don't sound certain in that. You feel like you maybe did something wrong.

ANON: You're absolutely right. I'm still struggling with it.

SPENCER: Where does that doubt come from? Presumably, I imagine if a friend came to you and said, "You know, I flirted with this guy, and then he came on to me, and then I said, 'No, I don't want to have sex,' and then he pushed through my repeated no's, and then we had sex." Presumably, you'd say to a friend, "What he did to you is extremely wrong," or am I wrong about that?

ANON: The number of times I've heard people say to me and to others in this situation things like, "What were you wearing?" or "Why were you out at that hour?" or "Why were you alone with him?" or "If you flirted, then what do you expect?" Yes, flirting is, sadly, something a lot of people assume gives them the green light. Again, going back to this issue, they feel somehow provoked beyond redemption, that they can't stop, they can't help themselves, and that the burden is on us. Sadly, this strongly instills a sense of guilt and self-blame in a lot of sexual assault victims.

SPENCER: It's so invalidating. I can understand why you're questioning yourself if you literally talk to friends and they tell you you should question yourself, that you had it coming. That idea that flirting implies that you're okay with having sex is obviously insane. You think about that for five seconds. Surely no one can really believe that flirting implies being okay with having sex.

ANON: Yeah. Or that flirting implies you've given them the green light, you know, till time immemorial.

SPENCER: You can change your mind. Maybe you wanted sex at that moment when you flirted, and then something happened and you didn't want it anymore.

ANON: Absolutely, maybe it was painful or suddenly scary, or you're suddenly uncomfortable. There are so many reasons. But yeah, that definitely confused me. I also think some of these guys will shut you down, or they'll say things like, "Oh, then why did you not leave immediately?" or "Why did you want it?" It's definitely a struggle, Spencer.

SPENCER: And that causes you to doubt yourself when they say things like that.

ANON: It absolutely does. Yes, it's too easy for me to doubt myself when they say things.

SPENCER: One thing I want to mention is, because I've had, this is not as common, but I've had some guy friends say things to me about how they're concerned that this could kind of go too far, where they have consensual sex, and then later, the person decides that they didn't want it. So it's like retroactive rape, but let's take this case at face value. There's no indication during the experience that the person doesn't want it, but they decide afterwards. I'm curious how you feel about those situations. Would you view the man as blameless in that scenario?

ANON: That's a really interesting question. If the man, yes, I would, and I look, obviously I'm saying this as a sexual assault survivor who wants to support every sexual assault survivor and encourage them to come forward. You can't blame assuming that if it's a man and a woman here and your guy friend really had no idea that the other person didn't want it or wasn't comfortable, and that they were being honest with you about that, then I think they are blameless. Going back to the person who felt like they were victimized in this situation, I don't know what kind of example we could conjure up, because maybe it's a situation where if they showed their body language or their facial expressions, and then your guy friends missed the cues. That can happen if they really didn't, if the guy friends you had in mind here really had no idea. Then, yes, I would see them as blameless. Yes, I would.

SPENCER: I think there's a really interesting distinction here, which is there are cases where everything was clear to both parties. The victim made it clear they didn't want it, the perpetrator read those signals correctly and knew they didn't want it. And then they do it anyway, right? So that's the super clear-cut, obviously, rape case. And then there's a case on the other end of the spectrum where the victim didn't want it, but they really communicated that in no way, or in such an ambiguous way that any reasonable person would have no idea that they didn't want it. There it's pretty clear that the perpetrator, while it was a bad situation, is not really to blame, because they couldn't possibly have known. At the same time, the victim still may feel traumatized or may feel really bad about it, and there's nothing wrong with them feeling that way. They feel however they feel. Just because they didn't say no doesn't mean that it wasn't a terrible experience for them. It doesn't mean that they don't deserve sympathy. But it's clearly not a situation where the perpetrator can be blamed. But then I think there are these intermediate cases where the victim did some signaling that they didn't want it, and the perpetrator either willfully ignored it or maybe just misread the signs, but in a way where other people would have read it correctly. There, I think it's really tricky, because it's like, well, let's say the perpetrator is bad at reading facial expressions. The victim was giving off one facial expression after another that they didn't want it, and then the perpetrator was sort of not reading them properly, or even sort of maybe leaning into misreading them, but they weren't really consciously aware that the person didn't want it. So it gets really, really hairy.

