The movement to end sexual assault and harassment was reawakened on Penn’s campus Tuesday morning, September 6th. Fliers were posted along the iconic LOVE statue, across the 38th Street bridge, and around other parts of campus. “THIS IS WHAT RAPE CULTURE LOOKS LIKE” it screamed. Underneath, a screenshot appeared of a sexually aggressive email that had been sent to freshman boys and girls from an off campus fraternity. Though just words, this email sparked something new: a group of girls who were fed up with the atmosphere of misogynistic men in the greek system and other male groups possessing the control, never facing the repercussions of their sexual harassment and assaults on campus and completely unaware of the implications of their actions.
Though overwhelmingly under-discussed, so many women, not only on Penn’s campus, but campuses nation wide, face the fear of these events occurring every time they step out their door. What has become more apparent, is that there is no connection between the definition of sexual assault and harassment and the real life examples that so many women have experienced. The stories that follow may be disturbing, but they are real. This is the truth.
This might be a trigger for those who have experienced sexual assault.
Just the other day, I was sitting at the bar with two of my close friends when a guy came up behind one of them and started talking to her. Immediately I noticed her eyes go wide and stare at me with a look of panic. She would reply softly to the guy trying to give subtle hints that she was not interested and wanted to be left alone. The guy, however, took the remarks as an invitation to invade her space further, placing his hands on her shoulders and whispering in her ear as she would cringe away from him. At that point I knew that this guy wouldn’t leave her alone, and I knew that she couldn’t escape. I looked at him dead in the eyes and said firmly, “Hey, she doesn’t want to talk to you ok?” and hoped he would back off. This only made it worse. He began to whisper sexual things into her ear in attempt to brush off my comment. At that point I was so livid that I took my hand and attempted to push him off of her. The bartender then noticed the altercation and began to yell at the guy: “DUDE, STOP F**KING TOUCHING HER. SHE DOESN’T WANT YOU TO DO THAT”. With that the ordeal came to an end as the guy screamed back at the bartender and sulked away. At that point I was both relieved and angered: relieved that my friend was not longer being sexually harassed, but angered because he did not understand the concept of hearing no. Additionally, a woman’s intervention was completely disregarded; it took a man to intervene, which continues to show the lack respect of a woman’s input and almost anything verbalized. Even though this is deemed an innocent encounter in the eye’s of men, it is sexual harassment, plain and clear.
One night, I found myself at an unnamed frat with an aggressive dance partner. He kept trying to kiss me, dance on me, touch my ass, and I kept saying no. Thank God that one of my good guy friends was there to swoop in and pretend to be my boyfriend! I'm so glad he was there to give me more drinks, insisting that I have a good night! When he decided to half walk-half carry me back to the Quad, I found myself feeling indebted to him. I should be doing him a favor, for saving me from that douche bag, right? Or at least that's the last thing I remember him saying after I told him I didn't want to sleep with him. When I blacked back in, I was crying, asking him to stop. He just said to let him finish, he was almost done. That he had heard I was better.
When my roommate the next morning asked me if I was okay and walked me to CVS to buy plan b because she found a broken, used condom on the ground when she got home, I knew I had to tell someone. I told a girl friend who was also friends with the guy, who asked immediately if it was XXXX. When I asked her how she knew, she said I wasn't the first one who had a similar experience, and named another freshman girl we knew, when I realized I had heard this story too, and dismissed it, until it happened to me.
I brought up the other girl to my group of guy friends (friends with the guy as well) and they laughed. They called her a slut, a tease, they said she wanted attention. They said she just regretted adding one to her number, and why does everything have to be blamed on the guy? He's such a homie, he'd never do that. No way. And I laughed along with them, secretly burning with shame- if they thought that about her, they thought that about me too. “You're right,” I said. “Sucks to be her.”
So I slept with him again, to prove to myself that it was my fault. That he was a good guy. That I could trust him, that I must have blacked out the part where I said “yes, I'd love to have sex with you” and grabbed the condom from my drawer. I slept with him again, sober, to prove that I was as good in bed as he'd heard. And I was. He said so. I winked and told him I'd see him around, and left the room, sobbing.
When the girl who he'd assaulted before reached out to me and asked me to help her take action, I said “everything that happened between us wasn't like that, haha. It was all ok. I'm really sorry for what happened to you.”
When I told my best guy friend (who had laughed with me and at me about it freshman year) sophomore year that it had happened to me, too, his jaw dropped. He paced up and down the hall of his frat house. He told me if he ever saw that kid again, he'd end his life. And then he hugged me as I cried.
