Queer people aren’t strangers to shame, or to reclaiming one of the darkest feelings a person can carry deep in their gut. Shame is distinct from guilt in that shame is about doing something nonnormative, whereas guilt implies a breach of morality. Still, the consequences of shame can be profound — isolation, stress, secrets. Shame is relative to our surroundings, to the people who have power over us or to the communities we try to find homes in. For this A+ personal essay series, writers wrote about things they can barely whisper to aloud, things they thought was once a blemish that they’ve turned into crown, things that make them feel like a “bad queer”, or the ways that other peoples’ shame has woven itself into their life and existence. Answers to nagging questions, positive conclusions from difficult times and happy endings are not necessary, and you might not find them in every essay in the SHAME series. But I do hope you fill find something that challenges some shame you might be feeling, that is too relatable, that leaves you questioning whether it is actually serving you to hide whatever it is you’re hiding. As always, thank you for the support that allows Autostraddle to publish the breadth of pieces that we do, whether we’re celebrating the bright spots or descending into the basements of our psyches — this is a space where queer people can pitch, write and publish work like nowhere else.
xoxo,
Nico
In December of 2021, I publicly came forward about being sexually assaulted by my male boss. I didn’t plan on saying anything, ever, about that one evening. But when a 20-year-old woman filed a rape report against another one of my bosses and it was fight-or-flight; I chose fight.
You see, I knew these men well. I worked for them. I worked with them. I had let them make me believe that they were somehow good guys, that somehow they were doing me a favor by making me, a girl, a manager at the restaurant. They made this dynamic perfectly clear when they called me on my day off to come downtown and pose for a photo for the restaurant to share on Instagram for National Women’s Day.
As soon as I heard that a young woman was about to face these men, these rapists, who party with the mayor and give the local police officers free drinks, I knew that she needed numbers. I had grown a following by that time — 10,000 or so on Instagram, another 150,000 on TikTok — and I wanted to do something fucking useful with it.
First, I wrote every instance of douchebaggery, adultery, drug use, workplace harassment, and general negligence that I could think of in my little Notes App. Then, I posted. I could not have expected that the post would be shared tens of thousands of times, that 6,000 people would like it, that the survivor’s mother herself would reach out to me. I certainly couldn’t have predicted that more than 20 women would message me to say that the same thing happened to them.
In one way or another, myself and 20-odd other women had survived an assault from these men. With each new message, I felt a wave of heartbreak and relief, separated like water and oil. The heartbreak sat on the surface, the appropriate reaction to learning of truly diabolical violence.
Deeper down, below the surface, I felt relief that I was not the only one; that there were others! When it was just me, I felt stupid and vulnerable and guilty. When it was all of us, we felt empowered and strong and vindicated. That may have been one of the hardest times of my life: subjecting myself to public ridicule and humiliation, risking a defamation charge or retaliation.
The thing is, I couldn’t help but to feel proud of myself and the other survivors. We had done the thing that women used to not be able to do. We spoke up. Hell, this was post-#MeToo era. We were heroes. I was… a hero.
So, why did I feel so much shame when, a year later, a woman sexually assaulted me?
In my recovery, I wanted to be alone. I wanted to rest and smoke weed and feel bad for myself. I was less than attentive to the woman I was seeing at the time, but in fairness to me, I didn’t feel as though we’d seen each other long enough nor seriously enough to prioritize her in the wake of being run over.
When I finally started feeling better, I agreed to make the commute from Bushwick to Bed Stuy to see her so that she could feel better about being there for me in my time of need. She promised to give me a back massage – something that I very much needed between my scoliosis and the accident. That night, we were intimate, and nothing was out of the ordinary. The next morning, still in the red lingerie from the night before, she pushed her body against mine and turned our good morning kisses into something more. I pulled back, twice, and apologized for not being in the mood.
“My back is killing me,” I said, “I can’t right now. Like I physically cannot”
“Oh! Let me give you that back massage I promised you,” she said.
