Youtoo, 2

In reading posts on social media with the #metoo tag I saw some sad and disturbing things.  Some of those things were in the primary posts themselves of course, but some of the sadness was men charging into threads that were started so women could relate stories of abuse and saying awful things.  Some of these men decided to start a debate about the exact difference between sexual assault and sexual harassment.  One decided to talk about how he was groped a couple times and he liked it.

It doesn't fucking matter if you liked it when you got groped.  It matters if the women in question liked it, and if people should stop groping people without being sure that they want it.  (Hint:  Yes, you really should make sure people want to be groped before groping them.)

This past Saturday I was dancing in a club downtown.  A bunch of friends were with me and one of them, a man of similar size to me, danced all sexy with me and at groped at my crotch a couple of times.  I was dancing sexy right back at him, so the groping wasn't out of the blue but it was unexpected.

I didn't mind.  In fact, I was amused.

But even though a person randomly groping me (who I am not sexually interested in) didn't bother me that doesn't mean it shouldn't bother other people!  I am a large man.  I am stronger than him, and could make him get off me if it came to that.  I don't think there is any chance it would come to that because the guy in question is a reasonable sort of person but just knowing that I *could*, if I had to, completely changes how the interaction feels.

It is also different when I don't think the person in question actually has any intention of pursuing more sexual interaction.  Knowing what he wanted and the limits of what he was interested in changes the situation drastically.  It also matters that we were in a public space around lots of other people, as that can add a layer of safety.

Afterwards The Flautist asked me if I had ever had a sexual interaction that was scary or felt like assault.  I honestly answered no - I have only ever turned down sex a couple times and it was never of the type where I was shoving someone off of me.  I just used my words and they were respected.  (Being big generally means your words get respected, so this isn't such a surprise.)  Then she asked if anything I had experienced would probably be taken as sexual assault if I were a different person.  That is an important question because there are plenty of things that could happen to me that I would just brush off where other people might be traumatized for any number of reasons.

I guess the groping in the bar would qualify.  There are a lot of people who would be quite upset or at least unimpressed with such a thing.  I suspect that the guy that groped me wouldn't have done so to a woman or to many other people but he figured I would be fine with it, and he figured rightly in this case.

So yeah, I bet there are a lot of men out there who have been groped but it didn't really do much to them.  That doesn't matter.  Their privilege, size, strength, and other factors can easily change something they don't mind into someone else's horror story.  They should not assume that their feelings are universal because who they are and how they fit into society drastically changes the situation, even if it seems superficially similar.

I got groped.  It made me laugh and I was not bothered.  But that doesn't mean that other people aren't justified in being upset by being groped, and I sure as hell shouldn't use my experience as a weapon to try to trivialize the hurt they feel.

When someone talks about how they have cancer, for example, everyone knows that you shouldn't step in and say "hah, cancer, what a joke.  I lived through cancer!"  Even if you did, and even if it wasn't that bad, shut the hell up.  You also shouldn't say "Well, *your* kind of cancer isn't that bad.  Other people have it much worse, you know."  Even if that is true, shut the hell up.

The same goes for sexual assault.  Don't minimize other people's suffering, and don't try to shut down their conversation because it makes you feel uncomfortable.