ANON: It really, really does. And then here it's important, we have to draw this distinction. Unfortunately, there is a line between being a bad person and doing something illegal, and unfortunately, not all bad and unethical sexual acts are legally pursuable. For example, I think in New York State, where you're from, you can, let's say you're crying during sex, and to me, that's a fair expression of distress. You have a pained expression on your face. They still can't do anything about it, because you have to say no or stop.

SPENCER: Passing some verbal communication, basically?

ANON: I think so. Yes.

SPENCER: And so much communication is non-verbal, so that also makes it so much trickier. In real life, so much of what we communicate we do with our facial expressions and our body language. But then, of course, there are also people who are bad at reading facial expressions and body language.

ANON: Exactly. In the first situation you described, the hypothetical situation of your guy friend, in my opinion, you can neither do anything legally nor can you even call him a bad person, because if he didn't know, I think you can call someone a bad person who engages in gray area sex, for example, ignores crying or ignores, if somebody has a frozen, fearful look. I think that makes them a bad person. But whether that's legally actionable or not probably depends on the jurisdiction.

SPENCER: Right. That might literally depend on where it happened, whether it's illegal or not.

ANON: Exactly. I learned that it varies drastically state by state.

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SPENCER: Now, one thing I want to get into, if you're comfortable talking about it, is you've been a victim many times. We've talked about three scenarios, but those are not the only cases, correct? A listener to this might think, "Why on earth is this one person being victimized so much?" They might find that strange. When people come out about their stories, people will say all kinds of mean things about them, which I think is horrendous, like that the person is just out there for attention or something like that. When you approached me about doing this episode, you said you wanted to be anonymous right from the get-go. So it's obvious you're not seeking attention. Tell us about why you are talking about this. Then I'd like to go into, if you're comfortable, why you think this keeps happening to you. Why is this a repeated event in your life?

**ANON:**Sure. Oh, thank you for validating that it was not due to attention seeking. Again, I think that sadly, the defense in these cases resorts to really old-fashioned, misogynistic tactics that sometimes even lack logic, but they work. There's a reason why they keep trying them, even to this day; juries believe them. So again, these tropes and myths, unfortunately, still prevail. I think it's therapeutic and cathartic for me to talk to somebody safe and empathetic like you, because the few times that I've tried talking to people about it, including in ostensibly therapeutic sessions I've had, the triggering responses, misdiagnosis, invalidation, misogyny, and really none of those help. Because when you talk about this stuff, you're so vulnerable, you're so exposed, and I think the wrong response can possibly even re-traumatize you, but the right response can really help you heal and grow, and I really need that. And also, if this can help sexual assault survivors in any way, that would help me. I think we need solidarity. We need support. A lot of the time, we feel like no one can understand what happened or what we're going through. So yeah, a big part of it is the potential to maybe reach out to other survivors and hope that it helps them.

SPENCER: And why do you think that this keeps happening to you? How do you explain that?

ANON: There could be a few things. I think that it's pretty complex. One is that, well, it's just known. I have to think about it, but it's now an established fact that it's kind of cumulative or clustering, this phenomenon, that if you're victimized, you're more likely to be revictimized in the future. Why is that? Again, this is from a lot of analysis and reading, and for sexual assault survivors, I think I would highly recommend Reddit and Quora. There are lots of really nice articles out there that really resonated with me and were therapeutic for me.

SPENCER: Maybe you could share a couple of those articles; we could put them in the show notes.