But the worst part to me isn't that I was raped. The worst part is that I stood up for my rapist. I defended him to his other victims. I isolated a friend, because I was so ashamed of what had happened to me. But I'm not ashamed anymore.
At first I let it happen, laying there completely limp. That last shot of tequila was hitting me and I felt foggy and detached. “Participate!” he said to me. I tried to reach up to touch his shoulder but was too drunk. “I’m trying,” I slurred. When I heard myself say that, it struck me that what was happening was very wrong. I said, “Please stop. I’m too drunk, I don’t want it anymore,” and he just looked at me while he kept going. I was scared, and shocked. My hands were up by my head, curled into tiny fists. Tears streamed down my face. All I could think was that I needed it to be over. “Please stop,” I said again, my voice cracking. He did not stop.
I would like to say that I somehow figured out how to fight back. The truth is that I closed my eyes so I wouldn’t have to see it, and I tried as hard as I could to just fall asleep. Soon, his roommate knocked loudly at the door. “Whatever, you’re too drunk anyway,” he said as he got off of me, clearly annoyed. He then started to get dressed. I’m not sure why, but I let him walk me home. I think I was very confused. I had thought rapists were strangers, but I knew him well and he was a good person.
Looking back at my relationship with him, it should have been a warning sign that he associated sex with power. He told me that in high school he was a “beta male” but he had lost his virginity to a girl on his hall and now was an “alpha.” I thought this way of thinking of himself was weird, but I never thought it should make me question my safety. Of course, hindsight is 20/20. I was a freshman. I was innocent, had never tried a drug, and was thrilled to be at my dream school. The night I was raped, I had only been in college for 8 weeks.
It has since been three years. I have received treatment for PTSD and depression along the way, and am now doing very well. I’m not sure I will ever feel safe at Penn, but I am no longer filled with anger. The women who have been supportive of me, especially my big, have been absolute lights in my life. Even though I was raped at Penn, I am so grateful to go here because of the friends who helped me get through it. I was worried that if I wasn’t fun all the time no one would want to be around me, but those girls have helped me learn to trust and have made me see such good in the world. It is important to note that there are also women who were not supportive. When friends or family reacted negatively, it was more painful than the act of being raped. I am still not sure if they didn’t believe me, or if they didn’t care. As women, we need to stand up for each other. If we don’t, who will?
We were dancing, we were talking, we were laughing, and he kissed me. I stopped him-“we’re friends, and that’s all we’ll ever be.” He claimed he understood-though he liked me, he understood. Two days later, we were dancing, and we were talking, and we were laughing and I was drunk and he was sober and he raped me.
He told my friends that he’d “take care of me.” He was a childhood friend- why wouldn’t they believe him? I stumbled to my room in the Quad and suddenly, he was having sex with me. I asked him to stop-he said that he wasn’t “finished yet.” I was too intoxicated to fight back.
After a while, he finally got off me. I told him to leave, but he aggressively told me it was “ridiculous that I expected him to walk back to his dorm at 5 am in West Philadelphia.” I fell asleep in the midst of a nightmare that finally walked out the door at 8 am.
I wasn’t drinking alone. I was at a fraternity where I had many friends, and with a group of friends I trusted. I was doing everything I had been told to avoid sexual assault.
However, there lies the problem- when we tell women to drink less, to be less noticeable- it is because we accept sexual violence as an inevitable evil. It is because we tolerate misogyny. It is the culture that needs to change, not the length of the skirt. We tell women continuously to adapt and accept things as they are. To create an illusion of safety, we tell women to dress conservatively, to consume less alcohol, to always walk with company at night. Even if the night had gone differently- my rapist would have not hesitated twice doing the same thing to another.
Though we have the opportunities to challenge sexual violence, as a campus we preserve the status quo.
It is time that we, as a united campus, take a firm stance against sexual assault. It is time that the administration empowers survivors and supports them in every way possible.
It has been over two years since it happened. Since then, I have learned to love myself again. I have not let my rape define me. I am not my rape, and I will not let it define me. I have thrived, and I have owned the rest of my time here at Penn again.
We all have friends, family members, significant others, of all genders and of all sexualities, who have suffered because of sexual violence- it’s time that we take action. No matter who you are, if you have been survivor of sexual assault, know that you are not alone. This piece is for you, and for me, too- because I want to regain the voice that was taken from me one January night. My voice matters- as does yours. We are survivors, we are fighters, and we demand to be heard. We are watching.
Remember that all genders and sexualities are affected by sexual assault, not just women. These stories were anonymously submitted by female students of the University of Pennsylvania.
