Speaker 1: Hey, Fucker's what up? It's Christina Hutchinson and Karin Fisher
Speaker 1: and you're about to listen to an excerpt from the
Speaker 1: latest episode of Guys We Fucked, the anti slut shaming podcast.
Speaker 1: Our guest today is Dr Jessica Taylor, and on the
Speaker 1: episode we talk about uh, violence against women, why it happens,
Speaker 1: why we're so often blamed for every fucking trauma that
Speaker 1: we endure, and it's kind of funny. There's funny parts.
Speaker 1: It is in the psychology of victim blaming, what that
Speaker 1: means in a society. It's honestly, I was so interested
Speaker 1: the entire interview and I'm very excited for you guys
Speaker 1: to hear it. Oh this is Yeah. She's a great guest,
Speaker 1: and if you want to hear the entirety of the episode,
Speaker 1: you can go to Luminary Podcasts dot com. And you
Speaker 1: can also while you're there, check out the amazing exclusive
Speaker 1: podcasts from other people like Russell Brand, Celesque Barber Guy
Speaker 1: raz Rock sand Gay, who we talked about later on
Speaker 1: this episode, and our friends Michael Rappaports. So from a
Speaker 1: psychological perspective, like I know, it's harder to deal with
Speaker 1: like other people blaming women for whatever it is that
Speaker 1: we're getting blamed for this week. But like, do you
Speaker 1: have advice on how to start blaming yourself because I
Speaker 1: think that's something that a lot of our listeners struggle
Speaker 1: with self blame. Yeah, self, Like, self blame is massive
Speaker 1: because and so one of the ways. So the first
Speaker 1: thing is to understand yourself blame. That's a that's a
Speaker 1: good place to start. So to understand that you, as
Speaker 1: a girl and then as a woman, you have been
Speaker 1: socialized since forever too um blame yourself and take responsibility
Speaker 1: for other people's actions. And that includes when boys and
Speaker 1: men are being violent or abusive or harassing you or
Speaker 1: being misogynistic. You are often as a woman expected to
Speaker 1: self reflect and then change your own behavior. And that
Speaker 1: happens a lot all the way through childhood and then
Speaker 1: your adoltlescens and then your adulthood. As a woman, you
Speaker 1: are if something happens you like a guy cat calls you,
Speaker 1: or a guy who's abusive or whatever, the first thing
Speaker 1: that will happen is that you will be expected to
Speaker 1: reflect on what you did and then change for the future. So, oh,
Speaker 1: I won't do that again. I won't dress like that again,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to get into another relationship like that. Whatever.
Speaker 1: So the self blame that a lot of women feel
Speaker 1: has been constructed over and over and over again in
Speaker 1: their lives by different people. And sometimes it's well meaning,
Speaker 1: you know. It's like it's like family members being like, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, you seem to always get yourself in relationships
Speaker 1: like this. Maybe you should, like, you know, stop attracting
Speaker 1: the wrong guys and you're doing you know, so that
Speaker 1: like builds into the self blame. Um. Some of it
Speaker 1: as well, is this sort of belief that that comes
Speaker 1: from the belief in the just world that you must
Speaker 1: have done something to bring this on yourself. Like what
Speaker 1: a lot of women will say to me, why does
Speaker 1: this keep happening to me? Like it seems like men
Speaker 1: just target me and I keep having I've been assaulted repeatedly,
Speaker 1: I've been in these abeative relationships, have been raped, and
Speaker 1: I feel like, you know, at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: I'm the common to nominator here. It maybe this is
Speaker 1: me And that feeds into the self playing because unfortunately,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of messages in society that will
Speaker 1: confirm that for women, and they'll say oh no, yeah,
Speaker 1: it is you, you know, and you need to change,
Speaker 1: You need to do something differently to protect yourself from
Speaker 1: sexual violence, to protect yourself from male violence, and to
Speaker 1: protect yourself and harassment. So one of the things that
Speaker 1: I would say is the first step is to really
Speaker 1: dig at your self playing and be like, why do
Speaker 1: you belie meself? Where did it even come from? Where
Speaker 1: did it start? Because some women will be able to
Speaker 1: pinpoint it, and I'll be like, oh, I don't know.
