I like to say that I’m not a bad looking female. Sexy, even. I have a pretty face and large breasts. I didn’t always have these attributes. When I hit puberty I had moderate sized breasts, a larger built body, and my face was torn up from acne. Somewhere around age 16, I seemed to grow out of it and into a beautiful woman. I’m thankful for that in some ways. In others, it has caused me problems. The main place for these problems has been in the work force. I’ve been sexually harassed or discriminated against at pretty much every place I’ve ever worked.

It started at my first job. I was just coming to terms with no longer being in my awkward stages in the looks department. Perhaps I strutted a little more than I did before. Maybe I twirled my hair or giggled a little extra. Maybe I didn’t do anything at all, other than be a female.

I had a male coworker who was about two or three years older than me. We used to work the same shifts and got to be friends. He knew I had a boyfriend but still flirted with me in a casual way. Then it escalated. It turned into asking what we were doing sexually. What did I like to do in bed? Was I kinky or sensual? Did I like it rough? Now, I’m not one that minds talking about sex, but something was a red flag. I’d never had a job before, but somehow figured that my usual potty mouth wasn’t the most appropriate in the work place. I giggled and answered a few of the questions, because I’m honest and a sexually open person.

It got worse. We were working together late one night and ended up in a room alone. He pulled me aside and backed me into a corner. He told me how he wanted me to go down on him, and how he knew I’d be good at it. He told me my boyfriend would never know, it would be our secret. I ducked from underneath him and ran out to where the rest of the employees were, short of breath and shaken. I pretended like nothing happened. I was young and clueless. I thought I deserved it for ever answering any of the questions in the first place. I quit a few days after, and never told a soul why.

A few jobs down the line, I was hired by a man who hated females but had an Affirmative Action quota to meet. He had hired a male manager, to oversee our department, who was much like he was – misogynistic. Everything was fine for a while, and then the same things started to happen. This time it started with long, eery stares. Every time I would walk by he would undress me with his eyes in a very obvious way. He would flirt with me. I would, after learning from my last mistakes, nicely say I had a boyfriend, but thank you for the compliment. He always wanted to hug me for a job well done. Pretty sure that’s not par for the course in the working world. I’m not a hugger to begin with, but unable to figure a way out of someone reaching their arms around you, I stood there and got hugged. His hands would linger, and he would press himself up against my chest.

Then the questions started again. What did I do with my boyfriend? What did I like? I’m not sure why these questions are so popular, but undoubtedly if I’m in a sexual harassment situation this is always part of it. They always want to know about my sex life. Not in the same way as a friend wants to know, but in that creepy way, where you know they’re storing it their head for use in a masturbation session later.

This time, I went to upper management. I was sick of being a sex object everywhere I worked, and sick of being undressed by the eyes of every male coworker in a five mile radius. I was sick of it all, and decided it was time to do something. Upper management, made up of a woman hater and a regular male, apologized profusely. It was a large corporation, and I’m sure the thought of a 19 year old girl suing over a 30 year old manager sexually harassing her was the last thing they wanted. What happened, you ask? Well, the manager that was harassing me was forced to apologize and cease the behavior or be terminated. I was told to come to them directly if anything happened again.

Personally, I don’t find that to be satisfactory. Luckily, he did stop after that, and quit shortly thereafter. What if he hadn’t? What if he retaliated and raped me in the parking lot after work? What if it had gotten worse, and I was forced to once again go before management with this situation? Women should not be put in such a place to have to face someone who has harassed them after the fact. If I could provide multiple witnesses, which I could, why is there a second chance for such behavior? Why give a sexual deviant the chance to make my work life miserable more so than has already been done?

One time, I was not hired for a job because of my looks. It was an all male company that did repairs for electronics. It was a small, family company, so Affirmative Action didn’t really apply. I was in desperate need of a job, and I had a male friend that worked there, so I figured he could get me in. They needed someone to do some filing and such, and while that’s not my normal line of work, I figured I would manage to do well enough at it to make it until something opened up in my field. I was told I couldn’t work there. When I asked why, I was told my looks would be a distraction to the male employees. They wouldn’t do any work, he said. Then he told me what would end up happening is that they would make lewd comments to me all day. Not only would I have likely been sexually harassed, but potentially harassed by not one male, but a group of them. Normally, I don’t like being discriminated against based on my gender or looks. After all the times I’ve been put through the wringer with sexual harassment, I’ve got to say I was pretty happy this guy was upfront and honest with me. It saved me what would have been yet another notch under my belt of uncomfortable work environments.

When I share these stories, I’m often told I should have sucked it up. I was being too weak or sensitive, apparently. Oddly enough, it’s my male friends that tell me these things. My female friends are more sympathetic, but not by a lot. Those that have been in similar situations feel my pain. Those that have not, seem almost jealous. It’s like we went to a bar and the attractive guy hit on me instead of her. Let me tell you, it’s not like that. Yes, I may not always say the most appropriate things. Yes, I’m sexually open and honest. Yes, I look and dress a certain way. That doesn’t give you the right to touch me, or assume that my love of sex means I want to have sex with every guy with a pulse.

