The Unforgivable Rapes

Some few weeks into the re-toilet training ordeal I reached the point where I recover enough function that I could signal my Mother that it was time for me to go soon enough that she could get me to the training potty without accident. I really don't believe that my Mother's training had anything to do with it, I just improved control naturally. If anything her efforts were a distracting sideshow.

But she was convinced that her meanness and pointless punishments had motivated me. Now that I was doing better she decided, in her words at the time, to "use a little carrot with the stick."

My Mother's idea of the carrot was to come up with a new way of raping me. She actually asked me to tell her how I liked it best.

Mind you, I wasn't given the option of not being raped. "Do you like it more when I do this with my fingers, or this?" She went so far as to say, "Why did you cry just then? I didn't hurt you! What are you crying about?" and then, when the answer back was, "it's gone on too long," she actually stopped. She said, "I understand, honey, it's better when it comes in smaller portions, isn't it?"

My Mother used what she learned to offer rape-lite as rewards for good toilet performances.

It's very hard for me to explain to people why the violent rapes were the easiest to deal with emotionally when all this came up in therapy years later, and the rape-lite has been the hardest.

The soft and gentle anal violation that even at times felt good created a jumble of mixed feelings. There was still the feeling of being violated. It was still not possible to say no. There was still the feeling of humiliation, of being subjugated and having my will and my needs made insignificant. But there was also sexual arousal and physical sexual feelings which gave rise to incestual feelings and shaming sexual displays. All those feelings plus confusion about whether my Mother really WAS doing me a favor (isn't toilet training nurturing?) and maybe this really IS how I'm supposed to be loved, jumbled together, created a labyrinth of contradictory emotions that overwhelmed me.

I was 4 YEARS OLD! 4 year olds shouldn't have to find their way through that kind of tangle!

It's hard enough for forty and fifty year olds. After twenty plus years of therapy, the rape-lite still hurts the most. I could have forgiven the rest.