r/PoursTea • u/Timbucktwo1230 đ« Mod âïž • 5d ago
FeministTeađ©đ»âđđ©đżââïžđ đ„Ÿ PTSD
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u/Timbucktwo1230 đ« Mod âïž 5d ago
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u/modest_rats_6 4d ago
They're finally starting to research period blood. Turns out its been very informative. And they may even be able to test for Endometriosis. Without needing multiple invasive surgeries to diagnose
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u/mahnamahna123 2d ago
Yeah the testing for endometriosis is so insane. The scans can only pick it up if it's late stae 4 so currently th only other option to be sure is to open you up. Really? In 2026?
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u/Pelican_Hook 4d ago
Oh, they have! đ One of the largest and most expensive studies on endometriosis to date found that luckily, men find women with endometriosis more attractive!!! So that should help, women. You can shut up now!!! (Obv /s)
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u/axewieldinghen 2d ago
As a woman with severe vaginismus, can we please start getting studies that aren't focused exclusively on couples?
Vaginismus can affect your ability to get smear tests, to use tampons, to get STI testing. But all the studies I've seen are about sexual satisfaction (specifically men's), and it pisses me off.
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u/spreadthesheets 5d ago
I entirely agree with you that research is lacking in womenâs health and has to be improved. But also just want to note for others that these kinds of studies are usually done by different researchers in different areas, and studies with very little value (like makeup) are often done by students starting out. These are classed as low risk in terms of ethics, so itâs easier to get. Theyâre often cross sectional so data collection and analysis is faster. You can get a larger number of participants, and the time commitment for participants is lower. It also doesnât require much expertise, and often is not funded by external grants - usually any payment etc is funded internally or by the supervisor. These are less likely to include conflicts of interest, too. Itâs like a âtraining wheelsâ project.
Again I am not saying youâre wrong. For example, as a woman, Iâve been incredibly frustrated at the lack of research into autism in women and masking, and burnout. Itâs also frustrating that most studies are done on children, as if we then âgrow outâ of it. It contributes to under diagnosis and misdiagnosis (like BPD) and delays help. We need much better and much more research into womenâs physical and mental health - itâs just that comparing the two is very much like comparing apples to oranges. Both fruit, both the same shape, but also totally different!
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u/Kind_Advisor_35 Prefer Coffee But Fill My Cup đ« 5d ago
Yeah, I do paid academic surveys, and there are a ton of studies that are just asking a few hundred people to answer a short questionnaire for $0.50
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u/spreadthesheets 5d ago
Yep! When my students are just starting out and doing their first projects, there is no way I would want them to take on a large or complicated project. The risk to participants is also far too high and our duty is to protect participants first (and not waste their time), plus I actually want them to see their study through to the end. One way around that is giving them data to work with, but they also should be trained in design and methods and data collection to some extent.
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u/ZoneBaddy 4d ago
Why havenât women studied these instead of waiting around for a man to do it for them?
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u/suriam321 4d ago
- women arenât allowed/have a much harder time getting into academics.
a lot of research is supported by donors, and donors are often
rich
men.
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u/chimneyswallow 4d ago
Because they need funding. And a lot of studies on women's health doesn't get that.
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u/Tracerround702 4d ago
You say this as if women weren't fully and systematically excluded from all higher education for a very long time
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u/maniacalmustacheride 4d ago
I was sitting at a bar once with a bunch of friends having a good time, nothing crazy, and whoop went the alarm bells. Try to stifle, it isnât working, trying to breathe, isnât working, Iâm fidgeting and I know where my eyes keep going, and Iâm trying to tell myself Iâm overreacting for no reason and finally I just say Iâm going out to smoke.
