I turn around to look behind me when I walk across this campus in the dark all the time. I ride the subway in my native New York aware of every graze against my body or my bag. I act as though I need to be ready to run or to scream or to kick at any moment. I can’t reconcile my desire to be trusting of my community and my neighbors with my conditioned need to protect myself.
I’ve never been sexually abused. I’ve never been injured in an unwanted sexual encounter. But I’ve been molested on subway trains, followed down streets, and now, I can’t help but feel unsafe in my own skin when I’m alone and it’s dark outside.
Sometimes sex is hard to talk about for reasons other than simple social faux pas. Sexual violence—rape, abuse, assault, dating and domestic violence, stalking, molestation, and other unwanted advances—are all ways sex is used as a destructive force. It’s appalling that it happens in the world at large, it’s no less horrible that it happens to students before they get to Middletown, and it’s undeniably unacceptable that it happens here, to our fellow students, at Wesleyan.
Yesterday, Wesleyan community members participated in Take Back the Night, an event designed to communally bear witness to the stories of survivors of sexual violence and raise awareness of how pervasive this kind of aggression is. We’re taught to just say no, to stay out of certain places, to create barriers to guard ourselves. Even in consensual sex play with restraints, we’re supposed to have an out, a safety word. But these tools and this self-awareness only take a person so far. It can be impossible to prevent a sexually violent act from happening to you, especially as it’s happening to you. Communication is important in sex, but “please,” “stop,” “don’t touch me,” or simply, “no,” sometimes just falls on deaf ears, or worse— sometimes it’s exactly what a perpetrator of violence wants to hear.
In order to move forward and think about sex as positive, healthy, and fun, it is essential that we acknowledge how frequently sex is used to hurt. Whether you chose to walk or not to walk, is now besides the point—this year’s event is over, but the message persists. Peer Health Educators will be holding a workshop about consent on November 3rd. Hopefully, in both formal ways such as that or informal talks in dorms rooms on campus, the dialogue will continue.
It is my belief that silence about sex, be it violent acts or merely bodily mechanics, creates further silence—dark space in which such abuse can take place. While it’s important not to desensitize ourselves to negative aspects of sex, being part of any conversation about sex is a step in the right direction towards awareness. It’s not a matter of your gender identity or your racial, social, or personal background. Sexual violence can happen to any one of us. It has happened to many of us. But empowering survivors, speaking out, or listening to difficult truths pierces the darkness that silence creates.