The Struggle of Conceptualizing Sexual Assault

Let me pain you a picture in your mind:

A college girl arrives at a man’s house drunk, so drunk that she could feel the ground spinning at a Frat party. She remembers very little of what even happened at the party. She couldn’t even tell you how much time had passed, who was around her or how much she had drank. But she remembers small moments such as being too drunk to walk in a straight line, remembers a man taking off her clothes and then engaging in the beginning stages of sexual intercourse. She remembers falling asleep/going unconscious during sexual intercourse, but doesn’t remember the rest. Upon waking up the next morning, she feels vaginal pain so she looks around to find her clothes then proceeds to walk towards the bathroom. Once in the bathroom, it hurts to pee. She glances up at the mirror and doesn’t recognize who she is; bruises on her shoulders, makeup all distressed and her hair knotted up.

The young girl, just barely on the verge of turning 19, heads back into the bedroom of where she had slept the night before. The man is asleep but still you can see the rhythm of his breathing; his chest inflating and then deflating. She crawls back into bed, tries to go to sleep but is restless. The pain and confusion lingers on her mind, as she tries to reassure herself that she is fine. The opportunity peaks after some times had passed and she asked the man,

“ What happened last night? Why do I have bruises? Why do I feel pain?” Pointing to her lower extremities, making it clear to what she is referring to.

He responds, “You ‘probably’ fell. Don’t worry about it.” From that point on, she never questions that night again. Knowing that if she did, she probably wouldn’t get the truth.

The same morning, she heads back to her dorm. The musty smell of the dorms mixed with the pungent smell of alcohol, regret and vomit from the night before. The young girl is greeted by her roommate, tells her what happened the night before. Unsure of what exactly happened but only one conclusion is met.

She sits in the shower, the droplets of the shower faucet dripping down her face. Knowing that her body is the evidence, she still persists to shower. Trying to wash the pain of anguish away.

~

For the last three years I have been in a revolving door with myself and only myself. I look for a new way out but I can’t seem to make the exit; I stubble over my own two feet while the door keeps pushing me around just like a merry-go-round. Round and round I go, getting more dizzy each and every time. I keep to myself about certain topics but often times, my friends take the brute of my pain. I struggle with conceptualizing what exactly happened three years ago after a drunken college party.

Over the this last Fall Semester (Fall 2019), I had been doing research regarding sexual assault on college campuses and student’s perceptions of the status of the alleged perpetrator (ex. fraternity men and student athletes). This topic is rather sensitive and at first I almost disregarded the topic but just focused on the idea that I was doing research. Essentially making it all about ME and how “smart” I was for doing so. I could have cared less in the beginning of the research on what the topic was, but over the course of the semester, the topic began to become more and more important. Almost, to a point to where I became obsessed with it. Unconsciously, I had transferred my prior experiences with sexual assault into this project. I realized slowly that I had never really came to terms of what happened to me, and I never truly “took care” of myself since the first incident.

~

Within the first month of the Fall Semester (Fall 2019), another incident happened. Rather this time, I remember this more in-depth. It was a Sunday night, I had just gotten done with a grueling sorority recruitment weekend. I was already exhausted, to the max: physically, emotionally and spiritually. If you’ve ever endured sorority recruitment (as new member or as an active member) you know exactly what I mean. I had missed a deadline for a quiz and I was crabby; just wanting to watch Netflix, eat and go to bed. However, something unexpected had happened. I was sleeping in a persons’ bed whom I had been seeing. When all of a sudden I was awoken by him penetrating me from behind. Mind you, I was fully asleep. As we had both “cohabitated’ together before, we had known the positions that we usually fell asleep in. I usually sleep on my stomach, one of my hands are more than likely by my shoulder holding a pillow in place. He normally sleeps on his stomach or on his left side, occasionally holding my hand or our arms interlocked like a pretzel. Usually he sleeps on the right side and I sleep on the left side, respectively. If we ever sleep on someone else’s side, its essentially World War III. However, going back to the topic at hand, I was woken up to him penetrating me from behind. The moment I had realized what was happening, I had arched my back trying to gain strength to get up. Then the penetration had began to increase, as if my movement had warranted a signal to continue rather than distress. As soon as I had managed to stop him, I had looked at him and spoke,

“I was not awake. That was not consensual,” My eyes nearly pierced his wellbeing as he quickly starts to apologize for his actions. But you can tell that to some extent it doesn’t phase him.

