The risk to women from rape is completely different

Im so sorry this has happened to you. I think most people will not have suffered the really terrible things you have and will not have the same perspective as you.
Your life has been different to a lot of people’s, through no fault of your own, and you can see things through a window of a lot of suffering that they can’t.

You definitely don’t need to stop being a baby. Most people who had been through what you had would not be getting out of bed every day, but you are making dinner for other people.

I don’t think you are in good faith

women should not be expected to take contraception as a defence against rape

it is a different risk to men

many women struggle with hormonal contraception
women might be trying to get pregnant with their partner

men being raped and the other problems of rape don’t mean that women don’t have that additional risk

I think the comment you quote at the top is rather ignorant and I can’t imagine who would hold such a view. You could equally argue that penetrative sex is normal for women so less traumatic than for a man. This would be a reductive and silly thing to say though.
I’m sorry to hear of your awful experiences.

I'm so sorry you went through this.

I'm the insane TRA so feel free to disregard but I don't agree with that view. Yes, getting pregnant through rape would be a complete nightmare. But I'd find it hard to say what happened to you was less worse. Or that raping a 90 yo would be less bad because she can't get pregnant. Or an infant. And those are extreme examples because every rape is unforgivable.

(I've chosen this board, because I've only ever seen this view on here in GC conversation in all honesty

you've only ever seen women express the view that men and women experience rape differently from GC women on this board ?

I find that incredibly hard to believe

I’m sorry you’ve experienced that. And certainly I don’t think that rape was less bad than your other rapes- and I wouldn’t presume to argue with you over it.

I’ve argued in the past that there are no ‘worse’ rapes.
The rape that didn’t involve violence, where you were drugged and have limited awareness, where you are now unsafe in your own home and with your loved ones, afraid to sleep…
How is that ‘better’?

I think there are additional consequences to rape for women and the fear of pregnancy, the consequences she may need to deal with, which can be lifelong, adds a dimension to her suffering.

There may be additional consequences to anal rape, in the way of injuries.

Rape can’t be compared.

I believe some men think that sex is no big deal, women should put out, that if you had sex with me yesterday why wouldn’t you have sex again. That it costs women nothing. That’s poisonous.

I am sorry those things happened to you, and even more sorry that you had to grow up expecting them to. That should never happen to anyone.

I don't think there's any mileage in classifying rapes into worse and less bad. Every rape is an abomination. It is true that, for some women sometimes, but no men ever, one of the devastations of rape may be getting pregnant and then having to decide (or, e.g. in some US states now, not even being allowed to decide) what to do. It is also true that some rapes involve more physical violence than others, or more psychological violence, or are not one-offs, or happen to younger victims, or are done by people the victim ought to have been able to trust, or or or. Sometimes, there is a need to hammer home the awfulness of some particular rape, and in those cases, I think it is natural that attention is drawn to the features that have been most awful for this particular person. I do not think this should ever be interpreted as meaning that if, counterfactually, those features had not been present then it would have been ok. Rape is never ok.

On average, women and men who are raped will experience both the rape and its aftermath differently, for many reasons, but I fail to see how this is relevant to the desirability of sex segregation in situations of intimacy or vulnerability.

Many more women than men are raped, by an order of magnitude, and most men over the age of fourteen are able to overpower most women (whereas a man has some chance of defending himself).

Therefore, sex segregation can reduce the incidence of rape. The fact that it doesn't help male victims isn't a reason to give up on it, but to think of other solutions for them (eg in relation to sex by deception and institutional settings).

Making everything mixed sex is not a solution to the problem of rape.

The fuck am I reading?

Rape is awful for all victims for a myriad of reasons. It is obvious that being pregnant with your rapist's baby adds another layer of awful on top. If you cannot see that I don't even know how to find the language to explain tbh.

I see your "what about women who can't get pregnant" and your victim blaming re contraception.

Edit to add: my own personal experience has made me react quite angrily op. I don't know if you're genuine, but even if you're not, there will be women reading who share the experiences you describe. I want to echo what others have said about how unacceptable those experiences were. We don't need to have a hierarchy of rape but we also don't need to invalidate the experiences of others in order to express how bad our own were.

OP you quoted me and started a thread without tagging me or letting me know.

And that was not my dissertation about ALL the harms of rape. It was to highlight the differences in rape, which as men will never get pregnant 'FOR A START' this is one way that rape can be worse for women. The RISK is different because it is not just about physical and/or mental scars but that rape could produce a child which the woman would then have to make a decision about.

The reason your mother made sure you were taking contraception in case of rape surely proves this point?

OP I am sorry that you have experienced such horror.

However, perhaps you have not understood the message that the poster who wrote that intended. All rape is traumatic. There is not doubt about that.

