It took four months before I began to come to terms with the fact I had been sexually assaulted. I knew all about consent and had even helped friends and ex-partners through the heart-breaking process of getting over someone’s choice to hurt them. But, because I was sexually assaulted by a Queer woman, I convinced myself that it wasn’t real. As I stood there, pinned against a wall having things done to me that I didn’t want, I thought to myself, “This isn’t happening.”
Afterwards, I repeatedly told myself that it was my fault because another woman would never do that to me. Over and over, I thought that a woman would have respected my repeated “no’s” if I had been more assertive. Like “no” didn’t mean “no”.
I’m far from the only queer person who has had an experience like this. We’re a long way off from having solid data on the rates of sexual assault for the LGBTQIA+ community, but the limited research available shows that it’s just as prevalent within our community as it is in the wider population.
Six in ten queer people have experienced intimate partner violence, according to a 2020 La Trobe University study, with more than half experiencing verbal, physical, or sexual violence.
One in five queer people surveyed had experienced sexual assault — a number that’s way too high for the lack of dialogue surrounding it.
We view sexual assault and abuse as a gendered issue, and statistically, it is. 97 per cent of the perpetrators of sexual assault are men and 83 per cent of victims are women according to the ABS. But statistics lack the nuance on who a survivor or an abuser can be, and that can leave those who fall outside the box without a voice.
Grace Tame called for that nuance while addressing the National Press Club alongside Brittany Higgins, imploring us to not forget the boys and men who can also be survivors of assault and abuse.
“Yes, statistics say that perpetrators are more often than not men. Yes, statistics say that women are overrepresented in the survivor category, but statistics are not people. People are people,” Tame said.
Grace Tame and Brittany Higgins have seen us finally have conversations about the sexual assault epidemic faced by women across Australia, something we wouldn’t speak about previously. But, like what Ms Tame said about men yesterday, the queer community hasn’t been in the focus when it comes to talking about what’s happening in our spaces and relationships.
That’s not to say that we don’t look out for each other. We’re quick to warn each other to stay away from “that person” who don’t seem to get boundaries, but that’s not enough. It falls short of the community-wide discussion and awareness-raising that we have proven capable of.
Not talking about this is dangerous. The myth that queer people, especially queer women, won’t hurt or assault you is precisely that, a myth. It leaves us vulnerable to abuse and silences us from speaking out.
Not only that, but it stops people from thinking that they can actually be responsible for bad behaviour. If one in five queer people have been assaulted, where are the perpetrators?
I have no idea if that woman knows she’s assaulted someone or if she ever thinks about what she did. After what happened, she admitted that she should’ve stopped, but I put the blame on myself and excused her completely. I always wonder how many women are out there not knowing that they’ve done something wrong.
In a community that is so open to sexual exploration and kink, consent is more important than ever. In the sexual experiences I’ve had since, I’m hyper-aware of when people jump to be dominant without checking in first. Sex is exciting, and I completely understand the rush to get to the fun stuff, but sometimes we assume people are “down for whatever” without asking if they want to be choked or slapped or degraded.
The LGBTQIA+ community is one of the most welcoming and wonderful that there is, and we get thrown a lot of shit by those who want to harm us. It makes sense that we want to protect ourselves and believe that no queer person could hurt anyone like that. But it is something that happens to countless queer people, and we can’t keep pretending that it doesn’t.
Eli Green is a journalist and writer. She currently works in social media for 10 News but struggles to run her own Instagram and Twitter.
Help is available.
If you require immediate assistance, please call 000.
If you’d like to speak to someone about sexual violence, please call the 1800 Respect hotline on 1800 737 732 or chat online.
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