The words we use to describe sexual assault stop women from taking themselves seriously

Maybe he was your boyfriend or maybe you didn’t say “no,” out loud even though your body language was screaming it or maybe nothing really happened or maybe you didn’t figure out why you can’t stop thinking about him on top of you until weeks or months or years later.

Reconciling your own identity and experiences with the societal perception of sexual assault is an incredibly difficult process. Discussing traumatic events in their specificity can be akin to dissecting and reliving them, which is often painful and can trigger panic attacks or flashbacks.

Many people whose experiences technically match up with the definition of sexual assault feel uncomfortable claiming that term because they don’t feel like their incidents don’t measure up to the intense, violent connotations that the word “rape” conjures up.

But it’s clear based on the way that women who have been sexually assaulted shy away from terming their experiences “rape,” “abuse” or even “assault” that the vocabulary we have now isn’t enough to encompass the range of experiences that can leave a person feeling inexplicably but irrevocably violated.

One woman babe spoke to didn’t want to label her assault “rape” because she partially blamed herself for her encounter with a serial sexual predator, which happened when she was blackout drunk.

“I wasn't beaten or anything dangerous or forced, but it was a decision made while I was impaired. If I could have not done it I would not have done it,” she said. “But I still feel like I can't tell people it's rape because I didn't really say no but I didn't really say yes.”

Another woman, Gail, said she felt pressure to justify her feelings about her assault to other people, especially after comments from friends. Counseling helped her realize that she wasn’t the problem.

“I would say I do feel like I have to defend myself when saying I was raped or even calling it [rape]. Even though he physically forced me to have sex without my consent, I always feel the need to describe the whole situation,” Gail said. “One of my guy friends told me a few months ago that being groped wasn’t a big deal and that I shouldn’t be upset? I haven’t even told him that I was raped ‘cause I don’t want to hear his response to it at ALL.”

Things can get even more complicated when you have a relationship with the person who assaulted you. When one woman’s consent was violated by her partner, she knew what happened was assault, but still doesn’t feel the incident quite qualifies because they didn’t do it on purpose.

“At the moment I felt shit and I knew it was definition assault, but I do not feel that it truly was that, as you said, intense,” she said.

She and her partner are still together, and although she said she is “mostly okay,” she said that some feelings of resentment remain.

“Sometimes I do seem stuck on those moments,” she said. “I get mad at the person seemingly randomly. But I know they didn't really know what they were doing wasn't consensual.”

Another woman described her hesitance to claim the word “assault” for fear of minimizing the trauma of others.

“I think with just the umbrella term of assault pushes out other experiences because automatically I think of rape or sexual abuse,” said one woman, who was groped in her apartment by a man she knew after voicing her discomfort. “I think my hesitancy lies in the fact that I don’t want to invalidate the people who experience rape or sexual abuse by using the same word… I don’t want to water down their experience.”

The inability to discuss these experiences in language that we feel comfortable with only creates more barriers when it comes to healing.

It’s easier to dismiss sexual violation when you can’t call it that, when it’s just the weird, cringe-funny hookup story or typical shitty ex behavior. But discounting your feelings of discomfort, shame and anguish stemming from the violation of your sexual and bodily autonomy only makes them more profound.

And unless we have the language to describe what’s happened to us without feeling forced into extremes, we won’t talk at all, and that’s the worst case scenario.

@k80way