~

Going back to the research topic that I had somehow landed upon, I had started to struggle ever since reading numerous articles by other sociologists about the topic of sexual assault. Ever since starting the research that I had done, I allowed it to consume me. I’d let the topic of sexual assault wrap my mind into this revolving door; the same revolving door that I was previously in. I remember sitting in a sociology class one morning, the night of the second alleged incident played back in my mind. I felt like I could feel my fingers grip the bedding once again, but in reality I was only grabbing onto the chair that I was sitting in. You could say that that is a bit dramatic because the second incident wasn’t “aggressive” or “violent.” Rather it might have just been a misunderstanding. But was it a misunderstanding? I’m not sure. What I do know is that it was not consensual.

I grapple with conceptualizing what happened in the sense that at times, I don’t know if it constitutes as sexual assault or rape. I find that there are grey areas when it comes to it. I don’t see myself as a victim, nor do I see myself as a “survivor.” The instances that I was in weren’t nearly as vulgar as other sexual assault survivors. So with that idea in mind, did these occurrences that happen to me count as sexual assault or were they just miscommunications? Or just a “drunken night of fun.?” These are the ideas that haunt me. It’s almost that I wished what happened to me was more violent or intense, just as a way for me to justify how I feel. But rather I’m left here sitting and contemplating what these events mean.

My friends are saints for dealing with me. They have heard my rants, they have seen me distraught over this mental complexity. They see me in the revolving door and I see them. As for my parents, they don’t see this revolving door. At times, I feel like they’d rather not open Pandora’s Box, but let it fester. There have been moments that I wished that they would ask me what happened that one “drunken college night.”

While I was doing research this past semester (Fall 2019), I almost wished they had asked me why I had chosen to take on this project or why it had meant so much to me. I wished that they would have had more insight into how I was doing. The relationship that I have with my parents is pretty open; I usually tell them everything- even the things they wished they hadn’t heard. While I don’t blame my parents for not asking the questions that I had hoped, I nearly blame myself for not being able to know how to raise awareness. But the paradox is: I was able to raise awareness of what’s been plaguing college campuses but wasn’t able to open up about what happened on my own college campus, and essentially about my own self.

You might ask yourself, why dose her experience matter? She’s just a making a big deal out of nothing. The truth of that is the exact opposite. What has happened to me has happened to girls (AND guys) across college campuses. It is not a lie that nearly 20% of college girls face this reality, but it is also well documented among academia that the true number may be higher due to underreporting (Jozkowski & Wiersma-Mosley, 2019).

If you were to ask me if I had ever reported my own experiences, I would tell you that I never had. If you were to ask me why I never did (as I still could due to the state’s statue of limitations)it’s a complex answer. Yes, my experiences have affected me; ruined me and broken me down. But, in a round about way, I felt as if I would have been the perpetrator of ruining other people’s lives for the sake of mine. In complex ideology, I would have been the perpetrator and they would have been the victims of my own actions, you could argue justice but also injustice. I would have ruined the lives of people in the way that if they had filled out a job application (or any governmental application), they would have to check YES, on if they’ve ever been alleged/convicted of a crime, specifically a sex crime. However, I’m not downplaying their actions, but I’m being honest. I couldn’t imagine ruining someone’s life based off of a possible misunderstanding or a “drunken night of fun.” Even if I was too drunk to remember the “fun” that happened.

As I have said before, and will continue to say, the events that have happened to me aren’t nearly as horrendous as what others have experienced. Hear me out, as I ask you this: do these experiences drown out someone else’s? Does the unfit, gray area of what constitutes as consent depict how we define what sexual assault is? In my own opinion, based upon the research that I had done and he numerous academic journals that I have read regarding this topic, I still have trouble understanding of what experiences constitute as sexual assault and/or rape. But for one thing I do knows is: sexual assault/rape is the unwanted sexual advances without consent of the victim.

*** Names and locations are and will remain private***

Jozkowski, K. N., & Wiersma-Mosley, J. D. (2019). A Brief Report of Sexual Violence among Universities with NCAA Division 1 Athletic Programs . Behavioral Sciences.

Related posts:

Testing completion-handler API happy path scenario is really simple with XCTestExpectation. Things get complicated if your test case has to verify whether given handler was not called. It is still…

The CIPS L2M4 practice questions present the most beneficial facts. You may drop by one of the most raised results by using L2M4 exam dumps material and achieve each of the Level 2 Certificate in…

Before using Amazon Web Services (AWS) for large scale websites and WordPress projects, there are some mistakes, and pitfalls to be aware of. This article will address the four key areas where the…