A spectrum of my assault, for Matt Damon’s consideration
MATT Damon is right. Assault does exist on a spectrum. The only problem is, though, many women experience every stop along the way, writes Katy Hall. Here’s what that looks like.
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“THERE’S a difference between patting someone on the butt and rape or child molestation, right?... All of that behaviour needs to be confronted, but there is a continuum.
“And on this end of the continuum where you have rape and child molestation or whatever, you know, that’s prison. Right?... The other stuff is just kind of shameful and gross.” — Matt Damon.
When you’re five, you and your siblings play in the spa at your nanna’s apartment complex, where an older man is already sitting. He slides close to your brother, and your brother tells you and your sister to move over. The man moves again, so your brother says it’s time to get out of the spa. You all dive into the freezing cold pool and start to splash each other.
The man follows you and watches you play. Your brother tells you to get out and sit on our towel, to not move; he tells you that he is going to get dad. By the time they come downstairs, the man is lying on a towel next to yours.
“Daddy, why is his doodle is hanging out of his swimmers?” you ask while your nanna pulls you away.
When you’re eight, men at the car show you are at with your dad scream at you to “show us ya tits”. You’re confused as to why they would want to see the nothingness underneath your shirt and for the first time in your life dream about disappearing.
When you’re 12, you have to go to the local shops to get some pads. The man behind the register swipes your only purchase before looking you dead in the eyes and saying: “You’ll be coming into budding season real soon.” He chuckles loudly and you wish you could sink into the floor.
When you’re 13, you borrow your sister’s boob tube to wear to the school disco. Paired with your low cut flare jeans, Globe sneakers, and liberal amounts of glitter eyeshadow, you’ve never felt cooler. When you get there, one of the boys from another college runs up to you and pulls down your top before running away. Your friends say they’re sure nobody noticed, but you know that’s not true.
When you’re 15, your friends drag you to a party with some older boys they know through their jobs at the mall. You sit on a couch, alone, and try to ignore the one who is asking you if you want a drink; if you want to go outside; if you want to go to a room.
You say no and instead go to the bathroom. When you’re washing your hands you look in the mirror and see that he is there, behind you, locking the door. He begs you to make out with him. He says he won’t let you pass until you kiss him, and you’re so unsure of what to do you decide to go along with it.
You turn the lights off so you don’t have to see his face. He pushes your head down into his lap so hard your neck jams. Still, you go along with it. It’s not what you want, but you don’t know how to say no yet.
When you tell your friends about it, they laugh and say that at least you're not a blowjob virgin anymore, and that you should be thankful; at least he was hot.
When you're 17, a boy in your history class opens his fly and dares you to touch his dick. You ignore him, but he waits until the teacher is near and starts his begging again. “Touch it, just touch it,” he says. You’re not sure why, but the teacher looks at you with disappointment before telling the boy to zip up his trousers.
When you're 18, you meet a boy you really like. You start dating and for weeks you are inseparable, but you can’t explain to him why it is that you’re just not ready to have sex. Eventually, he grows frustrated and calls you frigid. That you’re a tease. One night he gets drunk and screams that you’re a “f**king bitch”. It is years before you will see him or speak to him again.
When you’re 19, an older man you have grown up around puts his hand up your dress. He grabs your underwear first, and then eventually reaches inside and grabs the rest of you too. He laughs. To him, your body is the butt of his drunken joke. You eventually run away and manage to escape what felt like the longest 10 seconds of your life.
You cry yourself to sleep and wonder why none of the adults standing around didn’t do or say anything.
Months later, you see him again. It takes you six times to get him to stop trying to come to the beach with you.
Later, after floating in the water — the same place you learned to swim at and spent every summer of your life at — you emerge to see him sitting next to your towel watching you. You think about telling your mum when you get back to the house, but what’s the point? No one in your family ever believes you anyway.
When you’re 20, the manager at your bar job has to walk behind you to get to the other beer taps. He grabs you by the waist and rubs his crotch along your ass. “Mind your step,” he whispers as dozens of patrons look on.
When you're 21, you join a uni group working on an anthology. It will look good on your transcript and you might get something published. When the course convener emails the group to ask if we’re all free to meet on a Thursday, you reply: “Yes, that works for me.” Minutes later you get a reply all email from someone in the group that you’ve never spoken to before. “Sure, that sounds good to me. By the way, Kate, you left your panties at my house.”
You have no idea why he wrote that, and tell that to the group when you next see them. They all agree it’s strange, but when he walks into the meeting everybody keeps their heads down.