Maybe I had a look when I got outside, I donât know, someone else comes out, a dude, lights up, and asks if Iâm okay and I say yes and try to talk about the weather and laugh but did this sort of dismissive wave in front of my face when I said it was âtoo muchâ inside (it really wasnât that busy) and he just very intensely said âoh, the dude that came in and wonât take his hand out of his pocket? Thatâs why Iâm out here.â
And I donât know why it came out of my mouth but I said âwhat happened?â And he said âwas poor and they told me the Army would make it better. drag You?â And I guess I did the hand waive again and said âthe other thing.â drag
And he nodded. âYeah, itâs fucked up. Your body says to run, someone forces you not to. You like stars? Me too. I donât know any of their names.â And then real slow âbut Iâve always liked looking at em.â So I pointed out a few things I knew. We smoked another cigarette. Laughed about how weâd figured out different exits, who weâd grab. âItâs called catastophising, but it doesnât feel like that. It feels like your whole body is about to sneeze but worse, and you just need it to happen. You donât want it to happen, but if it did, youâd have somewhere to put all that energy.â
We hugged. Went back in. He just went straight to the bar and said what was up and then straight to the guy. Dude had a bunch of roofies in his pocket but swore it was his âfirst timeâ and he wasnât trying to do anything. They kick him out. Buddy comes over and says âlooks like it was âthe other thing.â But heâs gone.â His accent. âBut hees gown.âWe ended up adopting him for the night and he sang a mean karaoke.
But Iâll never forget him looking at me, not dismissively, and just seeing someone else fighting it out. I hope heâs okay out there.
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u/hyphenssuck 5d ago
For most of human history rape of a woman was considered a property crime against a woman's father/husband/etc... essentially whoever "owned" her. Only very recently was marital rape even considered a crime.
The amount of injustice suffered by women throughout history is hard to even imagine, and yet when Shane Gillis calls women whores on national television. Or a woman speaks up about her rape case that was never properly investigated because of some shitass district attorney... They crawl out of the woodwork to defend their "bros".
It's an absolute disgrace.
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u/Gussie-Ascendent Allegedly approved user 5d ago
Oh yeah, check what the Bible says is to be done with an umpromised woman who is raped:
She's to be sold to the rapist for 50 silver. Like a cow or a piece of furniture
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u/No-Theme2340 4d ago
Ye olde "you break it, you bought it." but with an actual suffering human being. Ain't patriarchy grand? /S
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u/GirlisNo1 5d ago
Not just the ones who defend, but the fact that most donât say anything at all. The silence is deafening.
Thatâs what gets me. We live right alongside them and they could give two fucks about the worst things happening to us on a regular basis.
Thousands of years of being property without basic human rights, and now that when we can finally shed some light on our issues they have the AUDACITY to come in with âbut what about men?!â And that too afterâŠyou knowâŠmen did nothing to fight for the basic rights of women for millennia.
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u/TimeNegotiator 4d ago
I'm reading Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut now, and there's a female character that gets raped. The book portrays her rapist and her husband as the victims. The rapist because the act shows his boorishness. The husband because his property has been taken from him.
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u/chimneyswallow 4d ago
That's Not true. For most of human history women were equal. Only when they settled down, it got worse. But the time is much shorter, which a lot of people conveniently forget when talking about "traditional". Opressing women was to break from the usual. Going back to the longest tradition would mean being equal again.
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u/NeedLegalAdvice56 3d ago
"History" is about written times, and, for most of them, women were oppressed. Now if you want to talk about Prehistory, I would just like this that it was 75% equal and 25% oppressed. Anytime after agriculture came about was bad. Even for a lot of nomadic women because of cultural exchange.
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u/UnleveledFoundation 5d ago
My therapist is a female sexual assault survivor and I am a male with complex ptsd/combat ptsd. We both look at each other wondering how weâre functioning when she chooses to disclose her trauma and I talk about my experiences. In my head that is progress. Itâs more than unfortunate that so many had to suffer for two people to sit down and discuss how to navigate this modern life. Iâm going to save these images and share them with her.
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u/Both-Pack8730 4d ago
This seems so human-oriented it makes me want to weep. Sharing is part of the human experience and you both being able to do this just seems excellent. No power imbalance, just 2 people learning from each other.
