Editors in Chief: Riya Mirchandaney and Maya Varma Blog and Publicity Editor: Scott Stevens Content Manager: Katherine Lazar Writing Editor: Samantha Frenkel-Popell Layout Consultant: Lauren Jacques Photography Editor: Avalon Edwards Staff Writers: Anna Boonyanit, Natalie Jarrett, Nina Chandra, Connor Van Ligten, Samantha Castaneda, Sara Varadharajulu, Vida Saffari, Kelly Buck, and Sylvia Chen
Contents Letter From the Editors A Brief History of Sex on Earth
9 Sex and Dating: A Few Freshman Perspectives Popping the Cherry
7 America’s Guilty Pleasure Sexy Times Playlist Love at First Swipe Campus Rape Goes Primetime
9 An Open Letter
Imperfect Storm “I Am More” Resources
7
Letter
From The Editors
“Have we talked about sex yet?” Every Winter issue of The Bard has a theme—a focus on a topic or idea that somehow plays a powerful role in our lives. This year, the theme seemed obvious. Sex is more than just an act. From sex ed to music videos to prom night, sex is idealized, protected, advertised, sold, mislabeled, cherished. Regardless of our varied experiences with sex (or lack thereof), Oscar Wilde’s supposed quip that “everything in the world is about sex” seems awfully relevant in the complicated landscape of high school and adolescence. While exploring, interviewing, and writing, we inevitably came across the unspoken “sweep under the rug and pretend it never happened” topics: rape, assault, and abuse. These are never easy topics to discuss, nor should they be. While working on collecting and publishing candid personal essays from the perspectives of rape and abuse survivors, we’ve been faced with the question: why? Why publish stories so horrific—what do you hope to accomplish? Everyone is aware that rape and abuse exist, but situations like these can feel distant: “It happens, but it just doesn’t happen here. It doesn’t happen to our students.” The hard fact is that it does happen, and survivors exist in our community—we hope that hearing this from real Menlo students can create a necessary discourse on this topic. At the same time, we hope that the pieces can provide some solace to those who are or have been in similar situations, and let them know that they are not alone. Sex in high school offers a different experience for everyone. For some, it can be empowering, exciting, and full of self discovery; for others, it can be nervewracking and confusing. And for some, it might be elusive or uninteresting. The range of experiences is broad, and to us, that’s what this Bard issue is about. We want to create a discourse about sex that reaches every end of every spectrum and works on the pieces in between: pressure and double standards, sexuality, virginity, the internet, pornography, the grey areas of alcohol, and maybe even a sexy playlist to get you and your significant other (or others, we don’t judge) in the mood. It’s impossible to cover every experience with sex in one issue, but we hope this can be a start. Enjoy!
Sincerely,
Maya and Riya
A Breif History of
Sex on Earth
1550-1850 BCE Ebers Papyrus and Kahun Papyrus contain early documentations of birth control: specifically, the use of honey, acacia leaves, and lint
600-500 BCE
The female poet Sappho, from the island of Lesbos, writes roughly 12,000 lines of poetry on her love for women.
400-200 BCE
~700 BCE: In Ancient Greece, the botanist Theophrastus documents the use of the extremely valuable contraceptive plant Silphium, which grows only on a small strip of land in Libya regardless of efforts to cultivate it elsewhere.
The Ancient Hindu text, the Kama Sutra, is composed. It consists of advice on sexual intercourse, as well as ideas on the philosophy and theory of love. (Only ~20% of the book is about sex positions, guys. Calm down.)
385 BCE Plato publishes Symposium in which prominent Greek intellectuals determine that love between men is pure, while sex with women is utilitarian and lustful. Pederasty (sex between adult men and young men/ boys) is a common practice in this time.
1451 Pope Nicholas V allows the papal Inquisition to persecute men who practice sodomy.
1916 Margaret Sanger opens first birth control clinic in the United States, only have it be shut down nine days later. Margaret Sanger would later flee to Europe and spark a movement for birth control less about the free sex she believed in and more about “planned parenthood�—a movement unfortunately closely aligned with eugenics.
1748 The first erotic novel, Fanny Hill by John Cleland is published in England as Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure. To this day, it is one of the most banned books.
1873
Anthony Comstock, a leader in the puritan movement, lobbied for The Comstock Law which criminalizes usage of the U.S. Postal Service to send erotica, contraceptives, abortifacients, sex toys, and information about any of them.
1960 The first oral contraceptive (or “the pill�) is approved by the FDA, drastically changing the nature of sex for women.
1972 1914 In America, sexual education begins during WWI, after STDs become widespread amongst soldiers. This includes the first sex ed film Damaged Goods.
In Baird v. Eisenstadt, the US Supreme Court legalizes birth control for all American citizens, regardless of marital status.
1969 The Stonewall riots, which are violent demonstrations by the LGBT community against police raids, occur in New York. This is said to be the single most important event in the modern fight for LGBT rights in the US.
2016
Sex trafficking, sexual assault, STDs, unwanted pregnancies, republicans trying to limit the accessibility of women’s health services, and more are all STILL huge problems, but at least we have John Oliver.
2015 The US Supreme Court rules gay marriage is legal nationwide.
1980s The AIDS epidemic begins, sparking an increased homophobic response, as well as a new urgency regarding sexual education in schools.
Sex and Dating: A Few Freshman Perspectives
W
By: Scott Stevens
e often find it hard to imagine how our younger selves viewed dating and sex. Such abstract concepts! For every young person’s shout, “I want to be a doctor. An engineer. An artist...” there is a whisper in their head, “Where can I kiss someone? How do I go on a date? (And very buried, very secretly) When will I know that someone other than my parents loves me?” It is a beautiful opportunity, to watch people younger than ourselves figure it out. Some find themselves comfortable with the topic, some uncomfortable, and some (such as asexual people) don’t find themselves part of the equation at all. All of these different journeys towards sexual self-awareness are healthy and unique. I’ve interviewed some freshmen to reflect on how high schoolers’ views on dating and sex can change dramatically over their four years. This is unsurprising, so you may find my investigation banal, but I promise these freshmen’s remarks will charm you with a wisdom beyond their years. Besides, many of Bard’s articles are written from the vantage point of upperclassmen, so hopefully this piece will balance the perspectives in this winter issue.
