Number 22

[Dill]

(07-03-2019, 08:59 AM)Aquapod770 Wrote: Did you watch the CNN clip? 

(07-03-2019, 10:29 AM)Mike M (the other one) Wrote: OK but did you read where she said she wasn't Traumatized by the event? So it makes no sense.

It does make sense if she was traumatized and in denial. The sense I got from what she has written and said is that her personality is "broken."  She is holding contradictory beliefs and feelings she cannot manage well.  One sentence she says she is totally fine and not affected; in another she has kept a dress untouched for decades and fears seeing/confronting Trump.

At the time of the alleged rape, she was advised by one woman to come forward and another to keep silent (the kind of advice that enables rapists).  She seems to be acting on both advisements at the same time. She wants to feel strong and independent; but she cannot hide her fear.

She wants to tell the truth about what happened, cathartically get out what she has held in all these years, and hopefully get some support; but she fears the backlash and of admitting fear and weakness "strong" women are not supposed to have nowadays.  

Feminists say women who come forward are brave and help bring into the light and correct a tacitly accepted social norm that favors sexual abusers in the courts and public opinion. So Carroll wants to be brave. But feminists are misleading when they say that social norms have changed to the point that now courts and public opinion listen to the accuser.  Many people, especially males, still think harassment is basically harmless, on the one hand, and on the other, that it is very common for women to have "second thoughts" after consensual sex and accuse innocent men after the fact.  Waiting years to finally accuse is taken, not as a sign of trauma and fear, but of ulterior motives (Why NOW, after all this time?).

If you think of Carroll as an older woman whose personality was formed in the days women were taught to see themselves as causes of sexual violence and to bear responsibility for men's bad behavior, but now living the aftermath of a rape in a time when women are praised (by feminists at least) for challenging that norm and coming forward to accuse powerful men, that might explain the schizo character of her behavior.

(One thinks here of the extreme difficulties Florida authorities had in prosecuting Trump's friend, Jeffrey Epstein, for scores of rape counts involving minors.  Trump's second rape accuser was allegedly one of those minors and named Epstein as well as Trump in her civil suit against Trump, which has twice been brought forward.  That accuser failed to show up at a press conference in 2016 and reportedly dropped the lawsuit afterwards.)