Is there a way to automatically not get connected to a certain segment of 7Cups listener?
I was sexually assaulted recently and I currently work in a stressful all-male work environment in a generally gaycist and patriarchal rednecked culture. I love my job and do my best - I try to just be polite around these men and use humour to circumnavigate the sometimes not-so-microaggressions. Things are getting better but sometimes I need to vent 'anonymously' here - and connecting with certain subset of individuals, especially cis/hetero males who are blindly religious and patronizing towards women often results in my retraumatization.
Also, I keep getting connected to men from strict religious cultures who will use 7cups as a dating site and they often do not follow what is being taught in their listener training. They would ask for a/s/l and ask if I'm on certain social media sites. I would block them but this means I have wasted another 15 minutes here instead of just connecting to a normal listener instead of a clickfarm troll. 9 out of 10 listeners that I connect with here are either gaycist, sexist, or condescending when they come from these traditional religious cultures. However, an older female listener from more progressive nations will be great, 9 out of 10 times, unless they are a fake listeners (sometimes you can quickly know from their sexy avatars wearing racy outfits).
As I am both physically and emotionally sick now, I am very poor and cannot afford therapy here. I do use the guides and other self-help resources but I do appreciate it when I get to connect to any normal listener who speaks English (I am Asian myself, but I speak English - I get listeners here who would spam me in their own mother tongue when I have never once indicated that I am able to converse in that language). It is traumatizing when I keep getting connected with pedo guys here. Their disrespectful and condescending advice (yes they are trolls - they don't listen, they just tell you that you're wrong or right for doing this or that) only makes me want to avoid people who are like them since people who are like them will act the same way 99% of the time. This means I will only get 1 average/normal listener for every 100 that I connect with from these gender/country/ combination, especially if they have a certain kind of avatar (mostly images that would into apps like Tinder, maybe Grindr.)
As such, please, please, please let me connect only to females or NON cis/hetero males from progressive cultures here. OR at least - the ability to indicate that I don't want to get connected to those who are anti-LGBT or have sick and non-progressive religious and moral standpoints. This would also mean that the experience would be a better one for everyone - they don't want to be connected to a gay, non-conforming individual and I don't want to be connected to gaycist, religious men who ask me for my mobile number - even if they are so called interns here with a medical license. Said person was from Egypt and seemed very genuine - until he cyberflashed me and then started stalking me here on 7cups using many different usernames.
As such, please allow for those suffering from PTSD and complex trauma from being retraumatized. 7Cups used to be a safe place. I hope it will be one again. Cheers.
Tl;Dr : I was recently sexually assaulted physically and the way the curse of revictimisation goes, I am also being stalked by a 7Cups male listener who generally hates gay people. Please let me talk only to female listeners from progressive nations. If they are not bots or sock puppets, they are usually great listeners who follow the 7cups guidelines closely. Thanks!
@AverageIdea5798 You can use our Browse Listeners page to do this. Click on More Filters (top right) and specify country and gender. Look for a listener who has a Chat Now button. You can also read their reviews as a further check.
Charlie
@AverageIdea5798
I realize that I posted this in the 50 and over forum instead of the general discussion forum. Is there a way an admin here can move this thread? Also, I am not 50 and over but I joined this forum since these pedoguy listeners will often just block me if i tell them I am 50 years old. They only want to connect to young females. And then install spyware and stalkerware so they can listen to my conversation lol. Ah 7cups today.
@AverageIdea5798
I am so sorry but the harrassment is really making me quite ill. Plus, he can intercept a conversation here as well so just knowing that he would have to force himself to present as a progressive female is reassuring.
@soulsings : Any ideas? Thanks.
@AverageIdea5798 I am not on the safety team, but what I would do is EMAIL not pm community@7cups.com
and ask to have your name changed.
Also do not give out details of your trauma until you establish trust with the listener.
If you have a problem with a listener report it immediately by EMAIL not pm to
community@7cups.com or do a review of the listener if possible on the review form.
Browse for listeners with Verified listeners can often help with the difficulty of listeners that are not well versed in being a listener.
