Disclaimer: This article includes facts, statistics, and personal anecdotes from anonymous sources about sexual harassment and sexual assault. If these topics make you uncomfortable, please stop reading now.
Before discussing serious topics like this, it is important to understand a few things. A lot of people think that sexual harassment has to be something as aggressive as rape, but the truth is sexual harassment can be something as little as cat-calling someone on the street. Sexual harassment is defined as behavior characterized by the making of unwelcome and inappropriate sexual remarks or physical advances in a workplace or other professional or social situation. Those inappropriate comments you made to your coworker? Sexual harassment. Those unsolicited nudes you sent to your classmate? Sexual harassment. Touching someone without their consent even if it did not seem inappropriate? Sexual. Harassment. While there is a clear definition of sexual harassment, the same cannot be said about sexual assault as it is defined differently in every state. However, sexual assault usually refers to sexual contact or behavior, often physical, that occurs without the consent of the victim. Therefore, sexual harassment is any unwelcome or inappropriate advances or remarks, while sexual assault is non-consensual sexual contact or behavior. Now that we got that straight, let's start with sexual harassment: It is very difficult to give exact statistics of sexual harassment because the law does not protect against simple teasing or isolated incidents. Sexual harassment is only punishable by law if it is very serious, occurs frequently, or in the context of employment. However, a survey launched in January of 2018, by the nonprofit organization Stop Street Harassment, found that 81% of women report experiencing some sort of sexual harassment in their lifetime. Most sexual harassment cases are mild and not illegal. Still, these situations happen so often that some women, at least myself and most of the women I talk to, can't even tell the difference between a guy with good intentions, oppose to, bad intentions. "When I first started college, I decided to download Tinder. Most of the conversations went nowhere, but if I liked talking to a guy enough, I would give them my Snapchat to continue talking. I had to delete Tinder after a while because even if they seemed nice beforehand, the first thing most guys would do when I gave them my Snapchat is send a dick pic." Sexual harassment isn't just cat-calling or unwanted explicit photos, many things are considered to be sexual harassment. Requests for sexual favors, jokes about sexual acts or sexual orientation, pressuring someone to engage in sexual activity, unwelcome sexual advances, and unwanted touching are all examples of sexual harassment as well. "One time, I was in a college bar with my friends. We were dancing and having a good time when I felt a hand slap my ass very hard to the point that my butt was stinging a little bit afterward. When I turned around to look at who it was, I saw this guy that I didn't even know smiling at me. I asked him 'What do you think you are doing?' All he said before walking away is 'Don't pretend you didn't like it.'" Sexual harassment and sexual assault usually get lumped together into one, because some forms of sexual harassment overlap with sexual assault. Something important to understand about sexual assault is that, like sexual harassment, it can occur without clothes ever being removed. Some types of sexual assault include sexual touching, pinching, groping, and attempted rape. "I had a friend who was 14 and she was dating a guy that was 18. I think that should have been the first warning sign. Either way, we all became friends, and one day he asked me to come to the gym in my building. I said okay. We were on the stairs and out of nowhere he pushed me against the wall. He was way stronger than me because I was a skinny 14-year-old and he was a muscular 18-year-old. I kept telling him to stop, and he kept telling me that I would like it and that I should let myself go. When he tried to get into my pants, I took the chance to escape. Eventually, I told my friend and she left him." According to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, 1 in every 5 women report experiencing some sort of sexual assault. Other forms of sexual assault include physical violence, sexual fondling, forcible sodomy, and, of course, rape. "This [is about] one guy I met at school the day after I crashed my car. I was overthinking and he came to ask me if I was okay. He seemed like a nice guy, and I just said I had no one to lean on because I have no friends here. He said he would be my friend. We exchanged numbers and started talking on a friend basis until he asked me to go eat somewhere. In the restaurant, he started getting into 'How's your life?' 'How's your love life?' 'Why aren't you with someone? You are so beautiful.' We left the restaurant and he wanted to continue talking in his car. When we were in his car, he started taking my pants off. I told him I don't want to while holding onto my pants. He ended up eating me out and fingering me." Sexual assault can have lasting effects on the victim. The Rape, Abuse, & Incest National Network (RAINN) reports that 94% of women who are raped experience symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) 2 weeks after the rape and 30% of women report symptoms of PTSD 9 months after the rape. RAINN also reported that 33% of women who are raped contemplate suicide and 13% actually attempt suicide. "It feels like a never-ending cycle. I felt like a different person while it was happening. I felt so powerless and I remember telling myself 'if I enjoy it, it is not rape.'" A huge misconception about sexual assault is that only men commit sexual assault, that is the opposite of the truth. Although men are indeed more likely to commit sexual assault, the results may surprise you. The National Crime Victimization Survey, conducted by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, found that female perpetrators were reported in 34.7% of rape or sexual assault cases with male victims and 4.2% with female victims. Another survey, the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey, found that women were more likely to experience abuse from male perpetrators, as were males who reported being penetrated without consent. But, when it came to other types of sexual victimization, 68.6% of male victims reported female perpetrators. "When we were like five or six, my sister and I went to daycare while our parents went to work. It was more of a house where they would take care of kids, but it was right across my parent's office. My parents trusted them since they were all women. They had a 14 or 15-year-old family member that would take care of the kids too. She would kiss us, touch us inappropriately, and would even try to get us to touch her. I knew it was wrong because she would do it in hidden places so I told someone else in the house and we never went back." The biggest misconception out there about sexual assault is that it only happens to women, at least that is what the media and general public seem to focus on. Now, I know that in this article, I tend to focus a lot more on the women's side of things but that's because the fact is, yes, women are way more likely to be sexually assaulted than men. According to RAINN, 90% of adult rape victims are female, but that does not mean there are not male victims out there as well. Earlier in the article, it was mentioned that 81% of women experience sexual harassment in their lifetime. Although the number is almost cut in half, that same survey found that 43% of men report experiencing sexual harassment in their lifetime. Statistics collected by RAINN also show, although the numbers vary a little in other surveys, that 1 in every 33 men will report experiencing attempted or completed rape, while 1 in every 6 women report experiencing attempted or completed rape. Furthermore, as of 1998, an estimate of 17.7 million women and 2.78 million men reported being victims of attempted or completed rape. The reality is that women ARE far more likely to experience sexual harassment/assault, but that does NOT give the public or the media the right to simply ignore the male victims who are also experiencing this. The heart of the matter is that every 73 seconds an American is sexually assaulted. Not male or female, not white or black. An American. And that is the real problem that we should be focusing on. If you or someone you know has suffered or is suffering from sexual harassment or sexual assault, please call the National Sexual Assault Telephone Hotline (800-656-4673) to speak to a trained staff member or visit hotline.rainn.org/online to talk to a trained staff member online. Sources: Chatterjee, Rhitu. “A New Survey Finds 81 Percent Of Women Have Experienced Sexual Harassment.” NPR, NPR, 22 Feb. 2018, www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/02/21/587671849/a-new-survey-finds-eighty-percent-of-women-have-experienced-sexual-harassment. “Statistics.” National Sexual Violence Resource Center, www.nsvrc.org/statistics. Stemple, Lara, et al. “Sexual Victimization Perpetrated by Women: Federal Data Reveal Surprising Prevalence.” Aggression and Violent Behavior, Pergamon, 28 Sept. 2016, www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1359178916301446. “Victims of Sexual Violence: Statistics.” RAINN, www.rainn.org/statistics/victims-sexual-violence
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