The following article deals with sexual assault I have experienced. Please do not read if this is a subject you do not wish to engage with for any reason.
I think I was fifteen the first time I experienced sexual assault though I wouldn’t have categorized it as that at the time. Thankfully, I’ve never been the recipient of a violent sexual assault but I think we can safely say that a grown man exposing himself to a teenager in a gym locker room is most certainly that. There were of course a lot of mixed emotions around the experience: fear, shame, and even a bit of excitement — I don’t think I need to say more than I was closeted fifteen year old in 2003 to get where the excitement came from.
It probably wasn’t until years later when I explained one of these gym locker room instances to a friend who told me: “I’m sorry that happened to you,” I realized that it was in fact sexual assault — and even if a small part of was intrigued, I was a child!
In the interim of it happening and me realizing what had actually happened to me I’d lost count of number of times I’ve experienced some form of sexual assault in male-dominated spaces. If we were to add on top of that these instances after being able to name them for what they are: we’ll have reached infinity. As I grew up I began to become more and more annoyed, then upset, as these instances happened: exposures in locker rooms, being grabbed by unknown hands in clubs and on dance floors, times I was too messed up to really consent and ended up having sex I didn’t want, even to a lesser extent being randomly sent dick pics by strangers on dating apps.
One time, I was something as simple as this:
I was sitting at the end of a not-so-crowded gay bar on a Wednesday night, having a drink and looking at my phone. I noticed a woman with her male friends on the other end of the bar. While not paying attention to what it was she was doing, she went up to every other man at the bar. Finally she got to me: “Can I have your hand,” she said rolling her eyes. “It’s very stupid.”
I confusedly offered her my hand, which she then put on her breast.
Apparently some of her idiot friends dared her to do that because of some very regressive idea over what constitutes sexuality between gay men and women. Never mind that me and everyone else sitting at the bar was a non-consenting partner in this display of “desexualization.”
Sexual assault in the gay community is ubiquitous. What’s worse, for a multitude of reasons, I don’t think we really talk about it with the gravity that it deserves; especially considering the already hyper-sexual energy in the gay community. However, according to the Human Rights Campaign:
40 percent of gay men and 47 percent of bisexual men have experienced sexual violence other than rape, compared to 21 percent of straight men
Obviously, this number is much higher for bisexual and transgendered women.
This past weekend I was sexually assaulted at a club in an especially terrifying way:
I was on the dance floor minding my business and noticed a man was invading my personal space.
I at first didn’t think much of it as it’s very common occurrence to be bumped into in small crowds spaces where everyone is dancing. He was wearing an oversized t-shirt which I realized he was using to hide the fact he was masturbating.
After he bumped into me a few times, I realized he was trying to get my attention. I moved away from him and he again moved toward me. I pushed myself to the other side of the dance floor and he kept coming toward me, fully exposed and with determination.
I won’t get into what happened next but needless to say my night was ruined and I haven’t been able to shake it. I will give credit to the event organizers who were very responsive to my concerns and will be taking steps to better deal with safety, which they were committed to even prior to this action.
A lot of what I have been dealing with has been trying to figure out why I’m so upset. I keep asking myself: was I making too big a deal of this? should I have tried to fight him? asked him why he was doing what he was doing? should I really have let it ruin my whole night (I went home shortly after)?
This particularly party does get very sexy, and some people will just not attend because it makes them uncomfortable. I knew going into this event, that I would be subjected to witnessing sexual activity. And you know what? I was fine with that. I may not be as sexually charged as the average gay (re: sensitive Pisces baby) but I’m no prude. As I told friends: “had it been an accident or had he backed off immediately I probably wouldn’t have thought about it.”
But having a man coming toward you in that way on a dark dance floor is very scary; it just is. Having your autonomy taken away in such a violent way does, in fact, have an impact on your psyche. My fight or flight instinct was activated! I’m entirely justified to feel the need to work this out. My feelings on the event are valid, no matter if it’s the first time or the 10,000th.
To anyone reading this who has survived any form of sexual violence: your body is your own and I’m sorry.
To gay men who may read this: how do we really start to fix this problem?