ANON: I would love that. Yes, yes. First of all, when you're victimized, your self-esteem plummets, and probably your body language compensates for that. So maybe just in the animal kingdom, the cheetah, leopard, lion, or tiger may not just pick an arbitrary victim. They probably focus on someone that looks more vulnerable. When you're raped or sexually abused, you automatically become a lot more vulnerable, and your self-esteem gets low. I think there might even be a two-way sort of attraction. The perpetrators are probably good at sensing that vulnerability, so they can zone in on their target, and then the victim, whose self-esteem is low, may not have boundaries, self-esteem, or even a good definition of what consent looks like. They might be attracted to these people, or they might accept them; they may not have the self-esteem or self-worth, or the framework to say no. That's one of many reasons.

SPENCER: That's really interesting. I've suspected that there's a sort of vulnerability that predators pick up on. Obviously, people are affected by things differently, and not to say that every victim is going to end up appearing vulnerable afterward, but I think that some do. They give off a vulnerability vibe. If you're trying to take advantage of people, that might be very appealing; it might draw them in. I think this actually brings up a really important topic, which is, suppose someone walks in a dangerous neighborhood and gets mugged. In no way can we say, oh yeah, it's not the mugger's fault; the person who was mugged is at fault, right? That's completely unfair and totally invalidating to the victim. However, we can say maybe the victim should avoid walking in that neighborhood or be more cautious when they're in that neighborhood. But that can really sound like victim blaming. Obviously, there can be prudent advice on ways that the victim can reduce the probability of being victimized again, but then they can feel like that's invalidating them, that's blaming them, which would be completely unfair. Does that distinction make sense?

ANON: It totally makes sense, and I've been dealing with that a lot lately, this whole concept of victim blaming and where you draw the line. For a recent episode, I told somebody about it, and they said, "Well, what were you doing with him alone?" I've also heard, "What were you wearing?" I've been told, "Well, yeah, you should avoid wearing certain things or avoid going to certain places." Yes, they're right in the sense that if you are doing that, you may be reducing the probability of being attacked. But I also think it's a myth that wearing so-called provocative clothing increases your likelihood of being assaulted. To me, that's saying that it's an act of lust, as opposed to that they're turned on and can't help themselves. I think it's more than that.

SPENCER: Are they not partly driven by lust? Would you say it's not about that at all, or would you say it's partly about lust?

ANON: I think yes, it has to be partly about lust, but it's also about anger and hatred.

SPENCER: Could you explain that? How is it about anger? Who are they expressing anger to when they commit assault?

ANON: Good question. Maybe they hate women. Maybe they had bad relationships with their mothers, and somehow they are taking out that anger on the person in question.

SPENCER: Do you see this anger, when this has happened to you, did you see this anger in their emotions, in their face and their expressions?

ANON: That has been hard for me to tell, Spencer, but all I know is that somewhere, intuitively, I've sensed hate and anger, and that those were additional dimensions to the sort of being turned on. I think a lot of people would agree with me over here, but going back to the re-victimization, I think even the experience of being robbed has a clustering phenomenon where being robbed once puts you at higher risk of it happening again. There's also — I'm sure you've heard of this — the repetition compulsion, that if we're traumatized severely, we actually replicate the trauma. I don't know whether that's subconscious or conscious, or I'm not even sure why. I think Freud had something to say about this. Maybe we feel like if we repeat it, we're in control, or that somehow we're going to bind it or fix it. That could be at play over here as well, or it could also be that, as I said, we associate sex with pain and trauma, and we maybe go back to what feels familiar. There are so many reasons why re-victimization happens, but if we're looking at it just from the perspective of the perpetrator, then I think that people who have been victimized are giving off some vulnerability vibes that perpetrators pick up on and see these people as targets.

SPENCER: Yeah, let's suppose you meet someone who's a perpetrator-type person. They might test the waters, and you, as someone who's more susceptible and less assertive, might not reject them in the way that maybe other people would. Let's say they violate your boundary in some small way, and then you kind of let it go, not challenging them or pushing them away for doing that. Then they might think, "Ah, okay," and feel emboldened. Again, not to say that that's putting 0% of blame on the victim. I don't mean that at all. I'm just saying, on a practical level, there are ways that perpetrators test people.

