Why Isn’t My Bildungsroman Like the Boys’?
Sexual Assault and Coming of Age in the 21st Century
(Trigger warning: sexual assault)
I’ve never considered myself to be a ‘true’ victim of sexual harassment or unwanted sexual behaviour. But after a recent experience, I decided to sift through my own memories to see if there were any moments I may have wrongly dismissed.* What follows in a non-comprehensive list of all the memories I could remember one night, in bed.
*I was aware that some of the following accounts were not okay when they occurred, though in these cases I still didn’t feel comfortable confronting the issue.
When I was seventeen, a boy I had known nearly my entire life held me down and tried to kiss and touch me. Twice. Several months apart. The second time, I had gone to his house to get help with some calculus questions I was struggling with. I remember telling myself it was my fault because I had trusted him and followed him down to the basement even though he’d tried this before.
When I was thirteen, my uncle named my developing breasts “Big” and “Bigger.” My entire family laughed. I didn’t know what to do.
When I was sixteen, a boy I’d gone to school with since kindergarten pushed me down into a couch during a party. I kicked him in the stomach to get him off of me. He and his friends called me “crazy” and told me to stop “over-reacting.”
When I was twenty, I ran into the younger brother of an old friend at a university kegger; this young man felt almost like a brother to me, too. At one point during the night, he reached out, grabbed both my nipples and twisted them. Later on, when I told people, I emphasized that he had been really drunk, as if that was an excuse.
When I was nineteen, a fellow student got drunk and tried to kiss me, having already made out with one of my friends earlier in the evening. I stopped him and I wouldn’t let him walk me home when he asked. He called me seven times over the next hour, suggesting we “hook up” and making sexually explicit remarks, even after I asked him to stop. Finally, I turned off my phone so I could sleep.
When I was sixteen, I wore shorts to school in June. Two of my male classmates openly leered at me as I went to my first class. I felt intense shame and humiliation for the rest of the day. I never wore those shorts to school again.
When I was eighteen, a boy on my residence floor came to my dorm room one night after drinking. We had kissed once before. He got into my bed and refused to leave. I went and hid in my friend’s room until he left.
When I was nineteen, I stopped going to the karaoke bar near my house because I was tired of having my ass groped by men in the crowd.
When I was twenty-one, I was walking in my neighbourhood on my way to run some errands. A man at least thirty years my senior honked at me from his mobile scooter and when I turned, yelled something vulgar at me. It was 2 PM in the afternoon, but I remember feeling dirty and extremely unsafe in my own neighbourhood. I called my boyfriend crying.
When I was sixteen, I went for a run. A twelve-year-old boy from the nearby middle school followed me on his bike for several blocks. He yelled sexual slurs at me the entire time.
When I was eighteen, I was walking home from a party late at night. At one point, a man pulled his car over and invited me to get in. I crossed my arms over my chest, looked straight ahead and kept walking until he drove away. I tried to come up with a plan of what I would do if he tried to grab me. I was less than five minutes away from my house.
When I was fourteen, two boys at my church started a “game” where they each chose a girl and won points for how far they “got” with her. I was one of the girls chosen, by a boy who was eighteen years old.
When I was twenty-one, a previous co-worker and I were talking about sex and making jokes, several other co-workers joined in. Later in the night, when he made advances and I declined, he called me a slut, a whore and a tease. When I told a friend the next morning, their response was, “Well, you were flirting with him…”
When I was eighteen, I was student teaching in a grade 8 classroom. When I would ask a group of male students to sit down or work with them one-on-one, they would make remarks of me being attracted to them and “wanting it.” They were fourteen.
When I was fourteen, I wasn’t well versed in sexual terminology or concepts. Two boys in my class would constantly ask me questions about blow jobs, anal sex and orgasms. One day, before class, they tried to film my obvious discomfort. They chased me around the class while a few other students laughed. I continued to talk with them after that because I wanted to be liked.
When I was twenty-one, a past co-worker agreed to give me back some work items he’d taken the summer before. When I arrived to pick them up, he presented me a “contract” that stated I would show him my breasts for 30 seconds if I didn’t return the items. He wouldn’t give me the items until I signed it, so I did and tried to laugh it off. I felt sick to my stomach all day, and wondered if I should tell my boyfriend.
When I was fifteen, I slept over a friend’s house after a party. One of our male friends lay down beside me and persisted in touching and kissing me, despite me saying no multiple times. I finally got up and slept on the floor in another room.
When I was twenty, a close relative entered my bedroom without permission. I was naked. He looked my naked body up and down several times before I finally found the courage to shut the door. To this day, the memory of feeling sexualized by a member of my family brings me to tears.
Until very recently, I considered almost none of these experiences as moments where my consent didn’t matter. I did not consider myself to be someone who’d faced even minor experiences of sexual assault, harassment or unwanted sexual behaviour. That alone is not okay.
It’s not okay that for years, I’ve ‘sugar-coated’ my memories of these events by telling myself that it was partly my fault. It’s not okay that I — not to mention many of my peers, teachers and family members — was able to dismiss these actions with a ‘boys will be boys’ mindset.
It’s not okay that I am still friends with many of these boys on online. That I run into them sometimes when I am home. That I still become pleasant and accommodating to them when I see them, because I don’t want to be seen as “that uptight bitch who couldn’t take a joke.”
It’s not okay that when I recalled one of these memories to a family member recently, they immediately changed the subject, because “he’s a good kid” with “so much potential” and “he was young and didn’t know better.”
It’s not okay that, while writing this, I worried that I might be over-reacting, or blowing things out of proportion, or making myself look bad. It’s not okay that I tried to be as vague as possible with names and places, because I didn’t want to ‘offend’ or ‘hurt’ anyone.
It’s not okay that for so long, I considered these experiences ‘normal’, as shit that girls and women just had to deal with. I consider myself to be one of the ‘lucky ones’. None of these incidents have resulted in what I consider to be sexual violence or extreme assault. But that doesn’t mean I should have had to experience any of them. These experiences should not be normal, they should not be what to expect when you wear shorts, or walk somewhere on your own, or have a few drinks. They should not be what I have to put up with in order to be accepted, to not be a ‘buzz kill’, to not make a scene.
And yeah, I’m writing this to show that we all have these kinds of memories, and to encourage others to look back and critically consider their own experiences. I can almost guarantee that everyone who reads this post can remember a time that they didn’t feel safe, or they should have spoken up. I hope that if someone should witness or experience something similar they will know in the moment that this shit is not okay and do something.
But mostly, I’m writing this to prove to myself that these things that happened to me weren’t okay, and that it’s okay to say that. I’m writing this to lay these memories out in the open and to call them what they are: oppression. I’m certainly not equating my own experiences to those of victims of sexual violence, but they’re part of the same fucked-up system that teaches victims and society at large that these behaviours are okay, that it’s part of growing up, or part of being female.
I’m writing this to show myself that I don’t need to feel guilty anymore.
Despite all this shit, I’m still okay.
Many thanks to Jonathon Reed, Alex Marshall and Millie O’Brien for their love, edits and support. ❤
