This is going to be one of the heaviest things I have ever written.
It is also going to be one of the most personal.
I want to start by saying something important about the identity I am using to tell this story. I am writing this under my pen name, Jaime David. Some people who know me in real life may know who I am outside of that name. I am not using my pen name to be evasive, to hide from anything, or to avoid accountability. Jaime David is my pen name. It is my creative identity. It is who I am as a writer and creator.
Using a pen name does not make my story any less credible, any less genuine, or any less believable.
I also want to make something else very clear: I am not writing this to attack anyone. I am not writing this to hurt anyone, expose anyone, “cancel” anyone, or create some kind of public spectacle. I am writing this because this is my story, and I believe it is important to share.
I am also deliberately not using the names of the people involved or the places where this happened. This happened years ago. I am not interested in identifying anyone. I am not doing this for attention. I am not doing this for drama. I am sharing it because I believe there is value in speaking about experiences like this.
Maybe someone reading this will recognize something in their own life. Maybe it will encourage someone else to tell their story. Maybe it will simply make someone stop and think.
Because we all have voices. And when we don’t speak up or share our experiences, we don’t give other people the opportunity to learn, to understand, or to do better.
That is also why I am putting this here, on The Musings of Jaime David.
I am not putting this on my politics blog, The Interfaith Intrepid. I am not putting it on my mental health blog, Let’s Be Different Together. Those are not really what this piece is about.
This belongs here because this is part of me.
It is part of my story. It is part of my history. And it is something I believe is important enough to share on the blog that represents me more broadly as a person and a creator.
I also want to make another distinction before I tell this story.
I am not trying to make my experience into something bigger than it was. I am not trying to exaggerate it. I am not trying to sensationalize it.
But I am also not going to minimize it.
I am going to tell you what happened as honestly as I can remember it and as I understand it now.
So, here is my story.
It happened during my senior year of high school.
There was a girl in my year whom I somewhat knew. We weren’t particularly close. We weren’t best friends or anything like that. We just knew each other.
One day, I was at my locker. I believe I was getting some books out.
And then, suddenly, she grabbed my ass from behind.
It was playful.
It happened incredibly quickly.
And I remember just being… confused.
I didn’t know what to think.
I didn’t know how to respond.
It was weird. It was awkward. It happened so fast that I don’t even think I had time to process what had just happened before it was over.
At the time, I didn’t have the words for it.
I didn’t immediately think, I was sexually assaulted.
I just knew that something had happened to me that felt strange and uncomfortable, and I didn’t really know what I was supposed to do with that feeling.
And, for years afterward, I carried a certain amount of shame and embarrassment about it.
I questioned myself.
I wondered what I was supposed to think about it.
And, if I’m being completely honest, there was even a sense of emasculation attached to it.
Because I’m a guy.
And there is this societal idea that men are supposed to be happy when someone touches them sexually. That men are supposed to want it. That men can’t really be victims of this kind of thing. That if a girl does something like that to a guy, the guy is somehow supposed to take it as a compliment or a win.
But that’s not how I experienced it.
I experienced confusion.
I experienced awkwardness.
I experienced discomfort.
And eventually, I experienced shame for even feeling those things.
It took me years to really understand what had happened.
The #MeToo movement was part of what helped me start looking at my own experience differently. Seeing people talk openly about sexual assault and sexual harassment helped me understand that these things aren’t somehow less serious simply because the person experiencing them is a man.
Eventually, I came to recognize what happened to me for what it was:
Sexual assault.
And even after I understood that, I mostly stayed quiet about it.
For years.
I didn’t really talk about it publicly.
I didn’t make it part of my story.
I just carried it.
But now, with the Cornell Seven and the stories people have been sharing in response, I have found myself thinking about my own experience again.
And I think it is time for me to finally speak about it.
I want to be extremely careful here, because I do not want my story to be misunderstood.
I am not comparing what happened to me with what the Cornell Jane Doe experienced.
I am not saying that our experiences were the same.
I am not trying to diminish, minimize, or take anything away from what she experienced.
Her story is her story.
Mine is mine.
But I also refuse to minimize what happened to me simply because someone else may have experienced something different, or because someone might look at my story and think, “It wasn’t that bad.”
It affected me.
I carried shame about it.
I questioned myself because of it.
And it took me years to understand that what happened to me mattered.
I think that matters.
Because sexual assault can happen to anyone.
It can happen to women.
It can happen to men.
It can happen to people of any gender.
And sometimes the person who experiences it doesn’t immediately understand what happened. Sometimes they freeze. Sometimes they don’t know how to respond. Sometimes they laugh it off. Sometimes they tell themselves it wasn’t a big deal.
Sometimes they don’t talk about it for years.
Sometimes they don’t talk about it at all.
And I don’t think we should have to stay silent.
We should be able to speak.
We should be able to say, “This happened to me.”
We should be able to acknowledge that something affected us without having to prove that our experience was the worst experience imaginable.
This is not a competition.
Pain is not a competition.
Trauma is not a competition.
One person’s experience does not have to be “worse” than another person’s for that person’s experience to matter.
My story matters.
And if sharing it helps even one person feel a little less alone, or helps someone understand that men can be victims too, or makes someone think twice about treating another person’s body as something they are entitled to touch without consent, then I believe it is worth having written.
This was one of the hardest posts I have ever written.
For a long time, I didn’t know how to talk about this.
Now I do.
So here I am.
I am Jaime David.
I am a writer.
I am a creator.
And I am also a survivor of sexual assault.
