Sexual Violence: A Widespread Product of the PVR Triangle

This article contains graphic descriptions of and references to sexual harm of adults and children, sometimes by people we are raised to revere and trust. This may disturb some readers.

The Boil-Down: Sexual violence needs to be talked about; that said, try bringing it up. Many of us have a sibling or best friend who will talk with us about anything; however, if you try to discuss it amongst people in a variety of venues from dinner parties to phone calls with Mom to interdisciplinary team meetings, the response you get may serve to deflect the topic or even shut you down. Denial has many of us employing the "not me" bias: sexual violence like rape does not happen to me (even when it actually has happened to them--victims tend to avoid naming what has happened to them "sexual violence"), to those around me, to those I care about. Anyway, it's not pleasant or polite to talk about. And for some of us, such a conversation holds a mirror up to our faces, one we don't wish to gaze into, reminding us that sexual violence did happen to us...or even that we may have done it to someone else. Admission of sexual violence victimization is going up, but willingness to report it to police is going down. It is all around us, sometimes lurking in the corners of (all of our) institutions, sometimes not trying to hide at all. But it's not new. Sexual violence is in our biological history, but for the sake of civility, denial, escape, we often act like it isn't there at all. Obstacles to discussing sexual violence need to be confronted and removed for the sake of prevention, accountability, and recovery.

The Details: More people have been victimized by sexual violence than research suggests. Reports on survey findings are often worded in ways that are misleading, over-confident. Bless them for their hard work, but they treat survey-reported phenomena as the only phenomena to consider. For instance, I'm so thankful that the National Sexual Violence Resource Center (NSVRC) compiles reports to the public about sexual violence, quoting sources like the U.S. Department of Justice Criminal Victimization Survey and the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey (NIPSVS). In doing so, they state that "1 in 5 women in the United States experienced completed or attempted rape in their lifetime." Of course, I find it very important that we validate those who spoke up in such a survey. But I still want to point out what might be obvious to some of us: Wait just a minute; those are the women who reported the experience of completed or attempted rape in their lifetime...what about women beyond that twenty percent, the ones who "experienced" sexual violence but were too guarded or fearful to speak up? (The total number of humans who have survived sexual violence, or any harm measured by a survey, is far higher than the number of respondents who answer the question by stating "yes" in a survey. The "map" does not accurately represent the "territory.") Of the women who enter my office, more than half endorse that kind of sexual violence. So why is there such a statistical difference? One might reach for the easy, well-worn argument that therapy clients are a unique cross section of society--different than the rest because of factors like their mental health diagnoses. Because only "emotionally wounded" or "mentally ill" people go to psychotherapy, the stereotype assumes, it follows that those people who don't seek therapy are the "sane" ones. That is NOT my experience. If you're asking me, people who don't go to therapy are far more like people who seek therapy than they are unlike them--check data from the ACE questionnaire for support of my hypothesis, although my hypothesis is looking holistically at the human condition, not just wounds. People who do not seek therapy are not always significantly less traumatized than people who seek therapy--they are just too busy, too ashamed, too avoidant, too in denial, or too mistrusting to enter formal recovery in a therapy office.

The main ways that non-therapy-goers are different than humans who have been therapy clients is that people who tend not to seek therapy are less trusting of others and less honest with themselves than those who will talk to a therapist. Based upon my experience, I do not believe humans with labels who talk in therapy are sexual violence survivors whereas humans who avoid therapy and might have no labels did not have to survive sexual violence--as though people who have never had therapy are somehow the sneetches with stars on their bellies. I believe humans of any group are survivors of sexual violence--adults and children of any gender description. I understand females, and unprotected children especially around age 14, to be more at risk, targeted more often than other types of humans; that said, the survey above also reports that one in four men have experienced sexual violence in their lifetime.

