Hi dxm_dxm,
what exactly are you referring to by this? I guess it’s not about homelessness, so your post probably belongs somewhat in between this thread and the one where @Aminah has moved it away from. I’ll answer you here now.
Have you really never heard of people encountering violence in a sexualised context? I can’t imagine that there is a country in the world where this never happens. If you really didn’t have anything to do with this and never heard about it you are probably very lucky!
Even if it is more common for women and girls to encounter this kind of thing it also happens to men and boys. When someone experiences violence in a sexualised form it is very natural that they feel bad about their body, and bad about having this specific type of a body, female or male.
The main reason why we don’t hear more about these things is that usually the ones who experience it don’t talk about it - particularly because they feel ashamed! Those who do these things, on the other hand, do often not feel ashamed, although they are the ones who would have more reason to do so.
Just to give you a little illustration of what I am talking about, a story I have been told:
A woman is sitting in a bus on the window seat, and next to her sits a man. At some point she notices that he puts his hand on her knee which is clearly a sexual assault. And most women in that situation - including me, when only hearing the story - would react with a feeling of shame, they would try to move away from him as far as possible and wish to disappear in the corner next to the window - and especially they would hope that nobody sees it!
This woman also had this reaction first, but then she decided to do something different and acted very courageously!
She took that man’s hand and lifted it up over her head with her hand and said loudly so that everyone in the bus could hear it: “I’ve found this hand on my knee; does anybody have an idea to whom it belongs?”
Then the shame was with the person who it rightly belonged to!
But what I am telling here is probably not worth half as much as what @Aoife was sharing in her own thread - this deeply moving story about transcending her difficult experience and arriving at this deep sense of forgiveness and peace and so much metta! Why should this not be genuine?
If we let ourselves be inspired by these qualities and open our hearts to them we all can learn so much from this!