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No one expects to come to college and be the 1 out of 4 female students to be sexually assaulted. Yes, you hear this statistic commonly throughout your college experience. But I, like most people, never thought that I would be that 1 in 4. However, as I have spent more time in college, and I have witnessed many of my friends and classmates become empowered through sharing their experiences with sexual assault, it’s harder and harder to deny that this statistic existsts.
In my mind, the line between rape and consensual sex is very clear. However, many of my peers seem to create in their minds a kind of fuzzy middle ground between what is consensual sex and what is not. This confusion that I think many of my friends have was clearly illustrated by an experience I had in high school when one of my best friends got drunk one night and in her own words, “went farther than I would have gone with him if I were sober”. She never defined her experience as sexual assault and she brushed off the incident as if it was no big deal. However, after going through pretty much this exact same experience in college, I realize the gravity of these incidents and that they absolutely cannot be taken lightly.
I feel comfortable enough that if I ever needed to, I could report any sexual assault to the University of Denver. Yet the morning after, as I frantically sped-walked home never wanting to see this guy’s face again, reporting that I had been taken advantage of sexually—even in the slightest—didn’t cross my mind. Neither did it cross my mind that the next few times I would see him in the following weeks, would result in immediate panic attacks, sudden sobbing and bolting from friends’ apartments, parties, and fat shack.
The way that I reacted to seeing him surprised me. I’m tough. I hate crying in front of people — I think it shows weakness. However, even though I get uncomfortable in emotional or confrontational settings, if I have a problem with you, I will say so. But, for some reason, I just couldn’t muster up the strength to tell the guy that had taken advantage of me that he had done something wrong, however clearly at fault he was in my mind.
I think the largest barrier holding me back from reporting to my school administration or standing up to him was the fuzzy middle ground of what constitutes consent in my college culture. I knew that if someone had sex with you, and you explicitly said no, it was considered rape. I knew that no one could touch you if you didn’t tell them it was ok. But, what if you used to date this person? What if you were so drunk, you don’t even remember where you went that night, or how the two of you met up, or if you tried to tell him no? All of these questions held me back from what I saw as giving this guy what he deserved.
I’m blessed to have a strong support network of friends, and eventually, I was able to tell them what happened to me and was able to realize that I was in no way responsible for what happened. That it didn’t matter if I was fucked up. I have plenty of guy friends that gladly walk not-so-sober girls home and would never take advantage of someone too drunk to give consent. Just because I was drunk, didn’t mean I was asking for it. Just because we had dated before, didn’t mean it was ok to assume I would want to go home with him. I didn’t ask for this to happen to me. I also didn’t ask for him to spam my phone the whole 2 weeks leading up to that night with text messages and phones calls saying he “just wanted to talk” at 3 am.
I was even eventually able to stand up to him when he approached me at a sporting event and asked how I had been doing and why he hadn’t seen me around lately. I was able, thanks to the support of my friends, to look him in the eyes and tell him to never touch me or talk to me again. I know this isn’t justice in the sense that he isn’t getting in trouble with the school or the law. Yet in that one moment, I felt more confident than I have ever felt before. I was able to come from a point where the mere sight of him threw me into a full-fledge mental breakdown to being able to confidently tell him what to do and how I felt. I also no longer let him affect my life. There was a reason he hadn’t seen me in a while. I strategically avoided him for months, not going to parties where I knew he’d be, avoiding his favorite bar, and even avoiding mutual friends’ apartments who I hadn’t told what happened. I spent more time worried I was going to bump into him for a brief second than trying to care for myself. Now, I stand my ground when I see him on campus.
As time creates distance between me and the dreadful night and subsequent months to follow, I embrace what happened to me as part of my identity. It has made me more confident and less concerned about hurting boys’ feelings when I don’t feel completely comfortable being with them. It has also fostered within me a deep sense of respect for all the other “one in four” women who are survivors of sexual assault because I now understand why so many of them never report it and how hard it is to do so. And, I more clearly realize the significance of the few who are able to come forward and share their experience as I have been able to do. We must put a face to the “one in four.” The only way to end the epidemic of sexual assault on college campuses is to create dialogue. We must explore the fuzzy middle ground of consent that I found myself in. We must foster a community in which women and men that have been sexually assaulted can feel comfortable coming forward. We must remove the stigma of shame and embarrassment that surrounds sexual assault survivors. I am sharing my story to let other survivors know that they are not alone. I am sharing my story so that someone might see a girl in the same situation that I was in—incoherently taken home from a bar with a boy—and do something so that she doesn’t immediately become scared of the world around her, as I did.