All of this helps me say that we live our lives in denial, a kind of avoidance that keeps us from falling apart now, but puts us at risk for crisis later. We are in denial about who suffers with emotional wounds (none of us should be referred to as mentally ill, as the term encourages iatrogenesis--that's when helping professionals and healthcare benefits companies do harm by thinking, talking about, and treating poorly those who have labels and need the help). Randomly point to any human being, and I'll confidently say that human has been traumatized in childhood or adulthood. It is time that we accept that about all trauma, but this article is about sexual violence. It is time for us to broadly accept that sexual violence is everywhere we look, but seldom seen for what it is. We need to name it aloud. We also need to understand that the perpetrators of sexual violence are often people we would never suspect. Mentioned in an early Eyes Wide Open entry, the PVR triangle not only perpetuates sexual violence, it rescues the perpetrators, blames the victims, and denies, invalidates and ignores sexual violence, minimizing the destructive effects of such narcissistic, non-empathic behavior on survivors and society.

Michigan State University's Center For Survivors uses a "sexual violence umbrella" defining seven kinds of sexual violence: sexual assault, sexual coercion, rape, sexual exploitation, sexual harassment, stalking, and relationship violence. I understand these terms not to be scientific, but conceptually helpful in covering areas of physical and psychological harm to victims that were certainly dismissed or otherwise not included in the past. While it's a reality that some paraphilic (sexually deviant) offenders can do great harm to their victims without ever managing to penetrate any of their victims' bodies, the vast majority of sexually violent gestures are designed to lead to penetration of the body. (If on nothing else, we can base this on the over ten thousand hours in my career spent interacting with "placed" or incarcerated sex offenders who confirm this.) So with that in mind, this blog entry will now default to the term that, in the writer's opinion, most vividly represents the deeply destructive reach of sexual violence--the physical enactment of psychologically impaling a human being, piercing a victim to their emotional core, with all the pain, confusion and shame (as well as long-term consequences) it brings: rape.

This article defines rape as the aroused or sexualized abuse of power leading to penetration of the victim's body; this includes the mouth, vagina, anus, and/or other receptacles violently fashioned by the perpetrator(s). The perp(s) fit into this definition by coercively penetrating the victim with their own body parts, planned or serendipitous implements including weapons or tools of torture, and even the bodies of others (e.g. forcing someone with inferior power such as one of their fraternal followers or another victim to perpetrate the sexually violent penetration). All the other things the perp(s) say and do as part of sexual violence can be made more frightening, shameful, terrorizing, and life-threatening when saying and doing them before, during and after rape. All penetration accompanied by other physical or psychological terrorism is likely to be experienced by the victim as life-threatening, because the victim's body no longer belongs to them, but rather to the perp(s).

Thornhill and Palmer (2000) published a work about the natural history of rape from a biological perspective. According to the authors, one reason that rape is so devastating to its victims, especially young women, is that rape circumvents a central feature of women's reproductive strategy: mate choice. I offer to extend that argument by stating that rape culture has historically stolen that strategic feature from women, and that historically, societal culture and the culture of war have been equal to rape culture.

History and mythology are steeped in the stench of rape. Zeus disguised himself as a swan to get close enough to Leda to rape her. Poseiden raped Medusa; and in an ancient mythological example of the PVR triangle, Athena blamed the victim, cursing Medusa with snake-hair hideousness. Exemplified by the separate stories of Lucretia and Helen of Troy, abduction and rape were equally prosecuted under raptus law in Medieval England. The Medieval tyrant Genghis Khan (formerly known as Temujin) was one of the most notorious fits to the profile of narcissism and traumatic undoing in history: he was heavily traumatized, even enslaved. His wife was kidnapped and taken prisoner. Per about-history.com, upon rising to power he regarded himself as "merciful" to those kingdoms and communities who did not resist him, for simply looting the cooperative rather than annihilating their people and razing their cities. His army's battle cry "feed the horses" was known to be a phrase commencing the murder, rape and pillage of their next opponents. His forces killed between forty and sixty million people--ten percent of the existing world population at the time. Khan participated in the rapes carried out by his men, and reportedly loved taking wives and daughters of vanquished men as his own wives and concubines--who obviously had no choice in the matter. An estimated eight percent of descendants of the former Mongol territories are understood to carry identical Y chromosomes to Genghis Khan. Sixteen million modern males are related to this notorious tyrant, who was not reknowned for even peaceful arranged marriages (which still would have deprived the bride subjects of mate choice). The stance of this article is not without controversy, as to this day Genghis Khan is viewed as a national hero or respected historical figure by several countries, including Mongolia, China, and Kazakhstan (one of the most common phenomena in the history of the world occurs when widespread perpetrators of rape are simultaneously revered as leaders of above-board groupthinks and respected members of their communities).

