Content warning: discussions of sexual assault and sexual harassment
I’ve always considered myself a passionate advocate for dismantling rape culture and believing survivors of sexual assault. I have marched, protested, participated in social media campaigns, and volunteered for an anonymous helpline at Planned Parenthood for two years. And yet, I find it tremendously difficult to hold the men in my own life accountable.
This is particularly true when facing unwanted sexual advances and otherwise creepy behavior on social media platforms. I find that even after the #MeToo movement gained momentum and more and more survivors began to come out with stories condemning prominent public figures of sexual assault, we continue to push the voices of those whose experiences begin and end with violations of their consent and privacy online to the backburner. This neglect is a fragment of a broader issue: the culture of victim blaming is particularly pervasive online. Telling a victim of online harassment to “just block” the predator carries the same tone of victim blaming as asking a victim of assault, “What were you wearing?” My own encounters with digital predators have felt insignificant in light of more salient stories of survivors, and I often feel that I have no right to bring them up in conversations about consent.
Last summer, while on vacation in Europe, my phone kept lighting up with notifications from my former coworker Ryan*: he was repeatedly sending me unsolicited photos of his penis. I never asked for them—I had asked him to stop, told him that what he was doing made me feel uncomfortable. He dismissed my concern, citing my past flirtatious behaviour, as if flirtation alone warranted bombarding my phone with unwanted nudes. Blocking his number or reporting him to the Human Resources department at our place of employment never occurred to me; I’ve experienced much, much worse than what Ryan was doing.
I didn’t think to mention the situation to my friends—it seemed so mundane—until one day, during a lunch in Rome, one of them saw my phone light up with yet another photo. Both of my (male) friends were outraged by Ryan’s audacity, and suggested that I block and report him immediately. With my consent, they sent him an angry message saying that if he does not stop immediately, the screenshots of our conversations will be reported. To my horror, his response was, verbatim: “Grow up. Take responsibility. Just this conversation is making me horny,” followed by yet another photo of his penis.
Ryan was someone I had considered to be a friend. We worked together for a while and texted frequently, and he would often drive me home from work. He was funny, friendly, and lighthearted. And he was right, I did occasionally flirt with him. But once my tenure at my workplace ended and he was no longer bound by the constraints of professionalism, his persistent advances quickly became outright predatory. He never would have dropped his pants and shown me his penis in the break room at our work, but being tucked away behind his phone screen made him feel that he was well within his right to bombard me with those images.
This incident is just a small fragment of the harassment (and assault) that I have experienced. I didn’t think too much of it because I did not deem it worthy of my attention, but it is wrong to underestimate the psychological damage that persistent online harassment can cause. In hindsight, Ryan’s behaviour was derogatory—he knew full well that I did not consent to his actions, but that did not stop him. And despite all my passionate advocacy for believing survivors, I still do not feel justified in bringing this experience into conversations about sexual assault. There is an incessant voice in my head insisting that I am overreacting, that what he did is nothing compared to the suffering of sexual assault survivors. While retelling this story to my friends and family, I was met with choruses of “Why didn’t you just block him? It was literally that easy.”
Except that it wasn’t. Ryan was my friend, and I desperately wanted to believe that he wasn’t a creep. It isn’t easy to cut someone out of your life, and the magnitude of his predatory behaviour took time to process. Upon my return from Europe, I did end up reporting him to my former manager and the Human Resources department of our company. To my knowledge, he got to keep his job. I can imagine Human Resources singing the familiar tunes: “Well he didn’t <i>technically</i> assault her,” and “She doesn’t work here anymore, anyways” and “He’s a solid guy, let’s not ruin his life.”
Within our broader conversations about consent and the #MeToo movement, consent in the digital space must be addressed with more rigour. Too many of us have stories about receiving unsolicited nude photographs, being harassed on various social media platforms, or being stalked. For all their convenience, dating apps such as Tinder are also notorious for becoming platforms for creepy behaviour and harassment. And yet, so often we dismiss these experiences, burying them under piles of “It wasn’t that bad” and “Others have had it worse” and “If it bothers you that much, why don’t you just block them?” But at their core, all of these justifications are just another mode of victim blaming. We have to stop deflecting responsibility from those who prey on their victims online. I sincerely want to see the scope of conversations about consent expand to include the voices of those whose experiences with sexual abuse begin and end with violation of consent online. Otherwise, we are dismissing an entire demographic of victims of sexual harassment and letting their experiences fade into oblivion.
* names have been changed
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