I don't appear to have the typical female experience I'd be interested in what some of you have to say

And lumping your experience with women's experiences of discrimination diminishes it. I get it.

Wasabi - that's exactly what I was trying to say.

only a woman who has been raped knows how it feels to be a woman who has been raped

but people are also different & have every right to feel differently than others.

i have had two sex related incidents in my life. i dont feel the way other women appear to. how i responded is not better or worse, its just how I feel. i was a victim at that point in time but now they are now very much in the past.

so when i read what other women write, i dont relate to it. if other women get support from feeling less alone that is undoubtedly good, but women also have the right to respond differently than other.

I don't need help to process anything.

I am justifiably angry. I was accused of things I never meant and even after I apologised that apology was not accepted.

I'm allowed to be angry and just because I'm angry isn't because of what happened to me.

i haven't said you need to accept it - by saying i hope you get help processing it i just meant it sounds like you are still very raw and i'm not surprised and i hope you can get some help, whatever works for you, to move on and feel better.

i don't think you 'should' see anything anyway i just answered an OP on good faith.

i'm leaving this thread now because i don't know what else to say to someone i am trying to be kind and calm and whatever with who is reacting angrily to things i'm not even saying - good luck and i hope you feel better soon.

I'm perfectly fine and to state that you hope I get help processing what happened to me is offensive. I don't agree with you. And to keep stating that I must accept it, and that those people are fighting for me too - no they're not.

As I said, I'm me and I'm happy like that. I don't see it how you think I should.

I was not angry until I was flamed on here for a comment for which I had already apologised.

I have so rarely got angry on any threads - you can search I've had (I think) 2 posts deleted, one I agree should have gone because I reacted to a person on a PND thread who said that PND was not a real mental illness, and the other one was deleted because it referenced another deleted post.

ok, i was trying to be kind and funny last night and explain things you claimed you wanted to understand and started a thread about. i also tried to lighten the mood a little given people had been upset.

my point about the sisterhood was that women would be fighting for the things that effect you and have effected you whether you identify with them or not. it's your biology that makes you a woman and the fact that things have happened to you and you have been treated in accordance with what society accords to that biology since birth. so when women fight for women's rights they are fighting for you too.

yes you must frame your experiences however you wish to frame them but obviously if you ask feminists how they fit with a shared female experience they will answer that. it's odd then to be responded to with anger and to be accused of belittling and denying your experiences... that is just odd.

without being PA or anything else i really hope you can get some help processing what happened to you and moving forward with less anger and defensiveness.

I'm now going to say what I wanted to say last night but couldnt' formulate the words.

I do not want to be in a group called formerly women or any other discriminatory and inflammatory title.

I don't want to be in any group - I'm me. And I like it like that.

And by saying that I'm in a sisterhood whether I like it or not is denying and belittling my experience and is trampling on my views and my feelings about the situation and demanding that I identify with something that I don't.

I know what happened to me.

I see it how I see it.

No one has the right to take that away from me and tell me I'm in a particular group whether I like it or not.

Ah I see

hathorinareddress69 Don't feel bad because a poster insists on ascribing meanings to what you said that you never meant or views to you that you don't hold and then carries on doing so whatever you say to try to clarify the situation. It happened to me. There is nothing to be done in that situation except to ignore it. It's only a thread on a message board. Don't let it upset you.

group formally known as women

not everything is about 'feeling'.

you are a fully paid up member of the GFKAW and as such feminists will be on your side even if you don't want them to be i'm afraid

hope you get some sleep - i'm off to find chocolate.

so sorry but you're in the sisterhood whether you choose to ignore us or not and when women march down oxford street campaigning for an end to violence against women they are marching for you whether you recognise yourself as part of their group or not. and when women fight against the closure of shelters they're doing it for you whether you need a shelter or not and whether you like them or not.

there is a sisterhood.

i know how you're seeing it but you're biology is just a given you didn't choose so it's not something you did other than be born a woman. it's one of the dangers we face in this world shockingly enough and that 1 in 3 women will experience in their lifetime sadly.

1in 4 of us will be raped.

we really do have shared realities brought on by the fact of our biology - not by anything we do or feel or think but simply because when born we were female.

if you'd been born male this wouldn't have happened.

so it is a woman's issue right? because every woman who has been raped has been raped purely because she was female and met a rapist - no fault of her own, just that.

just as foetus' are being aborted all over the world right now because they are female.

there are female issues. whatever we might feel or choose we are in a group that stuff happens to purely because of their biological membership of a group.

and yes it happened because he is a wanker but it happened to you not your male friend because you are a woman.

i think lots of people are upset and triggered BUT we're all grown ups who've been through bigger stuff than threads. people, including you, will calm down and get out of their triggered states and still be grown ups who can handle disagreeing without the world ending.

incidentally you said up there that he treated you the way he did because of biology - that's what is meant by 'because you're a woman' - your biology! and it's what we share.

he might still be a wanker to other men who he's not scared of but how he treated you was all to do with your gender. for a woman he chose physical violence, sexual violence, etc

whose shooting you down now? i'm taking the time to talk to you.

you said things that upset people and they reacted - just as you have been upset and have reacted. such is life with human beings in it. especially human beings who have been very hurt by abusers/rapists/violent husbands through no fault of their own.

and i'm sad for you taht you haven't experienced sisterhood - many people i know who have been victims of domestic and sexual violence have found sharing with other women who have been through the same and know how it feels really helpful. sadly this IS an experience that a lot of women share.

only a woman who has been raped knows how it feels to be a woman who has been raped. only a woman who has been tortured by her husband knows how that feels. only a woman who has been through an abortion... so many things.

there are shared experiences whether you've felt the need to talk about them with women or not. for example when women share their experiences of their care on labour wards and that information is collated and analysed there is a result to be deduced and maybe pressure to change things - by collecting and analysing the shared experiences of a load of women (who may never speak to each other) a picture of labour care experience is gained.

likewise domestic violence and abuse - when you gather together the experiences of women you find them very similar and when you gather up how their abusive partner behaved you find them very similar and you can start to build up a picture such as the 'red flags' people talk about here which comes out of the rich value of women's shared experience.

i'm going on too much.

you sound really triggered - do you have a relaxation technique you can do or a good friend you can call or a nice hot bath to sink into? hope you can calm yourself and get centred and sleep for the night.