Aurora's Blog

Goodness, gracious I have tried to edit this post so many times.

Add this, cut this. Add this, cut this. What’s helpful? What’s prudent? What’s rambling? What’s correct?

There are so very many stereotypes about women and sexual assault that it became easy to let this post get way out of hand and filled with tangents.

So, I’m gonna try to see if I can say what I’m trying to say…

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Also, I want to state two things first:
1) I talk about some old ideas I had about assault. The latent sexism I had was awful. And it may be upsetting and triggering. I am only talking about it to show growth, and a new understanding. And I’m sorry about things I was unaware of at the time, and my dumbness sometimes in life.

2) I talk pretty darn super openly about parts of my sex life in here. If you don’t want to read that,  then please don’t, and hopefully I’ll see you tomorrow!

Anyway (finally! (eesh, talk about trying not to tangent!)) – to the post at hand!

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I’m an idiot. I believed so many stereotypes about sexual assault… and that made me feel like Iiiiiiiiiii couldn’t be assaulted

I feel like it was so easy to kind of latently go along with many of the falsehoods of sexual assault.

Granted, I totally believed that women who changed their minds after originally wanting sex, and then let that be known to the men who continued anyway – I believed (and still do) that those women were sexually assaulted… I believed (and still do) that even if that happened with a woman’s intimate partner, she was assaulted.

However, I feel like I sometimes also passively believed that false narrative about women who changed their minds…

Was she being a “tease”? Being a “prude”? Playing a “malicious game”?  I know the answer is no. I know you never blame the victim…

But when people used to ask those questions, I sometimes let curious thoughts seep in. I sometimes silently asked those victim-blaming questions. (e.g. …Was she just playing with him?)

(I don’t ask those questions anymore. So, you can be mad at old me. I’m mad at her too. But please know my outlook has changed and I’m sorry. Anyway, getting back to the post at hand…)

There were other narratives too… “Was she a young little innocent farm girl? Someone who thought she was ready but now can’t haaaaaaaandle it because [suuuuuuuuuper condescending voice] little baby can’t handle fun adult time anymore… Awwww, is it not speeeeeeecial enough for you?”

Those are kind of the narratives I feel like I heard – that really the “only times” a woman would end up in an assault situation with a guy she knows is if she “led him on,” and was using sex almost like a “mean game.”
Ooooor… if she “thought she was ready,” but ultimately was “too weak” or whatever…

But I would never be “that girl.” Right? I’m such a “cool chick.” Sex doesn’t have to be “special” for me. I’d never have “drama,” now would I?

I was never intentionally victim-blaming. But I absolutely had thoughts of “that could never happen to me, because I’ll do it ‘right’.” I’ll never change my mind. I’ll always be horny for a man I’m with… etc….

It never even dawned on me for even a millisecond that a woman would want to stop sex because the man was physically hurting her, or because she ended up in a physical place where she felt unsafe.

Or because a man started treating her differently throughout the night – that maybe, just maybe, his attitude/body language/verbal language/anything about the way he’s interacting with her could change during the night… That maybe it’s not all her attitude just randomly out of nowhere.

He could turn mean or violent – emotionally or physically abusive, etc., He could ignore any concerns she has, making her feel so wildly uncomfortable that she could no longer feel an ounce of joy by having that person inside of her.

[*Silly lightbulb*]
Sexual assaults maaaaybe are not just women who were like, “Sure! Let’s have sex!” and then changed their mind for sport when they’re naked.

Circumstances can change from when she says yes, to when something happens… Well gee, whaddya know?

And by the way, for the record, there are obviously like a million more (spoiler alert: an infinite number more) legitimate reasons (since all reasons are legit), as to why a woman would want to stop the moving train of sex, even if she had wanted to have sex, at first….

And I know I literally just talked yesterday about the ridiculousness of judging a woman’s no – like, “well, is this a ‘legitimate’ no?” (Because they are all legitimate.) But even though it’s crazy, and very upsetting, it was a little bit ingrained inside me too!

I lived for my reputation as a “cool chick” – as someone who’s almost always down for sex with her friends (or maybe even that reeeally cute stranger who’s been flirting with her tonight).

I’m pretty sure I was thought of (by some) as “easy.” And I wasn’t ashamed. I wore it like a badge of honor. “That’s right. I’m sexy-ish and super horny. What of it? Come at me! [in a safe, respectful way ;)].”

I’ve always been a girl who’s (in person) talking about sex super openly without any games. (I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard, “Wow, you are so blunt about this stuff. It’s great; I love it!” (or some variation of that).)

And even [blegh, blegh, blegh, I hate mentioning relationships on this blog, but anyway, it’s relevant…] when I committed to one person for a while, because he asked me to, and I love(d?) him, I still tried to be a “cool chick” for him. I took it as almost a challenge to be ready whenever he was.