But first, the reader may also take slight entertainment from a snippet of the changes I’ve undergone during my time at Menlo. Skip as needed. Upperclassmen are overrated. Looking back on my sporadic attempts at journal entries from 8th grade to sophomore year, I am astounded I have managed to date anybody. Some propensities of mine are hard to root out. For example, here’s an entry from Scott Stevens, circa 2011: “Cheesily, I’ve always been attracted (romantically, and physically) to out of the ordinary, and lively things.” Yikes. I suppose some things never change. But it gets worse: “It’s just… I’ve always, for the longest time, thought and imagined that I’d meet a genius girl -- we’d be the perfect partners, each other’s sidekicks and support, and we’d go off, marry, and not worry about stupid things like sex...” (September, 2013). And what a change the time between then and now has been. The point of this immoderate sharing of my past self is that my sexual and romantic preferences have entirely flip-flopped. This is the case with many of the other seniors. Now, I am skeptical towards marriage, I have not seriously thought of dating a girl in years, and I have a less theoretical, less antagonistic (but by no means absolutely positive) view towards sex. In short, it’s not that big of a deal. I remember being part of the cast of The 39 Steps in freshman year. Perhaps the most memorable interaction with upperclassmen during that show was a conversation about having sex in high school. One girl talked about how she had had a “great time” with her boyfriend that past weekend. Naïve as usual, I asked, “Is that what I think it means?” The seniors looked at the juniors, the juniors looked at the seniors, and they all burst out laughing. The girl nodded her head about six times. I think I showed how much of a Catholic I was then when I whispered a bit loudly, “My goodness, I thought most waited till college… or marriage!”
At any rate, I want to share some of the opinions of Menlo’s freshmen and sophomores. Of course, this is a small, qualitative sample, and accordingly must not be taken as any measure of these grades’ general opinions regarding sex and dating. I tried to ask underclassmen from different social groups, but my sample size is still measly (seven students), and there may be a sample selection bias, as I only asked underclassmen that would be comfortable talking about this, underclassmen whom I’ve befriended. This article will simply showcase a few possible angles from which some of our fellow students perceive the topics of sex and dating. To make the interview straightforward and comfortable, I asked two questions: “What were your preconceptions regarding sex and dating before entering high school?” and, “If you were to take a guess as to your grade’s view towards sex and dating, what would you say?” If the conversation went smoothly, I asked other questions, such as, “What do you think about the terms ‘first bases’ and ‘home runs’?” These will be explained below. I started with freshmen boys. One such boy commented,
“Well, before high school I was very innocent and thought that teen sex was fake and something just in the movies. That all changed after my first week.” Many people I know in my own grade share this experience of seeing sex as something distant and media-driven, only to later see it as something near, something possible, something talked about after Semi Formal during a game of Truth or Dare. Another freshman boy said,
“...a lot of us [guys] want to hook up with girls but I don’t know what that always means. Is it kissing? Cause I’ve done that kind of stuff and so I wonder if some guys are doing other stuff right now….I think a lot of girls are either really shy about it, or [they’re] totally extreme you know with senior boys….” One can sense the lack of dialogue between not only boys and girls, but boys and boys. If they were to ask a wider pool of their peers, if they were to engage in a level of discourse on sex we don’t always expect from even adults, they would find that some boys do indeed have much different takes on the phrase “hooking up,” or different opinions on the value of the “base system,” which classifies sexual activity with the metaphor of a baseball field, “first base” denoting full-on saliva exchange, and “home run” meaning penetration. This system of definition reminded me of the “rating scale,” or the assignment of one body’s attractiveness to a number, usually ranging from 1-10. As in, “Oh, he’s a 7 for sure.” Or, “Dude, she cannot be a 9.”
I also asked a sophomore boy to reflect on his opinions toward sex and dating in general, as he has perceived it the past two years:
“From my perspective, it seems like most people fall into one of three categories: the hookup (the ones who drink, smoke weed, hook up with random (or not so random) girls at parties), the romantic (in a serious relationship, sex or otherwise), or those who [seemingly] have no interest in dating. A lot of guys I know are [...] sort of hopeful for one of the first two categories. Of the guys, most seem into the whole sex deal (being 15-16 year old guys), but also want an actual relationship. Some seem to not really be into the whole deal (or at least not show it, I couldn’t possibly believe they have [no] interest whatsoever).” He also responded regarding his personal experiences:
“I was a total prude before high school. I mean, I wasn’t planning to wait until marriage (that seems to be more common in kids raised [C]hristian), but I was definitely thinking I’d wait till college. Now, I want literally anything and everything to happen. I’m 15 and 2/3 years old and a guy, we’re a pretty horny lot in case you’ve forgotten…. And I haven’t even had my first kiss yet... *sigh*” As for the girls, I found a slightly greater awareness of the realities of sex, and consequently views with greater ambivalence. One freshman girl commented on what she’s noticed about how her classmates talk (or don’t talk) about sex:
“I feel like most girls know that they’re going to wait for a time later in high school to have sex, but I think a lot of guys on a few occasions, at least one guy has asked a girl in our grade to have sex, and they’ve been like, ‘No.’ I think guys are more forward about it, at least in our grade. You know, touchy feely. Some girls are into that, and some girls are like, ‘No.’ But I don’t think that most of our grade is actually talking about sex yet. We’re all kind of in that stage where we’re like, ‘Who cares.’ I think more people in our grade talk about hooking up, and kissing and stuff, more than actual sex.”
Again, my sample of underclassmen is very meager, but it is hard not to notice the possible connection between asking “a girl in [the freshman] grade to have sex” and asking a freshman girl to Semi Formal. Many a text message conversation have I spent listening to my male friends list off girls in their own grade, only to shake their heads, saying, “Nah, I can’t ask any of them.” They then move onto younger grades, whose female students one male friend described as “easier prey.” Another girl had a similar take on the subject, but it lacked the same level of interaction with boys: “I don’t know many of my friends who’ve done that kind of stuff. Like, some of them have kissed. I haven’t. I think a lot of us haven’t. But that’s not a problem, I think.” As with the underclassmen boys, the girls have had radically different experiences from each other so far. When asked whether the majority of girls in her friend group has had their first kiss, the first girl I asked said, “Yeah, the majority. Everyone, except for maybe two.”
She continued on to talk about her preconceptions of dating and sex before coming to Menlo high school. Out of all the freshmen, she had the clearest idea of what she wanted in her romantic and sexual life going forward, so I end with her reflection on the subject:
“I had never done anything [very sexual.] I knew I would wait. I have an older sister, and she gave me insight on that. I know she did stuff with her boyfriend, but she waited for a while. And I know I’m going to wait for a while because I feel like you have to find the person that you, you know, love.”
