I find it heartbreaking how lightly people take sexual assault now. During orientation week at my school, they made us go to a rape seminar — this lady was there to raise awareness of sexual assault, not to make fun of it. Sexual assault can happen to anyone at anytime. Four in five rapes happen by someone the victim personally knows while 5 percent is by family members. While she was talking she showed us this video of a fraternity at a different school, and the boys were chanting, "No means yes; yes means anal!" over and over again. The weeks, months even following this seminar I heard people all over the school chanting this and laughing. They were making a joke out of a serious problem in today's society.
Only 35 percent of sexual assaults are reported, and even those victims never get to run away from the pain caused by the attack. You won't know how it feels until it happens to you. I know how it feels, because it happened to me. Very few people actually know about my story, and now it is open for the public to read and relate to.
I never reported my assailant, and I regret it to this day. One night a friend of mine very nicely opened his doors and bed to me, because I had nowhere else to stay. He made up a bed in the living room for himself, and I very peacefully went to bed. I woke up in the middle of the night to him in the room, getting undressed. Instantly I started to panic, but there was nothing I could do to stop this 250-pound man. He might have opened his place to me, but I did not owe him in the way he thought I did.
Details of this don't need to be shared, but the stress and pain it caused me do. Pressuring someone into sex by saying "you owe me," or "come on, baby," does not make it consent. Every time I relive this moment, I lose a sense of reality and break inside. I am not one to show my emotions often, but I can't stand to see how lightly people take it.
Whenever I walk around campus, I am terrified to be alone because I don't know if I'll run into him or not. But the biggest toll this took on me was my academics. I spent years in deep depression and anxiety, and my senior year of high school I finally got better. However, once this attack happened, I went falling right back into the same problems. I gave up in school, I stopped caring about what mattered and wanted to spend my days in bed.
Sexual assault: Being forced to engage in sexual activities without consent. Almost 3 million men in the United States are sexually assaulted each year while almost 18 million women are. It's about time we start to take a stand against the oppression of sexual assault and speak up. Too often the victim doesn't report their assault because they don't think anything will happen to the assailant. I wish I had the guts to report my assault, and that many other people did too.
No means no, yes means consent.
