It's More Common Than You Think

 Gendered power and violence are things I think may never go away.  As long as society and the media continue to portray women and violence the way they do, I only see things getting worse.  When we are constantly fed images of men in power and women in subordinate roles and as sex objects we can’t really be surprised when certain things happen.  Society tells us these things are ok.  The media reinforces and glamorizes demeaning and violent acts against women.  Since these messages are always coming at us through, tv shows, commercials, etc we take them to be right or acceptable.  Sexual harassment and assault is not as rare as some would think it is.  I know for a long time I thought sexual harassment and assault was something that you only saw on tv or in the movies because that wasn’t my reality or that of anyone I associated with (I was sheltered lol). It wasn’t something that was discussed. Guys hitting me or invading my space in certain way wasn’t sexual harassment to me it was life, and guys being guys, which looking back I realize was harassment because there were many times it made me uncomfortable.  However, it wasn’t until college when I realized sexual assault was common and nowhere near as rare as I thought.  I was taking public speaking and a girl gave an informative speech on sexual assault and how she’d been molested and raped.  The professor then opened the floor for discussion and five more girls stood up and shared stories similar in nature, people were crying and everything, I was shocked.  After class I was hanging out with some of my friends and shared what happened in class then they started revealing things that had happened to them as well.  In a group of 7 of us 4 had been either raped, molested, or both.  Our text tells us majority of the time the victim knows the aggressor and with my friends it was an uncle, family friend, love interest, and a member of a fraternity. Three of them said nothing, one tried to tell but the few she did tell didn’t believe her because they knew him and said he wasn’t that type of guy so she just left it alone. My eyes are now so open to what’s really going on.