This article contains references to sexual assault which may be triggering to survivors.
M
y partner and I have recently taken up camping as our preferred method of weekend getaway relaxation. Although we’ve recently discovered it’s not always relaxing. Last weekend we had a tent full of utter knobs camping right beside us. For a start, they claimed the spot that we booked, then they had a massive fight with the park ranger because they refused to pay to camp there and then they went around trying to bully all the other campers into driving them back into town to get more booze because they were too drunk to drive. Their behaviour was revolting so we went on a hike to escape them and then watched a movie in our tent that night to block their incessant bellowing about who has spewed the most from alcohol. FYI it was Shirto (I’m pretty sure they were saying Shirto) and he spewed 14 times after sculling a bottle of Midori. What a legend *sarcasm font*.
The night progressed and at about 11pm we snuggled down to sleep but obviously couldn’t because The Annual Most Prolific Spewer Conference was still being held three hours later at 2am, loudly and obnoxiously just a few metres from our tent. I wanted to ask them to keep it down but I knew that wouldn’t end well, so I just tried really hard to ignore them. Then all of a sudden the conversation took a swift turn and one of the guys said something that broke my heart.
They were all talking about girls they hooked up with in high school and this one guy told a story about how he was at a party when he was left alone in a room with a girl, watching TV. He said the girl had suddenly started rubbing his penis through his jeans. He said he didn’t want her to, that it was ‘fucking weird and awkward’. He tried to kind of get away but she was really forceful and he said he didn’t want to hurt her feelings by turning her down. She gave him a blow job which he said he ‘couldn’t even finish’ because it was just ‘freaky.’ The conversation then steered back to Shirtos Midori fuelled spew-a-thon and then they all stumbled back to their tents.
Even though I finally had the peace and quiet I’d been longing for, I was wide awake thinking about this poor guy. Aside from the fact that he’d totally ruined my evening by being an inconsiderate dickhead of the first order, I was so sad for him that he’d been sexually assaulted and he didn’t even seem to realise that’s what had happened. It’s obvious it was bothering him. I gathered from their conversation that these guys had been friends since high school and this incident had occurred about 10 years ago. He was bringing it up a decade later while he was totally trolleyed around a campfire. It’s clearly an experience that has stayed with him.
The popular assumption is that men are always up for sex but that simply isn’t true. This guy was looking for validation from his mates that it was okay to feel weird about what happened to him but they just dismissed it, with one of his mates even saying that he’s a moron for ‘turning down a free blowie’. This is an incredibly dangerous mentality that is a direct result of gendered cultural assumptions that encourage the idea that when women sexually abuse men it’s not a serious problem or worse, it’s laughable.
I wanted to tell him that it’s okay for guys to say no to sex. It doesn’t make them assholes and it doesn’t make the women they say no to undesirable. The focus of sexual abuse awareness is usually skewed towards a female perspective, which is completely logical because statistically, women are much more likely to be targets for sexual abuse than men. The reason why I am drawing attention to the much smaller percentage of men that are sexually abused at the hands of women is because it’s such an important piece of the puzzle of mutual understanding. Many men don’t truly understand what sexual abuse looks like and by shining the light on stories that place men as the victim, it might just make them understand that silence isn’t consent. In fact it’s not even close.
Sexual abuse is everyone’s problem and it’s really important to talk about it openly, honestly and respectfully. The bottom line is that everyone involved in a sexual activity should be enjoying it and/or actively consenting to it.
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12 Comments
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“…it’s such an important piece of the puzzle of mutual understanding.” What a humbling sentence. Brilliant article, Smags, you’re a legend.
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Thank you. It all just comes down to a lack of understanding. x
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Beautiful. Love it. It’s so sad that we still get trapped by traditional assumptions even in sexual violence. The thing is, we often forget women can be perpetrators, and to other women, too. Would be awesome if we could just keep our bits to ourselves.
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I know right? My official stance on the whole thing is just to stop touching other people without an invitation. It’s really not that hard. x
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Exactly. Loving your blog, by the way. Fairly new fan.
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Perfectly said Carly. Perfect
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It’s frustrating because it’s all such obvious stuff. It was just bothering me! 🙂
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As usual, brilliantly said (written, you know what I mean.) Thank you for putting it out there so openly, honestly and respectfully.
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Thank you! It’s lovely to get feedback… everyone was rather silent after this one. Not that I’m comment hungry but I always worry when there’s not as much engagement on a post that I’ve upset or offended people.
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So true!! Men can be abused too and their ‘no’ should be respected.
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This has both resonated with me and educated me – thank you, Carly. And my thanks to the lovely community of Carly readers who comment here too.
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