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u/Cold_Vanilla9791 4d ago
I had a male sexual assault survivor, and even tho our trauma was different I felt like he understood me better than most ppl, itâs nice to have a therapist who is willing to share with you to and make you feel more comfortable by showing you they get it, I got diagnosed with PTSD way after I got a different therapist but I do miss him and wonder what he would have to say about my diagnosis
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u/AnimatorImpressive24 4d ago
PTSD can also be observed in people who closely witness their loved ones being treated in ICU or NICU over prolonged periods of time. Traumatic stress is an internal categorization based on what a given human being considers to comprise an existential risk, so any disorder arising from an overabundance of traumatic stress must of necessity involve diagnostic criteria informed by the beliefs and values of the patient.
What's more, care should be taken to avoid even subconscious judgements of validity or authenticity of specific scenarios placed on a list of experiences that "qualify" someone for diagnosis. Because the studies that have observed PTSD symptoms arising in combat drone pilots (as an example) strongly suggest that if someone is sufficiently convinced they are experiencing an existential threat then they effectively are experiencing it and will be impacted accordingly. A drone pilot's experience of violence is transmitted to them through so much technological abstraction that it would be trivial to simulate the whole thing and just tell the pilot it was "real", not to mention the whole "they are completely impervious to the violence they are only witnessing as a result of inflicting it on others" aspect.
The general public's willingness to consider the implications of that last bit varies wildly between soldiers and convicts, but PTSD doesn't so much seem to care about anyone's opinion of who "counts" as a victim.
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u/vienibenmio 4d ago
I'm a psychologist who specializes in PTSD. Sexual trauma is also associated with the highest rates of non recovery, even compared to combat trauma.
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u/No-Theme2340 4d ago
That makes sense to me. Veterans can leave the war zone, and eventually learn on the subconscious level that they are back to the"safety" the knew Before. Rape survivors usually stay in the same cultural and often physical context of their attack(s). And rapists don't wear enemy uniforms to mark them clearly, so the hypervigilance can never relax.
It's been 35 years since the last time, and I'm still caught in it. And I've tried everything I can afford. PTSD (or CPTSD, if we ignore the DSM) is just part of my life now.
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u/vienibenmio 3d ago edited 3d ago
It's also an intentional act done to you by another person, usually someone you trust, and an act that is supposed to be one of love and intimacy, not to mention the stigma of sex in general. Very shattering to one's view of themselves, others, and the world. Rape culture and victim blaming also are a factor. Trauma related beliefs, particularly self blame, are a big predictor of PTSD.
I'm sorry to hear that. We have some great treatments out there if you haven't tried them yet: cognitive processing therapy and prolonged exposure therapy. Both were initially developed to treat PTSD secondary to sexual trauma but they work so well they are now used to treat PTSD secondary to any type of trauma.
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u/Just-Feedback-2223 2d ago
I think itâs because weâre forced to live around our abusers for the rest of our lives. The people who raped and allowed me to get raped still live in my community. There are very little job opportunities here in rural North Dakota. I had to quit a job because the rapist was there. I canât keep a fucking job.
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u/Brutal_burn_dude 1d ago
Iâm so sorry that happened to you. Youâre incredible right. My abuse happened 30+ years ago and it still feels like yesterday because I live right next door to where it happened. I live in fear of running into him or his family.
Itâs so hard but I canât afford to move. The housing prices are so insane that even working full time would make living in a share house with strangers a financial stretch.
When youâre bound to the scene of the trauma you canât ever really leave it behind.
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u/kraggleGurl 4d ago
I am so shocked the dsm has not been updated. I was beaten and raped for 4 years. Diagnosed with ptsd, depression and anxiety. I cannot sleep without without meds due to night terrors. They need to update their stuff.
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u/TheChiarra 4d ago
What meds do you take for your night terrors so i can bring them up to my psych? I've suffered with them since childhood. I honestly didn't know they were night terrors until i told my therapist about them. her eyes went wide and said no wonder you're terrified to go to sleep.
