Medical-Sexual Assault Victims Are Valid

They/them

[justiceformsasurvivors]

Introduction Post

This blog is a place for activism, validation, information, and community for medical-sexual abuse (M-SA) victims.

For those who are not in the know (which is probably like. A Lot of people.), M-SA is the overlap between medical and sexual abuse, which includes but is not limited to: sexual misconduct in a medical setting, sexual misconduct under the guise of medical care, medical abuse that involves genitals or reproductive organs, or any medical procedure or treatment, regardless of necessity or urgency, that leaves the patient feeling sexually violated and/or traumatized.

These things are not often taken seriously by the medical system, the law, or people in general. M-SA victims are left feeling brushed off, invalidated, or ignored, even within other sexual assault victim spaces.

I will also be using this blog as a place to vent about my own experiences and frustrations, so if you don’t want to see that, block #vent

This blog aims to be inclusive of ALL M-SA survivors, so bigots fuck off. Also if I use any language that excludes a certain group or is otherwise not inclusive, please let me know so I can fix it. Some of the posts I reblog or the resources I post may use language that exclude transgender and intersex individuals, because there are not many M-SA resources, or consideration for trans and intersex people within scientific and medical spaces. Any posts that contain content of this nature will be tagged with “#gendered language”

This blog is also not in any way anti vaccination, anti medicine, or anti science. science and medicine are incredibly important and should not be ignored. However, the medical system and many of the people in it are very flawed and can partake in, excuse, and perpetuate M-SA. This blog IS pro autonomy, pro consent, and pro youth liberation.

I am also currently working on a document of resources and information regarding M-SA and common procedures that result in medical-sexual trauma, which I will be adding to the end of this post once it’s a bit more filled out.

[justiceformsasurvivors]

“not all men but always a man” NO ITS NOT. NO ITS FUCKING NOT.

most of the adults who actually assaulted me were women. The people who sent me for those procedures were men, yes. my father helped with some of my enemas, yes. But the nurses who did my vcug? all women. My own mother also helped with the enemas. I don’t even remember the genders of the people who removed my underwear and did god knows what to me in the hospital while I was asleep, nor do I care.

and let me tell you how many women were so quick to discount my experiences as SA, to admit that they had done similar things to their children, to express RELIEF and DISMISSAL when I told them that my assaults were mostly carried out by women.

yes, the patriarchy allows dangerous men to exist unchecked, but for fucks sake women can be terrible people too. Rape and SA carried out by women is not inherently impossible or less traumatic or deserved.

[justiceformsasurvivors]

ik that a lot of medical misogyny is systemic and subconscious and ingrained into the very core of the medical system HOWEVER I think it would be really funny if my medical team just looked at my five year old self and were like “ugh what a hysterical bitch 🙄”

[justiceformsasurvivors]

currently reading this paper (tw for IGM, experimentation, M-SA and CM-SA) about medical-sexual abuse of intersex children and I think this line sums up a lot of CM-SA

it doesn’t matter if the perpetrator(s) got any sort of sexual gratification from assaulting you. It only matters that YOU as the victim were being sexually stimulated or violated. It can feel really gross or shameful to have sexual feelings about something that wasn’t intended as sexual, especially when you’re a child, but that arousal is further proof that this needs to be considered sexual abuse.

if you’re sexually stimulating or penetrating a child (or anyone who isn’t consenting), you’re sexually abusing them, regardless of your intentions.

[justiceformsasurvivors]

Me trying not to say “me when I was five” when someone says or posts smth horny

[justiceformsasurvivors]

Consented: Rape Culture in Medicine and What We Can Do About It — Zed Zha, MD | Physician and Author

Consented provides a doctor's examination of the rape culture in medicine through the scopes of history, modern-day practices, and the futur

Ok, so I just found out about this book on the VCUG trauma subreddit, and omg. This is the book I’ve been looking for for years. This is the book i needed to exist when I was a child. I’m so so incredibly grateful to this person for calling out medical rape culture and writing about it. I’ve already preordered the book, and I’m super excited to get it. I’ll let you guys know when I start reading it. it will also probably be listed in my M-SA survivor resource list when I start publishing that as well. I can’t tell you guys how happy I am that this exists.

[justiceformsasurvivors]

I believe in rehabilitation. I believe people who used to be bad can become good. I believe that even the worst people in this world can redeem themselves with enough time and effort. However, victims are never obligated to forgive their abusers. No matter how much they change, abusers are never entitled to their victims forgiveness.