I jumped at the opportunity. I didn’t have health insurance at the time, so I couldn’t see a doctor for the nerve and muscle damage I had sustained in the accident. I was dying for a back massage. If I’m being honest, it was a large part of the reason I went over that night, for another set of hands to get to the knots and aches that I couldn’t. I turned over on my stomach and put my arms down to my side. She climbed onto the very lowest part of my back and began to knead hemp lotion into my skin. I felt relieved to think my body would be fixed the same way one medic bent my bike back into bike-shape while the other checked my vitals. It was healing.
I first realized that my body was not being healed, but rather used when I felt the lace of her lingerie chafe against my lower back. The moans were taken straight out of my mouth and placed into hers, except they were more frequent and high-pitched. I had the left side of my face down on her bed as I watched her ride my back in the periphery of my right eye.
She was really doing it. I thought, “No way is she rubbing herself on me right now.” I went to speak, to open my mouth, but found myself unable to get any words out. I didn’t have any evidence that saying something when you’re being assaulted will stop it.
One time, during freshman year of college, I woke up from being unconscious to a guy inside of me, pinning my legs behind my head.
“Ow,” I remember saying, “you’re hurting me.”
“What are you, a virgin?” he said from above me.
Practically. He didn’t stop.
So, I didn’t say anything. I didn’t say anything then, I didn’t say anything after she climaxed on me. I didn’t say anything when I ran into her on the train or the show or the bar. I didn’t say anything when she acknowledged that she had assaulted me by calling it “lowercase rape,” somehow separating her little deed from those that were penetrative, and therefore, supposedly worse. And maybe for that exact reason, I didn’t know what to call it. It had to be told to me.
“That’s assault,” my best friend said, “she assaulted you.”
“She did?” I genuinely didn’t know.
“Yes. You told her no and she still got herself off using your body.”
“I told her no. She still got herself off. Using my body. I said no. I was face down.”
I must have said that hundreds of times before I believed it. In fact, I needed other people to say it to me a few hundreds of times before I could believe it. She had a point, it was different from the times I had been raped penetratively.
For one, all of those other times, I was presenting as a femme, cis woman. I was outmatched in those dynamics; in physicality, in power, and in influence. The men who assaulted me when I was a girl were always older, bigger, and stronger. Surprising to no one, they’d also been popular and well-liked; not only by peers, but by teachers, coaches, parents, and bosses. Sometimes they were my bosses.
There’s something interesting that happens when you’re socialized as a girl, which is you learn that men can literally say whatever they want and it becomes fact. At the afterparty for my junior prom, I was using the bathroom and had my pants around my ankles while I sat on the toilet. I hadn’t even finished peeing when a senior boy barged into the bathroom with his erect penis out and charged at me, trying and failing to enter me. I learned a few days later in the hallways that that was how I apparently lost my virginity. Because some guy said so.
Secondly, we were together and while maybe we weren’t girlfriends, we were having consensual sex. All of the other instances were from guy friends or peers, each of whom knew what they were doing and that it was wrong. This time, though, I had just given her my body the night prior. What is the expiration on consent? Was my body something I owed her in some kind of apology for not asking her to come take care of me while I recovered? Maybe this happens sometimes when you’re seeing someone, and it’s inevitable for one to be in the mood and the other not. In college, I had a boyfriend who always wanted to have sex. If I wasn’t in the mood, he’d get upset and insist on masturbating next to me, still somehow making me participate in the activity even if just by hearing it as I tried to fall asleep.
Thirdly, I was sober that night in her apartment. Many, if not all, of the other times, I had been blackout drunk and on some kind of drug. I was in and out of consciousness, waking up for mere moments and catching enough to know what was happening before I faded back out. But this time, I was sober. So was she. The absence of some kind of poison makes the whole thing a lot more difficult to grapple with, harder to justify, harder to forget.
At least with the other times, I only remember the violence in flashes. This time, I can remember every stroke, every breath, every second I thought to get her off of me but couldn’t while frozen solid in disbelief. I remember what it felt like for her to finish on my back and how pleased with herself she was, even letting out a giggle — until she dismounted and I stayed put, still frozen and face-down. It was then that I had confirmation that she knew. She looked scared. No one had ever looked scared before.