For a long time, I felt like I deserved this harassment because of my clothes and the way I talked. As I’ve aged, I’ve learned that this is not the case. No matter what I look like, no matter how short my skirt may be on a Saturday night, no matter how foul my mouth is, I do not deserve harassment. I deserve to have a work environment as peaceful as everyone else.

If you find yourself in these situations, I urge you to speak up. Those that do this will continue to do so unless there are consequences. It’s not easy to go to HR or a manager and talk about it, but if you don’t, there’s no reason to assume the harassment will suddenly stop. In all the times it’s happened to me, the only thing that makes it stop is me quitting or making a report. You have the right to a safe work place. Make your voice heard to get one, and make sure management takes the right actions to make it stop.

Although I wouldn’t say that I grew up with a conservative family, sex is still a fairly taboo topic in my household, so it was something that I never discussed with my parents. However, by the time I hit eight years old, I was transferred to a horrible Catholic private school that was exclusively for girls. Those were the most depressing and sexually stifling years of my life, and I would never choose to relive those days if I could help it.

I was stuck in that school for ten years – I suffered through both grade school and high school in that institution. Since it was a Catholic girls’ school (and a rather strict one at that), sex education was completely non-existent, and intercourse was never even mentioned until I entered my sixth grade.

My sexual knowledge was so limited that I was actually one of those preteens who thought that you could get pregnant from a toilet seat. I always assumed that was the reason why male and female bathrooms were separated. I also thought that you could get STDs from pool water, and believed that babies are birthed through the anus. It took a while for me to find out that there was actually a third orifice down there: the vagina.

And what about things like puberty and menstruation? Well, these lessons were introduced in the second quarter of my fourth grade, but I wish that they discussed the topic somewhat earlier. For one thing, I was always rather tall for my age, and I seemed to have hit puberty earlier than everyone else.

During the summer vacation between third and fourth grade, I experienced menarche. I simply woke up one day to find blood on my pajamas. Beset with horror, I started screaming, prompting my parents to burst into my room, asking what was wrong. Tears streaming down my face, I showed them the stains. My mother hugged me and said that it was completely normal for a girl, and explained to me what menstruation was. She then attached a pad to my underwear for me, to show me how it worked. While she explained away, I was still sobbing; I really had thought that I was going to die. Thinking back on it, I wish that someone had prepared me for that experience, so I wouldn’t have been so terrified. I was only 9 years old, after all.

Eventually, my school did start teaching us about puberty and menstruation as part of our home economics class. While they did teach us the basics, such as how to launder our underwear in the event of a stain, and when to anticipate our periods by marking them on a calendar, they never quite went into detail. To be honest, they really did not dwell on the topic for too long, and spent the rest of the year teaching us how to sew and fold clothes, along with other mundane household related skills.

What irks me now, however, was the extremely negative mindset they taught us. Our teacher said that menstruation was something dirty and disgusting, and that a true lady would never, ever mention her period to a man. She also taught us to never get caught with a sanitary napkin, because it was considered extremely embarrassing. She emphasized that discretion was extremely important, especially when you are around the opposite sex. Even then, I thought that this was stupid. If it happened to every woman, why should it be such a big secret?

On the other hand, I finally found out what a vagina was after they explained the menstrual cycle to us. I found out that menstrual blood originated from this orifice, and that babies were born from this canal as well. I admit that I was relieved when I heard that little tidbit of information, because the idea of shitting out a baby was just horrible.

However, they never quite told us about sex. While they did talk about reproduction, and how fertilizing an egg cell with a sperm cell eventually leads to pregnancy, they always left out the mechanism of intercourse: how it actually happens.

The first real mention of sex was in the sixth grade. The school had decided to introduce a brand new subject into the curriculum – Health Education. In one of our lectures, the teacher started discussing the reproductive cycle with the class. She had us watch a video discussing things like attraction and pregnancy. During one part of the video, where we glimpsed a couple entering a bedroom, she started covering the screen with her body and began fast forwarding the tape. By the time she had finished, the video was already discussing pregnancy and the development from embryo to fetus.

Apparently, after I dug up the video myself some time later, the part that she fast forwarded was actually a slide show of the erection, insertion, and ejaculation process. The pictures shown on the tape were illustrated cross sections of the sex organs, and were quite harmless. It was not lewd in any way!

Funnily enough, she allowed us to watch the last part of the video. It depicted an actual live birth in glorious, gory detail. The girls in my class started screaming, and one girl had to be brought to the school clinic because she threw up all over herself.

The next meeting, our teacher finally explained to us what sex was, mostly due to the many questions that were raised when she skipped parts of the video. When she told us that the penis gets inserted into the vagina, my jaw literally dropped. “WHAT GOES WHERE??” were the exact words in my head.

She also emphasized that losing your virginity was extremely painful, and that sex should be avoided unless we want to suffer through pregnancy “before we were ready”. She also mentioned sexually transmitted diseases, and started showing us a gruesome slide show of female genitals in various levels of infection. Yes, my teacher loved shock tactics and would rather focus on pain and suffering than to tell us about sex.