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u/kraggleGurl 4d ago
Prazosin. Has greatly improved my quality of life. Its cheap too!
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u/afterforeverends 3d ago
Seconding prazosin! Gets rid of the nightmeres, I wake up screaming some nights that I forget to take it. It's also helped lower the frwuwecy of flashbacks when im awake
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u/TheChiarra 4d ago
Interesting! Thank you for the read. It's funny it's not in the DSM and I got diagnosed with it anyways from childhood trauma. Sickening how women are treated in health care.
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u/KyleFromBorrasca 3d ago
It's been in the DSM for decades, assuming you mean non-combat PTSD. What's changed is statistics on how very common rape and child abuse are. The requirement that it be "outside the range of usual human experiences" was removed in 1994 but there have been even more changes since then.
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u/Due_Pin78 4d ago
The only reason PTSD from combat was studied so thoroughly was because they were studying soldiers (like many other studies) and they wanted to know what to do to get men ready to fight and back on the front lines. That was the sole concern up until very very recently. Look at the language surrounding the study of 'shell shock' during the first world war--it is about minimum possible rest, minimum possible cost, to get a soldier back to fighting effectively as quickly as possible.
The concern about PTSD ended abruptly at the point the soldier would not be fighting anymore (either at the end of the war, or due to injury.) It was not about treatment or well-being, or really any care at all for the soldier. This was still an improvement from how it was previously handled: summary execution for cowardice.
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u/DyingRodeoClown 1d ago edited 1d ago
During the American Civil War, combat trauma was often diagnosed as "nostalgia," "irritable heart," or "soldier's heart" because of unexplained heart palpitations, fatigue, and emotional breakdown. There are 3,000-year-old Mesopotamian cuneiform tablets and accounts from ancient Greece describing soldiers suffering from nightmares, depression, and psychological distress after battle.
Rape predates organized warfare and it's a tragedy that society did not bother to classify its long-term effects until the 1970s. But I find it interesting that the understanding and legitimization of combat related post-traumatic stress disorder didn't occur until mens value to society as disposable cannon fodder was being threatened at scale.
The other thing I find interesting is that being raped is not something that exclusively happens to women. It occurs to me that the recognition that rape can cause PTSD in male rape victims was also delayed until after the classification and recognition of Combat related PTSD.*
*Edit: Nope, apparently this is still not universally recognized. There wasn't even a national study on male victims until 1995.
https://www.thinkglobalhealth.org/article/recognizing-trauma-boys-and-men
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u/t_kilgore 1d ago
I had a coworker who I would have lunch with from time to time. Him and I had previously served in the military. Walking to lunch one day, he made a PTSD joke and I chimed in with one of my own. He cut me off and said "you can only joke about it if you have it". So I responded "and you think I don't? Women don't have to go to combat for that".
There was a lot of awkward silence after that.
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u/bewitch1n 4d ago
Having only one type of person in charge of everything will always be detrimental to other groups. Its why diversity is important, why science is important, why the truth of history is important. Sad to see human progress going backwards.
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u/Negative-Cow-2808 4d ago
âWhen men are violated at war, we build them monuments. When women are violated at home, we tear them down, make them pay.â - Judith Lewis Herman
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u/KyleFromBorrasca 3d ago
Erm, I don't think the monuments were actually for the benefit of the soldiers...
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u/FoamboardDinosaur 4d ago
Excellent. I will be calling it rape trauma syndrome from here on out. Every man will be told, ah, you're suffering from RTS.
Just as 'scientist' was coined for 'women who do science', was co-opted by peepees, so RTS was co-opted (and only legitimized and mainstreamed) once a peepee was shown to suffer from it
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4d ago
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u/make_me_already 4d ago
I'm sorry, I'm a bit confused by this comment. What exactly are you saying here?
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u/Clever_Mercury 4d ago
Do you know what I think would have offered the single greatest improvement to humanity?
If we had spent a couple generations killing not only any convicted rapist, but the person's parents.