Popping The
Cherry
By: Emily Finke
I
n high school, there seems to be a profound divide between virgins and nonvirgins. The idea of losing one’s virginity has crossed the minds of most teenagers, but what does it actually entail? By its dictionary definition, virginity is “the state of never having sexual intercourse,” and most people define a virgin as someone who has never had sex. Here’s where we run into a problem. “Sex” is a term that can be used to describe a wide variety of actions when being intimate with another person. Every person can have a slightly different idea of sex. So if losing your virginity is supposed to involve old-school sexual intercourse i.e. a penis entering a vagina for the first time, then what do you call it when two people with vaginas have sex for the first time? Or two people with penises? What if a person is intersex or trans? What about oral or anal sex? Do these experiences count towards “Virginity is a social construct losing one’s virginity, or are gay people doomed to remain virgins their entire lives? that reprimands women for Losing one’s virginity is often considered having sex but is a necessity more as a symbolic transition into adulthood for men to prove their rather than as a physical interaction. In media, the losing of virginity is usually part of masculinity.” coming-of-age stories where it is a big part of the character’s maturing process. It seems as though virginity is a topic that comes up in every teen movie ever made; from classics like Sixteen Candles to Easy A, losing one’s virginity is seen as a rite of passage. From these movies, it is also evident that losing one’s virginity is viewed very differently depending on your gender. In Easy A, the main character Olive is called a “whore,” a “slut,” a “tramp,” and a slew of other attacks on her character for having sex, but her male friend is able to confirm his masculinity to others after partaking in the very same interaction. The popular word choice says it all: a boy “takes” a girl’s virginity, while a girl “loses” hers. And while girls are judged for having sex “too early” or “too often,” they are similarly mocked for their abstinence, for being “prudes.” Virginity is a social construct that reprimands women for having sex but is a necessity for men to prove their masculinity. And while a large portion of the media seems to say otherwise, virginity does not have an expiration date. One’s virginity is ultimately not something that should be able to be “lost” or “taken.” It is up to each and every person to create their own definition of sex, whether it’s about expressing love or having fun. Being able to define and comprehend virginity on one’s own is the true sign of maturity.
America’s Guilty Pleasure
By Natalie Jarrett
When our parents were the same hormone filled teens we are now,
the Parental Advisory Label was introduced to combat their widespread consumption of explicit music. 80s parents couldn’t believe their kids were listening to the masturbation innuendos in Prince’s “Darling Nikki” or the unapologetic gang violence in N.W.A. Unfortunately for the founders of this label, the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC), the label backfired and made profane music even more appealing to minors. Regardless of warning labels, we teens still excessively consume explicit media. Porn is the most popular of this kind of media. It is used to satisfy our sexual curiosity and newly found sexual cravings, though its fantastical nature does not prepare us well enough for real sex and sexuality. Porn for the average internet user is virtually unavoidable. An astounding 30% of the internet is dominated by adult rated material. 25% of internet searches conducted are related to pornography. On the rankings porn is searched even more than celebrity gossip, Kim Kardashian namely (though she could apply for either category). Porn sites boast nearly 22,000 unique visitors a day. Keywords like “Black teens” and “lesbian porn” are most frequently used on these sites. Porn is America’s favorite guilty pleasure. Despite Americans Mass consumption of sexual material only about 50% approve of its viewing. According to a New England university study, boys are more likely to report feelings of sexual excitement whereas girls are more likely report feelings of guilt, embarrassment, and bad body image. This can be interpreted as a direct reflection of the sexist divide in society’s expression of sexuality. The sexual desires of women are placed in much less importance than men. Most porn sites usually dedicate a small category “For Women”, in doing so these sites feel they fulfill their “duty” in appeasing the female population. Though the lack of equal representation does seem unfair, it is important to note that these sites have a predominate male viewership. Women are put into submission and men dominate accordingly. Though these roles often put female porn stars at great risk for violence, 88% of scenes contain physical aggression against the woman/women (principally spanking, gagging, slapping, punching, etc).
Studies remain unclear over whether people, boys in particular, viewing violent porn directly correlates with sexual aggression. The Youth Internet Safety Survey found that in adolescent males, frequent exposure to sexually explicit material was not linked to increased sexual aggression. Though for males who already have a high aggression risk, porn increases their sexual aggression by 400%. Also, exposure to violent porn leads to accepting attitudes of rape and other violence against women. The developing teenage brain is very susceptible to the influence of porn. One of the biggest concerns surrounding the use of porn is the risk of addiction. The teenage brain’s increased drive for reward leads to pleasure seeking activities; ex. drug use, alcohol, sex, gambling, etc. Our thoughts and decisions are heavily guided by the reward region in our brains, as opposed to adults who are able to more rationally decide. Compared to drugs and alcohol, the brains reward system has a very similar response when consuming porn. The bearing on an addict’s life are also similar. For us adolescents, porn addiction can negatively affect our daily social lives. In an interview, porn addict Calum Wrist describes his struggle with addiction. To him, real sex does not compare to porn, and he finds himself compulsively consuming it. At one point in the interviewm Calum passes by some attractive women, which he finds sexually arousing. He then pulls over to a restaurant and proceeds to masturbate in their restroom. Afterwards he describes feelings of disgust and frustration typical of addicts in withdrawal.
Navigating our sexualities in safer, healthier ways poses a large challenge in the modern day. The website, Make Love Not Porn, is dedicated to debunking sexual myth. The site reads like a comparison panel between porn sex and real sex. One example is the question of name calling women (bitch, slut) during sex, the site responds in an open matter stating that it is relative to the person, as is many things in sex. The site also includes videos of sex with real life couples as a replacement for hardcore porn. Though teenagers who are so used to hardcore porn will find it hard to transition back to reality.
