on sexual abuse

I've been meaning to write this for a while. Partly because I thought I needed some time to cool off before I did, and partly because I haven't had the time to sit down and do it justice, I haven't had a chance to do it until now.

In the last couple of months, I've both been personally told about, as well as personally read in our school's newspaper, too many cases of sexual abuse. I can't begin to express my frustration related to this issue and how lightly it is dealt with.

I see myself as part of several societies that are significantly different from each other, thanks to the resources and opportunities that my parents have provided me with. What I've come to realize is that over time, based on both personal observations, as well as on stories I've been told by my parents and grandparents, we've become less sensitive and grown number towards issues that we should not have developed these attitudes towards at all.

Sexual abuse is one of them.

I don't think that sexual abuse comes in one form. Rape is not the only way that someone could be sexually abused. And I know that it is possible for men to be sexually abused as well, but I purposefully don't want to write about that. I don't think it's acceptable for anyone to abuse anyone in any shape or form, regardless of their sex or gender. However, I believe that the issue that needs to be urgently addressed, the issue that people need to start openly discussing is the sexual abuse of women by men.

I do not say this because I'm a female myself, but because in all of the societies that I feel I belong in, the cases of female abuse by males is more frequent, and very unfortunately way more "accepted" or "normalized" than any other permutation of the crime.

Sexual abuse is not just rape. Rather, it is a broader attitude towards women that makes it possible, and even acceptable to act and speak in a certain manner.

I know several girls who have been raped. I know even more girls who are friends of friends who have been raped. Two weeks ago, I went to see the UPenn Vagina Monologues, where at the end, members of the audience were asked to stand up one by one: initially if they were raped, and later, if they knew someone who was raped. By the end, the entire auditorium with about 1,300 seats was standing, only with a few exceptions.

That says something.

* * *

A few days before attending the Vagina Monologues, I had a different, much less grave, but still quite important interaction with a guy who I thought was my friend. I won't go into the details of the conversation, but it was basically him accusing me of not having "hooked up" with anyone in college. He said people called me asexual (the same people used to call me a lesbian a short while ago), and that it wasn't acceptable for me to "go into professional life without ever having kissed anyone in college".
The same person told my best friend a day before talking to me that he, along with a bunch of his friends had bet someone in their fraternity (who I also considered to be a good friend of mine) "to try and make out with me".

I'll leave the interpretation and judgment of this up to you.

I'm not saying that all men are the same and that women have no culpability whatsoever, but I hope a more open conversation, and a broader perception of what it means to be sexually abused can be adopted by more and more people over time, and that people can start questioning their own thoughts, words, and behaviors.