Sexual "Strugglers", A New Low In Treatment Nomenclature
I’m thankful for my savvy readers who find these misbegotten initiatives and send me the links. And it seems the new low is to call sexual-abusive relational disordered men “sexual strugglers”. So, here’s what passes for a “sexual struggler”:
And if you’re thinking, “Oh, no they don’t mean people who commit crimes!”, you are wrong. The example from those promoting a program event for partners and “sexual strugglers” was the story of man who raped his wife and then pretended he had no idea this was wrong. He repeatedly sexually assaulted her while she was asleep. Each time, she would wake up as he raped her and be both traumatized and humiliated. Silly her! She imagined herself safe enough to close her eyes in her own bed with her own husband and go to sleep!
After explaining to her that this was rape, the treatment approach for the raped woman was not to report the crime but to tell her it was her job to tell her husband that he was, in fact, raping her and to ask him to stop doing it. Apparently, he claimed to have no idea it was wrong. No idea at all. Problem solved. How could he have possibly known? Now we are asked to believe that he “struggles” with raping his wife no more and everything is fine.
There is no question asked about why this woman didn’t recognize his sexual assault ambush as rape. There is no initiative to address the misogynist underpinnings of the theology that spawns and supports rape culture within the evangelical community. Women as property passed from father to husband is often ritualized in the marriage ceremony. She is there to serve his needs. Doesn’t that make the faith community complicit when he rapes her?
In fact, there is no accountability except that which is put on this woman’s shoulders. She has to confront her rapist. She is responsible for fixing this. She has to hope he doesn’t respond with rage. She has to take the risk of staying with a misogynist husband. Why doesn’t a law enforcement officer confront him? Why doesn’t the church leader confront him? Why doesn’t the therapist confront him? No, the raped woman has to confront her rapist and hope he won’t harm her further while she continues to live with him every day.
How careless they were with her safety. How foolish they were to pretend this would be the only thing he “didn’t know was wrong”. Really? What kind of core values does a man like this have in order to do this to his wife—that is, wait till she cannot consent or participate or seek her own desires satisfied in positive mutuality. No, he waits until she can do none of those things, isn’t even awake, and then rapes her. What in the faith culture of the community created that permission? She was just lucky that in confronting him he did not choose violence again. And how long will it be before she discovers other covert activities? What will those cost her? His core values that support misogyny were never addressed. She’s still in danger.
Husbands do not rape their wives when they are asleep because they don’t know it’s wrong.
A husband rapes his wife because he gets off on the violent and intimate disempowerment of the woman who has placed her trust in him.
Rape is always about power. It is never about love.
If the counselor/pastor/practitioner is required to report crimes as a part of his/her/their professional requirements and does not comply, then the lack of accountability is dangerous to others as well and he/she/they should be appropriately disciplined or charged.
The first act in response to her story should have been to ensure her safety, not put her at risk that he will escalate his abuse. This story is NOT a victory for anyone or anything except misogyny and its agents. This husband is not a “sexual struggler.” He’s a sexual abuser. He’s a criminal. And if his religious community never addressed the epidemic of male sexual violence against women so that they taught him the difference between making love to his covenanted life partner and raping her, they are complicit. They are also complicit in nurturing the ignorance within her so that she didn’t know that it was rape. IMO.
Groups that overtly or covertly collaborate with misogynists often do pretty much anything to avoid facts that indicate a redistribution of power in male/female relationships is needed. So they violate the facts. They rape those, too.
It is more than folly to imagine that this woman is now safe in her marriage. She is not. Like practitioners who ask wives and partners to imagine all the ways the husband might violate her and create “boundaries” to prevent it, the core value void that creates those “ways” is not in the woman. She can’t imagine it. He can. And sure enough, if he continues to practice his need to abuse her in ways she could never imagine, all he will say is that “it wasn’t one of her boundaries.” And if you think that’s a bit of stretch, I can assure you that in my work with women over the past ten years, it is not a stretch. It is exactly what these men do.
No matter what they do, these men are always innocent. No one told them they couldn’t do this or that or these, too! And don’t they love being called “sexual strugglers?” Not perpetrators of abuse. Not sexual predators. Not sexual offenders. Not criminals. Not perpetrators of intimate partner violence. Not parental modelers of hypocrisy and misogyny—teaching their children to sexually objectify women and participate in misogyny. These men and fathers are modelling the belief that women should learn to accept intimate danger and never hold men accountable for the core values out of which they actually live their lives. And the treatment practitioners are modelling that victims of these men should never require psychiatric evaluations to clarify and identify the root disorders underneath men’s core value domestic violence operations. But no, they aren’t failed fathers and dangerous life partners. No. They are sexual strugglers who should not be accountable at any real level because…“struggling”.
My goal is that women and children should be safe from these men. That is the difference between me and these other outfits. I don’t believe these men will get the kind of intervention, assessment and treatment by psychiatrists qualified to do that (and that they also deserve as damaged and disordered human beings) as long as these outfits use minimizing nomenclature and spackle their misogyny with hollow religious words and backdrops.
Women and children are paying the price for the heresy of “treatment” being peddled—treatment with no research to justify its claim on your wallet or your life—treatment that tarts up a rape story as “all better now with Jesus” but with no priority protection for the woman WHO IS THE VICTIM. Yes, misogyny is resilient and resistant. Here’s one writer’s take on the way it works in evangelical communities of faith:
Disordered men and sexual predators use religious organizations and support to hide their deeds, and when discovered, to diminish them at the expense and ongoing danger of their victims. “Sexual strugglers” is a cowardly and wholly inadequate description for these men and what they do to women and children, and to society as a whole through their participation in sex trafficking, racism, pedophilia, the porn industry, domestic abuse, criminal organizations underneath the sex trade, drug addiction, misogyny, and more.
Pretending that the domestic abuse of wives and children through the secret lives of compulsive-abuser sexual relational disordered men is episodic and can be treated that way successfully is fantasy thinking. It is not episodic. It is systemic. It is wired into the paradigm of male/female dynamics and needs dismantling so that relationships of positive mutuality can be established—relationships in which the woman does not have to take all the risks, all the time, because someone says that is what God wants her to do and it’s “inspirational.”
“Sexual Strugglers.” A new low in treatment nomenclature. A new low in faith. And a new low in treatment. IMO. What do you think?
As Tania Rochelle wrote in the link I posted to her blog last week, this is not easy work. I find it a little unbelievable that I have to point out that raping your wife is a crime, not a sexual “struggle.” But that’s how low the bar is in the treatment industry. Please stop handing over the safety of your precious life to these people. And stop paying them to protect him instead of you.
with you,
Diane.