Sexy Times Playlist
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Sexy Times Playlist Let’s Get it On Marvin Gaye
Sex on Fire
Kings of Leon
Where You Belong The Weekend
Thinking Bout You Frank Ocean
Meet Me in the Middle Jessie Ware
Good Kisser Usher
Best I Ever Had Drake
Adorn Miguel
Rocket
Beyoncé
No Diggity Chet Faker
Love At First Swipe
By Maya Varma
T
he Wikipedia definition of Tinder is as follows: “Tinder is a location-based dating and social discovery application that facilitates communication between mutually interested users, allowing matched users to chat.” Now, this is a pretty solid definition of the online “dating” app that now has 50 million users a month and over 12 million matches a day. But reactions to Tinder don’t completely reflect the diplomatic nature of Wikipedia’s definition: perhaps less innocent than just a “dating” app, and based on grounds more superficial than “mutually interested users,” Tinder is changing the landscape of hookup culture in both high school and college. Before I get into the politics of it all, let me explain the basics of the app. Tinder is pretty simple, and that’s the beauty of it. You create a profile connected to your Facebook account, write a short bio expressing your likes, dislikes, and intentions on the app, and proceed to sift through a plethora of other profiles of people who live near you. If you like the man or woman based on their photo and short bio, you swipe right; if you don’t like them, you swipe left. If two people swipe right on each other, a conversation opens up and they can meet up, hook up, date, get married, murder each other…besides the swiping and minimal information about each person, the app is built like any other online dating site. However, Tinder has spread like wildfire among teens and people in their early twenties—it has been featured humorously on Conan sketches and is currently clocking in at over 1 billion swipes a day. As a woman always curious about the latest addition to our continuously evolving hookup culture, Tinder caught my attention. Like any good investigative journalist, I realized that if I was going to discuss and critique Tinder properly, I needed to find out for myself what it was all about. I’d been jokingly on it before with friends at parties, but this time I made a real account and set out to do some swiping. I interviewed some other Tinder users over the messaging feature, as well as friends from my own life who’ve used the app successfully or not. All the people I interviewed asked to be anonymous. As an interviewer, that made me uneasy—how can you make a substantial article with only anonymous interviews? But I think that the requested anonymity of the interviewers should say something about the nature of the app. The users on it don’t want the rest of the world to know about their endeavors, yet so many more people than you’d expect are on the app. I’ve swiped past kids in my high school classes, family friends, and I even came across a few old middle school classmates. Whether we want to admit it or not, a substantial number of high school students are using this app, and it’s changing the way we look at hook up culture.
First off, let’s talk about swiping. Swiping is one of the features that sets Tinder apart from other dating sites, and it’s also what makes Tinder so controversial. The idea behind swiping is simple: save time and cut to the chase. You can swipe past people you don’t find attractive, and you can only match with people who also find you attractive. The process can take 30 seconds if you’re lucky. The whole dance around “does he think I’m cute?” and “does she think I’m hot?” is completely dissolved—you already know that the person you’re talking to finds you physically attractive, and you can move on to other conversation topics and quickly cut to the chase about what you want from each other. Since you already know you live close to each other, hooking up or going on “Tinder dates” becomes easy and effortless. There are two sides to this feature. On one hand, the swiping can feel superficial and impersonal. One senior girl recounted her experience on Tinder. “You swipe, and they’re gone,” she said, “and a lot of the time in real life you can look at their personalities too. No one stands a chance on Tinder though.” While you can see bios from users by clicking on their profile, many people swipe solely based on the photo of the user. When I tried swiping, I’ll admit it did feel a little impersonal. I became pickier about the people I swiped, looking for only incredibly attractive people because…well…I could. There was always someone else to look at, someone else to swipe, so my standards on appearance slowly increased. At the same time, however, you could argue that this feature is merely a product of the superficial society we already live in. Another senior girl on the app has met two men at separate times and has ended up dating both of them for substantial periods of times. One of them is her current boyfriend. “I think the swiping feature is very reflective of how people form their first impressions today,” she says. “In real life, that’s how you judge people.” I suppose it’s a hard fact to face, but we are a superficial culture and base many first impressions on appearance. The whole idea of “love at first sight” depends on initial mutual attraction, so how is Tinder any different? It’s possibly a chicken and egg situation: what came first, a superficial swiping feature or a superficial culture? But I argue that Tinder was made to fit hookup culture, and whether we like it or not, casual sex is focused less on personality and more on physical appearances. This app is a product of our society, and based on the millions of users on it, we seem to like what it has to offer.
“I think the swiping feature is very reflective of how people form their first impressions today.”
After swiping and feeling the slightly impersonal, ominously powerful feeling of being able to swipe past real human beings like slips of paper, I matched with a few lucky men and began investigated the conversational aspect. This is where you can go horribly wrong, and many men did. One guy started the conversation with the ingenious line, “I like hot wings and hot b*****.” For another girl using the app, a guy once started with, “I have a big d***, you can’t handle it.” She unmatched him, and later after she broke up with her boyfriend they were matched again. He had seemingly forgotten about her, because he started with the same exact line. I think this is expected of an online app: people say very vulgar things when there’s no visible consequence. But I also met some nice people genuinely interested in answering some of my questions. One guy, with the initials R.L., stated that he likes Tinder but doesn’t like the short attention span of everyone on the app. “I mean, you match with someone and have a great conversation,” he said, “but then within 10 minutes they stop responding because they’ve matched with someone better.” Since I wasn’t on the app to meet future hookups, I didn’t experience this rejection, but I heard the same complaint from many other guys and girls I talked to. With so many matches at your fingertips, your standards go up until you end up constantly looking for the “next best thing.”
With so many matches at your fingertips, your standards go up until you end up constantly looking for the “next best thing.” It seems that the complaints of Tinder are a greater reflection of our hookup culture. Sex has evolved in younger generations to be often times more casual, focused on fun and pleasure with a “friends with benefits” or “no strings attached” vibe. When you can match with people within a 5 mile radius and meet up with them right away, hook up culture becomes accessible to people who previously might never have experienced that in high school. Tinder allows busy people who don’t have time or interest in parties to cut to the chase and get down to business with others they find attractive. At the same time, though, the plethora of profiles is making our standards on appearance unreasonably high. We are seeing profiles with very little context on who they are as people, and we use this to choose our “mutually interested matches.” I don’t believe that this is specific to Tinder—all social media platforms related to sex and dating have made it accessible to find practically anyone online, and we seem to never be satisfied with what we have. How can you, when someone better could be just a swipe away?
