this is cool and all for you but you do realize not everyone has the opportunity, training, reflex, or confidence to respond to sexual assault with immediate and overwhelming violence, right? i’ve responded to some threats in my life with violence, and at other times i’ve run away or completely frozen up.
also as a word of warning in how you talk to people who have experienced sexual assault: until very recently, a lot of what we now understand as sexual assault or harassment was normalized as a reasonable and even funny thing for men to get away with. the further back you go, the less ‘counts’ as an actionable offense. if no one around you believes what happened to you was anything worse than annoying, you don’t know how to deal with your own pain and outrage, let alone feel empowered to retaliate.
so yeah, people have grabbed my ass as a joke, and i didn’t respond in time with violence, because everyone thought it was a joke. i was an ugly and awkward teenager. no one actually wanted to have sex with me at the time. that was the joke: the absurd implausibility that i was even worth raping. violence wouldn’t have improved the situation.
like, good on you for being very clear on your own self-worth and militantly defending your boundaries. i’m glad that kids today know that’s an option. a lot of people didn’t.