Arguably none of the women in the real or symbolic stories above were offered the power of mate choice. They were raped. But sexual violence of this kind is surreptitiously woven into comparatively recent American history as well. Integrated Trauma Theory predicts that in any group process governed by narcissistic gravity and (therefore) an absence of empathy, the most powerful members of that group are invariably positioned to abuse the least powerful members, and to encourage, strong-arm, and trick or coerce the intermediate group members to participate in that abuse, or at the very least stand out of the way in complicit reticence throughout the abuse (and secrecy after the abuse). This abuse will include sexual violence which, unabated, quickly and ultimately leads to rape--as well as the banishment, torture or murder of non-conformists who resist or interfere. World War II could have ended as triumphantly, altruistically and dignified as the United States government would have the press embellish. But it didn't, and in a textbook example of Attachment to the Perpetrator, the history-book heroes became the assailants--and got away with their collective assault.

In a brilliantly analytical essay by Ariella Azoulay, The Natural History of Rape, the author brings to our attention that researchers do not dispute the occurrence of widespread rape of Berlin women and girls by Allied Forces in the aftermath of WWII, only how close to two million the exact number of women and girls was (the number may have been as "low" as 400,000). Azoulay pointed directly to "a popular axiom of the Allied New World Order, [which] held that Germans had to pay for the Nazis’ crimes, and women, German in particular, had to relearn the lesson of rule by men, regardless of those men’s nationalities" (p. 147). A political vacuum provided a heavily triangulated, traumatized groupthink of war heroes the opportunity to exact massive sexual violence atrocities against enemy civilians--who, after all, were citizens of the country that went down in history for carrying out arguably the most atrocious mass human rights violation in modern history, the Holocaust responsible for the genocide of at least six million Jews and five million Soviet prisoners of war and others. (Iris Chang reminds us that there was another holocaust in which tens of thousands of women and children were raped in the process of ten to twenty million Chinese citizens being torturously exterminated by the Japanese military.) In the 1945 post-war occupation of Berlin, Allied soldiers, officers, and civilian professionals had a free pass to rape non-military enemy war survivors, and blame the victims.

Many of the vivid details in Azoulay's prose come from the published diary "A Woman in Berlin," a lurid eight-week account of what happened in the world of an anonymous female survivor in postwar Berlin beginning April 27, 1945. According to the cited sources in Azoulay's journal article, Allied forces entered German cities including Berlin to find streets disabled beneath piles of rubble, and citizens in shock from the overwhelming assault on their cities. The military machine which we were taught in school to see as the "good guys" manufactured artificial food shortages, also running the black market to control and manipulate the flow of life-essential resources. Starving women who out of desperate necessity repeatedly tried to organize their own systems of trade for food and other commodities were arrested again and again as the "actual" black-marketeers. A war-torn infrastructure left women and children with virtually no locked doors to hide behind; rape was rampant, and this included gang rapes of young women we contemporarily regard as underage. Many women preemptively victimized themselves by using their bodies to solicit male guardians; in this way, choosing a rapist reduced the number of rapists a woman was forced to encounter, and the number of sexually violent assaults she had to endure. The main thrust of Azoulay's article was this: as soon as Allied soldiers arrived in the city, the streets were crowded with (exclusively male) photographers. The author notes that the photographs of war taken were politically slanted and often served as trophies of the spoils too large to carry home. They were conspicuously omissive; in the photographic archives accessed by the author, none of the photos depicted rape, and none of the notes or news stories accompanying the photos referenced rape--not at all, even though the evidence overwhelmingly indicates that thousands of photos were taken within earshot of the screams of women and children being raped. The contemptuous possession of unabated power (again, a feature of the PVR triangle) will invariably lead to rape. And institutions will try to erase it from history.