Last February, Switched at Birth decided to confront an issue that goes frequently unmentioned on primetime television – campus rape. The episode began with Bay (Vanessa Marano) waking up naked next to her ex-boyfriend Tank (Max Adler), hungover and confused about what happened the night before. As the season progresses, Bay is told by her birth mother that what happened to her was rape, and she turns Tank in to their school. Tank’s life is turned upside down, as is hers. I am the first to admit that it is easy to dismiss the show as a silly teen drama. But I also have to give the show a lot of credit – they have been on the forefront of issues like deafness, poverty, classism, and now, rape on college campuses. Switched’s creator, Lizzy Weiss, noted that “[The girls on the show] are now in college, [and] it is the number one conversation on campuses right now. How do we not do a story in which one of the girls deals with campus assault? It’s really focused on the question of consent… Do you need explicit consent, and how drunk is too drunk to get that?” Weiss’ question is an important and nuanced one. And Switched did a particularly good job of covering the ramifications of sexual assault. TV shows frequently use sexual assault storylines, but glaze over the repercussions. Switched’s storyline is messy and painful – they did a lot of things very well. Weiss says they picked the fan-favorite, loyal Tank as the character for this storyline to show just how “sticky” sexual assault can be. Switched’s depiction of the victim’s experience is particularly striking. Bay doesn’t want anyone to get in trouble, so she decides not to turn Tank in. However, since Bay’s brother’s girlfriend works at the school, she is a mandated Title IX reporter and must submit Tank for investigation. This is almost identical to a case that came out of Vanderbilt – two football players were found guilty of raping a student. The victim texted her boyfriend that she “[didn’t] want anyone to get in trouble because of [her].” The Vanderbilt case is unique in that the men were found guilty – but how many more victims are keeping quiet because they don’t want anyone to get in trouble?
Campus Rape Goes Primetime: ABC Family’s Switched at Birth tackles a major issue on college campuses. By Samantha Frenkel-Popell
Slut-shaming is another huge topic that Switched doesn’t shy away from. Once Bay’s rape becomes public knowledge, everyone and their mother have an opinion on what happened. Part of what makes Switched so convincing is that it shows just how consuming the rape is to Bay – it follows her everywhere. Commenters write nasty comments on online forums, people stare at her in class. She overhears another male student saying the whole investigation is a waste of time, and that “You could tell Tank and that chick were going to hook up that night.” Another female student said Bay shouldn’t have drank so much that night and that “we [as girls] can’t let our guard down… That’s how it is.” Sarah Colomé, a training specialist for Break the Cycle, a group that campaigns against domestic violence, noted that the episode was fantastic in debunking rape myths, like the one that “it shouldn’t be that someone should protect themselves from sexual assault, but that we should be teaching people not to assault others.” Switched puts a special emphasis on the idea that “yes means yes,” something other television shows have largely ignored. “[Y]ou need to get a yes— that’s just a dramatic change for men to understand,” Weiss opined. It is incredible that Switched is able to cover these important and complicated ideas on their show. But I must admit that I find several crucial faults with the storyline. For one, both Bay and Tank were inebriated. Though Tank ultimately suffered the consequences and got kicked out of school, it would have been just as valid for him to turn around and say that she raped him. “Yes means yes” is such an important idea, but I think it gets a little overshadowed by the murkiness of the situation. The episode – titled “Black and Gray” – is not meant to be clear-cut rape. It’s supposed to be confusing, unsure, and chaotic. And Switched did a phenomenal job of covering the ramifications of what happened on Bay’s life – but not so much on Tank’s. The alleged rape ruined his entire life – period. It’s especially important in this case, when both parties were intoxicated, to note that the blame went straight to the man. It’s easy for me to say that the show should have shown either Tank or Bay sober, so it would have been easier to assign blame. But life isn’t always that clear. I recently watched a video of Yale fraternity brothers marching around campus in 2010 shouting “No means yes! Yes means anal!” So although I think Switched was too quick to blame Tank for something they could both have been implicated for, this issue is one that desperately needs discussing. Switched has a unique viewing audience of predominantly teenage girls, and they are largely the ones who need to hear this message and discuss it with their parents and friends. Maybe those Yale frat members could watch the episodes and learn something as well.
An Open Letter
to a Straight Student Wondering How LGBT People Have Sex
Dear Straight Student, You may have wondered how exactly lesbians, gay men, and/ or transgender people have sex. I understand – throughout our adolescents, heteronormative sex education has left us with the simple understanding that penis + vagina = sex. We’ve formed our own individual consensuses about what straight sex is from this scant sex-ed and our own online research. When we were younger, it all seemed relatively self-explanatory - the pieces fit together. Yet, discovering the in-between existence of LGBT people can muddle our ideas of what sex actually is and is not - the parts no longer fit together the same way. I experienced that cocktail of confusion and intrigue in middle school, and found myself inspired to reach out to a trusted adult in my life – Google. Sparing myself the graphic details, I gathered a basic understanding of how some LGBT sex was different from what I’d been taught. This knowledge wasn’t immediately relevant to my life, so I moved on. When I entered a queer relationship last year, I apparently motivated a remarkable number of straight people to embark on their own quest for knowledge about LGBT sex. Girls, boys, close friends and strangers have since implored me; how exactly does it work? And dear readers, I am finally here with the answer: Google it.
Many people, regardless of sex/gender orientation, see sex as a deeply intimate and personal topic. Others are extremely comfortable in detailing their sexual escapades to friends and strangers alike. I am of the former category, and this letter is a sincere plea to stop asking me what goes down in my bed. Your requests are mostly curious, but occasionally hostile; boys have repeatedly asked me about my sex life, hoping to hear recounts of pornographic queer lady sex. These requests make me uncomfortable! Despite how close we may or may not be, I, like many reasonable people, don’t feel as though I owe you an explanation of how I have sex. My existence as a queer individual does not inherently make me eligible to be your go-to for LGBT sex information, especially if you aren’t questioning your sexuality. Your curiosity is natural and understandable, but before you decide that detailed questions about my personal life are fair game, please take a minute to ask yourself: “Why do I care? How is this relevant or important to my life?” If your answers are “I don’t know,” and “It’s not,” then I encourage you to reevaluate why you’re so invested in what other people are doing in bed. If you so desire, nothing is stopping you from utilizing the boundless information about all kinds of sex on the internet - conducting your own research avoids putting LGBT people in the frequently uncomfortable and undesirable position of the educator. However, I understand curiosity in the light of personal doubt; If you are questioning your sexuality and/or exploring a non-hetero/cisgendered relationship, the idea of “different” sex at all can be nerve-wracking and frankly terrifying. If that’s the case for you, I only hope that you can find compassion and understanding in the LGBT community at Menlo. The assumption that minorities owe majority groups explanations about anything at all is ludicrous; just as an African American person doesn’t owe every white person an explanation of affirmative action, just as a girl doesn’t owe every man an explanation of the wage gap, queer individuals do not owe straight people personal explanations of queer sex.