Speaker 1: When I was being abused as a child, the perpetrator
Speaker 1: kept telling me your naughty, your bads, this is your fault,
Speaker 1: you deserve this, it's you know. But in other cases
Speaker 1: it's a bit broader than that. So it might be
Speaker 1: that they attempted to tell their mom when they were
Speaker 1: you know, eleven or seventeen, and that they told them
Speaker 1: or you know, you're just a bit of a slot,
Speaker 1: or you're easy, or you keep attracting this attention and
Speaker 1: because you wear particular clothes or whatever, and then they
Speaker 1: take that on and they wrestle with it for for
Speaker 1: many years. So one of the things that you can do,
Speaker 1: although this will make this does make quite a lot
Speaker 1: of women angry when they first start processing. It is
Speaker 1: to every single time you get a thought like that,
Speaker 1: is to tell yourself that the guy that did it
Speaker 1: to you wanted to, and he made an active adult
Speaker 1: decision as a capable human being to choose to harass
Speaker 1: you or to choose to assault you. That he didn't
Speaker 1: just lose his mind for a few minutes, like he didn't.
Speaker 1: He's like, ups, I accidentally assaulted you. You know, he
Speaker 1: didn't hit slip and fall over and rape you or anything.
Speaker 1: He did it because he wanted to. And you have
Speaker 1: to put all of the blame back on him and
Speaker 1: be like, no, in that situation, he chose to attack
Speaker 1: me because he wanted to, So you have to push
Speaker 1: it all back on him and accept zero percent responsibility
Speaker 1: like absolutely nothing, but it will make you great center.
Speaker 1: That is a great, great sentence. And there's also these
Speaker 1: psychological mechanisms that play when the when people experience trauma
Speaker 1: that I think will confuse the victim and then will
Speaker 1: confuse anybody around her that doesn't understand, well, why did
Speaker 1: you freeze? If you you were saying you were giving
Speaker 1: the example of waking up to a man eating you
Speaker 1: out um and and she just the the girl in
Speaker 1: the pretend example is just like what the funk? And
Speaker 1: you freeze when something traumatic happens to you, You don't
Speaker 1: know how you're going to react. And sometimes those reactions
Speaker 1: are you just can't move. And then a lot of
Speaker 1: times the body, especially if something occurred at childhood, your
Speaker 1: your brain will block it out, will black it out,
Speaker 1: and then you remember years later and then and then
Speaker 1: that's why I lose my fucking mind when I hear
Speaker 1: anybody go now she chooses to talk about it, like
Speaker 1: I I can't even articulate myself. That makes me so
Speaker 1: angry when I hear that reaction. Yeah, I think just
Speaker 1: like the criminal justice is um certainly in American I'm
Speaker 1: sure in the UK to uh you know, plays into
Speaker 1: this because is you know, when you even when you
Speaker 1: go to court, people will be showing like alphits that
Speaker 1: that the survivor was wearing. They will be showing, you know,
Speaker 1: talking about alcohol intake and like, is there a way
Speaker 1: to like, how do we change change that as a society,
Speaker 1: because it's like when when the very legal system in
Speaker 1: the place that you live, uh is questioning you like
Speaker 1: that's that's heavy. Yeah, it is. I mean to both
Speaker 1: of you have picked up on things are really important there,
Speaker 1: So the fact that for example, society women girls, but
Speaker 1: also professionals, the judiciary, judges juries, they I think they
Speaker 1: need to know that in over seventy percent of all
Speaker 1: rape and sexual assaults, women freeze. And that's research from
Speaker 1: massive studies and it was published in two thousands and seventeen.
Speaker 1: So the norm is to freeze and not fight back.
Speaker 1: So you know it's it's not fair and it's not
Speaker 1: scientific too. Then question a woman in court or why
Speaker 1: didn't you fight back? Why don't you do Why did
Speaker 1: you just lie there? Well, because that is exactly what
Speaker 1: happens as normal, so she shouldn't. She didn't have to
Speaker 1: defend that in court at all because we know that
Speaker 1: it's normal. But that doesn't mean that the other thirty
Speaker 1: percent fight back. It means that the other thirty percent
Speaker 1: actually tend to have other trauma responses. So sevent tend
Speaker 1: to freeze. And then there's another I think it's fifty
Speaker 1: that do this. It's called a friend reaction, which is
Speaker 1: where you try and talk your way out of it
Speaker 1: or into it. So it's sort of like, um, you know, oh,
Speaker 1: I'll let you do this, but don't hurt me, or okay,
Speaker 1: well maybe, or you know, like trying to like make
Speaker 1: sure that you've almost bargained with the perpetrator that like
Speaker 1: this time, it's okay, but don't do this, or I'll
Speaker 1: let you do this if you don't do that. And
Speaker 1: so that's also a very very normal response to being assaulted,
Speaker 1: being raped, being trafficked. Even it's very normal to have
Speaker 1: that sort of bargaining response where what you're actually trying
Speaker 1: to do there is save your life, because women and
Speaker 1: girls instinctively no if you start fighting back against some guy.
Speaker 1: Like I really really hate this narrative that women and
Speaker 1: girls should just learn fucking self defense or martial arts
Speaker 1: and then they can just like karate kick some guy.