The point that is being made though is that the experience of rape for female people is very different because there is the additional risk of pregnancy. Even with contraception. The consequences can be very different between rape depending on the sex category you are.

The point is also raising a general point rather than one about individuals. And it was raised to explain that female people face these additional risk factors. And the obvious physical advantage differences that also mean that female people can be at greater risk of any injury.

It sounds like you need proper therapy OP, in all honesty.

All rapists and all rapes are awful. Any one who's been SA or raped will have a different experience of it, even if the assault and the circumstances appear similar to another survivor's, the impact on the victim is uniquely personal... it's so multi layered, complicated and individual and no one say one example is easier or harder to deal with or better/ worse unless they're talking about their own experience.

What an extremely odd take on an entirely reasonable proposition - that the consequences of rape can be greater for women because of the possibility of pregnancy.

I know you feel this very personally. No one gets to police who can post here, and equally no one can insist people are taken at face value all the time- and I’m sure you’ll agree that would be unworkable and unhelpful.

Just remember that we all carry trauma that impacts how we respond to each other. I have less than you, but I know there are others here with terrible histories. They will react as angrily to some suggestions as you have to this one. We all carry history. Try not to take other people’s reactions personally. It’s the problem with any attempt to discuss rape. It’s very close to home and hard to be dispassionate.

I think that pregnancy being a risk of rape for women that men do not ever share is just a fact. To that extent I agree that at a population level rape is worse for women. I have also been raped, did not get pregnant, and due to contraception was unlikely to, but I don't see how a statement about a risk that many women face devalues the trauma that I went through, which would, I'm pretty certain, have been worse if I had got pregnant as well. And not just the trauma necessarily, but also the life long impact of having a child and the way in which that changes the trajectory of a woman's life. That it could have been worse doesn't mean it wasn't horrendous, unconscionable or was something that can be dismissed.

The statement is, presumably from the context you provide, about one of the reasons the NHS needs to not compromise women's spaces because some men may also be at risk of sexual violence from men. It doesn't mean that any individual rape where pregnancy wasn't a risk is just fine. It's talking about population level risks and how they are not the same for men and women.

I am really sorry that you are still traumatised to such a debilitating extent by the awful experiences you've had. I really hope you have support to help you heal. I don't think, though, that that trauma negates the reality that men cannot get pregnant if they are raped.

Of course it's not true. By that logic, a child or infertile woman is less traumatised by rape than a fertile woman.

I've always been sickened by the idea that there is a sliding scale of trauma. It isn't true in the slightest. No one has any right to tell others how they feel, or grade their trauma.

A man in my friendship group once insisted to me that men were more traumatised by rape than women because women were used to penetrative sex. The same guy months later tried to rape me.

Anyone telling a rape victim that they aren't entitled to their trauma is being abusive.

Downplaying abuse is itself an abusive act.

I think reading that has retraumatised you. It's's likely triggered significant CPTSD. I hope you can get some help, which you deserve. And I'm actually in awe of how you've survived.

Sometimes, the thought patterns and survival strategies which got us through abuse aren't helpful once we're safer.

I think you need to go easier on yourself, because surviving is a process. You're stronger than your abusers - and it shows.

You're strong as hell, and I admire that very much.

I hope you can get out more, perhaps to group therapy or helping other survivors? You'll have an incredible set of skills to offer, and likely could save someone's life.

I agree with the title of the OP and the statement quoted in there - I note that it doesn't say that victims of rape who then experience pregnancy 'have it worse' or are the only 'real' victims or anything along those lines, just that different groups have different experiences and the fact that women can get pregnant from rape is part of the difference. It doesn't say that all women can or would be impregnated, but that men cannot be (presumably it is classing transmen as women).
It is only a snippet from a longer work so presumably it then describes other differences in impact (for example gender-based differences in the nature of other people's reactions, in available support services/training, in associated risk of different types of injury, etc).

No, it was not part of a longer work, as I said, not a disseration.

It was about the additional risk that women and girls have from rape that men do not, when someone was trying to argue that men who have had their penises removed could be at risk of rape if they are put into male facilties in the NHS.

It is a different risk to women and girls as a class, because on top of all the other issues, there could be a decision that they then have to make if they end up pregnant as a result of the rape.

The person was trying to say that eunachs need to be in female spaces to protect them, and my argument was that no, if the NHS decides to remove the penises of men, it is down to them to have policies to manage them for any treatment after they have removed the penis of these men. It is not women's responsibility to give up all their single sex spaces to facilitate these men.

It was not a 'tick box who has the worst rape' exercise. It was not a thesis on all the downstream effects of rape. It was just pointing out that women and girls as a class have an additional risk that men and boys do not.

Which the OP's own mother knew, hence ensuring that the OP had contraception.