Abuse has been, is or will be a part of life for more people than not. What is it, and what different kinds of abuse are there? How do you tell the difference between someone or a relationship just being crummy and abuse? How do you protect yourself or get away from abuse? How can you heal? How do you make sure that you aren’t abusive? This section answers these kinds of questions and concerns.
Abuse
Highlighted content
Articles and Advice in this area:
Advice
- Heather Corinna
Your friend was likely referencing a longitudinal study of 3,000 women done in 1999 (Acierno, Resnick, Kilpatrick, Saunders and Best, Journal of Anxiety Disorders) which found that women who had been raped before were seven times more likely to be raped again. As well, many studies have shown that…
Article
- Heather Corinna
A basic lowdown on interpersonal abuse and assault: what all the terms mean, why strangers are the least of our worries, what a cycle of abuse looks like, how you can start seeing abuse for what it is, where it is, and how to protect yourself and others and make abuse stop.
Advice
- Heather Corinna
Worried: there’s no one kind of person, or kind of role, that gives someone a free pass to have sex on us or to us when it isn’t what we want. If a husband forces or coerces his wife into sex when sex is not what she wants, it’s not consensual, and it is then a sexual abuse or an assault: a rape. If…
Advice
- Heather Corinna
You just take whatever time you need, at whatever pace you need, to build trust with a new partner or potential partner. Being assaulted of course impacts how we trust people and makes it more difficult to trust, especially when you were assaulted by people who you trusted, who those around you…
Advice
- Heather Corinna
(Amsinha’s question continued) Whenever I’m alone my mind drifts to the fact that I was already 18 and that he didn’t exactly rape me and also that I wasn’t careful enough or alert enough. I feel as if I should have known that when he complimented my hair that there was something inappropriate. Most…
Advice
- Heather Corinna
Why would you want to be friends with someone you feel afraid of and who is harassing you? Who you fear may become violent if you take any action to stop his harassment? That’s not the way friends treat each other: this guy is not your friend, and clearly has no interest in being your friend. Sexual…
Advice
- Heather Corinna
Clarisse: the very first thing I want to say, and want you to try hard to hear, is that you are not abnormal, nor are you some kind of basket case. You’re simply someone healing from a serious injury. With at least one out of every four women being raped or sexually abused at some point in your…
Article
(Part of How You Guys - That’s Right, You GUYS – Can Prevent Rape, and continued from How can men know if someone is giving consent or not?) What more can we do to stop rape? There is a lot more all of us can do to help disengage our rape culture beyond not raping someone else. Since again, most…
Article
(Part of How You Guys - That’s Right, You GUYS – Can Prevent Rape, and continued from What is Rape & What Is It Like to Be Raped?) The vast majority of people who rape are and have always been male. That does not mean that most men are rapists. While many women will be raped, the majority will not…
Article
(Part of How You Guys - That’s Right, You GUYS – Can Prevent Rape, and continued from Why Do Men Need to Know About Rape?) Rape is when one person wants and pursues a sexual act on, to or inside another person who does not want to participate, and who does not fully and freely consent to take part…