I’m not gonna pretend that hearing the person who either contributed to or actively participated in most of my sexual assaults say “I’ve forgiven myself for what happened to you, and you should forgive me eventually too” wasn’t a deeply hurtful and painful experience.

[justiceformsasurvivors]

I think the best affirmation I’ve taught myself as a medical rape victim is “that’s not my problem”. People like to act like you should be in charge of making decisions that would have prevented your own assault. a lot of “you were so sick tho!” “I would have made/did make the same decision for my child” “well what should they have done?”

that’s not my problem. None of that is my problem. It shouldn’t be MY responsibility, as a rape victim, to come up with solutions for my rape. It SHOULD be the responsibility of the medical and scientific communities to LISTEN to people like me, and just. think critically about the procedures they are using and recommending for patients.

it doesn’t matter if there was no other option. It doesn’t matter how sick I was. I shouldn’t have been raped. I shouldn’t have had my feelings dismissed and my symptoms ignored. No one should have to be raped. Ever. And no one should have to be told that they should have been.

[justiceformsasurvivors]

“you were such a strong kid, we used to have to get two or three adults to hold you down for bloodwork and stuff” hey mom that’s called an “adrenaline rush” and it happens when you’re body thinks you’re literally fucking dying.

[peacefield]

you can say no to gynecological exams btw.

[clowns-ofthesame-circus]

"This child cannot get this treatment because their parent said no" why is this normal to you!!! "This child, who is begging for treatment, cannot be given lifesaving medical care because their parent said no" is a wild statement!!!

Children should not need parental permission for medical care!! This doesn't just apply to life or death care*! A pregnant teen should be able to get an abortion without parental permission! Let teens go on birth control without parental permission! A kid should be able to see a doctor about a mental condition that is harming them and get it treated, even if their parent "doesn't believe it's real".

KIDS SHOULD BE ABLE TO HAVE MEDICAL AUTONOMY!!!!!

*it should be noted that the reasons I list after this can also be considered life or death, as a lack of access to them can be deadly.

[nadir--nadir]

I got raped by a doctor during a pelvic exam.

And then the nurse who saw him do it and pulled him off of me told me I better not be one of "those people" who "think they can do whatever they want with their genitals without consequences."

But god fucking forbid trans men think for a second we experience gender-based oppression.

God fucking forbid we think we face any oppression at all.

[dreamyintersexpuppy]

I literally had my pussy sewn shut I deserve k cup tits as compensation

[dreamyintersexpuppy]

right forgot most of my followers wouldn’t know this so

TW for medical trauma and child abuse

when an intersex baby is born and they have what’s called “ambiguous genitalia” aka they have an intersex condition which causes them to develop a mix of traits from both male and female genitals, doctors will just pick which one it’s closest to and without consent from the parents and obviously without consent from this living human person that just got born, perform a permanently scarring cosmetic surgery to force the baby’s genitals to align with societies perspective of either male or female genitals. these surgeries cause lifetime medical issues and sexual dysfunction and are only performed because our medical understanding of intersex people was written by a bunch of bigoted genicidal monsters. And yes it’s genocide they are removing our ability to conceive children in almost all cases of these surgeries, on top of generally erasing us from public view by hiding our own existence from everyone Including us from birth. these surgeries aren’t well known about because parents literally aren’t told (my mom only managed to figure it out cuz she overheard the doctor talking to a nurse about it when she came down off her painkillers) and scientific literature on it is not only hard to read it sounds like fucking nazi shit so obviously most medical establishments don’t want it in public view. I had one of these surgeries performed on me, I literally don’t even know exactly what it was cuz it’s not on my medical records anymore but I have the scarring and still have uterine tissue so in compensation for our current human society systematically mutilating my body and genociding people like me I think I deserve some banger bazhoingas i think that’s fair

[dreamyintersexpuppy]

I hope you don’t mind me adding this @werewo1fbutch I wanted to offer resources in my original post but I’m still looking for my own so this is really appreciated

[luesmainblog]