I was then resigned to the thought that women will always suffer because of their vagina. Menstrual cramps hurt, sex hurts, and giving birth hurts. It was always about pain and horror. In fact, these thoughts were reinforced by Christian Life classes. They taught us that God punished Eve with the pain of childbirth because she ate the forbidden fruit and fell into sin.

And… that is it. That is how my official sex ed ends. The Health Education teacher never finished the year with us because she was fired (the school never told us why), and the subject was never mentioned in my academic life ever again, even when I entered high school and college. There were simply more important things like algebra, philosophy, and of course knowing how to walk like a proper lady.

It was a dark time, full of ignorance and misconceptions. In fact, the only reason why I’m more enlightened now is because of a little thing called: the internet.

For many people, holidays are not joy-filled or fun. They don’t feel like laughing, and they don’t even want to be around others. Instead, they fight depression, on a seasonal or even daily basis.

I’ve struggled with cyclical depression for years and have learned some tips that I use now whenever I feel a bout of depression coming on.

• Give yourself a limited time to rest/run away from others. I allow myself one day to lay in bed and hate everything about my life. Sometimes this is enough to help me start feeling better because I was overtired to begin with.

• Make sure you’re drinking enough WATER. It is easy to drink sodas, and coffee, and tea, and energy drinks, and that is fine. But your body also needs water, and if you don’t get enough fluids it can make you tired and help you to feel drained.

• Eat three meals a day. When I’m depressed, the last thing I want to do is eat, and I will often forget to eat. I have to force myself to eat three good meals and not just snack on sweets or salty items.

• Get outside for at least 10 minutes per day. There is something about the fresh air (and hopefully sunshine) that helps to pick me up.

• Listen to music that is upbeat and you enjoy. I like to put on something with a beat and try to make myself do a bit of oldies. Other times, when I need to rest, I like to listen to instrumental hymns and praise music, because they help me to calm down. Find something that works for you, whether it be music or movies or tv shows.

• Start a gratitude journal and list at least three things every day that you’re thankful for. Sometimes I’m just thankful that the day didn’t go worse than it did! But I find that having an “attitude of gratitude” really helps me to get my mind off myself, and it helps the depression to lift at least a little bit.

• Don’t pull away from others. This is probably the hardest thing for me to do – to reach out to people and say, “I need help”. I have friends who will contact me if we haven’t talked every week or two, because they know I have cyclical depression, and they want to make sure I’m ok. By being honest with them and sharing that I have this, they sometimes recognize the signs of an “attack of depression” and will reach out to me before I’m ready to work towards overcoming it.

Living with depression isn’t easy and you can’t always get over it with a few simple steps. Sometimes you need to add medication to your life, or receive help from a counselor.

I’ve learned that I can work my way through a depressive episode somewhat faster if I follow these steps.

After five years of being with the same person and having two kids with him, I am now officially, at 25 years old, a single mother. Now, I never in my wildest dreams imagined I would one day be this young, have two kids and not married to the person I had them with. I saw myself as being happy and taken care of. Life, unfortunately, never seems to turn out how you expect and hope it would.

I personally blame karma for this. I knew that after being wild and crazy as a teenager, doing whatever I wanted whether it be drugs or partying, I would one day have to pay for my carelessness.  The sad thing is, I felt like I had already paid enough. After being cheated on by my boyfriend, I too made the same mistake and let myself get caught up in the attention other men were giving me. I felt horrible afterward, and truth be told, the guy I chose sucked in bed, so it really was worthless that I went looking elsewhere when I was getting what I wanted at home. So after three unsatisfying meetings, I realized that I might have a problem, and behold my intuition was right. After taking a test, I figured out I was pregnant again.

Sticking to my feelings from when I was pregnant with my daughter, I knew that despite having relationship problems I would keep and have this baby. This is when hell pretty much started. The guilt I felt over my infidelity ate at me from the time I woke up till I went to sleep. It was all I could think about, it was making me miserable and unhappy at a time when I shouldn’t have been.

About five months after I found out I was pregnant, the truth finally came out. I already knew about when he had cheated on me and felt I took it well, so I was hoping he would do the same. I was wrong. He couldn’t handle what I had done, and the next few weeks were a blur of me staying up with him all night and day talking it out, over and over.

Instead of coming to terms with it and working together to rebuild our trust, he turned to drugs to numb his pain and escape from what our reality had become. As weeks went by, he started to become angry, and in turn started becoming violent. Our fights turned into harsh words meant to crush the other person, and hitting. I kept telling myself that we would get better, that given time we could work all this out and be alright and become the happy family I so desperately needed us to be.

As we became more disconnected from reality, my due date was quickly approaching, and in a weird way things started to get better. He was getting help, and we were finally figuring things out. The few days we spent in the hospital following our son’s birth were amazing, things felt normal and happy again, and I was ecstatic. Like most situations like this, things don’t stay happy for long. After we left the hospital, our reality became too much to bear, and the cycle started all over again.

Bath salt, for those who don’t know what it is, could be found at that time in any local smoke shop, it was essentially legal methamphetamine. I swore I would never touch it, I was pregnant and held my ground, but after my son was born I couldn’t handle the sleepless nights fighting and tried it. Starting that May, my life became a downward spiral that I still can’t fully recollect. Those five months I lost myself and started living in a world that didn’t really exist.

