Personal Break

"I'm afraid of men." I told my mother while she drove me through the country roads behind our suburban sanctuary. She was taking me to a house I frequently pet-sit at and we were discussing how my roommate at the time was bringing home strange guys and letting them stay the night without telling me because we were fighting. I didn't even think before I said it.

"Why are you afraid of men?" I couldn't think of an answer fast enough. "Who hurt you?"

I began to panic. I didn't know what to say.

I'd been assaulted a few different times, nothing overly serious I'd think. There's worse assaults than what I'd been through since middle school, but it still made me apprehensive towards men.

My mother began listing off relative names, her worst fear was me being hurt by a male relative. I denied them all--I've been so very lucky to have all the men in my life be good men. I didn't even know that men were capable of such terrible things other than the horror stories my mom tried to tell me when I ventured into chatrooms online as a kid.

I didn't know how to talk my way out of this, I was caught so off guard. I didn't even realize I'd told her honestly that I was afraid of men--I had kept that part of my life a secret from her for about five years at that point.

But it was too late, she knew something had happened to me based on my reaction.

So I told her everything.

From the first boyfriend, to the most trusted male friend, she then found out about it all. And I felt ashamed. Now I flinch when men accidentally touch me (or even when my partner purposefully touches me), I have to remind myself that certain professors aren't my once-abuser that look just like him, and I'm constantly thinking of escape plans whenever I'm near a man.

My mother didn't believe I'd been assaulted. She did agree that I was abused, but she didn't exactly agree that I'd been assaulted.

She had a habit of denying anything that happened to me or what I was if it didn't fit her narrative.

I told her I was gay, she said I wasn't because I liked men. I tried to explain as a young teen that I had attraction to both men and women--and nonbinary and genderfluid people and I wasn't sure what it meant--she forced me to break up with my first and only girlfriend and grounded me for over a month.

I told her I had revoked consent on more than one occasion and I had been ignored. She said it wasn't assault.

It took me nearly two years to realize I had been assaulted. I went through quarantine with unresolved issues about it, attempted online therapy, and even drunkenly told my sisters what had happened to me during one of my sister's bachelorette party that made me really think about what had happened to me.

I went through all of that.

To slip up and accidentally tell my mother I was afraid of men to her finding out why and it wasn't even a second thought before she said it didn't happen like I thought it did. I was sexually abused, not assaulted. And she somehow tied in her situation with her ex-husband (my adopted dad) into being the exact same thing as my assault.

If it wasn't for the empathy of my sisters and their concern for something I said, I wouldn't know what had happened to me was actually wrong. My mom pretended sex didn't exist because she mainly didn't want me having sex and I'd gotten embarrassed at a young age when she started talking about it and told her I'd learned all about it on the internet.

I did learn about how it worked. But not how it was supposed to work. You know, consent, comfortability, and so much more. I didn't know that what I had gone through as a 16-year-old wasn't normal.

This is why it's so important to talk about it and why I've gone on so many tangents about sex, abuse, mental illness, and odd stigmas around it all. Society on one half wants to never talk about these things and pretend they don't exist--pretend it's all sunshine and rainbows because those topics are controversial and uncomfortable; but then society on the other wants to normalize this conversation about it.

Sex education needs to do better instead of teaching us the "scary" parts about sex like most curable and treatable STD's and teach us about what a consensual relationship looks like and what warning signs to look for.

Public education needs to do better on sex education instead of worrying about teenagers having sex--they're going to have sex. But in situations like mine, maybe the issue of ignorance could be prevented by properly informing young teens what to steer clear from and make it a bit clearer what a healthy relationship should look like (in the broadest terms possible, of course, but obviously showing what is not okay in a relationship).

I think another reason I like to argue about why "sex" shouldn't matter to other people is because I have my own fears against men and I sort of feel guilty about it. It's not all men, obviously, there are some really good men. I have many male friends that are perfectly respectable, the men in my family that never made me question that men could be scary and dangerous, and just so many more in the world that I don't know.

But it's hard to deny that the statistics of male violators is much higher. It's hard to deny that the statistics of female victims is insanely high. It's like, what, every 1in 3 women have had some sort of violating experience with a man? It's something crazy high. Way more than it should be.

This is something I worry about in how people view numbers vs people. Again, that "it's not all men" statement is used in good and bad ways. There are people that dismiss the abuse and issues by stating "it's not all men" and there are people who are actively arguing that it's not an inherently male issue, it's an issue with an individual who happens to be male.

Another part of me argues that of course men have the higher statistics just because they have the easiest weapon for assault--it's a lot harder to assault with nothing for cis-women. Yet, it still happens with women who are particularly sinister. However, given a weapon of opportunity, it becomes easier to use when the urge may come.

Regardless, no, it's not all men. I probably have more stories of men helping and protecting me than assaults--but I can't help but bristle if I have a male professor, coworker, or even share an elevator with a man. It's nothing they did, I just am now afraid that if even some of the men that were absolutely closest to me could do something, I fear what a stranger could do.

I feel if I had a better option to talk about what had happened, and what was happening at the time, I may have been able to figure out what was happening to me faster or even figure it out before it fully happened.

I don't know if it would have changed anything, but sometimes I just wonder that it would've been better to have more space to talk about it without it being such an uncomfortable topic for both me and other participants.