We went through eras where we burnt witches, burnt widows, chopped off hands of thieves, opened up the lungs or cut out the hearts of traitors, but we never provided a really clean sweep of predators. We should have done so. Rape isn't about sex, it's about power. If you get rid of the people who do it and you specifically put the blame on the family that was responsible for it, you could rewire quite a bit of your society, quickly. I'm astonished this wasn't done in, say, the 1600s or 1800s for awhile.
I think it would certainly have spared the world an awful lot of CEOs, military lunatics, and bad politicians.
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u/insomniacPrince 2d ago
Bad take. Cutting off hands never stopped theft, capital punishment doesn't stop rape or murder. This is not an individual issue of "bad apples," it's systemic.
Saying this as a survivor or sexual assault, people need to be given the chance to learn and change. Yes, including rapists. Punishment and demonization most often just makes people get defensive and double down on their toxic behaviors.
If we really want to reduce the rates of sexual assault and other abuses of power, we need to restructure society to solve those massive power imbalances. We need to educate people, from early childhood, about consent. You said yourself that rape is about power: If we keep with the status quo, with rich white cis men holding the most societal power, no amount of state-sanctioned murder will prevent widespread rape and abuse.
This is why feminism is important for everyone.
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u/Clever_Mercury 6h ago
Completely disagree.
There are criminals who cannot be reintegrated into society. There are crimes so severe where the only thing we can reasonably do is provide the deterrent to others to repeat it. Your attempt at mercy only creates more victims and an unjustified expense to society while they continue to coddle the criminal.
I have exactly zero objections to the law using capital punishment. It is effective as a deterrent when it is swift, severe, and certain as a potential consequence. It absolutely does restructure society, which is why you see a much greater cultural aversion to theft in countries that punish it.
Everything we know about human psychology tells us there is a relationship between the desire to overpower others and its application in many, many violent areas. The people who abuse animals are more likely to abuse people. The people who cheat in school are more likely to cheat at work. The people who mentally classify sex as a means of domination look for domination and power -regardless of the harm it provides- in every other place.
I will admit one nuance, since you brought it up too; perhaps not every case of sexual assault would be clear cut enough to warrant such a possible verdict from a jury. Fine. Not every murder is eligible for the death penalty either. But the idea that absolutely zero of these attacks is eligible for capital punishment explains why our society has been historically broken. It would be easy to fix.
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u/42LargePeas 4d ago
I have PTSD so bad that I don't feel safe in this world at all anymore, I rarely go outside, I can't work, and people terrify me. Therapists terrify me too, because I've been abused by that system. I feel like I'm going to die.
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u/False_Astronomer_300 3d ago
My shoulders and neck hurt so bad Iâve had to use bengay since it happened itâs like I physically carry the weight of it.
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u/Hepperoni4 2d ago
I mean.. the DSM is kind of shit to begin with. Even clinicians who were taught off it, say that
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u/SchemeBig4199 2d ago
It was called âshell shockâ in WWI, the name PTSD is recent but clearly it is a condition that has probably always existed.
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u/sugar_skull_love2846 2d ago
My mom developed PTSD from serving in the Navy. The kicker? It was because she was sexually assaulted while serving, not anything combat related
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u/insomniacPrince 2d ago
This is depressing, but not surprising. Like many aspects of our society, trauma and PTSD have only been given legitimacy when they impact the most important people in the patriarchy: cisgender white men, especially those who are wealthy and powerful.
What we now know as trauma or PTSD, as a concept, didn't exist until the late 19th century with the advent of widespread railroad travel. Rail travel was faster than anything humans had ever experienced before, and accidents were common on early railroads. When wealthy businessmen who had been in railway accidents started experiencing symptoms of PTSD, they sued the railway companies for damages: though they were not physically injured, their psychological symptoms rendered them unable to work, thus reducing their income and value to society. The diagnosis of "railway spine" was created, and railway companies lost many lawsuits in the late 19th and early 20th centuries with this argument.Â
But of course, people have been experiencing traumatic events long before this. But no one ever talked about the rights of factory laborers, coal miners, the people building these railway systems. When one poor, Black, woman, immigrant, or child worker died or suffered serious trauma, they were replaced; that was just the norm. But when a wealthy white lawyer can't work due to flashbacks and anxiety from a railway accident? That's serious business. The "railway spine" diagnosis eventually faded from public consciousness, but was integrated into what we now understand as post-traumatic stress.