ANON: I think you're absolutely right, and this transcends sexual assault. Maybe the way con artists might operate. I've heard that some of them will say, "Oh, can you lend me money?" and then they will give it back in a very timely fashion to establish the trust of the victim, so that the victim thinks, "Oh yeah, this person's trustworthy. They gave it back to me." But that was actually just a test to see how much they would literally give. You're absolutely right. It can be. I think this is another topic for discussion, but some people who have difficulty reading these cues or red flags can really set themselves up for victimization. The point is that these perpetrators are not picking their targets arbitrarily, it would seem.

SPENCER: Another thing I think might be true from talking to people who've been victims is that their intuitions can get scrambled up. Once this happens to them, especially if it happens multiple times with different people, they can start having trouble trusting their intuitions about people. This can make it easier for them to be re-victimized because they don't know what to trust about themselves. For example, maybe they'll have fear around totally harmless people because they've been victimized. They have a lot of fear now, and then they kind of see, "Oh, wait, but that person's harmless. Why am I feeling fear?" But then later they have fear around a harmful person, and they don't know whether to trust that fear.

ANON: You touched on something really important. We lose the ability to trust our gut. Our gut is such an important signal for the notion of what's right and what's wrong, what's safe and what's dangerous. That can get really blurry for us, and we don't end up having a strong signal to trust and use to make decisions. You're absolutely right. Some of these people might even participate in making us doubt or dampen that signal, if that makes sense.

SPENCER: I also want to add, we're talking here quite a bit about cases where a perpetrator is really a horrible person who probably has done this to multiple people. But I want to point out that there are also a lot of cases where someone does this for the first time, or they're not a repeat perpetrator. I want to highlight that there are other kinds of cases too, where maybe someone makes a mistake that they wouldn't normally make, and they regret it afterwards. Yes, they're fully to blame for it, but they're not necessarily a horrible human being. I want to hold space for the complexity of this and the fact that this is a spectrum, all the way from the most egregious repeat perpetrators to people who do it once and will never do it again.

ANON: Have you ever known of a rapist or sex offender who has expressed remorse or admitted what they've done? I'm yet to hear of one. Actually, the Gisele case in France, I think he did plead guilty, which was very surprising to me. But I'm sure those people exist. I've heard more along the narrative that these people are, most of the time, recidivists, but I would love to know if that space does exist. I would totally accept and welcome the idea of people making a mistake. It is a bad mistake to make, but...

SPENCER: Yes, it is a huge mistake.

ANON: It is.

SPENCER: I do know of some cases like that. One in particular stands out to me, where someone I know was raped by their boyfriend. It was not the most clear-cut case; there was some ambiguity to it, but I think it was, by any reasonable definition, still a rape. The person I know was extremely regretful and spent a very long time re-earning their trust. But maybe that is less common. I don't know. We don't have any good statistics or way to know how common these different situations are.

ANON: Yeah, that's a really interesting one to me. It seems like it's a rare-ish instance, but I respect that person for owning up to their mistake. One of the things I believe is that what's more important than the mistake is how you act after it, although maybe rape or sexual assault could be an exception to that. I think it's important to acknowledge that he acknowledged what he did and that he tried to make amends.

SPENCER: Yeah, and that's such a huge difference, because in most cases, most perpetrators don't acknowledge it to any extent.

ANON: Not at all. They do the opposite. I mean, look at all these cases: Weinstein, Epstein, Leon Black. I mean, all of them, they just gaslight. They attack the victims. They try to portray them as crazy. So, I respect this person for owning up to what he did and trying to make amends. But I still think it's up to the victim whether to forgive this person.

SPENCER: Absolutely. Before we wrap up, I want to get practical for a moment. Suppose that someone has a friend, and the friend tells them that they were sexually assaulted. How do you be a good friend in that situation? What are things you should do, and what are things you should make sure not to do, to ensure you're being a good friend and being supportive?

