Was it Sexual Assault?

All he did, really, was try to put a part of his body inside a part of my body after I said no once then twice then three times. All he did was make me feel degraded, and seem to enjoy it.

He sounded like a rapist. After, he told me, “thanks for being cool.” Guys say things like that when they know they’ve done something they should not have done and they know they’re going to get away with it.

He handed me his used condom to dispose of.

I know that men don’t simply get lost on the way to a woman’s vagina. He tried to put it in several times, but I was in pain and wouldn’t let him in all the way, so he got frustrated. He pulled it out and tried putting it in my ass instead. I told him to cut it out. He tried again.

Finally, I let him fuck me, even though it hurt. I just wanted it to be over.

He fucked me so hard it scraped me raw. I bled the next day when I peed.

These are the things I remember.

I was alone in an empty house. He knew he could push me around. I was lonely and fat and disabled and he was a professor at some East Coast university and he was several moves in the class hierarchy above me. He knew it. I knew it.

Weeks later, I texted him, “if you had penetrated me anally after I said no, that would have been rape.” Then I blocked his number.

I am a well-educated feminist with two Master’s degrees but none of that means anything when there’s a stronger person standing in front of me who wants to do me harm, and there’s nothing to stop him. I have learned the hard way that it is up to me and only me to stop him and that sometimes I can’t because it just gets too exhausting and too hard.

These nights, I sleep alone. I won’t let anybody in the door of my room. I don’t trust that I will sleep beside them and wake up and still be safe. That has not been my experience with male bodies. My experience is that given the opportunity, they will hurt me.

This guy looked so normal. He was handsome, even. I could feel him judging my body for being fat, fetishizing the body he simultaneously despised. He had a utilitarian attitude towards me. I was there to be used.

I am afraid that all men are like that. Wouldn’t you be, if you were me?

I started off this essay asking if this is sexual assault, but I already know the answer. You don’t have to tell me.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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