The following content contains explicit descriptions of assault which may be triggering to those affected by sexual harassment or violence. 

 

The first time I was sexually assaulted, I was 16-years-old.

I was a junior at a prestigious boarding school that I had begged my parents to let me attend. That night was the second weekend of the school year. It’s over three years ago now, but I still remember what the early fall night air smelled like as I walked home from the gym with the boy who assaulted me. I still remember the strange, bitter tang of soap in my mouth as I scrubbed my tongue in my friend’s dorm room. 

The second time I was assaulted, I was still sixteen. I still went to the same school, and this time it was a different boy who made me feel so horrible that I spent all night scrubbing my mouth out with soap until I was gagging.

When I left high school, I thought I was leaving that part of my life behind me. I was no longer going to be the girl who had a panic attack in the fluorescent-lit bathroom, digging her nails into her forearms.

I thought that I could choose to be happy, to leave my experiences with violence in the past. I started my freshman year at Dartmouth, and immediately joined a group that does work with sexual violence prevention. I met amazing women, and I felt like the work I did was making a difference. At a college with an overbearing drinking culture and a dominant Greek system, I felt my friends and I were making campus a little safer, even if we only influenced a few people.

Then, I was raped at Dartmouth.

It had happened to girls I vaguely knew, even close friends. But when it happened to me, I finally realized what it was like to feel unsafe at all hours of the day. Sure, it was helpful being around people who I knew cared about sexual violence prevention and cared about me, but no one can spend all-day-every-day being protected. Alleged rapists walked freely not just at frat houses or dimly-lit parties, but through the dining halls, libraries, dorms. They are in the places we study, sleep, and eat. Nowhere felt safe for me anymore. I was terrified and unhappy — but that was not the worst part.

The worst part was that people knew and still know that this kind of thing is happening, and they choose not to care. Not caring is easy. Being complacent is easy. Being friends with perpetrators is easy. What’s difficult is acknowledging one’s own participation in the vicious cycle of harm.

People don’t care. They show up to soccer practice, to frat meetings, to parties, but not to anything that might — God forbid — make them uncomfortable. I hope that some of you will read this (hello frat boys!) and I hope that it ruins your day, just like every single day of my life is ruined by the harm I have experienced. Unlike the rapists who so easily run away from the fact that they are rapists, I can never run away from the fact that I am a survivor of sexual violence.  

In places that are overrun with sexual violence, we need men to step up and do the work. Not because women don’t want to do it, or are tired of doing it, but because people listen to and respect men. I wish this weren’t the case, and I’ve tried to do prevention work while ignoring this fact. But the simple truth is that men listen first and foremost to other men. Their teammates, their fraternity brothers, their friends. Women can share their stories —  I can share my story — but people don’t give a shit about things unless it starts to affect men.

I believe men at Dartmouth care about preventing sexual violence insofar as it helps their own reputation, or the reputation of their fraternities. For most of these men, the issue is not life and death. They don’t spend their days on campus ducking into bathrooms to throw up because they saw a rapist, or running home at night because they’re terrified of being alone in the dark. Some men at Dartmouth will say that they’re “passionate about sexual violence prevention,” then shove your head onto their dick so hard that you’re gagging.

A friend of mine once said that he “couldn’t even get the guys to show up to paintball,” much less care about sexual violence prevention (sometimes frat brothers play paintball together for some fun, non-hazing bonding). Somehow, rape and paintball have become analogous in our world — something the guys might have the time to worry about, but probably not.  

I organized a march against sexual violence over the summer with my best friend who is involved in the same prevention organization as me. We took turns screaming from a megaphone, holding our signs above our heads as people joined in the march. For about an hour during that August night, it felt as though other people maybe gave a shit about the innumerable women who were (and are) violently raped at Dartmouth. But the next day? Not so much.

My friend’s rapist had the audacity to show up to our march. He stood with his fraternity brothers, yelling that “rapists are not welcome here” while our march snaked down fraternity row and across campus. He left the march after a short while, probably to go get shitfaced with his brothers and rape someone else.

The boy I had been sleeping with all summer did not show up to the march. When he saw me a few days later, he said that he was at a party, getting fucked up. “You would have hated it,” he told me. “Thanks for coming to the march,” I replied sarcastically. He slipped on his ray bans and changed the subject, because he didn’t have to care.

So, as one frat brother once asked me, “what are some implementable night-to-night solutions?” Well, show up to paintball. Start thinking about sexual violence — no, caring about sexual violence. And not just because some guy who isn’t your frat brother assaulted your friend’s girlfriend or your little sister. Care because sexual violence ruins the lives of women on Dartmouth’s campus and around the world. Care because you are all complicit —  no, culpable — in the cycle of violence that rules my life, and the lives of countless other strong, amazing women.