I saw the same scared look sitting across from me when I asked her to meet up so that I could break things off, even though I had no intentions of bringing up what had happened. It was a week later, and I hadn’t told anyone yet. There was a part of me that felt bad for her, that didn’t want to tell her what she had done… but it turns out I didn’t have to. She told me. After I finished telling her that we shouldn’t see each other anymore, she asked for the floor.
“The last time we were intimate, I felt like I made you really uncomfortable,” she said. “I feel like I lowercase raped you.”
“You did,” is what I should have said. Instead, I comforted her. I told her that it was okay and that those kinds of things happen (they shouldn’t). “You assaulted me” would have been better than scrambling to make her feel desired. But remember – it took me a second to even call it assault.
Even with her literally telling me that she did something wrong, that she knew — I had said “no” and asked her to stop — I kept it to myself and went about my business. I cut off all contact with her despite telling her that it’d be chill if we ran into each other places, which was a lot less of a promised friendship down the line and more of a guarantee to her that I wouldn’t have her canceled. In the following weeks, I had reopened any healed cuts on my cuticles and welcomed the blood. I had started eating less and sleeping more. I abstained from sex, even when I wanted it.
My body stopped feeling like my own which, as a trans person, is saying a lot. If someone expressed interest in me out at a bar or online, I thought that they could tell I was weak. Maybe they, too, would want to take what they could get from me without asking. This wasn’t a wildly unfamiliar feeling. I had come up as a content creator during the pandemic, which is when I came out as trans and started presenting more masculine. I watched women and queer folks proposition me in my comments in ways that they would never find acceptable if it was a cis man talking to a woman. I would post a video about mental health, and still, there would be a woman in my comment section talking about how badly she wanted to fuck me. I was talking about helping your friend with panic attacks.
I know that the over-sexualization of trans mascs stems from women typically not feeling safe around cis men but loving the masculine energy. In their heads, a trans guy was surely once a girl, and knows what it’s like to be catcalled and objectified and harassed. And they’re not wrong — but at what point does turning to us for safety make us less safe? Am I meant to use my own trauma to enable the ways in which they tackle their own?
It’s disappointing and frustrating — and frankly, fucked up — when certain toxic behavior I thought I had escaped by leaving hetero spaces finds its way into queer spaces. I should not have to avoid a lesbian bar because the last time I was there, a woman grabbed my face and kissed me without my consent. Being queer doesn’t give us a hall pass to be creepy or unsafe to be around. There are, indeed, boundaries to our expression of pleasure and sexual desire, one of which is consent.
So if I knew what it was, and she knew what it was, and we knew what it was, then why was I still carrying the shame?
Perhaps it was because I’m now a trans guy, and in my transition, I’ve lost the camaraderie of womanhood. It would be a good guess! I take issue with that, though, because that leans far too close to a TERF’s definition of womanhood than I’m comfortable aligning myself with. Too often, transphobic, cis women shout about trans women not being real women because they’d never truly experience what it is to “be a woman.” By that, they mean rape. It’s a sick and vile thing to say, yet they repeat it over and over not once taking into consideration that trans women know exactly what it’s like to experience high levels of sexual assault and rape. So no, it wasn’t that I lost my Rape Card as soon as I started wearing a binder and using they/he pronouns.
A thought I had was… maybe I’m having such a hard time with it because all the other times were so much worse? Is it like getting punched your whole life and then one day finally getting an open hand slap to the face and not calling it violence?
Was it the blow to my masculinity? I mean, even as a woman, I was a fierce advocate for including men in discussions around sexual assault survivors. I knew the numbers were different but that it still sure as hell happened, and that the collective fight would be stronger if we didn’t alienate anyone. Could I not apply the same logic and empathy to myself? Was it because I don’t see myself as a man or if I do… a weak one? I did feel quite pathetic that a woman who was the weight of my left leg could overpower me.
I repeatedly considered how others would react if they found out what she did to me. Would they feel bad for me and comfort me? And if they did, would that make me feel like a girl, somehow? Would that be such a bad thing? Maybe they’d give me a nudge to my arm and tell me to “Buck up, buddy!” I would go back and forth with myself for weeks before finally deciding to tell somebody.
When I did work up the courage to tell a few folks about what had happened, I got mixed reactions.
“She came on your back? That’s so hot dude. Do you have a picture?” one guy said.