I grew up on sitcoms. I’ve seen the tropes of the poor husband not getting enough sex. I wanted to make sure that a man never complained about me in that way… Because (of what’s been ingrained in me) it would make me feel very inadequate if he did. (Not that I’m saying a woman in general would be inadequate. I’m saying I would feel that way whether that’s “right” or not.) Plus, I love(d) sex. So, it felt pretty darn easy to always want to be with whoever I was with…

Over the course of years (on and off), I never once told that man I didn’t want to… I was soooo hot for him (and I always wanted to).

Random small (slightly dirty) example of a funny time with him: One time, we were on his couch, and I was telling him how horny I was for him, and I was telling him softly, “babe… My [you know what’s] wet.” And he said, so flatly, “I know.” (His delivery makes me laugh even now.) And I said, “How could you possibly know right now? You can’t even feel it from where you’re sitting.” And he said (lovingly and in a fun way), “Because, Aurora. It literally always is. You are always horny. You are the horniest person I know.”

And I found that to be such a freaking compliment; I was ready to get a sash made. Look at me! I’ll never be a sitcom trope. I’m the horniest person he knows.

I’ve worked for Playboy. I’ve worked as a phone sex girl. I have a whole drawer full of costumes. I love(d) sex! I’m into it.

And I’m competitive as all get out and I will do my best – if you want me – to have sex with you until you tap out. I’m in it to win it, baby!

So how could someone like me possibly be sexually assaulted? (Right?)

It just used to feel like, “Well, the “cool chick” doesn’t get assaulted, because, you know, I’m too busy being cool…and always being horny… and willing to have no-strings-attached sex with my buddies when I’m not in a relationship (which is most of the time, since I don’t to a lot of “real relationships” or whatever).

“I could be assaulted by a complete stranger on the street, I guess,” I thought. (And I did worry about that a little bit… It was a very, very tiny part of why I’ve been so militant about some constant form of birth control for myself – so even if I were raped by a strange man, at least I’d be protected from that.)

“But barring that whole scary strange man on the street thing, I’ll never not want to have sex if I’m alone with a man in his room. If I am willingly privately around a buddy, or a new cutie or whatever, I’m sure I’m into it… Therefore, it could never happen to me.”

And I know there’s like a million things wrong with that thought…

For one (of a trillion things) I could’ve ended up alone with someone on accident when a party cleared out. It is possible to be alone with a man (even one you know) without intentionally planning it… (Also, it shouldn’t be assumed that anytime a girl is alone with a man it’s for sex.) Oh goodness…

Aaaanyway, as we’ve been establishing, I was wrong. So, so, so, so, so, so, so, so very unbelievably wrong.

It can happen to anyone.

Assault is not the byproduct of “overly-sensitive” or “confused” women… Assault is a criminal act perpetrated against women who deserve respect. (You know… all women).

(I bolded that because this post is really long and I think that’s the most important sentence (and the point I’m trying to make), because before it happened to me, even as a woman, I don’t think my apparently pea brain fully understood.)

[Side note: Of course assault is perpetrated against men as well, I do not ever mean to leave them out of this problem… This is just statistically an overwhelmingly female-victim problem, and this post is sort of how society/stereotypes view women victims. But I don’t mean to exclude men. My heart is of course with any person this happened to (and the charities I’m running for help male victims as well).]

And I do wonder how in the world – how, and/or why – I could have even a part of my brain that kind of sees the side of the victim-blamers…

I mean, I do maybe see how, kind of…

You know. Growing up in the patriarchy. (Gah! I know, as soon as you say patriarchy a lot of people turn off their ears, but please hear me out…) Having a bunch of usually (in these cases) misplaced empathy (including for people who coooooould’ve potentially maaaaaybe perhaps been falsely accused, ’cause you know, I don’t know… blah blah blah blah). All that jazz.

(I mean, some people are falsely accused, but not as many as too many people would have you believe…) (Basically, it doesn’t seem responsible to let all your empathy immediately lie with the accused perpetrator. At the veeeeery least, you should give both people empathy, which I think as a society, we often don’t do…)

As you can see, this is where I could try to say more and tangent even more, but I think I got the main point across – that I think the narrative about how a situation goes down, where a person gets assaulted by a man they know, because “they screwed something up,” is wrong. (Or at least, the narratives I felt I always heard seem to be probably pretty super wrong, for the most part.)

And I am so so so so so so sorry that it took me until it happened to me to understand (and straighten out my view). It feels selfish, and wrong, and like I had blinders on. And I’m truly sorry I didn’t understand the issue. I’m working hard to understand it now (even though I understand it’s pretty late to do so; I’m sorry).

[To see all the posts from this series, you can go to the sexual assault page.]