In Case You Also Didn’t Know

Sexual assault, rape culture, and a tiny bit about Platner and the White House’s #1 sex pest

CW: discussion of sexual assault: me talking about my own experiences, including my sex life (minimal details, but that may still make some people uncomfortable).

I had a cis man remove a condom during sex and come inside me without consent, and I didn’t know it was sexual assault. Until I called my friend M. I sought her advice after he’d done it 2-3 times and I was frustrated. She labeled it what it was.

I’d liked this guy a lot. We had a lot of fun together, and we were both adventurous in bed, usually meeting each other’s energies. We knew we weren’t each other’s forevers or even long-term. He genuinely made me laugh, and he was smoking hot. In fact, the first time I met him, he delivered used bookcases to my apartment like something out of my wet dreams.⁽¹⁾

I was on oral birth control at the time. He was the first sexual partner who’d ever offered up his STI test results — which would’ve been on paper because it was that long ago — so we could stop using condoms. I said no, I wanted to keep using them. We were ethically non-monogamous and both mutually dating and having sex with other people.

But there are lots of reasons beyond STIs and possible pregnancies to use condoms. Clean up is simpler. I’d previously had a string of nasty yeast infections linked to not using condoms with a monogamous partner who didn’t have any STIs.⁽²⁾ And sometimes you just don’t want jizz leaking from your cootchie while trying on clothes at the (now defunct) Value Village where Macklemore and Ryan Lewis filmed “Thrift Store.”

After the first time he took the condom off, I invited him over under the pretense that I needed his help picking out an outfit. I tried to feel powerful when I (successfully) refused sex that evening. Because rape, sexual assault, and sexual harassment are all about power; and I wanted some back.

I did bring up my unhappiness about the condom removal, and that no, it didn’t matter if that sex was vaginal or anal or that he’d “broken the seal” by barebacking against my will the first time. That no sex night, I’d tested him, to see if he’d cross further sexual boundaries. He did not; so he couldn’t be that bad, right?

In the end, I answered his phone calls and texts less and less. We never connected on then burgeoning social media. For other reasons, I moved apartments and changed my phone number, and we “lost” contact. We didn’t run in the same social or professional circles and lived in adjoining towns, so our paths never randomly crossed again. I still have one of the bookcases.

I never called it sexual assault to his face. I’d only remained consistent that I wanted to always use condoms when we fucked again. (Because we did fuck again.) He wasn’t the first or the last person to sexually assault me. All were people I was dating, and I’d probably be hanged in the media as too horny, too trans, and too problematic to be a victim if any of my stories made headlines.⁽³⁾

My story isn’t unique or surprising in the ubiquity of rape culture.

So when news broke about yet another (alleged) sexual assault by Graham Platner, a man who’s apparently 3 red flags in a trench coat, included an ex-girlfriend saying he removed condoms during sex, I wasn’t surprised. I likewise wasn’t surprised to learn that many states do not have sexual assault laws around “stealthing” (what I learned through this reporting that non-consensual condom removal is called). Nor was I surprised when I saw a cishet man on social media compare this and the other sexual assault allegations against Platner to him leaving the toilet seat up after peeing.⁽⁴⁾

Unfortunately, sexual violence and rape culture remain a plague in our society. Just as I can say pretty confidently that every woman, every trans person, and probably more cis men than you’d think have been sexually assaulted and/or sexually harassed, this means that there are plenty of perpetrators. Some of whom are also victims. Right now, I don’t have a lot of say about that future considering a convicted in civil court of sexual assault and owes $5.6 million pest occupies the White House.

But I’m not writing this for policy wonks, Maine voters, or even sincere allies. I’m sharing my story for those who woke up the headlines and saw their own stories. Who, instead of a trusted best friend telling them they’d been assaulted, found out through headlines and online discourse. Who never said a word because who would believe them anyway. Who need someone to not erase their story. Me too.

1. Especially as a young adult with no real furniture and lots of books!

2. Many years later, I mentioned this one time to a group of friends (2 cis women, 1 trans man, and 1 cis man), and they unanimously said the cis male partner in question needed to clean his dick better since using condoms stopped the problem.

3. I cannot imagine that kind of public magnifying glass. Or in my case, how horribly media would fumble talking about pre-transition SA.

4. The ex who left the toilet seat up and my narrow ass fell in at 4am is still a dear friend and coincidentally not on the list of cis men who sexually assaulted me.

Header photo by Kat Closon.