If people poisoned by the toxicity of their groupthink(s) happen to read the preceding passage, they will be inclined to programmatically dismiss or discount this writer or the sources used; or they may turn to their groupthink leaders for sound bytes of denial to soothe them away from digesting the unpleasant realities painted by this blog entry. (Incidentally, people self-sworn to never seek therapy for their pain are far more likely to reject/deny or "repress" the above information, compared with people with the vulnerable awareness to enter therapy.)

Because alcohol and other substances elevate the incidence of rape, I strongly assert that party subculture is rape subculture; such chemicals as alcohol are involved in half of all rapes. (Sadly, the same argument can be easily applied to all social subculture, as half of all male and female rape victims identify their perp as someone they know.) As the most widely accepted narcissistic arm of social subculture, alcohol/party subculture IS rape culture.

The Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network (RAINN) identifies four faces to sexual assault--which again almost invariably ends in penetrative rape. These forms of sexual assault include: coercing/encouraging intoxication beyond one's comfort zone, ignoring pleas/refusing help to an intoxicated person, initiating sexual contact with an intoxicated person knowing they're less able to resist, and refusing to tell someone what or how much of a substance is in their drink.

Providing some very enlightening statistics about rape, the Social Media Victims webpage also offers a particularly specific definition of rape culture: "the perpetuation of a belief that the victims of sexual abuse contributed to their victimizations, and are thus responsible for the abuse." (I personally would add a description of the triangular dynamic that goes further to blame victims and rescue perps, from the highest halls of justice, down through law enforcement agencies and on.) Citing the Steubenville rape case, the writers describe the perpetuation of rape culture and the amplification of the victim experience via bystanders who do not help, and often troll victims whose rape videos and photos appear on the internet, shaming and blaming them. Moreover, the internet is a sort of lawless cyber-jungle used by predators to harass, threaten, defraud and lure potential rape victims into vulnerable positions. I add here that the internet is a morally neutral device, similar to an article of clothing, a business meeting, or a hunting rifle. What people do with it is seminal to the outcomes of its use, and many people are using social media to support one another, expose rape culture and recover from sexual violence. Others are not; for example, WeChat is an arguably neutral platform widely used to facilitate an industry of rape: sex trafficking.

There are volumes more about rape to be said that won't appear in this article; however, I will not fail to mention the hidden pandemic that no one seems to want to fully acknowledge and for which authorities and helping organizations do not have an accurate sketch: sex trafficking.  Estimates of the prevalence of this not-so-invisible scourge land wildly all over the board. I found estimates suggesting that the number of humans sex trafficked in the United States each year is as low as 15,000; one countermeasure--the percentage of sex trafficking cases detected--claimed that 99.6% of cases don't even reach the system's awareness. The National Institute of Justice (NIJ) is willing to admit that we don't know how prevalent human trafficking crimes in general are, with sex trafficking following suit. They assert that law enforcement agencies are deficient in identifying crimes as sex trafficking, and that local and state authorities have been slow to contribute information to statistical databases. Survivors of sex trafficking have endured being raped five to ten times (that is, by five to ten different perps) every day, demeaned, tortured, shamed, further threatened. Many escape the industry with STDs, serious damage to sexual organs and other body parts, most with PTSD, many with features of Stockholm syndrome, and others with the mental, emotional and physical scars of having been subjected to involuntary abortion without anesthesia. All of it occurred against their will, and they have survived what counts as slavery because they worked for free--traffickers generally keep all money earned, often under the excuse that they need to offset trumped-up debt incurred by bringing the victims across national borders or overseas. Now let's do some macabre math. If we select a middle-of-the-road number, using NIJ's upper-end estimate of 50,000 annual sex trafficking victims (business insider reports a stat suspecting hundreds of thousands) and assume that those 50,000 victims were forced to interact with five pandering rapists every day for a year (some victims report as many as thirty rapes daily), the number of total rapes in that span of time would be 91,250,000. Ninety-one million plus sex trafficking rapes in the U.S. in one year alone. What drives the demand for that number of annual rapes in the United States? I did my own math using 2022 census statistics. Men age 18-55 comprise 25% of the total U.S. population of 334.2 million, which means there are 83.55 million men in that age range. If every single man in this age category committed one rape of a sex trafficking victim, it still would not add up to the modest estimate that 91.25 million sex trafficking rapes occurred in any given year. So how is it happening? Are one million American men committing an average of eighty-three sex trafficking rapes every year (remember, this doesn't even take other rapes into account)? With "eyes wide open," a person begins to accept the distinct probability that many of the ordinary men that we pass on the street, park next to, office with, and who live in our neighborhoods, are pandering to the rape of sex trafficking.

