Making it okay to talk about sexual abuse male or female

I’ve recently joined multiple sites online in an attempt to feel human connection in this worldwide pandemic. If we can walk away with anything good about 2020, it’s that we’ve stripped our masks, the ones we’ve been wearing for years. The ones that made it okay to answer the question “how are you?” With the answer “great!”

Not all of us are, on any given day, at any given moment. A more apt answer might be, “surviving.”

I was in therapy for years due to past and present trauma and how it manifested in my everyday thoughts and actions. It was useful but not the same as feeling that other people in my daily life felt that I was okay. Normal. A pleasure to be around.

I posted recently about seeing a male GYN and feeling triggered by it.

It was so hard to post. I immediately regretted it and pulled the covers over my head in preparation for the onslaught. The onslaught is comments, which I needed, but feared at the same time.

It occurs to me that there are so many people with similar experiences of trauma, physical, psychological, and sexual, that don’t feel comfortable telling their truths. That’s okay. You’re ready when you’re ready.

I understand. Especially with sexual abuse. There’s so much shame, more so. Particularly for men who have experienced sexual abuse as a child, or sexual assault as an adult.

Men are told to be silent and stoic in direct words while women are told the same in systematic vague terms.

Hope that makes sense, I might go into it more but not now.

Here, I’d like to recognize that there are so many men that have been sexually abused and are not given the same consideration as women. Women are sexual beings right? 😒

I think I speak for all female survivors when I say, I hear you, I believe you, I support you.