Feeding off each other, we kept doing bath salt and kept promising we would stop. We got to the point where we would stay up for a week, not eating, and after sleeping for one day, would start all over again. I knew that I wasn’t this person I had become. I looked in the mirror and saw a girl I didn’t recognize, she was a stranger. I lost 40 lbs in three weeks and was slowly driving myself to die. I know that now. If I hadn’t stopped I would probably be dead, and that thought terrifies me.

The last few months were the roughest. He started becoming more violent, and I would have to hide my bruises and make excuses for what we had become. This life was not what I wanted for my children; I knew that and yet had become too weak to do anything about it. I saw rock bottom coming, and instead of doing something to stop it, I waited for it to come. Every day he became more disassociated from reality, I saw that this drug was killing him from the inside out, he was sick and getting worse. At first I ignored the paranoia and delusions. He would see people that weren’t there and think everyone was out to get him. I tried over and over again to help him see what was real and what wasn’t, while I myself was slowly losing my grip on reality.

Watching someone you love and care about start to exhibit symptoms of a disorder such as schizophrenia is terrifying, you can see movies portray it ,but until you see it in real life it doesn’t become real. The drugs were triggering a problem he had, and it was terrifying. I was living in hell day in and day out. It got so bad that I just expected it to happen and went along with it. I knew the people he was seeing were not really there, but I appeased him and acted as if they were there. I kept trying to reassure him there was no one else since my mistake, and no matter how hard I tried it fell on deaf ears.

It got to the point where I had no phone, no computer, and couldn’t go to the bathroom alone. I was a prisoner in my own house, and I let it happen. Looking back, there were several things I could have done, people I could have talked to. I felt that by asking for help I was going to show everyone how vulnerable I was, and they would see all the mistakes I had and was making. I prayed our neighbors would call the cops, something, anything, so that I would have my savior, and it would not be my fault. They never came, despite all the fighting and screaming no one ever called the police.

The last weekend we were together the kids had gone to spend the weekend at my parents, we did the usual and escaped into our world. This time he didn’t come back out of it. Watching someone you love pretty much deteriorate in front of your eyes is brutal, words can’t even express how terrible it is. I knew our rock bottom was coming, and it would be coming sooner rather than later. We fought like never before, he hit me and didn’t even remember doing it. By that Sunday, I was too sore to move. Covered in bruises, I watched as he finally had enough and wanted to end it all.

I did the only thing I could think of. Our house was a mess, our life together shattered, I knew we had nothing left to lose except our lives. I got him into my car and started to take him to his mom’s house. Sadly it wasn’t that simple, he fought me and hallucinated the whole way. At one point, he got in the driver’s seat and I said my goodbyes. I truly didn’t think I would live to see my kids again. I have never been so helpless and terrified in my life. My saving grace was him getting out of the car to walk the rest of the way. I just let him go, and as much as it broke my heart I knew it was for the best.

I went back to his mom’s house a few hours later and learned that in the morning he would be moving to his dad’s house, out of state. I was heartbroken, but there was nothing I could do. That was the last time I saw him. We had been together for four and a half years, and the end had finally come. I would love to say that last day we hugged and left on good terms, but we didn’t. He was sick and didn’t know what was going on. It has been two months now, and I am living back with my parents and my kids. As hard and terrible as it was, I know it was all for the best.

Being apart has enabled us to both grow and heal. He is doing very well and has a job and a new girlfriend. He is happy, and that is all I can ask for. I still have days where all I want to do is cry and give up, but I have come this far and giving up now isn’t an option. Shortly after moving back home, I found out that I was pregnant again. I had to yet again make another hard decision, and even though it killed me I had an abortion. I wasn’t in the right state of mind to be pregnant again, and do what I needed to do to get back on my feet and be the mother my children needed me to be.

I know I made the right decisions. Things needed to happen this way, and I am thankful that we are both still alive and there for our kids. I felt that I had to write this, to get all of what I went through out in the open for myself. I need to heal, and keeping it bottled up inside will only damage me further. I hope that after reading this you take a look at your life, and the world, and realize how beautiful and precious it is. You have to live for today because you don’t know if you will have tomorrow. Cherish everything in your life, the good and the bad, these things are what make you the person you are. I am now a stronger person because of what I went through. I have learned more about myself than I ever thought possible. I can now be the parent I need to be, and maybe one day a wife. Until then, I am going to embrace all the things in my life.

“You’re going to get yourself raped.” Has anyone ever said this to you? If they have, what were you wearing? What was the topic of conversation? If you haven’t, you’re lucky. It’s a painful thing to hear. It doesn’t matter if you’re a slut, a prude, or a virgin; gay, straight, questioning, bisexual, or pansexual. You could be asexual or demisexual; childfree, waiting for the right person, attempting to conceive, or a parent. Someone, somewhere, is going to have a problem with how you conduct your sex life, and that isn’t so bad when you can conduct an open conversation and both sides try to be understanding, but when threats are leveled, and preemptive victim blaming takes place, it isn’t alright. It happens to all kinds of people all the time, so let me tell you a little about my experience as a prude.

