This is something personal without any attempt at a researched discussion.

It’s been weighing on me for years. Many people who are close to me don’t know about these stories. Sometimes it comes out in rage. Sometimes it comes out in protecting people and excusing behaviors I know I shouldn’t. Sometimes it comes out in self-hatred and loathing. I’m tired of letting it seethe in the darkness.

I have been sexually assaulted multiple times.

My best friend in college raped me.

I’ve been used as a beard and sexually accosted by my gay friends.

I’ve been in situations where I felt like, because I am femme presenting, I couldn’t say no to someone’s unwanted sexual advances. I’ve dulled myself with alcohol and drugs just to get through otherwise unwanted sexual situations, all because I knew a cis man’s delicate ego couldn’t handle hearing no.

I am so completely divorced from my own sexuality and the things I actually want as a result.

The first experience happened when I was 13. In gym class. It was quick. A hand down my shirt while I was distracted, a squeeze against my tiny breast, and then it was gone.

I had turned to look, absolutely shocked, and saw one of the jock boys in my class wink at me. It wasn’t flirtatious. He knew what he’d done and he wanted me to know that he’d done it.

I don’t remember his name. I just remember that touch and the realization that if I said anything, no one would believe me.

At 16, grown men would come up to me in public places and try to flirt with me. Men online weren’t any better either. I had developed hips far faster than any of the girls my age, I was always aware of this, and when I would tell these men to leave me alone, that I was a minor, I would hear, “You look so mature for your age.”

I was a child. They knew I was a child. They still persisted.

I once had a 21 year old hit me up at a bookstore when I was 17. I was looking at books on modern Druidry, it was something I had become interested in on my path to figuring out my spiritual practice. He seemed off but promised to help me get in contact with certain Druidic groups in the area. We exchanged AIM handles and he invited me over for what I thought was a group teaching session.

My mother knew better but she drove me over there anyway. Told me I would just have to learn on my own.

It was a teaching session, but not the one I had anticipated. It was him and his two roommates living in a run down Columbus city apartment. I could tell he was nervous about me being there. I could tell one of his roommates was eager to make this a group session, if you catch my meaning. I was immediately uncomfortable.

His other, older roommate noticed and offered me a ride home. The tone of his voice made it clear that he was disappointed in this guy who had tried to pick me up. I accepted the ride in his shell of a car — there was little in the way of upholstery and the floor was bare metal covered in cigarette butts. This man apologized to me.

I never heard from Druid dude again.

This is to say nothing of the sexual coercion and guilt tripping I dealt with in my first romantic relationship. My boyfriend would always threaten to cheat on me if I didn’t give him what he wanted. It got to the point where I was trying anything to be exactly what he wanted. I hated my body. It wasn’t the exact proportions that he wanted it to be. I fantasized about taking a knife to parts of my body, of excising bits of fat and moving them to new places, all so I could be more appealing to him.

He still cheated on me. He still blamed me for him cheating. He still tried to control how I looked and what I wore. He still called me fat and ugly. He still nearly beat my face in one day. He still forced me into doing sexual things with him I didn’t want to do. He still told me that no one would ever love me. He still called me a dead fish when I let him have his way with my body.

In college, my best friend and second ex-boyfriend came to visit me in Japan. We’d spent the day wandering around Shibuya but were slowly getting tired. He had wanted to visit a love hotel for the experience of it all and I knew there were a few in Shibuya where you could pay for a few hours to just get some rest. I figured that would be fine.

We were friends after all.

We cuddled. We made out. I had been in Japan for six months and I was lonely. I had only broken up with him because I was going to be overseas, so it felt so good to see him again and have him there.

I consented to having sex with him, willingly…

Until I didn’t anymore.

I told him to stop. Yelled at him to get off. Repeatedly.

He didn’t.

He finished and left me on the bed by myself. He went off to the shower while I sobbed into the comforter. Before he could get out of the shower, I had left him alone in the hotel room and headed back to where I was living at the time in a Nakameguro guest house.

Hours later, I had to go rescue him because he couldn’t figure out how the train lines worked and didn’t know where to go to get back to my place…since he was also staying with me.

