Ida Tin’s “Dear Men” Series: Part 9 of 29 – Sexual Assault

Dear Men, post 9/29: When what must not happen happens

Sexual assault is a simple label we put on things ranging from a not so great moments to life destroying trauma, both because someone intruded our bodies and minds in a sexual, unwanted, damaging, wrong and sickening ways.

Every single woman knows the creeping fear of walking down a dark street. It didn’t have to be that way, but it is because we all have experiences that we wish we didn’t have. I have lived a pretty wild life, travelling alone on my motorcycle and camped alone in the desert, stayed in foreigners’ homes and gone home with a man or two. And yet, I have been spared all the horrible things that could have happened.

I do however have many “not so great moments”. Let me share one minor experience. I was around 11 years old and biking home from the train station in one small village and home to the next village where I lived, a trip of 5 km between fields. It was a summer day and a car honks the horn as it passes me. I don’t recognize the car but wave at it as a polite gesture, assuming it must be someone I know. The car pulls over a few hundred meters down the street. As I stop on the drives’ side, a young man has pulled down his pants and is doing, which would have been quite all right at home under his bed cover. But for me, it was a shocking sight to say the least. It was not the best introduction to a male erection, the first I had ever seen. I simply quickly continued on my bike. As you can imagine, the last 4 km home felt very different from the first 1 km. Every single bush became a potential crime scene. I made it home. Did I tell my parents, did I call the police, had I noticed his number plate? No. Why not? Because I was ashamed. It makes no sense, but that is the wicked dynamic of assault, the victim often feels shameful and says nothing. It has been more than 30 years, and yet I think about that moment every single time I pass that place. Something I have done hundred of times. That guy left a mark that cannot go away. It was not minor. I know that now. Each and every time a person crosses the line, it has long and deep effects.

So what about my dear, strong, super smart girlfriend who told me that the exchange student that had stayed a few months with her family had raped her, and she never told anyone? Where does that experience go? Where does it sit, what does it do to her? I cry as I try to imagine.

Rape is used as a weapon in war. It makes me so sad, sick, furious, screaming angry that the magic of sex, and bodies becomes a curse, a burning iron torturing women. I feel a tightening in my throat knowing that harassment, assault and abuse happens on the street, in wars, and perhaps worst of all in her own home. And not just by a few freaks. It is so prevalent that the people who do this are the ones I pass in the street, sit on the airplane with. Something is totally off, this must not happen, and we must talk.

-This post by Ida Tin is shared on LinkedIn and is republished here with her permission. The SheSight Team has not made any changes to the content.