Another thing you can try is non reaction. If something traumatic happens stop and connect with your breathing. Connect with what you hear and sense in your environment until you get calm. If you think it is worth chatting more than continue. If that is not possible then do not get into a disagreement with listener.
For reference : On the subjugation of women in Muslim cultures ->
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/19/opinion/muslim-women-sexism-violence.html
As a non-conforming person born to and still living and working with men from this culture, it can be very traumatizing especially if you have no resources to leave the situation.
@AverageIdea5798
//
As a feminist of Egyptian and Muslim descent, my lifes work has been informed by the belief that religion and culture must never be used to justify the subjugation of women. I can write about my culture and religion because I am a product of both. Even when Im accused of giving ammunition to the Islamophobic right, in the struggle between community and women I always choose the women. It is exhausting that Muslim womens voices and our bodies are reduced to proxy battlefields by the demonizers and defenders of Muslim men. Neither side cares about women. They are concerned only with one another.
Earlier this year, a Muslim man — a stranger — emailed to chastise me for my views on sex, which he labeled un-Islamic. He hid behind the phrase, Dear Sister, I say these things with greatest certitude of your Islam. So I asked fellow Muslim women on Twitter to use the hashtag #DearSister to share their experience of being lectured to and reprimanded by Muslim men. //
Note to Self and Additional Reference for Context
->
https://quillette.com/2019/05/07/feminisms-blind-spot-the-abuse-of-women-by-non-white-men-particularly-muslims/
// The effect of this wilful blindness is that the victims of violence are abandoned. Given that most abuse takes place within racial groups, when the Left refuses to recognise the crimes of Muslim men it also refuses to recognise the victimisation of Muslim women. Think of the funding, publicity, and diplomatic pressure that could be brought to bear on the oppressors of women in the Muslim world if only there was the political will. But lending support to such an effort would be considered by many on the Left to be an act of neo-colonialism, even outright racism. //
p/s : As a person who was coerced into wearing the hijab years back and then finally grew a pair and 'unveiled' - at a great social cost; the act was shunned by the extended family - I am still grateful that the situation where I am is not so bad that there are honor killings or that I am forced to wear veils covering my face that look like letter boxes or that I would eventually die by setting myself on fire or risk being punished for watching a football match at the stadium. But the emotional costs are high just interacting with these men at work.
I have not met one single truly progressive cis/hetero Muslim man in my life in person before - one who would accept me as I am and without agendas like wanting me to date them or be their second wife or work for them on some project etc. It is unfortunate. And the gay ones here often have to lie even to themselves and of course especially in public and with their families. Even right now in 2019. The more popular and successful Muslim gay celebrities who are role models to the community (except for the very progressive, very young ones who gets shunned by the religious community) often do not have the courage to say publicly that, Yes, I am Muslim and I support the LGBT community.
@AverageIdea5798
Hi there,I am very sorry for what happened to you you don't deserve that.
Also I've read each letter you wrote here and I would like to apologise about any bad experience you have met here also I want to apologise about the people acted wrong under the flag of Islam
And I want to apologise about the look of Egyptians (they are not the same there is a good people)
It's an honor to me if we could connect here to talk about what bothering you and I would like to help you as much as I can
@Yahya56
Thank you for your attempt but as of now, after the series of sexual assaults and being blamed for it by men that I know (my father, my uncles, just men from my religious culture in general) I have no intention of interacting with any cis/hetero male at all if I can until certain issues get resolved. If you're a gay Muslim man then maybe it's okay - I feel less threatened by gentle, patient, non-Asian men who won't be capable of sexually assaulting me or berating me for not conforming to the culture. But then again, I often feel like vomiting and get hives around attractive, manly men like my dad or bitchy, sissy ones like my stalkers if I don't just numb myself around them. It's funny to think that my dad is/was also a very handsome man - he looks like a Muslim Jeffrey Epstein. Best to minimise contact and keep things cordial. Sorry.
