Girls can be just as horrible as boys, to my mind, and psychological bullying is every bit as damaging as any other type.
Response:
^Clearly stated by someone who has never been through rape.
That is perhaps the worst thing I have ever read on Mumsnet. Congratulations^.
I second the person who responded to this comment. And there is a lot of it about on Mumsnet at the moment: it's an emerging narrative and it's derailed a fair few threads about sexual violence and abuse.
This minimising of rape - a horrible, invasive, humiliating psychologically damaging crime - together with a culture of victim-blaming and on occasion active tormenting of women who say they have been rape victims, has shown an extremely ugly undertow of this site over past weeks. I won't ask if these people think about what they are writing as they write it, as I'm convinced they know exactly what they're doing. And the narrative usually arises from a position of NAMALT, 'women are just as bad', and taking issue with this position makes you a 'man hater'.
I've been a victim of rape twice, both times at the age of fifteen, and endured sustained bullying (at the hands of both mean girls and boys) and I know exactly which of these incidents were the most damaging. To try and lump them into to the same category of problem is repulsive. And I'll call this type of behaviour out every fucking time I see it. It's not acceptable. (And says something very ugly about the agenda of the kinds of people posting it).
I've come under sustained attacks from two or three posters - perhaps the same poster, their style of expression and bellicose tone are strikingly familiar - for taking this stance. MNHQ are aware (and take a dim view of it).
It's taken me the thick end of 25 years to be able to speak about this: in part thanks to #MeToo, and I won't be put off by some piece of work hiding under an alias on MN. Talking about it might help someone else. Staying silent helps only the perpetrators.
And who, exactly, stands to gain what by keeping the status quo precisely the same as it always was? I will not be bullied into stopping writing about these experiences.