ANON: Sure. And as I said, I think people's responses to revelations of sexual assault can really make or break things. So as someone who's gone through it, I can say I'm still figuring out what helps and what doesn't, but I can definitely say that compassion, empathy, patience, and validation are super helpful, and the lack thereof, which includes victim blaming, can really hurt. Suggestions can help, but when people say, "Oh, why haven't you tried this?" or they judge you for not doing this or that, that can feel a little invalidating, even if the person has good intentions, which the friend certainly does. Just because our journey is so complicated, it can take so long to see things for what they are. Sometimes you're just not ready to take action. Sometimes all you can do is just get through the day. So I guess maybe that's where patience comes in. You can give suggestions, but you might have to understand that the person may take their time to take up the suggestion, if they do at all. That said, I think sometimes one of the consequences of sexual assault is self-destruction, and I think it can be very hard for a loved one to see that person go through self-destruction. In that case, they may not just be able to sit and watch them do that to themselves. So I think those things can be tricky.

SPENCER: I try to use a rule of thumb. I don't always do it perfectly, but I try to use a rule of thumb that when someone's upset and they're telling me about something, to actually withhold giving advice until they request it. I don't always do it perfectly, but basically try to listen empathetically until I feel okay that this person actually wants me to give them advice. The reason I try to do that is because unsolicited advice can be very invalidating if it comes too early. It can, as you pointed out, make the person feel like they messed it up, that it was their fault, even if you really don't mean that at all, especially in these tricky situations. So I think it's better to wait until later, until they're ready for advice.

ANON: Absolutely. I fully agree. And the advice, of course. Another thing, sorry I forgot. Support groups. We often feel like nobody can understand what we went through and what we're going through. But for me, talking to people who have gone through it has been really helpful. Just knowing that the other person gets it is often comforting. Even if other people are empathetic, they often just don't get it, even if they mean well. Usually, if somebody has gone through it, then they really get it. Sometimes being able to talk to somebody who's gone through it can be really helpful. Support groups are one option, and something that addresses trauma in the body can help too. Whether that's meditation, massage, or physical activity, I think those things can be really helpful.

SPENCER: Final question before we finish, after these kinds of events occur, people can have all kinds of effects. Sometimes they're diagnosed with PTSD, or sometimes they don't fit any clear diagnosis. Do you think people are often misdiagnosed when these kinds of events occur?

ANON: Yes, very important. If you Google misdiagnosis of sexual assault or rape survivors, you will see treasures online in the form of articles, Reddit posts, and Quora. These have really been my best friends in the last few years. I think women, especially, are often misdiagnosed with things like borderline personality disorder, when instead they may have post-traumatic stress disorder or complex post-traumatic stress disorder. The latter can arise when you've experienced multiple traumas or trauma over a prolonged period of time, whereas men for the same thing will get diagnosed with PTSD, depression, or* anxiety*. There is lots of fascinating information on Reddit and Quora, and if you just Google misdiagnosis, you'll find it. It's both unfair and harmful to the victim because if you diagnose them with the wrong thing, then the prognosis and treatment are incorrect. It's also telling them that this is because of an inherent personality flaw, as opposed to a reaction to trauma. This is not to stigmatize borderline personality disorder, but you want to look at the why. Even if they have similar manifestations or some similarities in behavior, such as difficulty in emotional regulation, self-harm, or anxiety, you want to look at the why. With borderline personality disorder, it comes from a fear of abandonment, whereas with a reaction to trauma, it comes from a reaction to trauma. If you don't treat that or look at it as the root cause, then obviously you're doing a disservice to the victim. I think it's really disproportionately overdiagnosed in women, including in the context of rape and trauma.

SPENCER: Thanks so much for coming on and for sharing your story. I imagine it's difficult to talk about.

ANON: Thank you so much for having me, Spencer.

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