An open letter in response to the journalist's suggestions that Lady Gaga isn’t suffering after her assault, by the US WH eds
Dear Piers Morgan,
We get it: mansplaining is kind of your schtick. Already this year you questioned Jennifer Aniston’s thoughts on tabloid culture and body image. Then you ‘educated’ Beyoncé on why her “playing the race card” in Lemonade “smacks of shameless exploitation”.
With that track record, we shouldn’t have been surprised that you felt it necessary to school Lady Gaga on the appropriate response to sexual assault. The singer recently and bravely spoke about how being raped 20 years ago caused her post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
that she still deals with today. Instead of responding with empathy and
humanity – or not responding at all, because, really, what business is
it of yours? – you instead said “only soldiers returning from
battlefields” can develop PTSD and “it angers me when celebrities start
claiming ‘PTSD’ about everything to promote themselves”.
Worse, you suggested Gaga’s rape never even happened, tweeting that she and Madonna “have both made ALLEGATIONS of rape many years after the event. No police complaint, no charges, no court case”.
This line of thinking is ignorant – and sadly, rampant. Many
victims suffer from PTSD decades after their rapes. Some points
of enlightenment we’d like to share:
Rape doesn’t only happen when a woman marches down to the
police station to report it. Not all sexual assaults are reported to
police. A woman who has just been brutalised and violated in the most
devastatingly intimate way may feel embarrassed or fear she won’t be
believed. She might blame herself for not being able to stop the attack.
Or she just might realise that she lives in a society where victims of
rape are told their choice to wear a short skirt or have a few drinks
means they deserve to be raped.
Sexual assault and the aftermath are incredibly scarring and
often lead to PTSD. Research shows that rape survivors often have more
severe PTSD, and a harder time overcoming it, than war veterans. While
between 10 and 20 percent of war vets develop the disorder, about 70
percent of sexual assault victims experience moderate or severe
distress, a larger percentage than for any other violent crime.
Acknowledging what is a very real phenomenon among those
who’ve been sexually assaulted doesn’t discount the severity of what
members of the military have been through in any way. More should be
done to help and support all PTSD suffers, whether their distress stems
from a war fought on foreign soil or one waged on their own body.
Far from “promoting” herself, Gaga is shattering the stigma
of both rape and mental illness. Her words and actions may give hope to
other women who feel lost, alone and silenced by their sexual assaults
and PTSD.
Following your comments on Twitter, Gaga agreed to sit down
and discuss these issues with you in an interview. We hope you listen.
Signed,
Women’s Health
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