decide what to be and go be it.
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trigger warning: sexual assault
2am, staring at my Google search bar, furiously typing and retyping and retyping and retyping my question: “can a thin man rape a fat woman”
anxiously, i awaited the results. would my fears be confirmed or denied? would i find comfort and solidarity in the vast world of the internet, or would the answer to my question be what i feared?
I met him in the fall of 2020. I moved to the greater Philadelphia area from rural Ohio to pursue graduate school, a move I was often applauded for due to the pandemic. I was excited by the prospect of dating in a big city. I had never really had much luck with dating in the past, and I mainly attributed it to being in Ohio.
Hinge seemed like a promising option. I rarely ever liked other people’s profiles, mainly due to a lack of confidence and a mixture of anxiety and self-doubt.
A notification! “___” liked your response. I remember exactly what our first conversation was about. For the next few days we chatted about everything from favorite cocktails, what books we were currently reading, and what we had been doing since the beginning of the pandemic.
He was nice. He was kind, cool, and whip-smart. For the most part, I really did want to possibly pursue something. My self-doubt and insecurities came to surface though and I dodged hanging out with him at every opportunity. His suggestions were always met with an excuse on my end.
For context, I am fat. I’ve been fat for over half of my life. I was a slim child, but around age 8 or 9 I begin to fill out overwhelmingly. My mom met this with panic, encouraging me to lose weight with incentives such as toys, trips, and games. She even went as far as putting me on Weight Watchers at the ripe age of 10. None of this is to take a jab at my mom. She did what she knew, and I love my mother.
My whole life has been a constant struggle to accept and appreciate my body. My strong, yet soft body that houses and protects and feels. I was taught that loving my body was wrong. I should hate it and want to completely change it. And I did, and sometimes, I still do.
Dating as a fat person is, for a lack of a better word, hard. It’s a constant worry about if you’re going to be rejected, ridiculed, fetishized, or even in some cases (like mine), harmed. The trope of the secret fat girlfriend is one I know like the back of my hand. Good enough to fuck, but not to date. It’s happened countless times to me, and to many other fat people I know. A secret shame men face around the idea of being attracted to a fat woman.
I often feel like I have to prove that I can be sexual, that I can be satisfying. Every sexual encounter I have, I feel shame surrounding the way I look naked. “I am not worthy, I am not worthy, I am not worthy.” I definitely believed that. Sometimes I still do.
He seemed interested, even after I gave the “Im not skinny” spiel that every fat woman knows all too well. Months passed by, and we would intermittently talk. A few months later in November of 2020, we briefly discussed BDSM. I was 22 and did not know the slightest thing about principles of BDSM. Looking back now, what he was suggesting was straight up abuse. I asked him if this was something he did often. He responded, “I only have this kind of sex with fat women.” I was disturbed, but admittedly, I was also intrigued. I asked why. He said, “They have low self-esteem, so they let me.
I should’ve ran then. But he was so conventionally attractive, Ivy League educated (which I am learning means absolutely nothing), and he seemed to align with me politically. He was right though, I had low self-esteem, so I let him.
The first time wasn’t that bad. Some light punching to the face, hitting me with a belt on my backside; nothing i couldn’t handle. The sex felt good. I felt satisfied.
A whole year passed before I saw him again. It was November of 2021. He had moved out of the state by then to pursue a job elsewhere, but was in town to visit family. A testament to my own insecurities, I reached out to him.
I have a lot of anxiety surrounding sex. I am now a 3 time survivor of sexual assault, which complicates intimacy in so many ways for me, as I’m sure it does for many other survivors. At that point, I had been feeling so lonely that I felt myself wanting to have another sexual encounter of the like with him. I think, in this case, my need to already be familiar with my sexual partners played a key role.
He had expressed unbridled interest in consensual non-consensual sex play. I questioned if I was genuinely interested in it, as I had a lot of concern surrounding the logistics and credibility of this “kink.” I entertained the idea but ultimately, I never said yes.
He haphazardly texted me that he was in the area and I needed to make up my mind if I wanted to see him or not. I said yes, because I thought this encounter would be similar to the last.
“Here.”
I walked to the door to let him into my complex. Some pleasantries were exchanged, but as soon as we walked into my apartment and I shut the door behind me, he punched me in the face.
I was shocked and sort of chuckled as a reaction. He hit me again. At this point, I am thinking to myself, “What the fuck am I going to do?” He gestures to the direction of the bedrooms in the back of my apartment, “Which one is yours?” I point to my bedroom and silently follow him in.
I knew I could handle some punches, but these were a thousand times more aggressive than the time before. He told me to take my clothes off. I did.