Speaker 1: Like why are they not considered like right, I always
Speaker 1: think academics that put this forward, I want to know
Speaker 1: if they've ever been in a fight with a guy.
Speaker 1: That's what I want to know. If you've ever stand
Speaker 1: up in front of a load of women and tell
Speaker 1: them to learn kickboxing and that they have to be
Speaker 1: able to fight a guy off if they ever attacked them.
Speaker 1: I want to know if they've ever been in a
Speaker 1: fight with a guy, Because I've been in fights with
Speaker 1: guys and like if you hit them, they will hit
Speaker 1: you back. Yeah that's yeah, I think, Yeah, that's what
Speaker 1: I would think would happen. Yeah, like a guy, guys,
Speaker 1: Guy's gonna punch you with the face and you're gonna
Speaker 1: fall over. Yeah, that's the thing. Like most women are
Speaker 1: smaller and and just like weak, weaker, but like there's nothing.
Speaker 1: It's not like a testament to who you are as
Speaker 1: a human being. It's just like your physical form. Like
Speaker 1: I can't fight most man, I'm five for three, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: gonna work. It's like, also, why do we ignore the
Speaker 1: fact that there are so many athletic, experienced, skilled women
Speaker 1: in m m A and in you know, um, in
Speaker 1: other forms of martial arts, right, who have been victims
Speaker 1: of rape, domestic violence, and assaults. Right. So these women, yeah,
Speaker 1: like because the thing is they'll freeze because their trauma
Speaker 1: response is going to take over the fact that they
Speaker 1: have twenty years of training, because they know that they're
Speaker 1: being they're about to be raped, or they're being assaulted,
Speaker 1: or they they're in this power dynamic with a partner
Speaker 1: or an ex partner where they're not going to fight
Speaker 1: back anyway because they love that guy, and they wish
Speaker 1: he didn't treat them like that. And they've been groomed,
Speaker 1: or they've been manipulated, or they're being blackmailed, they're being threatened.
Speaker 1: So you know, from like a survival instinct perspective, it's
Speaker 1: not very intelligent to then start like hitting him in
Speaker 1: the face, you know, because you know it's gonna resculate.
Speaker 1: I just thought of this. Do you think there's ever
Speaker 1: there would ever be a world in which public school
Speaker 1: systems would um tack on trauma education into not just
Speaker 1: with pairing it with sex education, but with just all
Speaker 1: the fucking education that we give the kids and all
Speaker 1: of the things that we learned that you know, I
Speaker 1: learned how to sow a so a blanket, you know,
Speaker 1: I would have been a much better off learning how
Speaker 1: the brain reacts involuntarily to trauma to the point where
Speaker 1: you don't even know how you're going to react until
Speaker 1: it happens to you, but know that you could fight,
Speaker 1: you could flight, you know, you could run away, or
Speaker 1: you could freeze. And how that's how you see that
Speaker 1: in animals like my my I work with this therapist
Speaker 1: is my personal therapist, and she always points out look
Speaker 1: at your dog. Look at how your dogs with its
Speaker 1: whole body, and when your dog scared he shakes. Don't
Speaker 1: try to calm the dog down. Let the dog get
Speaker 1: it out of its system, because the dog knows it
Speaker 1: needs to shake it off. And I'm like, if I
Speaker 1: knew that when I was fucking seven even or or
Speaker 1: fucking fifteen, I would have not done so many drugs.
Speaker 1: I don't know right right to this point that you're making.
Speaker 1: I've been thinking about this for weekshry, and I keep
Speaker 1: toying with the idea of doing a YouTube video on it. Right,
Speaker 1: I do understand, right, I do not understand why millions
Speaker 1: of people understand trauma trickers in dogs but not in humans.
Speaker 1: So they'll you'll be talking to someone who owns a
Speaker 1: dog and they'll be like, oh, yeah, a couple of
Speaker 1: years ago a dog bit them in the park, and
Speaker 1: now they're really nervous and they have anxious responses when
Speaker 1: they're around dogs, and sometimes you know, they'll cry, they'll
Speaker 1: go and hide or whatever, and that that's because they're
Speaker 1: so traumatized for when they got bit by that dog.
Speaker 1: But then you buy humans who are really traumatized from
Speaker 1: that time. The idiot. You should have fought in the
Speaker 1: face your idiot. Yeah exactly. Yeah, you sat on the
Speaker 1: floor siding into your dog. Why don't you just bite
Speaker 1: the dog back? DoD so emotional? Yeah so yeah, absolutely, Guys.
Speaker 1: Did you like that excerpt? I did? If you're interested
Speaker 1: in listening to the entire interview, got a luminary podcasts
Speaker 1: within us dot com and find more of us and
Speaker 1: other you're gonna fucking love it. Yeah, squired sir, whoa, whoa,