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Comment by mirimir | Hacker News Reader

OK, I've been robbed at gunpoint. Also arrested at gunpoint. And a guy with a knife threatened to rape me, but didn't.

The first two left me very traumatized. The third, not so much. True, I would very likely have been traumatized, if he'd actually raped me.

Still, sex isn't the major issue for me. It's being powerless. But of course, I'm a guy. So maybe I'm just incapable of truly empathizing.

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Rape often causes feelings of dirtiness, worthlessness, etc that other forms of powerlessness usually don't.

I guess.

Many years ago, an ex girlfriend got back in touch, and wanted sex. Just once, it turned out. Then, I was diagnosed with Chlamydia and HSV. And later, I hear from mutual friends that she was bragging about infecting me.

Anyway, that I feel dirty about. Because I will have HSV for the rest of my life. Maybe that was rape, but in a devious way. And I get that forced risk of disease is part of the trauma about rape.

I don't know about whatever legal jurisdiction you're in, but in Canada that would be an open and shut aggravated sexual assault case. People have gone to jail for failing to disclose that they have an STD, on the basis that you're not really consenting if they leave out an important detail like that; to deliberately infect someone is far beyond that.

Yes, I'm sure that it's illegal now, everywhere sane. But this was a long time ago.

Ah, ok. I tend to assume that anything people talk about on HN is fairly recent, since most people on HN were born fairly recently...

Really? I fall into the assumption that most people are near my age... and I was not born too recently.

True enough, but there's a tail.

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