The Case for Queer People to Talk About Sexual Violence

Photo by Mika Baumeister on Unsplash

I remember my first sexual encounter was with a man (let’s call him A) in high school. We played hooky during gym class and made our way to the men's bathroom (this was before I transitioned). I didn't know what I was doing and was very uncomfortable doing it, but A insisted. He brought me to the bathroom stall and f@cked me raw. Talk of condoms was never mentioned. Nor testing or consent. He pushed into me for several minutes before we were interrupted by a student walking in.

I don't remember how the sex went. I do remember walking home later that day, telling myself over and over again that it wasn't rape. I had wanted to be there at first, I reasoned. I had not stopped it. Worse, I had sat there lifelessly to the point where he remarked how still I was.

How could I have been raped when I did nothing?

I remember crying in the bathroom shower at home as I washed away the blood from my body. I told no one what happened. It took me years to be honest with the assault, and even as I went to therapy and started taking medication, I was deeply uncomfortable with sex, always believing I was one hookup away from someone hurting me.

Recently, I have started talking about my assault, and it's been liberating. I can have sex again, and it's opened up space within me that I didn't think was possible. In fact, I wrote an entire book where one of the main characters experiences sexual assault, and I am not afraid to admit that it draws heavily from personal experience. (See The Bubble We're In.)

The shame and guilt I have felt has dissipated, and I want to make the case for such vulnerability in the queer community, where we normalize talking and listening about our experiences with sexual violence as a means of strength.

The stigma surrounding sexual harassment and assault

In general, it's tough for people to talk about sexual assault and harassment for a variety of reasons. Researchers in the peer-reviewed journal PLoS One have found that sexual-violence stories, either negative or positive, are generally perceived as more challenging to share than other tragedies and less likely to be shared.

One of the reasons for this is internal or a person's self-image. Academics in the peer-reviewed Violence Against Women Journal found that self-stigma from sexual violence victims can correlate with "increased levels of trauma symptom severity."

There is also the social stigma that comes from being believed (or not) by your support network, which has been noted to have a huge impact on your self-image. As summarized in that Violence Against Women Journal article: "Considering self-blame, if a survivor's social network responds by blaming her for the assault, self-blame is greater than if she is not blamed by her support network."

Finally, there are cultural stereotypes that make being believed more difficult. For example, there is an infamous stereotype that someone sexually harassed or assaulted is to be blamed for their assault if they wear "revealing" clothing, have a "promiscuous" pattern of behavior, and other such actions.

All of these lenses intersect, as cultural and subcultural norms can influence in-group norms (and vice versa), which impacts one's self-image.

With LGBTQ+ people, there is the added wrinkle of anti-queer opponents often linking us to sexual abuse. There is a malicious conspiracy theory, popularly proposed by conservatives going back decades, that being sexually assaulted is what made us queer in the first place. Anti-gay advocate Joseph Nicolosi is noted for saying in 2009: "If you traumatize a child in a particular way, you will create a homosexual condition." Some may not wish to be open about their experiences for fear of validating such odious myths or being discredited because of them.

There is also the moral panic of us being called groomers, where many modern-day conservatives believe queerness to be inherently linked to pedophilia (see I'm Trans & Society Removed My Comfort Around Children). We do "not reproduce, but must recruit," goes the infamous bigoted saying, and in an effort to downplay the Groomer Conspiracy Myth, some may downplay their experiences of sexual violence altogether.

And so many queer people often have a hard time talking about sexual assault and harassment, with underreporting being quite common, particularly with queer students. The systemic biases queer people face intersect with the already stigmatized nature of sexual assault to make it less likely that queer people will report anything.

Helping to preserve communities of healing

Yet, as queer people, we don't have the luxury of hiding or being withdrawn, no matter how much society conditions us to do so. We are more vulnerable to sexual assault and harassment than our straight and cisgendered peers by a significant margin, especially when we focus on bisexual people and other less accepted sexual orientations and gender identities: something that compounds with race, sex, and class. According to the Bureau of Justice, for example:

“The violent victimization rate for bisexual females (151.2 victimizations per 1,000 persons age 16 or older) was eight times the rate for straight females.”