Sincerely, Queer and Tired of Explaining
The following personal essays are written by fellow Menlo students. They detail the experience of surviving sexual assaults and abusive relationships—we urge you to listen to the words rather than attempt to guess which anonymous voice is behind it. While this issue is about sex, we would like to stress a point: sex and rape are not the same thing. Rape occurs in an attempt to gain power and dominance over another individual; sex is meant to be mutually pleasurable. But rape and abuse exist in the complicated landscape of sex, and we felt this Bard issue would be incomplete without their presence.
Imperfect Storm: The Story of a Relationship
By Anonymous
“But I do think it is their husbands’ faults If wives do fall. Say that they slack their duties, And pour our treasures into foreign laps; Or else break out in peevish jealousies, Throwing restraint upon us…. The ills we do, their ills instruct us so.” -Emilia from Othello (4.3.97-115)
M
y ex-boyfriend and I had an eight month relationship before I
ended it in September. He was in college, I was still at Menlo, and there was no incentive to keep the machine of ours going. Cycle after cycle of fighting we would have, and I began to reflect on the summer we spent together, and deduced it had been a purgatory. The following story is from my perspective. I don’t assume the truth in its telling, for every story has many sides, but I do offer it as a description of the hazy boundaries that exist in relationships: between consent and surrender, protection and control, devotion and desperation. The trouble seeded itself at the start. I hadn’t been very sexually or romantically experienced before meeting him, so I was startled when he, someone who had sneaked out on Wednesday nights to Stanford parties as a junior, actually took a liking to me. I was intoxicated by the attention, and before I knew it, we were a couple. There was no doubt he “did the work” when it came to romantic ritual. Arranging beach picnics, buying me flowers (then the verbal expectation that I do the same for him), demanding that we take the best couple pictures (a competition to be the cutest, he said), creating an elaborate trip to the city for my birthday (which I tried to emulate for his birthday, knowing he would scream at me if I did not return the favor). Charming as he was, generous as he was, he wanted what I did not want. After two years of partying and hooking up, he wanted to devote all of his time to one person, something I wasn’t sure I was ready for. Every activity of ours had to be documented on Snapchat, everything public. His favorite book was The Odyssey because it was one of the few books he had read attentively in high school, and because he admired Odysseus for his ostensible loyalty to Penelope. I had a different interpretation of the book. Other than that sexist epic, he didn’t read much. He worked hard, which I admired, but he was uncritical of his own ambition. Plan to plan, pointless business ventures that foundered, an obedience to water polo -- that local emblem of long hours keeping oneself afloat, the athletic equivalent of Stanford Duck Syndrome. Smiling bill, frantic bubbles.
And our relationship was like that duck. Just as the two webbed, nasty legs of a mallard hits against each other under the water, so did our equally strong personalities. Many abusive relationships drag on because one partner is weaker than the other, and cannot speak up. But for us, we didn’t end it because we were at a moral stand-off. We were both complicit in each other’s agony. For my ex, a relationship was the ultimate sacrifice. “I could be hooking up with any number of strangers, you know, very hot strangers” he would say, “but I chose you… because I love you! You tamed me. And now, I’m going to tame you.” Fantastic. It seemed I was a shrew. By all appearances, he was in love with me. Yet I sensed he exploited the self-hatred I would sometimes reveal. He would require I do certain things for his enjoyment, since he was doing so much for me. He wanted me to clear out my wardrobe and wear nicer things. “I’m doing you a favor, you’ll feel better about yourself ” was a frequent statement. But this is the immanent confusion of a relationship that tempestuous. One day, you’re sitting on Half Moon Bay beach, eating brie and sipping bubble tea he’s chosen for you, aware that you like these superficial pleasures; the next, he unearths your deep-seated fears, accusing you of not having enough love in your heart, of having nothing within yourself but a prow intent on the icy core of academic achievement. “You’ve accomplished nothing in your life so far… if you’re so smart, why can’t you do what you want?” I suppose I was attracted to him as a metaphor for the Silicon Valley culture I’ve had to tackle. My friends would roll their eyes when I would complain about him (I do not blame them), and they’d say, “Then break up with him!!” The favors he did for me pleased me marginally. But I felt that if I stopped dating him because it was too rough, I would be failing yet another challenge in life that I should be able to overcome. This is the crux: failure. In the same way that I wanted to appease the Steve Jobs-level gods of our area by attempting excellence in STEM classes, in the same way I wanted to compete with my parent’s own successful marriage, I wanted to “succeed in a relationship.” I was learning in APUSH about the power of compromise within politics, and I wanted the level-headedness to compromise within love. I wanted maturity. As Theodore Roosevelt said, “Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty…” My family drilled into me this “work first, play later” line of thinking.
“We were both complicit in each other’s agony.”
Besides, he was the only one who had shown me this sort of attention, so I felt guilty when I didn’t return it, and rash when I thought of breaking up. Worse, he did believe that I could become a formidable writer, yet only as long as I stuck to his plan. According to him, from seventeen years old onward, we would be a power couple, him as the film star chased by paparazzi, me as the house-manager, with three kids, living between LA and an old chateau in France, converted into a family-owned hotel. All that I detest, in other words. My sense of self thrown out, my logic crumpled by fear of failure, I felt like a fool who’d thrown out the key to my cage. I met another boy who was mutual friends with our group of friends. We texted, we realized how much we had in common with each other, and we agreed that my boyfriend at the time was becoming hard to bear. Mature as I wanted to be, I childishly tried to get out of that relationship by sleeping with the new boy. I should have done things in a different order. My ex came to my house when he found out. I met him at the porch, and he came at me, ready to punch. I whipped back into the house, with him following, screaming, “Where’s your mother? Your sister? They have to know how full of SHIT you are!” He grabbed me by the shoulders and twisted them; I shoved him off. My mother came down, and asked what was happening. We calmed him down, and we went outside, and I faced him, ready for the onslaught of accusations against my whole character. He cried, and I acquiesced a conversation. As soon as he started talking, a prism hung over us and focused its searching light over me. It seemed then that everything imperfect in my life was my fault. My pride, he told me, my selfishness, my inability to empathize with others as well as he could. Simple vocabulary, but it tapped into what I hated and believed to be true about myself.
“I felt that if I stopped dating him because it was too rough, I would be failing yet another challenge in life that I should be able to overcome.”