When the time comes, you decide not to submit anything in case he makes fun of your writing or decides to humiliate you again. Eventually, you stop going to group meetings and drop out of the group. You still aren’t sure if anyone really believed you when you said you don’t know him.
When you’re 22,a guy you’ve never met puts his hand down the back of your pants. He laughs and you freeze as you feel his clammy wet hand pushed against your skin. It isn’t until your boyfriend has the bouncers kick him out that you feel like you can breathe again.
When you’re 23 you get off the tram late one night. A man walks behind you, slowly, and pauses whenever you stop to turn around. Something kicks in and you grab your keys from your bag and start running. You don’t stop until you’re inside the gate and sprinting up the stairs to your door. Later that night you lie awake in bed wondering if he was really following you, or if you were just imagining it.
Later that year you go home for the summer and get drunk with your friends. A boy you haven’t met before is there and you can tell that he likes you.
It feels nice to have someone stare at you, to laugh at the things you say. You get injured, though. Your seat falls off the balcony and you land in the garden below. Your ear starts to bleed.
Your head is killing you and your vision is blurred. You make the decision to stay in the spare room at your friend's house. You take a valium, the only type of pain-killer you can find in your bag, peel off your sweaty clothes and climb into a bed that’s not yours.
When you wake up, the boy is standing in the room saying that he wants to kiss you. You agree, sort of, by not doing or saying anything. He says he wants to make you come, that he wants to be the best sex you’ve ever had. You’re so disorientated, you don’t say anything. You lie there and wonder why your head is still hurting so much.
At some point, it ends, but you’re not sure when. In the morning, you ask him to go to the couch and not tell anyone about what happened. When you get home you realise the inside of your legs are covered in bruises and you don’t know why.
When you’re 24, you go to the house of the boy you’ve been flirting with. He’s more attractive than any man you’ve ever seen before. He kisses you in the kitchen and leads you into his bedroom. He pushes your hand to his crotch. You want to say you’re not ready for this, but you remember you went to his house, that you kissed him back, that you went into his room, so maybe you shouldn’t care how you feel and should just do it.
When you’re 26, you’re on the tram home. It’s 6pm and the front carriage is full of people going to the footy. Aside from you and another guy, the back carriage is empty. From the reflection in the window, you can see he’s wearing a black hoodie and sunglasses, and is staring at you.
He throws a plastic bottle at you to get your attention. You know you should just get up and go to where everyone else is, but you’re frozen. He walks towards you and sits next to you. He puts his arm around you and you feel like you might vomit.
His left arm grabs your crotch hard and, leaning in to touch your cheek he whispers, “nice lips”. The tram stops and opens its doors. Without thinking you jump out of his grip and run home to where you call the police, who say that without having seen his face there’s not much they can do.
After, you will have panic attacks whenever you are alone, terrified of who is behind you and what they could be doing. You throw up in the supermarket and stop being able to do your job properly. You will tell yourself over and over again that it wasn’t really an assault; that it didn’t really count, that you shouldn’t be so traumatised by something that wasn’t rape.
When you wake up at night covered in sweat and gasping for air, you wonder how long you will be this broken for.
When you’re 27, you go to a hotel to interview a famous singer. His sound manger asks if you’re there to “service the boys”. You wonder what you would have to do to be seen as a completely sexless object.
When you’re 28, you walk home alone late one night and a young guy, out with a group of friends pushes you and tells you he wants to fuck. You turn and begin to scream, telling him to get away from you, that you’ll kill him if he ever touches another woman again, and for a second, you feel like you mean it.
When you’re 30, the #metoo story starts breaking and it doesn’t stop. Suddenly, you’re having conversations with so many women, and you realise what you thought was a phenomenon is the norm. That you are not the only one, that other people have too many stories to remember as well.
You see men look at you with doubt and assume that it's all a jumped up farce that’s been fed Twitter-brand steroids. That it will die down, that people's names are being dragged through the mud for things that they consider to be misunderstandings. But they're not, and now you know it.
A few months later, an award-winning Hollywood actor tells the world that there is a spectrum in which sexual harassment and abuse exists, and that one experience is not the same as another, as though that’s not already a lesson your entire life has been dedicated to learning by heart.
For a while, you feel angry. You want to cry and bang your head and scream from the rooftops for someone to believe you. But mostly, you just feel more tired than you’ve ever felt before.
You wonder if anything is ever actually going to change; if there will be real repercussions for the Weinsteins of the world, or if it will just stop happening to you because you’re getting older and less attractive in the eyes of the people who have spent so long trying to make you something and someone that you're not.
Katy Hall is a writer and producer at RendezView. Follow her on Twitter @katyhallway.