Sexual Assault Awareness Month. My Story

April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month. Here is my story.

Transcript

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Welcome to the Dickin podcast. It's about to get weird friends. I'm your Luden loud host, Rachel z Liam Masseuse, sex educator, breast cancer, thriver, funny gal sitting in a room full of dicks talking dicks butts and all things. Sex. Welcome to today's episode. This one is a hard one for me. Okay, because I almost didn't do it April is National Sexual Assault Awareness Month, and I think it is really important to talk about. But at the same time, I also was really hesitant to talk about it because this is personal and it's vulnerable, and I like to consider myself a pretty private person, which I know sounds ridiculous because. I will talk about all the things, and if you've been listening, you're like, what the hell? This girl thinks she's private. But while I will talk about all the things, you know, I love talking about sex, dicks, butts, embarrassing things that happened to me, all kinds of crazy, funny stories. I absolutely use humor as kind of a defense mechanism, and I. I don't like to share things that make me feel vulnerable or exposed or that are very private. So this isn't one was hard for me because I'm like, well, do I talk about it? Because if I don't talk about it, then that just furthers this cycle of, you know, shame and stigma and guilt that surrounds this topic. or do I share it and kind of do my part in using my voice to say, Hey, this fucking happened to me too, so we're gonna talk about it. Ultimately, I decided to share. I don't wanna go into like the who's and all that because it's hard, it's private, and I, I, I just don't want to share it. but I do want to have a short episode about it. So before we get into the heavy topic of sexual assault, I wanted to quickly share a funny story with you. Again, def humor is my defense mechanism. Before I do this vulnerable thing, I wanna share a funny story. So this week, Vaughn and I Vaughn my. And I were at an art show for his girls, their high schools. They're in high school and they're seniors. So we went to their art show and we met there and I rolled up and initially I was like really impressed cuz I could see from the car that he had on a college shirt. And I was like, Ooh, fancy you wearing a collared shirt. Then he gets out of the car, this man has on fucking VW. Trunks. He's wearing swim trunks. Now mind you, it was the first day that it's been really nice and the girls had said it was hot in there, so he decided he was gonna wear shorts and thought that this gray polo perfectly matched it. And I was like, oh my goodness. I. Like you're wearing swim trunks. Really, sir. And so we go in, we have the art show. I am in. Menopause and the bleeding is a little bit uncontrollable at times, and that sucks because it makes me feel like I'm this like young girl who doesn't understand how periods work with how much I bleed through. So here I am this whole time mocking him for his choice of pants. And then we've been in the art show. We've looked at all the art and one of his girls Rachel name, same says, are you bleeding under her breath meet? And I'm like, oh fuck. So I go into the bathroom, like quickly exit, go into the bathroom, and I have just, Period. It all over. It has leaked through my pants, my period panties, my cup. It is a fucking mess in there. So here I am mocking this guy for wearing swim trunks when I justed my pants and it is like big and obvious and I'm like, oh fuck. Time to go. So we. We leave. Thank God this man had an extra pair of pants in his car. He had brought a pair of camo pants for me to try and so there it is. I end up wearing his camo pants and we proceed to go out to dinner as the worst pants wearing couple. He's got on swim trunks and I've got on. Camo camo pants and my shirt does not match, by the way. So just a quick little story to say that karma came back to me for mock and his shorts. Now that we have the funny story out of the way, let's talk about the meat of our podcast today. Sexual. So it's awareness month, right? And the whole purpose is to just use our voices to share our stories and bring awareness to the fact that this happens way, way, way more frequently than you think. Justin's. Quick statistics on it. One in five women in the US and one in 67 men in the US will have experienced some sort of sexual assault in their lifetime, and that is an astronomically high absurd number. This means if you look around. If you just look around, chances are probably pretty good that it's happened to someone that you know love and care about. Sexual assault is an umbrella term, right? This can include so many things. It can include. Rape, molestation, child sexual abuse, human trafficking, sexual abuse, even with a partner, sexual violence with a partner. Even if you are in a relationship with someone, sexual violence can still happen to you. So I'm just gonna tell you a little bit about my story with sexual violence. and with sexual assault and a little bit about what happened to me and how, how it affected me throughout my lifetime. So I would say that my story started with sexual assault when I was pretty young. I, you know, I can't pinpoint exactly how old I was. I would say just ballpark, probably like six. to 13. This went on for years and by three separate people, and they were all people who were really, really close to me. So I don't want to go into like who but because it's private and it's vulnerable and I don't wanna share it, and that is okay, but. It did happen to me for a long time, and here's the thing. I was kind of brainwashed by my predators to believe a few different things. I was kind of brainwashed to believe that this was normal. This was something that everybody was doing. Even though it was normal and even though everyone was doing it, I shouldn't talk