This problem is serious and well-documented. We need to help each other here, and talking about our bad sexual experiences (and, more importantly, listening to the experiences of others) is part of how we bridge that gap. The American Psychological Association has a formal guide for psychologists on how to deal with patients who have experienced sexual assault, and one of the most important things is providing a space free from judgment, writing:

“So far, the data suggest that survivors often receive mixed reactions in their informal support networks…Family and significant others were particularly likely to issue ultimatums to the survivor about getting formal help and to get frustrated if the survivor did not...

…survivors delay telling others because they fear being blamed for the assault and because they don’t want to burden others. Some worry that if they tell family members, they might react violently against the offender.”

Fostering an environment where we accept people's stories is a type of care that not many automatically receive. It's a lesson for all of us to pause when our family members, friends, peers, and loved ones tell us heavy news and to listen before we respond.

Yet it cannot just be about talking and listening: awareness and empathy are only a tiny part of the battle.

We also need to materially support communities of care that provide resources for those who have experienced sexual assault and harassment. When I wrote The Bubble We're In, I tried to make the main character, Sebastián, neither a victim nor a survivor. The event is part of him, but it's only a part of him — one he processes through community. He attends a community therapy session at a local LGBTQ+ Center, which helps him begin to heal.

It's a touching scene, but it's also increasingly a fantasy. Unfortunately, there are fewer and fewer of these spaces in modern America. Some have closed down due to the moral panic we are currently experiencing. From Texas to Florida, LGBTQ+ centers in schools all across the country have been shut down.

Others are undergoing financial problems. The Milwaukee LGBT Community Center, for example, never quite recovered from the recession caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The William Way LGBT Center in Philadelphia has had its funding slashed multiple times over the last year.

And listen, charities should not be seen as the ultimate solution, and not all of the people who run them are good at their jobs. I live in the Washington, D.C. area, and infamously, an LGBTQ+ Shelter here, Casa Ruby, was so mismanaged that the city cut all funding, and its owner is currently facing legal troubles for diverting funds meant for the nonprofit into her personal account.

We need to be critical of these services as well (and shut them down when they fail us), but that doesn't change the fact that something needs to fill these gaps. Our community is already strapped for cash, and many of us cannot afford the United States' expensive and overburdened mental health system. These centers are a lifeline, and many are quite threatened this pride season.

A prideful conclusion

There is a reason pride in ourselves became a rallying call within the queer community. Society immersed us in shame, and as a defense mechanism, queer activists got loud about it. As one organizer of this movement remarked in an interview with The Allusionist in 2015:

“People did not have power then; even now, we only have some. But anyone can have pride in themselves, and that would make them happier as people, and produce the movement likely to produce change.”

Yet sometimes, it feels like pride has morphed into a dangerous form of respectability politics, where we only feel proud to uplift the good parts of the community: the queers with talent, awards, money, and accolades. The times our community produces joyous art and “civil” acts of resistance—the positive experiences and nothing else.

However, part of having pride involves being comfortable with all of ourselves. If we are proud of the people we have become and are becoming, we should be allowed to talk about all the experiences that have shaped us — both the good and the bad.

I was sexually assaulted.

It happened, and I see my ability to talk about it as a means of survival and strength. I got through it because I was able to chat about it with loved ones, friends, and professionals, and I want others to have the same opportunity. We should want to make space for queers who are processing the all-too-common trauma of sexual assault and harassment, and when it comes to on-the-ground aid in our communities, the money and resources are often just not there.

This pride, in between the parades and parties, I beg you to donate to your local queer community center, LGBT sex workers coop, or any other community-run initiative working for us and by us. We are the ones that must protect each other.