The first time I heard that despicable phrase, if I recall correctly, my step-father was on another of his tirades about how I was never good enough. I can’t recall exactly if he was telling me how I’d probably end up pregnant and disgraceful before I even got out of high school, or if he was demanding, once again, that I marry a “good christian boy” and have lots of children. He might have been speculating on my state of “dyke-dom” again, for all I can recall. Whatever prompted it, I sheepishly confessed that I wasn’t having sex, I didn’t want to have sex, because I didn’t feel sexual desire. It set him off, and that lead to an hour long rant starting with “You’re such a little prude, you’re going to get yourself raped, and maybe that’ll fix ya.”

He wasn’t the only one, either. Other family members and friends told me variations on the same thing. From “You’re nothing but a cock-tease, if you won’t have sex, you’re going to get yourself raped.” to “If you won’t have sex, you’re going to be alone. If you date someone and won’t have sex with him, he should rape you.” and even “If you don’t have sex, how will you have children? If you don’t have kids, you’re going to Hell.” What’s worse, none of those things were said spitefully. They were said in that same well meaning tone people normally reserve for “how not to get raped” advice. They could have just as easily been telling me not to walk alone at night, or not to dress like a “slut.”

I don’t think they quite saw the twisted humor in telling me that I should have sex I didn’t want in order to avoid being “raped,” as though there were that much of a difference between the two. If you consent to sex just so you don’t get raped, how is that any different than any other form of coercion?

Not to mention the double standard. If I had sex with everyone, or even a handful of people, I would be a “slut”, and then they’d tell me, “Don’t have so much sex, you’re going to get yourself raped.” or “Don’t dress like that, you’ll get yourself raped.” I think that if I’d told them I was saving myself for marriage instead, they might have had a different reaction, as well. Then I would have been a “good girl” rather than just broken in their eyes.

I’m not sure why people are so intent on “fixing” people with low or no sex drive. It’s not like having sex will magically make it better, it’ll just mean they’re having sex they don’t want to appease the masses. If someone is content without sex, why should they have sex? Why fix what isn’t broken when it isn’t hurting anyone?

Another problematic thing about it was the phrasing. They never said, “someone might rape you.” it was always “you’re going to get yourself raped.” As though by being asexual, I was inviting someone to rape me. No one, ever, wants to be raped. The very nature of rape is that it is nonconsensual. Nobody “gets themselves raped”. People choose to rape, and it isn’t the victim’s fault, ever.

The worst part, though, was that it almost seems like they were right. I was molested. I won’t call it rape, because my genitals weren’t touched, but more than one person, upon hearing that I didn’t respond sexually, decided that they would “make me respond.” I’ve been kissed against my will, had my breasts and ass fondled, been backed into a corner and felt up, had my hair pulled, and even been pinned down and humped. All of these things were done by people I considered friends at the time and trusted enough to tell that I thought I was asexual.

I’m not sure if the problem comes out of our society’s hang-ups over sex. The “life script” that tells us we should meet someone, get married, lose our virginity to that person, and have children, in that order, or some other internalized issue, needs to stop. It wasn’t my actions that “got me molested”. It was the mindset that a victim is asking for it by acting a certain way, when in reality, no one is asking for it. The mindset that someone can “get themselves raped” is the problem.

It was the summer of 1997, and I was going to be a Freshman in high school in about a month. I had been dating the “coolest” guy in town, his name was Mike. He had shoulder length black hair and the most mesmerizing smile. All the girls wanted him, but I had him! You know that when you’re a teenager, things like that mean everything to you. What you wear, who your friends are, who you date, and what cool gadgets you own are top priority in your social life. If you weren’t in with the cool crowd, you were nobody, and you were miserable!

I was 13 years old and was going to experience something that nobody ever should. “You know I love you” he told me. “If you don’t do it, I will find someone who will!” I knew he had no problem doing just that, every girl wanted him, and I wanted to keep him. Rape isn’t always brutal, but it is always forced. My rape was mentally forced upon me. Yes, I know I could have just told him to find someone else, but I “loved” him, like any other stupid 13 year old. I gave in to his demands and have had to deal with that for the last 14 years of my life.

It gets easier as time goes on, but it is something that I will never forget, or forgive. Mike took my innocence along with my trust for men. I had to grow up far before I should have, I had a child on the way. You heard right, I became pregnant with this child of rape. I didn’t know what to do, I was scared, confused and hopeless. I miscarried that child about eight weeks later, and had never told anyone of my pregnancy, until about five years ago. I am pro-life, and when people ask me what I would do if I were raped and became pregnant, I simply state that I was, and I had. If given the choice, I’m sure I would have kept that child, or at least allowed it to live with a different family, but I do know that I could not have aborted.

He sent me a friend request on facebook one day, about two years ago; I was shocked! I hadn’t thought about him in well over a year, things were going well. That one little click of a button brought up so many bad memories, but I had to see what he had been up to. After searching through his photos and reading his wall, I found out that he had fathered at least six children by five different women, one of which I know was coerced as I had been. I’m sure there are more children that he doesn’t know about, nor does he care. He is a rapist; he is self-centered, and he is conceited. Once I felt that I had seen and read enough of his profile, I scrolled down and blocked his account. I’m hoping that he will not try to contact me again, because the nights that followed were terrible. I had nightmares and was constantly looking over my shoulder, thinking he was going to show up at my house.

