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There are a lot of stories of men committing sexual abuse in public, among a group of other people, trying to do it covertly while their victim tries to get away, tries to stop it, all while being quiet and not drawing attention to themselves and what's happening.
We tend to think of sexual assault as being something that happens behind closed doors. We think of the guy luring their victim to their hotel room, or accosting them in an empty hallway, or while they're alone in a car. But it happens in public, in groups, more than you think.
And that's precisely because so often the reaction of the victim is to not draw attention, to desperately try to stop it without anyone knowing what's happening. Trying to move as far away as possible or clench up to limit access, all while trying to act normal.
Of course many people's response to this will be "but why not draw attention to it? When it would be so easy to stop by bringing people's attention to what's happening?" For the same reason so many choose not to report. We don't know what the reaction will be.
And there's a good chance it won't be kind to us. So many of these kinds of assaults happen within groups of friends or coworkers. What do you think is going to happen if you draw attention to it? If you shout "stop touching me" or "take your hand out of my pants"?
You think the guy is going to to what you ask and then own up to assaulting you? No, he's going to act like you're crazy, tell everyone he wasn't doing anything wrong, and say or do anything he has to to save his own ass. And we know from so many things what happens to us after.
We know from our own experiences, from watching the experiences of other victims, who our friends and coworkers are more likely to believe. We know that even if they do believe us, they're still more likely to try to protect him than to drop him.
To respond with "that's just [insert name here], you have to know how to handle him" or "he was just making a move because he liked you, you overreacted" or "he does that all the time, it's no big deal". We know that the situation we're most likely to find ourselves in is this:
They're not going to do anything about it, they're going to keep being his friend or keep him employed, and if we don't drop if we'll be the one treated like the problem. We'll be the one who gets dropped. And if we want to get away from the person who assaulted us?
We'll have to be the one that loses a job or loses friends. And there's a good chance we'll have to deal with the person who assaulted us spreading shit around about us, to make it harder for us to get another job or to get new friends. Because even IF they believe us?
We'll still be seen as the difficult one. The ones who makes trouble and can't just "let things go". It could potentially ruin our lives. And let me remind you, I'm not even talking about reporting a sexual assault. I'm talking about stopping one while it's actively happening.
In certain situations, just trying to stop it could ruin our lives. "But you don't know for sure that your friends/coworkers will respond that way." Yeah, sure, maybe we don't. But we can point to so many cases where people responded in exactly that way.
Think about that, and think about what could happen to us if they did respond in exactly that way. Can you really blame us for being too scared, especially in a moment where we are actively being sexually assaulted, to take the risk?