But Wait, There's More! everything i'm about to say is secondhand experience from an intersex friend i have known for years, who i will not be identifying for safety reasons. not only can they just completely remove it from your medical record, many hospitals are in practice of straight-up lying to the parents to excuse why they're taking the baby in for surgery. an extremely common excuse is saying the baby has a heart condition. if you or a loved one were taken into surgery for a heart condition at birth and the parents had no idea anything was wrong until said birth, i HIGHLY recommend inspecting your genitals for scarring and speaking with a gynecologist or urologist(depending on which you usually rely on) if something seems fishy. they can also mark you as the wrong sex on your birth certificate because of this, which can barr you from treatment you are legally entitled to! worse than that, getting that corrected is extremely difficult. even if the doctor who edited your birth was LITERALLY THROWN OUT FOR MEDICAL MALPRACTICE, the hospital - and state - will continue to refuse acknowledgement of the mistake and no correction will be made. this is a very notable issue in the UK, especially if you were wrongfully marked Male. another thing people are often unaware of is the rampant issue of medical CSA that occurs if an intersex child is decided Female. There's a medical procedure called Dilation where a hole is carefully stretched wider over a period of time for various reasons; on its own, this is not a bad thing, and can be necessary for several reasons. however, many "female" intersex children are put through Vaginal Dillation at a disturbingly young age. the idea is that because their vaginas are shallow or more closed off, it's better to stretch them for a few years so that they'll be able to have sex properly when they get married. the thing is, there is no wrong time to start dilation. if you start at 18, there is no drawback; in many cases it would actually be safer, and it only takes between 1 to 3 years to reach a desirable state, depending on the person. and yet, this is often done to children FAR below the age of consent, explicitly with the future marriage reasoning in mind. this is sometimes started at infancy. let's really think about that. a young girl who is too young to consent and may not get any say in the matter is taken to a doctor over and over again to have her vagina stretched out because it is expected that when she's older she'll marry a man and have sex with him. there is no non-creepy way to put that. there is no way to explain this that is not BLATANTLY sexual assault on a fucking child. and the worst part is, this is not legally recognized as SA or abuse in the majority of juristictions. and ALL of this should be given the extra consideration that a large chunk of intersex children begin to identify differently than they were assigned at birth, often BEFORE hitting puberty. intersex people make up roughly 2% of the world population by modern count. that's twice as many intersex people in the world as there are redheads.

i know this is long, and i'm not going to guilt anyone into reblogging; you're not a bad person for keeping upsetting stuff off of your dash. but if you're able, i do gently request that you reblog this. it's important that more people know this is happening. stay safe all, and i wish every intersex person loads of moneys and whatever body they wish for.

[leo-fie]

TIL it's apparently custom for medical personnel to lie about surgery on infants to the patients and their family. Do they lie on the internal hospital paperwork too? To the insurance? Is this not a conspiracy? I have so many questions.

[dykepuffs]

Different in different jurisdictions - In the UK it's the NHS, so often it's just they lie to the parents to 'save them the embarrassment' and it's described as something like correcting a cosmetic abnormality on your paperwork. We don't often see our own medical papers (No billing means no opportunity to read back over what happened) and if you move to a new hospital trust as an adult often your paediatric records are just left behind.

[justiceformsasurvivors]

People when someone says they feel sexually violated or traumatized by a medical procedure or medical professional

[traumasurvivors]

Your trauma is valid, even if you reacted in "bad" ways to the things they did to you. You did these things while you were being abused and backed into a corner. Reacting, even in "bad" ways does not make your trauma invalid, or make you deserving of it. You could never deserve it.

[justiceformsasurvivors]

me: I relate a lot to intersex people who have been through IGM and other related medical abuse because of my own medical-sexual trauma! I’m also queer and want to listen to different members of the community. I should get into intersex activism and learn about different variations!

*remembers worrying and obsessing over how my genitals never quite looked like the diagrams as a tween*

[justiceformsasurvivors]

ok after doing more research I don’t think I have an intersex variation, just a few peritypical variations that aren’t really talked about. Anyways I think sex ed classes and general education tools should teach more about diversity and intersex variations, both so intersex kids can learn about themselves and so that everyone can see themselves reflected in their education

[justiceformsasurvivors]

disregard last reblog. Inetrsex :D

[gonyadaldysgenesis]

hello all, i noticed a lack of resource online for people who are curious about intersex genital mutilation scarring later in life without having to dig through surgery gore photos. i threw together some diagrams here (content warning for discussion of IGM and drawn genitalia diagrams) of the major surgeries that are completed on intersex children. worth noting this is based purely on my own research, and i am not a doctor, and i of course am not running around doing these surgeries myself. im absolutely free to corrections or adding more diagrams if other surgeries are brought up.

[gonyadaldysgenesis]

i wanted everyone to know that this document has been entirely rewritten and redrawn! all previous drawings and documents have been archived and are still accessible, but the document is now in an easier to consume PDF!