Trigger Warning: This post contains language about sexual assault that some readers may find disturbing. This piece is part of Not Your Fault, a Teen Vogue campaign that aims to educate people about the epidemic of sexual assault. For more on this series, click here.

I was supposed to fear the boys. The men. The frat guys, you know, those guys.

I wasn’t supposed to fear you.

You, the queer woman, the cool senior girl, the dark haired and bold, the captivating comic, the body positive. The sex positive.

You were supposed to represent the other side. Or at least, whatever side I was on. An emblem of a community where sex is a conversation, where gender is on the way out, where we are somehow better than the heteropatriarchal bullshit that everyone else experiences. We, the queer ones, the rule breakers rewriting the rules.

You were supposed to be safe.

And yet, today a man whistled at me and I remembered your fists inside of me. Today, I dissociated for 30 seconds in a parking lot because one night, three years ago, you violated and assaulted me in your bedroom. Today, I did the breathing exercises I have been taught, walked through the PTSD grounding techniques, and cried in my car because you, a queer woman, were not safe.

Here are the facts, in case you’ve forgotten: One friday night in September I went home with you, consented to sex, and stopped consenting after it got violent. You did not ask my permission before penetrating me. You choked me, left bruises on my arms and chest, and bit a dark circle into my inner thigh. You pushed me into walls, pulled my hair, and fingered me while I slept. Later, when I asked you why, you told me you thought it was hot and fun.

If I speak of this without gender attached, people are sympathetic and kind and sad. If I assign male pronouns to the story, people are angry, and protective, and most feel solidarity. Men, other survivors say, they’re monsters. And when I speak the truth, when I say a queer woman did these things, made me bleed, left me limping — people get quiet. Or awkward. Or uncomfortable. They say things like are you sure and did you say no and so it wasn’t like, a rape thing.

I am writing to you because queerness and femininity does not make anyone exempt from the rules of consent. Because violence is not sexy if you don’t ask first. Because somewhere out in the world, you, perpetrator, are still having sex and I need you to know that one yes does not give you an all access pass.

And I am writing, because somewhere, someone reading this letter just began to write one of their own. Because it took me finding a letter like this to know it was okay to call this assault, even though you’re a woman, and I’m a woman, and somehow we’re supposed to be on the same team.

Because I needed this truth when you first did this to me, and my guess is somewhere, someone else does too.

So for the last bit of my letter, I am going to address that someone, and I hope you, perpetrator, listen as well:

Dear survivor, rape is still rape, no matter the pronoun. Your body is still yours, until permission is explicitly given. There is no in-between here, no excuse based on a shared gender, or uncertain gender, or complicated relationship history. Here is your permission slip to believe yourself. Your body is yours is yours is yours, a thousand times over, and no amount of queerness makes that untrue. I promise.

If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, you can seek help by calling the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 800-656-HOPE (4673). For more resources on sexual assault, visit RAINN, End Rape on Campus, Know Your IX, and the National Sexual Violence Resource Center.

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