about it. So there was this like firm sense of secrecy around it. And with that secrecy also came like threats. Like, nobody will believe you if you talk about this. They're gonna think that you asked for this, this is your fault. You're just, all these things like kind of forced me into secrecy. About it. And, and I mean, I will say that that is like a predator mo, right? To force this sense of secrecy and shame and stigma that nobody's gonna believe you or that you asked for this and you deserve this or that somehow this is their fault, your fault, and not theirs. And that is 1000% false. Okay, so how did. Sexual assault affect me in my life. I think. it caused me initially to have like a really weird relationship with sex. I wasn't super sexually active as a teenager, even though pe all the people around me were, because I, I still had carried around a lot of sexual tra, a lot of trauma from the things that had happened to me when I was young. And another thing about my story is that like a lot of the adults in my life had an idea that this might be happening to me. They were always questioning like, is this person being inappropriate with you? But I was too scared to say yes, and it wasn't until I was a full grown ass. Probably like within the last like five or six years that I actually was like, yes, that did happen. So a adults in my life kind of had a suspicion that this would happen to me and, and that kind of led to like another form of distrust because not only were the people who loved me, who were loved me and responsible for me, like kind of mildly aware of this, but also people who loved me and were. Figures in my life were also abusing me. So it led to kind of like a distrust. And I would say that that distrust has absolutely. like carried on throughout my life with the fact that like, I use humor as a defense mechanism. I don't really like to talk about my feelings. I, I am always really, I've always been really private and really guarded with things that are hurtful or painful or make me feel vulnerable or make me feel exposed. and, and I would say that that definitely was a result of some of the trauma that I experienced as a young child being sexually abused. Another way that this affected me was, you know, it it, it did make me, make me feel some shame around sex and sexuality, and it also made me like overly sexual. Do I think that? The things that happened to me when I was young kind of led me down a path of sex work. Yes, absolutely, but not in a bad way. I, I, I get that the, the first thing that comes to mind is like, oh, she got involved with sex work because these things happened to her. Which I mean, it is kind of true. But for me it was a way to really feel empowered about sex. Like I set the rules. It was sex on my terms, you know, I set the rules, I set the boundaries. I set who I saw. I set the things that I did and it really kind of helped me to feel empowered about sexual my sexuality instead of. Instead of that shame and guilt and trauma that I had felt for so many years. So for me, sex work has always been about my terms and my empowerment. It's never been something that I've done because out, out of like necessity or trauma or brokenness, it's always something that I've done out of a sense of empowerment. I wanted to share, like I said, I have been going back and forth, back and forth for the last week about whether I was gonna talk about this or not, but here's the reason why I ultimately decided that I was gonna share this is because we need to talk about it. There is so much shame and stigma and, and stuffing it down and, and it is not. If you are a man or if you are a woman, or if you're a child, if you are any person who has experienced any sort of sexual assault or sexual violence in your lifetime, it is not your fault. It is not your fault. I don't care what your abuser said to you. It's not your fault. You are not to blame for this. You didn't ask for this. There is no need to feel shame or guilt around the fact that this has happened to you, and I want that to be the biggest takeaway that you leave here with. This is not your fault, and it is okay that you have experienced some trauma around this. This is normal. The biggest thing that I wish I would have done differently, way back when, if I could go back and, and I would have told someone, I would've told someone, I would've stopped the cycle of abuse. I would've shared my story, but I was just so scared. I didn't, I didn't know that that was an option. So that's ultimately why I decided to share this story is because I want people to know that it is okay and, and you need to talk about this. Talk about it with a loved one, talk about it with a friend, talk about it with a therapist, talk about it with. A professional who deals with this. There are so many resources out there. There's the National Sexual Assault Hotline. There are so many places that you can turn and get support. Even confidentially for, for things like this and sexual assault can happen. It happens so much and so frequently, and we just need to be aware that this does and can happen and just as a society, it's not okay. So that is my short. A story of to say that I am a sexual assault survivor and we need to bring awareness and start talking about this. I hope that you have, like I said, this has been hard for me to talk about. I am really proud of myself for deciding to share this. But it wa it came with a lot of inner turmoil. So if you love the Dict podcast, make sure to subscribe so you never miss a story or some info. Make sure that you subscribe to never miss an episode. Join me next week as we talk about my absolute favorite topic, anal sex. We're gonna be talking about it is anal sex day next week, and we are gonna be talking about man, Butt stuff. That's right prostates. So don't miss this episode. It's going to be super juicy and I will see you next Wiener Wednesday. Keep it weird my friends.