“Beautiful, it’s not your fault. How can you keep yourself safe from something when you don’t recognize it as being dangerous?” As Tawnya1 listened to the woman, her words were so simple, her message so clear. When Tawnya heard her talk, her understanding of what she had experienced seemed so easy to understand. But when Tawnya thought about trying to tell friends what she felt, confusion, embarrassment, shame, and guilt made her feel completely incapable of confidently telling them what she now knew about some of the times in her sexual past. Like Blaze. Tawnya had the biggest crush on him in 8th grade. She finally got his attention and ended up going to one of the afterschool dances with him. Tawnya carefully picked out an ensemble that highlighted the best parts of her figure. After a fast dance song, they stopped to get some punch and some fresh air. When Blaze walked her out the back door instead of the front door, Tawnya remembered being so excited. “OMG, he’s gonna kiss me!”, she thought happily to herself. He did, and she felt soo lucky. She still remembers feeling startled when he suddenly slipped his hand up her midriff top in the middle of the second kiss. “What are you doing?!” she thought to herself, but the words seemed to be trapped in her throat. Tawnya searched his face for the kindness and interest in his eyes from the school halls and the dance floor but found none. The shift in his manner made her body stiffen and her mind race. “What does this mean? Is he mad at me for seeming uncomfortable with this?” Earlier, Tawnya had wanted this night to end in being his girlfriend. Now she just wanted this night to end. He continued kissing and groping until Tawnya’s thought processes just - stopped. Finally, she remembered hearing the sound of the music from the dance and the voices of the other students. She knew it was over for now. Tawnya left the dance shortly after and avoided Blaze from that moment on. For the longest time after that night Tawnya had thought of telling someone, but what would she say? Wasn’t it her fault she found herself in that situation? I mean, she did want to dance, she did want to kiss, she did want to be his girlfriend. The disoriented thoughts had always seemed impossible to sort out - until now. Now she knew it was sexual coercion. The woman, Courageous, was talking about the fact that sexual coercion2,3 IS sexual abuse4 , and that sexual abuse IS domestic violence. “Oh wow” she thought, “just like when Patrick and I were 17 together in our junior year in high school and told me he could find a new prom date who would be willing to do fellatio if I just couldn’t seem to bring myself to get over it in time!” Tawnya could see in the definitions showing up on the screen that was him trying to make her “feel threatened or afraid of what might happen if [she said] no.”5 Finally, somebody gave her confusion a name. Finally, somebody gave her haunting thoughts on her horrible past experiences like Blaze, Patrick, and others solid validation. When Tawnya heard the speaker talk about how common sexual coercion actually is, she instantly felt less isolated… • “Black women have a complicated historical and contemporary relationship with domestic violence and sexual abuse within the United States. This has resulted in the highest rates of both domestic violence and sexual abuse victimization for Black women than any other ethnic/racial group.”6 • “Rates of experiencing sexual coercion are, ranging from 55% of 18- to 19-year-olds experiencing some form of sexual coercion in the past to 43% of adolescent girls
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