Individuals and groups who are more inclined to deny the prevalence of rape or blame victims of rape are quite likely to also minimize the effects of rape on survivors. In reality, the results range from disturbing to devastating. According to RAINN, ninety-four percent of survivors report symptoms of acute stress disorder (a behavioral health disorder) in the two weeks following rape. A third report symptoms of Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) nine months later. A third contemplate suicide, and thirteen percent attempt suicide. Women and men victimized by sexual violence are exponentially more likely to start using hard drugs, experience prolonged impairing distress, and experience problems at work or school. And depending on who's doing the tallying, anywhere from 7,750 to 12,500 children are conceived each year as the result of rape. It's important to add other groups of people at increased risk for all of the above negative outcomes: transgender, genderqueer, and non-conforming individuals are at increased risk to be targeted for sexual violence. Indigenous females age twelve and over are twice as likely to receive sexual violence than any other group. Eighty thousand prison inmates "experience" (again, that is, those are the minority willing to report) sexual violence each year--and, a not-so-fun fact, sixty percent of all such sexual assaults are committed by correctional staff. Additionally, 6.2% of active duty women and 0.7% of active duty men "experienced" (reported) sexual violence in 2018.

What you can do: Look at the data for yourself. Read the study results, watch and listen to the testimonials, buy a non-fiction book about the subject of sexual violence. Tactfully look for opportunities to bring the subject up with people you know, and don't be afraid to ask them if they've experienced unwanted sexual contact or pressure to have sex. Every time you hear people making jokes, watching media or espousing attitudes that make light of rape or ignore the perpetrator's actions while labeling or blaming the victim, speak up whenever it is safe enough to do so. Be willing to openly explore your own life to see if it holds evidence that you were the victim of sexual violence...or possibly even the perp. Understand what other people's words and actions about your body and your purpose on the planet may have done to make you feel fearful, shameful, or loathsome about yourself, your body, your sexuality, your attractions, decisions or desires. Any time any person of any age or gender identity is willing to disclose that sexual violence happened to them, blatantly err on the side of believing them unless and until it becomes obvious that their main assertion (not just certain facts or details) is not true. Contribute your voice, your time, and some of your money to supporting survivors of sexual violence, and to reliable organized sources of support for those survivors. The folks at RAINN have about twenty ways to help in a drop-down near the top of their webpage. Sooner or later you will discover, if you haven't already, that sexual violence is affecting the life of someone near you, and you may discover ways sexual violence is affecting you in the here-and-now. Are you a survivor of sexual violence? Seek therapy. Ask for support. Dare to heal from it. Find your voice and tell your story. When plausible and safely possible, pursue accountability.

Eyes Wide Open addresses powerful, destructive phenomena such as sexual violence to help survivors and their supporters better understand sexual violence, heal from it, and prevent it--as well as to help everyone notice, expose and put a stop to group and institutional tactics and phenomena that perpetuate sexual violence. Please visit Cutter Law's guest link to an article about the risks of sexual assault presented by ride sharing.