Over the summer we tried to mop up the bilge water of our relationship. Part of this involved “making me feel exactly what I had made him feel.” This seemed terrifying but logical, like a criminal facing a thirty-year sentence. It started with the sex acts. There were a number of actions I had expressed discomfort towards, all of which he remembered, and made me do. Pinning my head down, tying me up and gagging me, he played the 50 Shades of Grey soundtrack on repeat as he checked actions off his wish list, when all I wanted was to get out of the room. Things went smoother if I pretended afterward that I had slightly enjoyed it, or if I suppressed the dread I started to feel towards sex, that nauseous feeling. A game of control laid itself over the summer. I would control myself and make myself a more caring person, and he would control when I had to text him and where I could go. He had all the leverage, I felt, over not only my sexual identity, but also how I handled my body. Reasoning out that it was fair, he thought that he should get to shave my private areas, as he had wanted to earlier, though I had refused. Of course, I had to plan out dates, immediately leave my house and visit him if he wished me to, and I felt the best strategy to endure it was to convince myself that I was having a swell romantic time. One weekend, my parents were away, and he came over. I have a deep fear of alcohol -- alcohol as beguiler, as organ poison, as bacchanal loss of control -- and I had told him this before. I never wanted it to pass my lips, for fear of becoming addicted. He came to my house, pasta and candles in hand, and said, “Tonight’s the night! You like your purity, but you’ll have to give it up for me.” I was horrified that he was making me break this promise I made with myself many years back. As I watched the candles burn themselves out in the room, my ex asleep in my bed, I thought of how pretty all the pomp and the romantic demonstration were: trips to the city, I-280 lining my mind; roses being thrown left and right; long discussions in the car on a weekday at midnight, regarding the meaning of life -- all of it a distraction from the snare I was in.
“I would control myself and make myself a more caring person, and he would control when I had to text him and where I could go.”
“I felt like he would hurt me, but I feared it would hurt more if he went back home and wrote a tirade against me on Facebook, Instagram, even Snapchat. It was idiotic, and I still felt responsible.” Why did I fear breaking it off? I felt unsafe physically and socially. The night before I was scheduled to go to the nation’s best writing camp, one I had applied to and been accepted into, I was at a dinner party with him and his parents. Earlier in the day, he had told me that the perfect way to make me “feel his pain and loss” was to cancel my flight to the camp last minute. I was about to refuse, but then he reminded me of all the people he was connected to on social media. “I shake, I get anxiety attacks when I think of how you betrayed me. I could make your life a hell like you did to me. Everybody would side with me, you know, and I know everybody. Your close friends already aren’t talking to you, but I could make the rest hate you too. Nobody would hire you in the future -- all of these schools are for building connections.” I had visions of my classmates glaring at me the first day back to school, of teachers giving me strange looks -- everybody would know of my disloyalty. I was delusional, thinking even parents would cluck their tongues and brand me as a mendacious disgrace. As the dinner party ended, I couldn’t hold in my misgivings about foregoing the camp, so I told him I was going. He yelled, said it was unfair that I could fly myself away from pain while he couldn’t, and he kicked a hole in the garage wall. I ran to my car, and he ran after me. I was about to call 911, when he pounded at my car window, his parents behind him. With him yelling in the middle of the quaint Palo Alto street, his parents trying to hold him back, I said we’d walk around the block and talk. I felt like he would hurt me, but I feared it would hurt more if he went back home and wrote a tirade against me on Facebook, Instagram, even Snapchat. It was idiotic, and I still felt responsible. “I’ll just have to wait until he gets to college, then things will be calm,” I told myself.
A turning point came later in the summer, on one night during one of our usual spats. We were driving to the duck pond near Sharon Heights. Sitting under the willow tree, the air hanging with the stench of drought-dead pond scum and duck feces, we talked about the boy I had slept with. My ex asked if I had said “I love you” to the boy. My throat caught, so I said yes, and that set off the fuse. He roared and paced around, heaving his shoulders, his triceps twitching and ready to sting. I said quietly, “Let’s go back into the car, can we talk about this tomorrow?” I was waiting in the driver’s seat for him to hop in. He was crying, and with the same speech I’d heard many times before, spewing, “You’ll never be happy if you betray people like this. We can be happy, but you just never TRY. You never do the WORK.” In me a sensation of being sucked backwards arose. Like being pushed back by a black wind, like thousands of cables unplugged in succession, like a tunnel of shadowed hands creeping around the sides of my vision. The car lights dimmed, sound muffled, and my arms reached out for the glass I had in the cupholder. I spun out of the car and hurled the glass on the ground. I needed something to get away from this -- yes, I thought, even now I should be talking, instead of in this detachment, this trance, with this shard of glass in my hand, now in my forearm, now with three thin lines of blood smearing onto the glass… I hardly felt the cuts, but they felt warm, and I could feel my heartbeat again. Now, my ex yelled, “What happened?” And I felt my legs constrict with hot blood, my face flattening and skin pulled tight. The last thing I remember seeing were large shadows fly across the park like the blades of a giant’s fan in the sky, the oak trees’ limbs desiccating, shrinking into twigs, the pavement rippling like lakewater, and the stars flashing bright white, then to black. When I came to, I lay curled around the pole of a mailbox three blocks away, my vision returning. The car had passed, and eventually, so had the dark afterimage of its headlights. I had thrown myself in front of the vehicle. Everybody thinks about suicide sooner or later, but it was strange, I thought, as I wandered the neighborhood, dazed, limping with a missing flip flop, strange that it had been so instinctive and that it had happened to me. I felt like a slumpedover marionette whose strings had been cut.
I heard my name being called -- my brother and my ex. They were about to call the police, and at once I felt as though I had indulged in a nap one hour too long. My nerves, my reactions to things, everything was off-key. After I slowly explained what had happened, my ex was crying and promising he wouldn’t yell again. I was skeptical. Before he left for college, it was not “It’s ludicrous to glimpse as bad as it was earlier in the summer. I wanted to end things smoothly. I still merely one grade in the feared upsetting the peace, I hadn’t talked great report card that is a to my friends the last half of summer, and person’s life, and at the time, I did still feel as if I were the source of the trouble. determine the average of After I broke up with him, which the them all.” distance of many miles made more civil, I began to understand how harrowing some of those eight months had been. How did I get through the second semester of my junior year? A simple vocabulary for how I felt, going into the second quarter: stupid, fail, crazy. A more accurate description would be, “misinformed, still learning, a fallible human being.” Sometimes, when I raise my hand in class, and I see the three scars on my arm, I am reminded before answering the teacher’s question that Menlo students are not always as they seem. There must be others like me. We can look up at a peer; see that their academic, athletic, or social prowess is evidence for a life without fault, without moral or sexual blemish; yet they can be just as screwed up as much as the next student. There are so many “classes” we take from birth to death: those in school, in sports, in art, in money, in love, in sex. It’s ludicrous to glimpse merely one grade in the great report card that is a person’s life, and determine the average of them all.