Even esteemed men who are my childhood heroes and father figures like the current Dalai Lama, Gandhi, playwright Aaron Sorkin & tv powerhouse Charlie Rose, and then the seating Pope have disappointed terribly when their condescending attitudes towards women are uncovered. I am lucky that Isaac Newton and Richard Feynman are both very dead so no one can suddenly run a revisionist attack campaign about how they were really closet pedo guys.
I guess I need a women-only safe space for now, physically and emotionally. Thanks again.
This explanation of my trauma trigger was just posted in a trauma thread but I think it belongs here to so I'm gonna do a copypasta.
//
Hello, how is everyone here doing? Not sure if I'm necroposting but here goes.
Recently I was sexually assaulted and I have mostly numbed myself to the incident until an even more recent online harrassment (stalking) situation escalated - funnily enough on 7Cups chat. I live in a police state and we don't really have privacy here - it is a tradeoff for relative safety so yes, the person who harmed me physically was caught. This is a first for me to feel that there is justice since a bunch of things also happened when I was a child and in my youth, and later with an NPD lover who caused my first broken metatarsal.
Due to the backward religious family culture I'm in, though, the victims get blamed for being assaulted and the abusers are excused for doing what boys do. My own parents were and still are especially toxic to me as they blamed me and the way I dress, etc. I am a bit of a tomboy and usually find myself having interest in things that women from my generation don't really care about so most of the time I find myself as being one of the guys. Even my workplaces are mostly all-male work environments. I bro-zone all of them quickly and insist that hey, I am a boy too to ensure that no one gets too close me. Men were the ones who assaulted me, but maybe if I am a man, just like them, I would be invisible and not get hurt. The women closest to me were the ones who made me feel ashamed for having a body so they can't be trusted either. My mom and aunts (and even this particularly religious teacher I had in my secular high school) used to berate and take jibes at me for not covering it all up, and wearing a bra like other women (I get gender dysphoria at times, so I hate all these reminders of misplaced body parts.) Some counsellors and doctors here can be condescending and at the same time they can't really guarantee privacy and confidentiality especially if one speak publicly about how the cultural system is not working for them - as I mentioned, panopticonian police state - so I am very selective about the people I can truly trust.
And as such adult people from my ethnic and national culture, and all those men who have made explicitly expressed unwanted sexual advances or worse, who have actually physically assaulted me or even disrespected themselves by flashing and cyberflashing, etc, become my trigger. These people with these likenesses and these behavious and mannerisms have traumatized me before and I have developed a form of allergy around the especially backwardly conservative ones - unless of course I protect myself with the gloves and mask of feigned interest and polite niceties, which kills me just a little bit more inside with each interaction, because, holy giddens! this feels like self-racism and unhelpful bias to my progressive sensibilities.
However, we have to come back to this very basic biological premise of the self-protecting human organism. My father once told me about a serious bout of food poisoning that he had when eating shellfish he had collected with his friends from a quite polluted beach. Dad grew up very, very, poor and food was scarce so they would eat everything the family could salvage - even food from the trash of 'white people'. My late grandfather was a garbage collector. As such, shellfish, even ones from not so pristine beaches, were a delicacy. And oh boy did he enjoy those - until the wretching and vomitting and diarrhea that comes after. It was a serious one but they couldn't afford to go for the standard western medical treatment with an IV drip and so on and so forth so he ended up in bed for days on end with traditional and over the counter medicine. Some time later, his grandmother cooked a shellfish dish that he liked but instead of excitement, his immediate reaction was that of revulsion. We all have a simple, little Pavlov dog somewhere in the primitive parts of our human brain, and I know my complexly traumatized one can't deal with further exposure to certain people who have abused and rendered me powerless and in extreme physical and emotional pain throughout my life.
Maybe one day I will overcome it, but as of now due to unavoidable life circumstances, I am back to living in the same situation and culture and having to interact and still being harmed by some of the same people who had abused me, so there is no place of healing and repair for me now, just a kind of quiet surrender. Shikata ga nai. If I don't get out of this situation I don't know how much longer I can survive here.
//