Of course the PTSD of (mostly male) combat veterans matters more to a patriarchal society than the PTSD of women who have been raped. When the societal expectation is that women are sexual objects, rape is a natural occurrence not worth recognizing. Women's physical and mental health needs have always historically been dismissed, whether as "hysteria" or some other diminutive euphemism. I hope, as mental health matters are less stigmatized and more widely discussed, that this can change. But as long as a society's foundations are built on the suffering and subjugation of a subset of people, that suffering can never be fully legitimized; otherwise, that society as we know it would fall apart.Â
Funny, isn't it, that we're seeing such a strong conservative pushback in response to marginalized groups who have been more loudly speaking up about their suffering? To quote the show Letterkenny: Kinda makes a fella wonder.
I first heard the story of railway spine and early concepts of PTSD in this interview with processor Catherine Liu: https://youtu.be/JysbLAm7uL4?is=lzApi1EPgQTULcu_
This 2003 article describes more details about how railway spine was popularized and integrated into our societal understanding of trauma, in relation to post-9/11 anxieties around air travel: https://www.americanheritage.com/railway-neurosis-and-birth-psychotherapy
I tried to find more sources on the links between recognition of trauma via railway spine and socioeconomic class, but most are locked behind paywalls.Â
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u/AuraTickler 4d ago
Daily dose of gender war đ
Its horrible it took so long that any form of ptsd was recognized.
Was there no classification for rape trauma at all before that?
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4d ago
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u/SiegfriedVK 4d ago
Its to make people mad I guess? Idk. This sub and r/sipstea appear to be mirrors of each other.
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u/ArmsVSeaOfTroubles 4d ago
Because of course there are only two kinda of trauma, war and rape. Nobody ever, man or woman, lived through a severe beating or maiming of course, so obviously men had to steal raped womenâs trauma by creating war and dying from it and leaving the survivors scarred just to one up women!
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u/ZoneBaddy 4d ago
Men with PTSD during WW1 were called cowards and executed. It somehow took a very long time to stop executing men with PTSD and start recognizing and treat it. Sorry, but what youâre describing isnât worse than that
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u/make_me_already 4d ago
Do you think female sexual assault survivors have never killed themselves from trauma? Do you really? Do you really think they've never been mocked, ostracized and bullied out of their own communities?
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u/No-Theme2340 4d ago
Or even worse. My wife's grandmother was in an abusive marriage. The marital rape, which was not even a legal concept at the time, broke her. She was sent to a mental hospital where she was given shock treatments and threatened with a lobotomy if she didn't stop crying at the mention of being sent back home.
She did stop crying, and they sent her back to her husband/rapist.
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u/Seraphina_Renaldi 21h ago
There are still countries where rape victims are being killed
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u/ZoneBaddy 37m ago
I got a notification that you replied, but can only see the first few words because a mod removed it. I donât know what you said, but you might want to calm a down a bit
Anyway âhow many of your male friends have died in a warâ or something like that. You canât be for real with this question. Thereâs no way youâre that out of touch
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u/ZoneBaddy 20h ago
Uh huh, murder is bad. I donât understand your point
My comment is pointing out that âwomenâs oppressionâ isnât womenâs oppression and is actually something that oppresses/affects everyone. And in this case, something that has affected man a hell of a lot more than it has women, and yet all misandrists in the comments are crying misogyny
âThere are still countries where rape victims are being killedâ is an example of a bad thing happening, not proof of oppression against women. You can list off bad things happening somewhere in the world all day. I can do it too. And neither list will prove anything
Misandrists have no critical thinking skills
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u/Doucevie 5d ago
We've been so terribly wronged.