The next day I told him off about it. He apologized and admitted in the moment he knew it was wrong. I forgave him but I never forgot.

It took me years to call it rape and even now I can hear the women defenders of men typing away on their keyboards that, because I had consented once, it wasn’t rape. To them I say, fuck off. It was violating in a way I hope you never have to experience.

A year later, a random man would grab my crotch blatantly in public as I walked past him.

I was headed to Shinjuku Niichome with some gay friends of mine for a night out. We had a few drinks before getting on the last train out. I was laughing, having fun, feeling the buzz of the alcohol.

Then all I felt was a hand grabbing at my pussy as I walked by a group of Japanese salary men.

I stopped in my tracks, unsure what had just happened. Caught, like I had been in middle school gym class, as I waited for my brain to catch up to reality. My friends stopped and turned to look at me, asked me what was wrong.

“That man just grabbed my crotch.”

I turned back around, saw him walking away with two of his drunk friends. He turned to look back at me. He winked.

Something snapped in me and I took off on a march. Ashamed. Drunk. Mad as hell and wanting to make someone pay for what they’d done.

My friends grabbed me and told me to let it go. I was a foreigner in a foreign land. I would get in so much more trouble for chasing down a pervert than the man who accosted me would.

One of those same friends would use me as his beard to get out of unwanted situations with other gay men.

Whenever he found himself drunkenly trying to get out of a situation, he would find me in the club. Unannounced, his hands would grab my breasts as he declared to the person he was trying to convince that he was straight. That I was his girlfriend. On one occasion he came up to me and motor-boated my tits without warning.

I knew to expect it. I let it happen.

He never apologized for it.

Things got worse when I came back to the US. Even in kink and consent positive cultures, there was an undercurrent of knowing you can’t really say no. Especially if someone is just awkward.

You can’t say no to them, don’t you know how much effort it took for them to even ask in the first place? All they want is a hug. Just indulge them even though you’re naked and bound. Just let them touch you. You can’t get out of it anyway.

I stopped caring. Largely because it was just easier to dull my senses with alcohol and let men have their way with me. Anyone could with enough alcohol. I didn’t care anymore. They could use me all they wanted. My body wasn’t mine. Many men over my life had made that point clear to me. I was just a vessel that they could masturbate into and then leave.

I hated myself then.

I would have done anything for people to like me because I didn’t like myself.

It wouldn’t be until about 30 before I finally had enough.

I had gone up to Anchorage to visit a friend ahead of Burning Man. We’d talked quite a bit before then and I felt safe enough to stay at his house with him. He still came on to me.

He was a virgin, he’d told me, but he didn’t want to be before the Burn. I indulged him. It was boring. Once he got what he wanted, we barely spoke after. I could have said no, but I was in his house with nowhere else to go and little money to get a hotel for a night, let alone find someone to drive me to it. Despite it being summer in Alaska, it was still the middle of the night and I doubt I would’ve found an Uber or Lyft.

There were other times after that where men would hit on me. Where they would make their advances. I resisted most, unless I felt that I couldn’t comfortably say no and get out of the situation.

So when I say fuck rape apologists, or fuck rapists…it carries all of this with it.

You should never be made to feel like you have to give up your bodily autonomy for safety. You should never have it taken from you forcefully or suddenly. You should never be told, post-hoc, that what you experienced was not rape or assault. If you felt assaulted, then or after the fact, that is how you felt.

It can take years to process the trauma of having your autonomy stripped from you. It’s why many survivors don’t come forward. It’s why some survivors perpetuate what they suffered and make excuses for rapists. It’s why it takes survivors years to come forward when they do. I should know, I did all of those things.

If that’s something you can’t handle or something you’re going to lawyer into the ground, telling me that if I let it happen then it wasn’t assault, you can fuck off from my life. I know what I experienced. I know how violated I felt. How violated I still feel. How locked away I feel from my own body and my own sexuality.

Fix your hearts or die was meant as a rallying cry against transphobes, but I think it applies to anyone who feels disgust when someone tells their story. Fix your hearts or die.