I have committed sexual assault.
In junior high, my friends and I would go to concerts and grab women’s butts in the crowds. We would compare numbers.
Also at these concerts, I understood walking up to women and escalating from dancing near them into touching them, unless they pushed us away, to simply be the way to approach them. I did this too many times before realizing it is touching them without their consent.
In high school, I was egged on by my male friends, in public view of the group, to kiss a female friend, who had said no. When saying good night to people, I kissed her, to the cheers of my male friends.
Also in high school, at a party, I held a male classmate from behind to make him think a woman he might be interested in was making a move on him, trying to dance with him. He turned around and got upset. I tried to turn what I did, and his reaction, into a joke by laughing it off, not accepting that he was upset by it, and that I did not have his consent to touch him that way.
In college, I felt a flirty vibe from a woman at a Rocky Horror performance. We were side by side, arms around each other. I put my hand on her butt. I did not have her consent, but convinced myself that touching was more acceptable in the Rocky Horror environment. When she told me not to grab her ass, I insinuated that she was overreacting, and literally ran away.
Also in college, I took a romantic interest to her home and, both of us tired, I lay next to her in bed. She asked me not to sleep over, and I did. I did not have her consent to sleep over, and I violated that boundary.
While in college, though not actually at school, I was invited to a friend’s party as the unofficial male stripper. One of them passed out, and the group cheered me on to dance above her, which I did. They made jokes about tea-bagging. I did not make physical contact, but I did dance above her sexually without her consent.
Years later, I made an inappropriate joke to others in reference to tea-bagging my friend. I made this joke in an attempt to launder my guilt and receive group validation that it was funny, and therefore not wrong. Justifiably, the group did not validate me.
With a friend I was attracted to, after she had told me she did not want to engage sexually, we watched a show together platonically, though with my arm around her. It was my attempt to assuage myself over the rejection. I did not check in or ask for consent, and she later told me she was uncomfortable with it.
At 29, a friend invited me to stay over her place. We shared a bed, which she consented to. I cuddled her, which she did not consent to. I did not come to understand this until she told me two years after. This was a painful wake-up call to how I have continued to act even after first writing this piece, in Dec 2017. I am adding this paragraph (and other edits) in July 2020.
Experiencing a culture of social distancing, because of Covid, has also helped me more plainly see my entitlement to others’ bodies, especially women, whether a touch on the elbow, an arm around the shoulder, cuddling, or sex.
I was once with a woman who told me she did not want to engage in penetration. I accepted this limitation, which I understood to be intercourse. I did not realize, until she told me years later, that she did not consent to how I had touched her, and that she had been uncomfortable with me since then.
For too long in general, I believed in a narrative of mustering courage to make the first move, as a man. This narrative clouded my judgment, and I often saw my own resistance to kissing some women as a personal fear to overcome, rather than it being from correctly reading the situation and their body language. This drove me to kiss women whose consent I now see I simply did not have.
Less directly, I can think of too many times I have been able to prevent or stop sexual assault without taking that opportunity. There are times I have stepped in — This is about the times I have not. Those times I did not step in have usually been because of fear, ignorance of what to do, or lack of time to respond. All of those reasons are legitimate. But the truth is that if I prioritized enough the work of uprooting my internalized misogyny, I would have been more confident, knowledgeable, and quick to respond. Instead, I chose to make jokes that mocked Feminism to demonstrate how I was better than something by being cynical about it.
More broadly, I have also put undue pressure on women and made inappropriate comments that contribute to the culture of Toxic Masculinity, the Patriarchy, and White Supremacy more broadly, including entitlement to women’s bodies. I have referred to women as “hot,” or otherwise referenced their appearance, which both reduces them to their looks and also insinuates that they are responsible for my feelings of arousal. They are not. I have also let others make such comments without speaking up.
I have harassed and street-harassed. Sometimes this was for the enjoyment of my friends. Sometimes this was because I believed in a narrative of challenging myself by practicing conversations with women on the street, to the point that I ignored social cues that they did not want to spend time or energy telling me No.
I have taken women for granted. I have gaslit. I have condescended, and dismissed concerns and interests on the basis of gender, both conscious and unconscious. For me, this most manifested because I thought myself smart and wise, and so trusted my own assessments more than what others said, even about their own boundaries. This also conveniently meant I was rarely at fault, and so refused to acknowledge responsibility for my actions when called to account. This kind of dynamic is more destructive the more intimate the relationship. In this way at least, I have thus hurt lovers, women, more deeply and in distinct ways from how I have hurt friends, mostly men, even if my behavior was the same with both.
