Abstract

At age 23 I began acknowledging and healing from my experiences with sexual trauma. Although my trauma occurred from ages twelve to eighteen, my doubt and preconceived notions about what abuse was kept me from believing that I deserved help. Due to an incessant belief that abuse looked one particular way, I found ways to minimize and frame my experiences as "not abuse". Fueled by encouragement from my therapist and my interest in Communication research, I began to wonder how others who experience shame and doubt surrounding sexual abuse frame their experiences. To better understand, I conducted a critical discourse analysis of a Reddit community created for and by those who've experienced sexual trauma. Using social constructionism and framing as a lens, I focused on posts within the r/sexualassault community with the flair "Was This Sexual Assault". Alongside the analysis, I offer my experiences as an abused child and healing adult as a form of autoethnography. The aim of this study is to listen to others' stories, identify how the framing of experiences can lead to doubt, and dispel the myth that only certain experiences "count'' or are "worthy" of being heard. Ending this process of deciding whether you deserve help would allow people to seek assistance earlier. Further it may help reduce the shame and self-blame surrounding many experiences of sexual trauma - including my own. Through my analysis, I identified several themes which led the poster to doubt their experience, including framing their abusers as "not how a perpetrator should act", framing their reactions during and after the assault as "not how a victim should react", and internalizing how others (family, the perpetrator, etc) frame their story.

Notes

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Graduation Date

2022

Semester

Fall

Advisor

Hastings, Sally

Degree

Master of Arts (M.A.)

College

College of Sciences

Department

Nicholson School of Communication and Media

Degree Program

Communication

Format

application/pdf

Identifier

CFE0009372; DP0027095

URL

https://purls.library.ucf.edu/go/DP0027095

Language

English

Release Date

December 2022

Length of Campus-only Access

None

Access Status

Masters Thesis (Open Access)

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Included in

Communication Commons

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