What was she wearing?

 

The first time it happened to me, I was in between sizes - that happens when you hit a growth spurt - wearing a graphic tee that didn't quite fit. The kind little boys wear. The bottoms, I can't remember. Other than that they were off. Another casualty trauma has done to my memory.

 

What was she wearing?

 

The second time to when it became routine, I wore pajamas, t-shirts, shorts, light-up sneakers. The kind of things 8 year old boys like to wear. At this point, I thought what was happening was normal behaviour. Until it wasn't, until 'normal childhood experimentation' became expectation to boys who called me faggot while molesting me behind closed doors.

 

What was she wearing?

 

For many years I put what happened to me out of my mind, deep where trauma likes to hide things and recall them later. I repressed my pain, my sexuality, and grew to despise the consensual acts these boys and men distorted. I had to pull myself out from what they did, and by the next time it happened I was some semblance of whole.

 

But then it became routine, with a dear friend who routinely violated me and my boundaries in public. But women can't assault men, certainly not when they're wearing blazers and sweaters and jeans and whatever university students like to wear.

 

If boys and men can be sexually assaulted regardless of how they adorn their bodies, then it sure as fuck does not matter what girls, women, and nonbinary folks wore when it happened to them.

 

Your rhetoric saves none, least of all girls and women, certainly not me, and definitely not the men and other genders who lie at the outliers of these stories too burdened by shame to speak out.

 

When you say, what was she wearing? You are saying that girls and women are responsible for the gaze that falls upon them, not the ones violating them with their eyes. What was she drinking? Where was she? Who was she with? All of these questions are never asked to those of us who don't fit your narrow paradigm.

 

If we want true gender equality - between all genders not just two - then it is up to us men to hold each other accountable and make sure the behaviours that support rape culture are not acceptable. No more 'locker room talk'. No more 'boys will be boys'. No more 'I couldn't help myself'. No more 'she was asking for it'. No more 'what was she wearing'.