His biggest fantasy became my biggest nightmare. Punch after punch to my face resulted in a severe concussion and horrific bruising. Repeated kicking to my stomach resulted in excruciating abdomen pain.
I shyly whispered through tears, “Please stop. Please stop. Please stop.” He didn’t. I thought for a second that maybe I was going to die.
He was playing out his fantasy of consensual non-consensual sex play. Except it wasn’t consensual on my end. He even forced me to say (more than once), “I want you to rape me.” Threatening to hit me even harder if I didn’t.
He finished, abruptly put his clothes on, and left. I was so delusional as to what just happened, that, I too, abruptly put my clothes on and walked him out. As headed towards my door, I wryly joked, “See you around this time next year.”
I didn’t hear from him after that.
I sat on my bed and cried. I slept. I cried some more. My roommate came home from work later that night. I hid my face and said I was tired, and I’d see them in the morning.
I didn’t quite process what happened to me until the day after, which was, coincidentally, Thanksgiving. I woke up to a bruised and swollen cheek, and I told my roommate.
I had to seek medical care because I was in excruciating pain. After hours of waiting, I was finally seen, but the doctor questioned my credibility when I told him what happened. “This is why you don’t get yourself into these kinds of situations.”
I filed a police report, almost immediately regretting it. I was met with what I can only describe as complete and utter disrespect. He asked me what he looked like. I described. He asked almost mockingly, “What’s his build.” It was a statement, not even a question.
I told him an approximate guess of his height, and that he was of average build. He audibly stifled a laugh. He said, “Did you try to fight back…?” I couldn’t find a response. I sat in the exam room alone, on that bed, in a hospital gown, with a black eye and a swollen cheek in front of a police officer who had just laughed at me as I tried to recount the most traumatic event of my entire life.
He asked me a few more questions, and I explained that it had began as a BDSM encounter, but consent was never freely given in the first place and it was audibly withdrawn numerous times throughout the assault. I told him that a safe word was never established because my rapist said we didn’t need one.
I admitted that I was probably foolish to even entertain the idea of entering a BDSM encounter without a safe word, but I didn’t know much about BDSM and that I trusted him as a previously established sex partner to guide me. The police officer just sighed.
He eventually said he had all he needed and left.
I got dressed and drove myself home.
The next few days were generally a blur, and I didn’t really comprehend anything that was happening. I only told a few people, and I found myself sort of wondering why they even believed me. I was second guessing my reality; playing back every second of every moment of that encounter with him. Did it happen the way I remember?
The detective looking into my case called me the next week. He said there wasn’t anything he could do because he didn’t have any prior criminal activity and he lived in a different state. He said I could press charges, but he highly doubted that anything would come from it. I thanked him for his time.
Flash forward to seven months later. I am here. I’d be lying if I said I think about it everyday. Truthfully, I don’t. Sometimes I don’t think about it for weeks. But right now it’s all I can think about because there is now a new precedent set for survivors.
Survivors are seemingly encouraged to share what happened to them. yet, when they do, they are chastised, shamed, and called liars.
If a wealthy, blonde, thin, white woman such as Amber Heard is mocked on every single surface of the internet, what does that mean for me? Or you? Or your cousin? Or the girl you sat next to in Psych 101 your first semester of college?
I am sharing my story not because I think this is the perfect opportunity for a think piece moment, but because I can’t continue to live with it stuck inside of me anymore. I only shared the full story of what happened to me with one person. But now, I think it’s time for me to let it go.
Believe me or don’t. But next time you share an article or tweet about how Amber Heard got what she deserved, remember this. Amber Heard won’t see your post on facebook or your story on instagram or your retweet on twitter. Your friend who was raped will. And your friend who was raped will know that you mock and question and belittle the credibility of survivors.
To every survivor out there: I believe you. And I hope you believe me too.
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drake?
josh?
where’s the body of christ?
(via chromaticwasp)
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do not separate them…..
Starter Pokémon in Ohio
(via elphabaoftheopera)
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Christopher Plummer as Captain von Trapp
THE SOUND OF MUSIC (1965)(via elphabaoftheopera)
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booty shorts that say “your Midas touch on the Chevy door November flush and your flannel cure this dorm was once a madhouse I made a joke well it’s made for me how evergreen our group of friends don’t think we’ll say that word again and soon they’ll have the nerve to deck the halls that we once walked through one for the money two for the show I never was ready so I watch you go sometimes you just don’t know the nswer til someone’s on their knees and asks you she would’ve made such a lovely bride what a shame she’s fucked in the head they said but you’ll find the real thing instead she’ll patch up your tapestry that I shred”
merch concept ❤️