Another friend would be more supportive and offer to file a report with me. “No, thank you.”
Others would swear to never interact with her again, calling her what she is, “Dangerous.”
The affirmation of hearing the words dangerous and assault repeated back to me was life-saving. I felt like I was going around to friends, describing the event, and begging, “That’s assault, right?” and even though I already knew the answer, I needed them to say it. I needed to hear it from them. The more that I let people know, the more I set aside my masculinity and preconceived notions of what counts as rape, the less shame I felt.
It’s weird, when the immediate dust begins to settle and the conflict isn’t resolved, but shelved. I watch good things happen to her and grow angry, yet I’m still unwilling to out her for what she is. There’s nothing I can do with that. I either say something publicly and ruin her life so that I don’t have to see her succeed or experience joy, or I stay quiet and she gets to carry on as if nothing happened. Or worse, and perhaps more commonly, I say something publicly and she carries on as if nothing happened. I mean, that’s par for the course, no?
This is the reality for so many of us who are taken advantage of, regardless of gender, sexuality, size, and circumstance. Even when we do work through the shame of it all, even when we’re ready to speak up and alert those around us, even when we have all of the evidence, we’re told it doesn’t fucking matter.
I don’t have all of the answers on shame and how to stop feeling it, because the truth is, I haven’t stopped feeling it. I am, however, slowly learning to offload the shame onto those who perpetuate sexual violence and who enable abusers. I want to make them feeling fucking weird. I want them to lose the respect and admiration of their friends and family. I want them to feel so ashamed they never have sex again and if they do, all they can think of is how disgusting they are. I want to make people feel uncomfortable because I know that they know that their friend is a creep.
One way in which I reassigned my shame to the person who deserves it is by telling her exactly what she did to me, months after it happened. She had reached out to see about mending our “friendship” and seemed to be under the impression that things were awkward or bad because breakups are sticky or whatever. It occurred to me that I never did offload my shame onto her, but instead let it fester within me, and rage is a feeling that I am deeply uncomfortable with. For me, it turns into not eating, not sleeping or sleeping too much, and tucking away the joyous parts of me that I love so much in order to give the rage room to breathe. I took the opportunity and ran with it.
I told her that it wasn’t weird when we run into each other because we’re no longer seeing each other, but because she sexually assaulted me. I told her that I had said “no” and she chose to do what she wanted anyway. I told her that I could only call it what it was after seeking help from friends and a therapist. I told her how severely the assault, and her subsequent minimalizing of it all, affected me. I didn’t hold back. I didn’t freeze.
She left me on read for a few days until she finally replied with an apology filled with regret, panic, and – there it was – shame. It was no longer mine to hold. I didn’t immediately snap back into myself but I did slowly, day by day, feel the rage take up less space. I’m curious if it’s because instead of it being me who replayed that morning in my head over and over again, it was now her memory to dissect. I questioned less what my role in all of this said about me and more about what hers said about her. I could finally see that this wasn’t something that happened to me but something that she chose to do. And it is not my responsibility to contemplate or justify her choices.
Like I said, I don’t have the answers. I know that not everyone can speak to their abuser or rapist. But I do have affirmations for you, like my friends had them for me:
If it felt bad, then it was bad.
If you said no, they should not have kept going.
What happened to you has nothing to do with your gender, strength or character and everything to do with them.
Even if you had sex with them once or one hundred times, your body still belongs to you and you only.
You are no less of a man if you are assaulted by a woman.
This is not who you are and this does not define you.
Just because you or others have had it worse doesn’t make what happened to you okay.
It’s okay if you didn’t call it what it was when it was happening.
It’s okay that you took time to analyze what happened to you.
It’s okay if you feel shame right now. It won’t last forever.
This is such a powerful piece and a lot of it resonates with me. Thank you for sharing.
These affirmations at the end? Wow. Thank you Motti for the gift of this piece, truly, on so many levels.
“If it felt bad, then it was bad.” YES. This is so powerful. Thank you for this piece.
There was a lot that was really interesting in this (esp as a person who has been harmed by SA), but man, it kind of really seemed like it needed another copyedit, to the point it jarred me out of the piece. :(