Similarly, I engaged in some of these behaviors partly because I trusted myself as one of the good guys, and therefore above misogyny: to let up if need be, and that I would prove myself to the women involved after any indignation. Only after confronting the fact that I broke someone’s trust did I slowly begin to realize what I am capable of, and have in fact been doing. I also now know that not recognizing that only serves to guarantee a culture of marginalization, harassment, and assault, and that I will personally perpetuate those things. It is only when we admit that we can that we will take actions to ensure we will not.
I have also been sexually harassed, and even sexually assaulted. This is not about those times. This is about what I have committed.
Examining myself has helped me understand how we men/people validate ourselves to process guilt, and also what makes something permissible. I have come to believe that rather than acknowledging our actions for what they are, we often repeat what we know to be wrong in the hope that others will tell us it is not wrong. This, to validate that we are not wrong. But more importantly, I have come to understand that someone being personally unbothered by the action, does not necessarily excuse the action itself. I think a lot of rape culture comes from not understanding this simple truth.
Being personally not bothered by the action does not necessarily excuse the action itself.
I believe a lot of rape culture also comes from this: That we men/people view our sexuality as a story of personal/spiritual challenge to triumph over, to conquer fear and insecurity. When taken alone, this means subjugating women/others to objects, conquests, in our stories. Either we believe we are great, so everyone would consent, or we believe we must overcome our personal insecurities to reach that point. If we are great, they would consent to us. If they have not, either we are not yet great or we must still prove to them we are great. This way, we only know we have become great once we can convince women/others to consent to us, or that they did consent to us. But no arguing about reality will retroactively change consent.
In either spoken language or nonverbal cues, “No,” does not mean “Convince me.”
“No,” does not mean “Convince me.”
Some have told me that some of these instances do not count as sexual assault. Maybe. But I do not get to decide that. Whether I had the person’s consent decides that. And in some of these situations, I can no longer check, or it would be inappropriate to do so. So I include here even the stories I am not sure of. Greater than that, I find it telling that we have so normalized rape culture, and made consent so foreign, that sexually acting on someone without their consent not be considered sexual assault. This is also partly why instead of the question “Do/Did they consent?” as my standard for accountability, I now prefer, “Do/Did I have their consent?”
The former question invites too much mind-reading and argument over internal unknowables. The latter is something clearer to me. It also shifts attention from one person to the other. It is partly by trying to mind-read others, rather than paying attention to my own internal compass, that I have continued to act without having consent, even after first writing this piece. In the moment, maybe I can convince myself they would consent, but it is harder to convince myself that I have something they have not given.
Obviously, I have a lot of feelings about these behaviors. I regret deeply the harm I have caused both individually and by participating in a culture of oppression and trauma. I do not dwell on my regret in this piece, because this is not about my feelings. This is about dismantling a culture that oppresses people. And that means confronting the fact that I have committed sexual assault without letting my feelings get in the way.
I process this because I want to be honest with myself and to do what is best to end oppression. I write this to help myself confront my own actions and behavior, and their consequences. I share this publicly partly to help demonstrate the magnitude of the problem, partly to hold myself publicly accountable to help me confront my own behavior, and also as a model for men/others in confronting their own behaviors, who may then contribute to the work generally as well as my own work in it. In better seeing the cultures of Male Supremacy, Toxic Masculinization, Patriarchy, and Rape Culture, we are better equipped to dismantle them.
Culture is in relationships. We must discuss the ways we have personally oppressed, rather than simply hope they never get brought up on social media.
We must not wait for others to hold us accountable.
This only further burdens them.
I hope we all do the same.
Since initially writing, I have learned of two tools for relationships I find particularly valuable, and want to share:
The Wheel of Consent (6 min video), is for understanding and communication. It is a framework around who is benefiting from what. I find it particularly helpful as a “same page” basis to have conversations about consent.
RBDSM Conversations (8 min video) is a check-in especially helpful before each first-time sexual encounter with a new partner. (The acronym is just to make it easy to remember.) I am now outright evangelical that everyone practice having these conversations. Quite simply, they ask partners to disclose: (the questions are just examples)
Relationship Status + Agreements: Single? Partnered? Fluid-Bonded?
Boundaries: Protection? Hard No’s? Go Slow’s? Heads Up’s?
Desires: Foreplay? Actions? Pace? Teasing? Dom/Sub?
Sexual Health + History: Last Test Date + Results? Activity since?
Meaning + Aftercare: Cuddle? Text the next day? See you again?
I am righteously angry that I did not learn about these until I was 34, and that I am the first one bringing them to many of my partners since. Especially the RBDSM Conversations have completely changed my relationships. At time of this update (July 2023), “consent conversations” (without quotation marks) currently returns 141M Google results, while “RBDSM” (with quotation marks) currently returns 41.5K, nearly every single one of which has nothing to do with these conversations.
Please: Practice and Spread these conversations and other tools.
