The "Not Rape" Sexual Assaults {featured reads}

My friend Molly over at First the Egg has written a powerful post de-normalizing the sexual harassment and unwanted touches women in our culture are made to expect and stomach. "Have I ever had “ANY unwanted/undesired physical or sexual contact”? is the post's title, a question on a health history form. Her answer is yes and she describes her experiences in detail, giving words to the many unaccounted for experiences of sexual assault women experience on a regular basis, silenced because, as one commenter wrote, "I think it’s really easy for us (especially for women?) to minimize their own experience by saying “well, someone else had X experience which was worse, so I shouldn’t complain.” Concludes Molly:

I refuse to do the happy dance because I was fortunate enough not to be molested as a little girl and have not been violently raped. I refuse to be abjectly grateful for ‘getting off easy’ with the experiences I’ve mentioned here.

Because I deeply resent that they are normal.

Sharing our own experiences with sexual assault, coercion, molestation, and harassment does not diminish the rapes and violence experienced by others. It's not a competition. Molly's post is an important reminder that we take seriously all sexual wrongdoings, and that we do not dismiss those that are less extreme, obscene in their own way by their "normalcy." Several readers have chimed in with their praise and thankfulness for the post, sharing their own personal experiences and rightly protesting the response of one insulting commenter.

Further reading is also recommended in the comment section, including The Not Rape Epidemic. EXCERPT:

Yes, we learned a lot about rape.

What we were not prepared for was everything else. Rape was something we could identify, an act with a strict definition and two distinct scenarios. Not rape was something else entirely.

Not rape was all those other little things that we experienced everyday and struggled to learn how to deal with those situations. In those days, my ears were filled with secrets that were not my own, the confessions of not rapes experienced by the girls I knew then and the women I know now. [...]

My friends and I confided in each other, swapping stories, sharing out pain, while keeping it all hidden from the adults in our lives. After all, who could we tell? This wasn’t rape – it didn’t fit the definitions. This was Not rape. We should have known better. We were the ones who would take the blame. We would be punished, and no one wanted that. So, these actions went on, aided by a cloak of silence. [...]

We must give girls the tools they need to defend themselves against sexual predators.

The small things we can do – paying attention, giving the words they need, instilling the confidence in which to handle these situations and providing a non judgmental ear when a student or teen approaches us with a problem – may be the best, and perhaps only, weapons they have to continue the fight against this epidemic.

Photo from AAUW announcing its report “Crossing the Line: Sexual Harassment at School” (2011). Find the report in PDF-file here. New York Times' feature on the report is here.