Looking back now, it is much easier to speak about, I feel that I have healed to the best of my ability, but the experience has messed with my view of men. Sex isn’t something that symbolizes love for me, as it does for many other people. I wish I could feel that closeness during sex, but I just don’t. If I kiss you, then it’s love! I find men to be ugly, and to look at a penis disturbs me. If you look in my toy chest, you will find no toys that are realistic looking. I am bi-sexual, but I am sure that has nothing to do with my experience. I do, however, find woman to be far more attractive than males. With that being said, you should know that I am married to a man. He is a very kind and understanding man, who knows all about my past. He is my soul-mate!

I am not sure what is considered “normal” for rape survivors, since I have never really spoken to any, or if I have, I didn’t know about their rape. However, I do have sexual fantasies about being violently raped. I know, it may sound odd, but I love it when my husband grabs me by the hair, ties me up and throws me down. Maybe it is because my rape was not violent? I am not exactly sure, but I do enjoy the rougher side of sex more than the gentle soft version.

Rape is always devastating, but it is not always violent. Rape is always wrong, but it is not always life shattering. I’ve moved on in my life, but I will never get over it. I was violated, but I have triumphed and grown. Rape sucks, but I haven’t let it destroy me. If you have been affected by rape, know that you are not alone, and you can move on. We were victims, but it isn’t like that forever, now we’re survivors!

Like nearly every other woman on the planet, I have heard just about every rape prevention strategy out there. I’ve heard them everywhere, from everyone. Things that are aimed at reducing the probability that a woman will be the victim of a sexual assault. Frankly, I always thought they made perfect sense; the ideas suggested were, to me, things that every woman should do (or avoid doing) regardless. Don’t walk alone at night; keep your doors locked when you are home alone; take self-defense classes whenever possible. What’s wrong with any of those suggestions? To me, the answer was always: absolutely nothing.

Then I was grabbed in a parking lot, held captive for a week, and repeatedly sexually assaulted. None of the things I had ever done to try and protect myself from that very scenario were of any use to me at that time, in that moment, during those days. I had done everything I possibly could to prevent myself from becoming a victim – and nothing had worked. One would think that now, my faith in rape prevention tips would be destroyed.

Here’s the thing, though: if one thought that, one would be totally wrong.

Let me tell you a story. When I was in college, I lived in a co-ed dorm, but on an exclusively female floor. A friend of mine lived down the hall and had a habit of never locking her door when she went to bed. One night, she awoke in the middle of the night and was absolutely horrified to find a man standing over her bed. Luckily, her scream scared him off before he had the chance to do anything. (And god knows I don’t even want to imagine what he could have done if she hadn’t woken up.) But I will freely admit that after it happened, after I had made sure she was okay, the first thing I said to her was, “Now will you please keep your door locked at night from now on?!”

If something had happened to her that night (god forbid), it wouldn’t have been her fault (because after all, it is up to the potential attacker to control his own behaviour) but I couldn’t (and can’t) help believing that had she locked her door in the first place, she would have removed the possibility of him getting into her room in the first place.

I can understand where the backlash against victim-blaming comes from. When you have been sexually assaulted, the last thing you want to have planted in your mind is the idea that you are, somehow, responsible for what happened to you – or, at the very least, responsible for ensuring that it didn’t happen to you. I’ve been there. I’ve been in the position of being asked, over and over, “Well, did you fight back? Did you scream? Why didn’t you try to get away sooner?” And I didn’t fight back, and I didn’t scream, because I was trying to survive to get away. I didn’t try to get away sooner because I was biding my time and trying to ensure that when I did try to escape, I would succeed, instead of being caught and perhaps losing my life in the very act of trying to preserve it.

But even with what happened to me, I still believe that potentially preventative measures are important, because I honestly don’t see them as a form of victim-blaming. No, it is not, nor has it ever been, a woman’s responsibility to keep from getting raped. It is always the rapist’s responsibility, without exception. And in an ideal society, women would have no need for rape prevention tips, because men would never rape.

Unfortunately, we don’t live in an ideal society.

As nice as it would be for the concept of rape to be completely abolished from our worldview, that has not happened yet. And I fear that it would be rather unrealistic for us to expect it to ever do so. The world is an ugly place in some respects, and rape is one of the ugliest. Yes, the view of rape should most definitely move from “don’t get raped” to “don’t rape”, but as of right now – in the year 2011 – that doesn’t seem to be doing the job. At least, not to the extent we would like. So in my opinion, we as women owe it to ourselves to try and protect ourselves to the best of our abilities. At the very least, it can give us some sense of having control over our bodies. And if (again, god forbid) we do everything we can, and we still become the victims of rape, that in no way means that we are to blame for what has happened. Because that’s something I’ve learned in my own experience – you can do everything you think is possible to protect yourself and still fall victim, but that doesn’t mean you’ve failed in any way.