I Am
More.
H
By Anonymous
e had an antique hat-rack at the foot of his old mahogany bed. I used to joke that his room looked like my grandma’s, to which he’d always feign a serious expression, say “please don’t ever compare me to your grandma again,” and pick me up and toss me on the bed like I was a feather. I’d giggle as he climbed on top of me. I can’t recall the amount of times I’d looked over his shoulder at that rack, mesmerized by the velvety black hat that hung on one of the bulbs. It had one of those brims that reached out so far, the fabric had to lazily flop around your scalp. There was a beautiful satin bow tied around it. It was the kind of hat I imagine Audrey Hepburn would have owned. Sometimes, as I let him lie on top of me, I’d stare at that hat and picture the owner: a thin woman with long blonde hair—beautiful and intelligent—her name was probably Jessica or Melissa, and she had a hypnotizing laugh that drew others towards her like magnets. I knew so many girls like her. Whenever I asked about it, he’d shrug me off and kiss me, casually saying “a friend of mine left it here.” I had known for a while that he had many “friends,” friends who wore velvet black hats and liked Indie folk, friends who left their things at boys’ houses just because they had that many things and that many boys. I wasn’t one of them, but I was his. For some reason, the hat didn’t bother me too much. I suppose it could have served as a reminder that I spent my time in a bed where many had been before. A reminder that the girl hadn’t come back to retrieve it for the whole year I’d known him. What happened to her—did he discard her like the others? Like he’d inevitably do to me? But for some reason I was mesmerized by that hat, and I think in the end I studied its thick satin bow more than I studied his face.
His face. I don’t mind remembering every detail of his room—the smell of marijuana that drifted out from his bedside table, and the navy blue sheets I loved to wrap myself in—but I wish I could forget his face. His is a face I’ll never forget. And not for the kind lips that used to mouth “are you ok?,” or the smell of aftershave that hung on his cheekbones; not for the bits of stubble he’d lazily forgotten about, or the way his eyes laughed when we watched his favorite episode of Blue Mountain State for the third time that night. But for the time when his lips didn’t ask if I was ok. For the time his eyes didn’t laugh, but instead looked at me dead and dry. For the time he didn’t bother shaving off the stubble because he didn’t care whether he scratched my face. That’s the face I’ll never forget and I’ll never forgive. *** “Did you do anything that could have led him on?” “Which hand pushed you down, right or left?” “Do you think he misunderstood the situation?” “What was the orientation of the room?” “What type of wood was his bed made out of?” “What was the logo on his t-shirt?” “How many pounds did he weigh?” It had been almost 24 hours since I saw his face on top of mine, his body holding me down while I kicked at nothing and scratched at callous hands. I hadn’t slept. I was hungry. I was in pain. The pastel purple walls around me were supposed to be soothing, but they suffocated me as I told my story yet again to the officer in front of me. He nodded while his partner scribbled in a notebook; he asked me over and over again to retell what happened, to go back, to remember tiny details—when I couldn’t remember something I’d get flustered, and the officer pressed on, trying to trip me up or help me or something in between. I couldn’t tell. I never thought anything could be scarier than being under him the night before, crying as my voice became coarse and tired, peeking at the hat from the corner of my eyes and wondering if this was why she never came back to get it. But reliving the moment over and over again for a stony eyed officer with skeptical eyes made my palms just as sweaty—my stomach jerked with pain and I took a deep breath to tell the story again. Three hours later I could finally go to an emergency room; at this point I was walking through a smoky haze, replaying the questions over and over again in my head, trying to remember if I told it right, if I was in trouble, if I would be here all night.
Often in the middle of the night, I wake up and imagine his deadpan eyes over me. The warmth he used to exude somehow left that night, and I’ll never be able to understand why. Was it because I broke up with him earlier that night? Was it because I’d never told him no before, and he expected my body like he expected a salary at the end of the week? Being with him, I found so much fleeting fun in having sex. He made it simple. I enjoyed sleeping with him, going about my own day without feeling like I owed him a phone call or a cheesy text, and then going back to him when I felt like more. When I felt like an adventure, a stress relief, or a really good laugh. That year, he taught me to live on my own terms, and I’d never felt more independent, satisfied, and free. When I complained about school and family as we lay on the roof of his car, he’d tell me that I could be more. He’d tell me that if I read enough books and loved enough people, I’d find the passion I was looking for. But when you see someone’s eyes switch from warmth to cool indifference as they shove their body on top of yours, as they ignore your urgent crying, as they forget the mind they once laughed with and only see a body they were told they can’t have—that’s when everything else fades away. I suppose he was right: I am more than the petty gossip of my high school life. But I’m also more than the nightmares I’ve lived, and I am more than the feeling of being crushed under his torso. I can read more books and love more people. I can buy that velvet black hat and tie up my hair and feel like Audrey for an evening. I’ll never get back that night, and I’ll never forget or forgive. But I’ve learned that the mistake is to think that he took something from me. That I’m somehow less—maybe even broken—after that night. If anything, I’m more. I found strength in my family, and I found love and trust in my friends that I had once misplaced with him. I’ve found anger where it should be, and a passion to fight for others who’ve been thrown on their backs and had their cries silenced.
“I am more than the feeling of being crushed under his torso.”
I don’t know if I’ll ever find closure, or where I should even look. Maybe it’ll be in a courtroom getting legal justice, or on my own in some exotic country, Eat Pray Love style, as I find peace within. Maybe it’s sitting with my mom at our favorite café, sipping hot chocolate and laughing about all of her ridiculous coworkers. Maybe it’s binge-watching Netflix with my brother. In those 24 hours, I’ve had stone-faced officers try to tell me what to say and how to say it; I’ve been interrogated and confused and completely exhausted. But I’ve also had a best friend holding my hand the whole time, and a feeling that I can move forward stronger than ever. One night might have changed me, but it will never define me. I’ll work everyday to ensure that won’t happen. I am more than a survivor, a victim, a case, or a witness statement. I am more than a body under his.
— y l p m a m i I s . e e r t i o u m —q
Resources If you or someone you love has been sexually assaulted: • • • •
Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network National Sexual Assault Hotline: 1.800.656.HOPE National Sexual Assault Online Hotline Not Alone: Together Against Sexual Assault
If you are in immediate danger, call 911 General sexual education: • • • •
Planned Parenthood Go Ask Alice: Sexual and Reproductive Health Sex+ with Laci Green Sex, Etc.