Trauma often messes with one’s ability to say “no”.
You either consciously or subconsciously think, “I don’t want to hurt this person’s feelings” or “If I say no, then they’ll hurt me” or “It won’t really be that bad” or “I can handle this” or “I need to do this to prove myself” or “I deserve this”, or you forget that “no” is even an option.
It’s still not your fault if you didn’t say “no”, even if you think maybe you could have. It’s still not your fault. You didn’t deserve what happened to you and you didn’t bring it upon yourself. It was never your fault.
Consistent experiences of boundary violations can also effect your ability to say no. Like getting misgendered all day and being unable to safely address it. Experiencing consistent racism microagressions and not being able to safely address is. Experiencing sexual harrassment in the workplace. Women, trans people, people of color, learn that ‘no’ is rude, unacceptable, dangerous.
If ‘no’ is not an option during everyday boundary violations and if the feeling of always having your boundaries violated is the backdrop of your emotional life, it becomes difficult to say ‘no’ at all, or to acknowledge that a significantly more serious boundary violations took place.
If you didn’t say ‘no’ or if you said ‘yes’ but had an experience you did not want or came away feeling violated, that is real. You are allowed to say that your boundaries were violated, because they were. You are allowed to call that experience non-consensual, because it was.
QueerAnarchism 