Learning rape prevention techniques helped me, first and foremost, to keep my head about me when I was in the most terrifying scenario of my life. It gave me the wherewithal to cope during the days when I doubted I would survive, and ultimately allowed me to gather up the courage and the nerve I needed to save myself. Maybe that sounds trite, but I swear it’s true. No, locking my door every night didn’t keep me from getting ambushed from behind in a dark parking lot, but I still do it, even a year later.

Because I might not be able to change my past, but I’m willing to do whatever I have to do to (try) and ensure my future. Aren’t you?

It seems like some people are still shocked and don’t believe it when they find out that many women watch porn on their own. Just a few days ago, a male friend of mine posted a Youtube video on Facebook of girls saying they watch porn and how much they like it. My friend thought the whole video was a gag and didn’t know that any women would watch porn without a male partner making them. Girls even commented on his post saying that they don’t watch porn, enforcing his belief that girls are essentially “porn haters”. Maybe there are other girls that saw his post that are just too shy to reply, but then again, maybe there are still a lot of women who don’t like porn. I was the only girl on his Facebook that confirmed that video was true, not outright saying I watch porn (I hinted, just didn’t want to make it obvious), but saying yes, girls like to watch people get fucked. This video is definitely not a joke!

There are so many studies that even say there is a rising number of women who watch porn! There is so much porn on the market that is specifically made with women in mind. A lot of the stuff aimed at women seems to be sensual porn, maybe videos with a storyline, as well. I can totally understand that. It’s really nice when you feel like you’re a part of the video, rather than just watching a couple of random people have sex. One article I read on this matter said that some women might like lesbian porn because a lot of it is slower and romantic, and involves a lot of just kissing and touching. A Cosmo magazine recently said they found a study that states women get off on seeing male on male romances, so maybe more women are watching gay male porn also!

As for me, I personally don’t really go towards the mainstream stuff that is focused towards women viewers. I like a lot of it, but it’s not my first choice most days. This really shocked my boyfriend, and at first he was hesitant about the kind of stuff I like to watch. He’s a simple guy and mostly likes to watch amateur videos, and blowjob videos, and hardly wanders into anything rougher than a girl getting hit in the face with a penis. My boyfriend saw my bookmarked pages of porn, and didn’t realize I’d like to watch gangbangs and videos where the girls are referred to as whores. It took him a little while, but he eventually accepted it as part of me, and when he comes across a video he thinks I’d like he sends it to me. It’s pretty sweet actually. When we watch porn together, we usually compromise. Sometimes we watch stuff of his choice, and sometimes it’s my choice. Overall, it works out pretty well, although I don’t think he’s particularly paying attention to the porn when it’s all anal sex or ass to mouth, or something else he doesn’t like.

I like a little bit of everything I can think of when it comes to porn, but mostly rough stuff. I’m just into that kind of thing, and nobody would ever really guess it. I like rough sex in real life, and I love to watch a girl get tossed around and face fucked. I love straight and lesbian porn; I love girls and guys, threesomes, roleplaying. You name it, I probably like some of it.

I know there are a ton of places to get free porn from the internet, but since I started becoming more interested in porn stars, to where I read their blogs even (sometimes they have free clips of their videos or pictures!), I like to buy a lot of videos and online subscriptions when I can. I still do have my favorite videos online, but I try to support the porn stars.

Whenever I’ve told female friends that I like porn, most have thought I was crazy. They don’t watch porn, and a lot of them don’t like their boyfriend’s watching porn either. I guess they just don’t understand what it does for me, and that’s why I get funny looks if I mention my love of porn. I’m not sure what all of their reasons are for not wanting to try to watch porn, but I’m sure if they tried it then some of them would like it. Maybe some of these girls I talk to are too shy to talk about it, or are afraid they’d like porn! I met one girl who said she enjoys watching it, just never has a chance so she reads erotica pretty often. I think that’s great. Women should explore their sexuality and try new things! It is so much more socially acceptable now for girls to watch porn or to want to masturbate. It may not be something everyone talks about, but it’s surely happening everywhere we look.

They say most men are visual and need to see something to get off. Women are thought of as the opposite, and that may be true for some. Tons of women (as well as lots of men) can get off with just images in their mind or a nice erotic story. But even if a lot of women aren’t naturally visual creatures, it definitely doesn’t hurt to be watching something, and can really make sex and masturbation a lot more fun.

And Loving Every Minute of It

I have been called every name in the book. Before I lost my virginity, I was a slut, a ho, a whore. Before I learned how to stand up for myself, I was a bitch, a twat, a cunt.

I came to accept these words. The labels became me. I embraced them. Everyone thinks I’m a bitch? Fine, I’ll start fights with everyone. They think I’m a slut? I’ll sleep around.

I learned early about sex, which upset my parents who kept me extremely sheltered. At fourteen though, I had lost my virginity, and by fifteen, I had already had my first one-night stand, experienced phone sex, sexting, and cyber sex, all with different boys.

By sixteen, I had started skipping school to sleep with guys. I didn’t know how to say ‘no’. I didn’t know how to tell them that they weren’t my future, but my education was. I was an outcast for most of my life. Until I started spreading my legs, I didn’t get the attention I believed I deserved.

