Content Warning: This article mentions sexual assault. 

July 2018: my solo trip to New York. On the subway from Manhattan to Brooklyn, I was sat next to an excessively drunk man, naïvely thinking my headphones would protect me until I was interrupted by him grabbing my hair, complimenting me on the style. He spent the rest of the journey talking about what an attractive couple we’d make; me, an 18-year-old alone in a foreign city, and him, a middle-aged drunkard.

He repeatedly asked for my name and as I stood up to get off, grabbed my hand. If I pulled away, he might get aggressive; we stayed like that until the subway doors opened. I was terrified he wouldn’t let go, thankfully he did. But why should I be thankful that it didn’t get any worse? It was already vile enough.

In my disorientation I took the wrong exit, into an isolated neighbourhood I didn’t recognise, intensifying my already heightened anxiety. I immediately called my parents, not caring about the six-hour time difference, and had a panic attack. Once back at the apartment, I took a scalding hot shower, desperate to erase the memory of his hands in my hair and on my skin.

I’m tired of making excuses and justifications for the actions of men who have no regard for the crippling consequences women face. Afterwards, I tweeted a joke about how I was going to move to New York to be with him (after all we’d make a ‘great couple’). To this day it is my best performing tweet.

Anonymous

I was sexually harassed at work with a male colleague (who was eight years my senior, with me being only 18 at the time) ceaselessly trying to flirt with me when I was clearly uncomfortable, and during normal conversation would say things like ‘why don’t you take your clothes off?’ At my most recent job in a factory, I went to eat in the dining hall alone. A group of middle-aged men stared at me and made loud comments about what they would do to my body. I ended up hiding in a toilet cubicle for the rest of my lunch hour. I never ate alone again.

In my first year at university, I went to Rosie’s on Halloween night. Whilst waiting for a taxi home, a man squeezed my bum as he walked past so that when I turned, I had no idea who had just groped me. I could not stop crying the entire ride home and have never worn the dress I was wearing since. Due to internalised victim-blaming, my thoughts automatically catapulted to your dress was too short. Except, when I ate my lunch while working in a factory, I had to wear an oversized white protective coat. I was never asking for it, no woman ever is. Clothing has nothing to do with it. It has everything to do with the perpetrators, who make you feel like a piece of meat only worthy of their consumption.

Anonymous

At primary school, I was never the girl that the boys had a crush on. I was jealous of my friends getting all the attention until year four when I found out one boy liked me. I was flattered but didn’t reciprocate his feelings, which he did not take well. Because I didn’t want to kiss him, he decided to ask one of his friends to pin me down to a bench—which was easy as I was small, even for a nine-year-old girl—so he could kiss me. When my friends found out they were excited for me because I had kissed a boy, which must mean he was my boyfriend now. I tried to tell them I didn’t want to kiss him, that he had forced me, but they were too young to understand consent—we all were. Though this may seem mild compared to some other stories, this boy felt he was entitled to me from a young age, and this is a belief that follows many boys as they become men. I don’t blame that boy for feeling that way; I don’t blame his friend for helping him; I don’t blame my friends for not listening to me when I told them I didn’t want to kiss him; I don’t blame myself for not telling any teachers. But I do blame the lunchtime assistants who let the boys play ‘kiss chase’—a game where boys would chase girls trying to kiss them—despite the fact it obviously upset us; I do blame parents and schools for not teaching consent—even in a non-sexual context—to young children; and most of all I blame the society that teaches boys that they can do whatever they want and teaches girls that they have to let them.

Anonymous

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Read the other articles in our series here:

We Are the 97% (Part One)

We Are the 97% (Part Two)

We Are the 97% (Part Three)