makeout regret
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I think there’s a lot of good advice here. To be clear, you don’t need to feel guilty about this. Even though you have an opportunity to learn more about boundaries and enforcing them, what he did was wrong. It’s not OK to start kissing someone without their permission. It’s also very easy to not know how to react in the moment. I don’t know anyone who is born knowing how to react when a stranger kisses you, and it a lot of situations that are scary or unexpected make us freeze. Most of our lives are spent learning how to be polite in public and not to ruffle feathers, so feeling comfortable shoving someone is uncommon for a young person. Just because a person doesn’t react in the perfect way in a situation and get themselves out of it doesn’t make it their fault.
I’m not sure if you actually continued making out to get experience, or if you’re telling yourself that because you feel like you’re to blame and you want to figure out a reason. What seems most likely to me is that you were shocked and didn’t know how to respond.
Someone mentioned talking to a counselor, which I think would be helpful. It doesn’t matter if there were other things you could have done in the situation. It doesn’t change that it’s a jarring experience and there are a lot of underlying issues for you that you may need to work through. (Including the racism aspect here).
To be clear, I do NOT recommend shoving a guy as a first resort. That’s going straight to violence and is not a good idea. Step back from the kiss. If you have to, the next step is to put your hand up like a stop sign and say, No.
I get it was unexpected, and of course it wasn’t your fault, but you’re at the club, where alcohol is flowing and everyone is trying to hook up. You need to go there expecting to have guys get in your personal space, and know what to do.
This is a very good book for all women to read, with chapters specifically about parties and bars.
Sorry if it sounded liked I was implying you suggested shoving. I didn’t mean shoving in a particularly violent way. Moving someone away from you and stepping back from a kiss, in a situation like this, feel very similar and I was just using it as an example of why someone might be uncomfortable handling it.
Okay, and I would argue that you shouldn’t be going out to clubs in big cities (probably shouldn’t be at college on your own unless it’s a very tightly controlled religious school or something) without having picked up some basic tactics for dealing with drunk heterogeneous social situations like house parties and bars. I don’t know who’s remiss here – racist Dad, the school, the LW herself – but it’s time to spend a couple hours reading up. That book I linked to is great for women of all ages, too, if you feel like you wouldn’t necessarily know what to do in a situation like this either.
It sounds like you had a rather conservative upbringing. I’m not going to get into the racism side of this – it’s ugly. Know that racism is ugly.
Most guys in clubs work on a principle of odds. The more people they approach, the higher the likelihood that someone will say yes.
You are the owner of your body. No one has license to tell you what to do with your body. If you want to dance. Dance. If you want to kiss someone, kiss someone. If you want to have sex, use protection and have sex. You own you. You don’t have to punch a guy to say no. All you have to do is hold up your hand, use the stop hand sign and say “No thanks.”
If a guy gets aggressive, then you can get aggressive right back, but most guys will back off if you just say “no thanks”.
Putting aside the racism for a moment, which is obviously abhorrent, I’m surprised at the amount of blame the LW is getting for being sexually assaulted. She’s a young, naive girl. She was assaulted and obviously doesn’t know how to deal with the aftermath. I don’t think blame is helpful. I agree with the posters saying she has to learn to deal with it. But how many of us knew how to deal with it properly the first time we were in that kind of situation? Probably very few.
For the racism, yeah that’s disgusting and blaming her for that is fine. It’s probably due to her parents, but still. Open your eyes. Read some damn books. Educate yourself about race instead of just parroting your parents’ hatred. Racism is weak and pathetic. If you can’t handle everyone being equal to you, get therapy or something. Don’t treat other people like crap to make yourself feel better. (Not talking specifically about her sexual assailant here, just in general.)
@RedRover I agree with the thought that this was sexual assault and everyone was so focused on the racism that they chose not to see that she was emotionally harmed by this happening to her.
Some people freeze when bad things are happening. They have trouble thinking and reacting in the moment. That’s why we practice things like fire drills and tornado drills.
LW Now that you know that things like this happen you need to think through how you will handle things like this in the future. Think through what you will do. It is the same as a fire drill. You will be able to do what you need to do because you will have trained yourself. Going to a club or not going to a club is your choice. Just because your friends choose to do something doesn’t mean you need to or should. Make the choice you feel is right for you at the time. The same for drinking. You don’t need to do what everyone else is doing. You can make a different choice if you feel that it is best for you.
Your parents raised you to live in a different world than the one you found yourself in. You need to decide what is right for you.
Maybe it’s blaming, but look, don’t go to da club in a big, multicultural metropolitan area and drink, without some basic idea of how not to engage. It’s a pretty safe environment, with bouncers around, but you do need to know how to say NO. At no point while holding his hand, talking to him, letting him put his hands and mouth on her, all of which is acceptable in a club environment, did she say no. We’re telling her how to stop unwanted attention before it escalates. Which, honestly, someone had a responsibility to teach her if she was going off to college. My parents are super conservative too, but I still knew how to say no if I didn’t like something. Yes, at 18, in the club.
My point is that everything he did was actually fine in the context, she’s just traumatized because she found him “ugly” and his skin was the wrong color. If he was a cute white guy, she wouldn’t be upset. I don’t see assault in this one.
I’m talking more about people characterizing it as a hookup that she regretted later. It was an assault. Of course she regrets it – she didn’t want it and never consented. That’s very clear by the way she describes how gross she felt during it and how she couldn’t wait for it to be over. Her friends clearly saw it as a choice by her, and now people on here are reinforcing that. It was not. She froze up when she was assaulted for the first time. That’s what happened.
As to she should have not gone out without knowing how to defend herself, that’s pretty much the definition of naive. It didn’t sound like she realized there would be a need to defend herself, let alone realize she should prepare herself for it. People don’t know what they don’t know. Well, she knows now, and the advice to prepare herself will be good for next time.
@Kate, what? You’re saying that because she may have consented with another guy, that that wipes out her non-consent with *this* guy? No. Definitely not.
“while it was happening, I couldn’t wait for it to get over, I felt nothing and thought he was gross and ugly.”
That’s not consent. It doesn’t matter if her reason was the colour of his skin. That makes her racist, but it doesn’t confer consent. If she didn’t want to make out with him, and he did it anyway without her consent, that’s assault. Pure and simple.
I still don’t think he did anything wrong, honestly. Was he aggressive? Sure. But context matters. Walking down the street, that would have been totally inappropriate. In a club, not really.
Anyway, knowing is half the battle, you’re right.