By seventeen, I had already had an audience. A bunch of trashed rednecks watched my boyfriend of two weeks and me fuck like bunnies in a tent. They then proceeded to pee all over the outside of the tent.

By eighteen, I had anonymous sex. I didn’t care what his name was, and he didn’t bother to ask mine. We were drunk, met at a frat party, and he was just visiting his friend for the weekend.

I wasn’t a self-proclaimed slut yet. At eighteen, I had only slept with ten boys. That equaled two-and-a-half boys a year since I had lost my virginity. I shouldn’t be judged for that.

The tenth boy, though, is the one that made me truly embrace my sluttiness. The irony is he was frightened I would be a slut. He hit me, several times, when I wouldn’t sleep with him, or when he thought I was cheating on him, which was basically every night. Then he would hold me down, and fuck me. Sometimes he was passionate, kissing my neck, careful not to brush against the bruises. Sometimes he was rough, holding me down by my throat, hissing the words “slut” and “ho” in my face. I began to believe it.

He was arrested.

I went four months without sex. Four long, painful, dragging months. My fingers became super nimble, and I learned more about my body than I ever could have learned before. Those were the longest four months of my life.

I worked with a nice boy, who asked me out one night. We did everything right. We went on dates, we talked, we learned about each other. And then I told him I was a slut. We jumped into bed. He was probably the best guy in the world to get me back on my feet.

He found out I was moving, and got upset with me. We called all things off.

I decided then, that I wasn’t good enough for a relationship. Besides, I enjoyed being a slut. I liked anonymous sex and being used.

I had a party at my house. It was mostly guys there. We got trashed. I can’t tell you how, but somehow I ended up in bed, with four boys. I had one dick inside my twat, and one in my mouth. The other two were in their hands, waiting impatiently.

I moved. No more labels. That’s what I told myself.

I danced on the table for a group of Marines at a local bar. I told them I was a slut.

Within a month of moving, I had slept with a Marine, the DJ and his brother, one of my friends, a co-worker, a frat boy, and one of my professors.

My number doubled in a year.

It felt like I had my label tattooed on my forehead. Everyone knew if they wanted to get off, give me a call.

I somehow ended up in a no-shit, honest-to-god, relationship. He had been a fuck-buddy, and not a very good one, but I could hold a conversation with him. We worked together. I trained him in bed. I rocked his world.

Then, he got bored with me. We dated for a year, but somewhere in there, he decided he didn’t care about my sex anymore. I had nothing else to offer him.

I cheated. I didn’t mean to. I held off as long as my pussy allowed me to, but, being the slut that I am, I couldn’t control myself. It also didn’t help that I had gone six weeks without getting laid. SIX WEEKS. AND I was in a relationship! I should’ve been getting dick every night.

The man who I cheated with knows I am a slut. We had been good friends, and shared fantasies and sex stories. He is twelve years older than me, and gives me everything I need. He lets me be a slut, and when we go out, he’ll be the one talking to guys, asking them if they want me. He knows I’ll make out with anything that moves, and brings girls around for me.

He also treats me like a lady, though, which is what no man had ever done before. He cuddles with me and tells me he loves me. And I have never in my life been happier to be a slut, because I am HIS slut.

It seems like someone I know, or barely know, or someone who just happens to blog in the same corner of the Internet as I do is wishing that she could squirt. She wants to manipulate her G-spot so she can gush like the pornos or, maybe, just so she can experience something new. I totally respect that. In fact, I once was that woman. Not any more.

You see, I can squirt now. You better believe I was excited when I first discovered it. Then, I became better at it. I excitedly relayed my experiences to my then-husband, while he was deployed. We excitedly awaited the day when I would be able to squirt with him.

But it just isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be. I quickly discovered that I needed a specific kind of stimulation in order to prepare for ejaculation, and without it, my urethra would become sore, and I wouldn’t want to continue sex. Unfortunately, the kind of stimulation I needed just wasn’t the kind of stimulation he was used to giving, nor was it the kind of stimulation that I enjoyed during sex.

Enter problem number two. Stimulating my G-spot so I can squirt is not physically pleasurable. In many ways, it’s like a doctor hitting your knee with a reflex mallet: it gets the job done, but it’s all very mechanical. G-spot stimulation is the same for me. The expulsion of female ejaculate does not accompany an orgasm. It quite simply happens or, if it doesn’t, I become uncomfortable.

I may become uncomfortable if I can squirt, anyway. The texture of my ejaculate is not good for lubrication. In fact, it even has the opposite effect some days. No matter how hot it may be to squirt on someone’s cock or thighs or face, it’s just not the right kind of wet for the rapid and steady thrusting of penis-in-vagina intercourse.

Unfortunately for me—and I know that I must sound like an ungrateful wretch when I type these words—I’ve become really good at squirting and I can’t really hold back. Sex is going to stimulate my G-spot and, as much as I shudder at the idea of only being able to have sex in one way, it will become problematic if I don’t go at it in just the right way. So, do I want my sex painful or boring? Neither, thank you very much.

And that is precisely why I cannot help but roll my eyes and chuckle when people revere me for my squirting talents, and wish with all their hearts that they, too, could squirt.