When faced with predators, many species, including humans, freeze or play dead.
During sexual assaults, if victims don't scream, fight, or try to flee, police may doubt they've been raped.The "fight or flight" response to threats needs to be updated to "fight, flight, or freeze.". If both partners acquiesce to the sex, it’s consensual. If not, it’s rape.
They also report feeling re-abused when family and friends challenged them saying, “What? You didn't scream? You didn’t fight back or run?” Humans also experience tonic immobility. One study at Boston City Hospital analyzed 92 women who had been sexually assaulted. One-third of them said they froze, went limp, or dissociated—that is, their minds disconnected from what was happening. Several studies of sexual assault show that only a minority of victims scream, fight, or flee.
Jim Hopper, a clinical psychologist who teaches at Harvard Medical School, says that in the context of rape cases, the phrase fight-or-flight is harmful in two ways. Most sexual assault victims don’t fight or flee. And legal and cultural assumptions that someone threatened with rape must fight or flee leave those who freeze feeling confused about their behavior, ashamed of themselves, blaming themselves for the assault, and often questioning their sanity.
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