They say one in four women will experience forced or coerced sex in their lifetime. I used to find this number high, but in the last year, I've had two experiences that made me reevaluate.
Some of you may remember that a few months ago, I encountered a friendly acquaintance who hit on me as we were hanging out, watching a movie. I was amused by it all, so my original "No" answers were said with an amused tone. Somehow he interpreted this to mean "I'm saying no but I really mean yes" and my struggles were somehow interpreted as friendly wrestling. It was only when I resorted to physically hurting him that the message got through.
This is not someone I expected to ever have this experience with; he's a nice guy, and I trusted him. It made me wonder about how women and men interact sexually, if he was interpreting my clearly stated refusal as assent simply because of the tone of my voice and the amusement on my face. I am not blaming a woman for cases where she is forced -- the word "no" is "no," after all -- but I do wonder what kinds of mixed signals men receive.
In another case, a friend hit on me so relentlessly (but sweetly) that, honestly, I got tired of it and assented to sex even though I hadn't really wanted to have sex that night. At the time, I shrugged it off, but I always felt off and weird about the experience. It took me a couple months and some space to realize that the reason I felt so guilty and awful about the situation is that I felt coerced into doing something that I didn't want to do.
I'm an intelligent woman. I'm strong-willed. I understand my right to say no. But I didn't talk about this experience for months, or deal with it at all, because I felt deeply ashamed of myself. So when I read an article about Rosario Dawson, whose new movie Descent explores one woman's struggle with the aftermath of rape, it really resonated with me. The main character doesn't go to the police, or report the crime, or even deal with it, even though she is an intelligent, well-educated woman who comes from a loving family. Instead she self-destructs.
The sexual politics between men and women are fascinating but frightening. I encounter men all the time who treat me brutally as a sex object -- conversations move rapidly from inane and everyday to frank descriptions of the way they would like to use me. And the word "use" is correct in this case. (You'd think that, if they're attempting to talk me into bed, they would think to focus more how I can have fun, rather than their own fantasies, but that's a topic for another time.)
Of course I know to avoid those types, but my own bad experiences have come from men I liked and trusted. Men who are intelligent and relatively mature, and who would be (honestly) horrified to think of themselves as "rapists" in any context. I wonder what's going so very wrong?
