I had been raped before: my second sexual experience was being raped, in my own bed, aged 18, by someone my flatmate had invited back to our flat. He would not take no for an answer. I experienced first hand the instinctive blame put on the victim by friends of the perpetrator. It took me a decade to go to the police and by that time, they couldn’t track me down. But they did listen.
When I was training in a city away from home, I started to explore my different interests within the community down there. I felt a real sense of freedom and release at being able to express myself to the fullest sense possible of my identity. I am what is known as a switch and I am also poly in direction too. I am both dominant and submissive. I like men and women, although it is more of a thing that I simply find things about people attractive and I don’t define myself as one thing or another. That’s a conversation for another time.
Then I met someone I thought I could trust to explore these things with on a sexual level. We talked a lot about various things and I felt I knew him. There is, in this kind of thing, situations where you have a mentor and also partners. I knew he was seeing other people. I assumed I was being invited into that collective. I assumed he would take precautions. That assumption has haunted me for ten years.
The circumstances of what occurred meant I would never even have been able to pursue charges being laid. Suffice to say, I was very clear about what was OK and not OK and I was ignored. At the time, I was not in a position to be able to do anything about it. My trust, which in this case is paramount, was utterly betrayed. I had said no, I had used my safe word and he had refused to stop. That’s rape.That is all I am saying about it. The next morning I went home and later that evening discovered from him that all he had wanted was one night of sex. I felt humiliated, betrayed, deeply upset, utterly vulnerable. I stepped back from the community for a while, to lick my wounds and be more careful.
Except that this wasn’t the end of it.
Two months later I had to report to the GUM clinic, because of symptoms I had been having. I discovered that I had Pelvic Inflammatory Disease, bilaterally. For those of you who know about this, you’ll know that’s not good. I was examined and asked for the (male) student not to be in the room. I was ignored. I was handed two lots of strong antibiotics for a significant period, which made me feel very unwell and on the advent of my 33rd birthday was told, possibly incorrectly (I have since discovered the clinic has a habit of mixing up notes) that while I hadn’t contracted any kind of blood-borne disease and while it wasn’t Gonorhhea, Syphilis etc, the damage that had occured meant it was highly improbable I would ever have children.
Let that sink in.
As a responsible adult, I contacted the dickhead who did this to me to inform him which is when he told me that one of his partners had had a UTI and they’d had unprotected sex. He casually informed me that it could be transmitted through sex. Eye-opening. I was devastated.
I decided, realising the legal route wasn’t an option, with the support of some friends, I told our de facto community leader what had happened, because of safety concerns for others. The result was that while he continued to be a respected member of the community, I was ostracised. I no longer felt safe going to events or clubs, let alone exploring anything with my friends. And i was developing quite the skill with a bullwhip. I still support the community. I still want friends in the community, but I will never again want to be active in that way. This event destroyed that - and sex generally for me - I thought permanently. I have not trusted close male friends for a decade. Until two weeks ago, I had not even kissed someone in seven years. I have met someone quite wonderful who I am having an unconventional friendship with, but it is slow going. I’m going to have to tell him the above, in far more detail: I am not looking forwards to it.
Sex was always something where people just wanted the physical act from me. Even in an 18 month relationship, they had no interest in intimacy. My sexual history has been occasionally falling into bed with someone and a crippling lack of confidence and self esteem to approach people I liked, along with sheer terror of my emotional responses. On top of that, one delightful horror, jealous at my “getting to someone first”, got that partner drunk, got him to tell her everything I had asked him to do in bed and then, I kid you not, told all of our mutual acquaintances. And this guy? The first person I had trusted to sleep with after the first rape. Some 18 months later. It was another 18 months before I went there again and in typical questionable judgement, that guy knew how vulnerable I was in so many ways, yet not only split up with his girlfriend for a week to sleep with me, guilt free, but also then threatened me with that if I ever told anyone about it, he would just say I was crazy, making it up and people would believe him, not me. Unfortunately for him, he we overheard saying that. This guy had been someone I trusted implicitly. It was devastating.
A friend put up a post a couple of days ago about what happened to her at the festival and the response of people around her to it. There has been some backlash. I sort of understand their reaction, but I deeply understand hers, too. Which is why I am writing this post, now. In some ways, I a, disappointed in some of our mutual friends. I am not sure they are truly taking the time to understand and respect her experience and what effect it has had on her.
I have alluded to some of this on a comment on that post. I’m not sure of what will happen. What I will say is that it has taken me ten years to start exploring intimacy and challenge these - and other associated - demons.
This isn’t the only occasion something awful happened to me. I do hope it was the last.
#metoo
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