California's new law is a major stride towards sexual justice
One of the most dehumanizing experiences in my life was a man taking off his condom during sex without asking or telling me. It was my boyfriend of two years and even though it felt like all autonomy had been stripped from me, I did not want to ruin what we had, and I didn’t have a word to describe what had happened anyway. I tried to just get over it, forget that it had happened, and I didn’t really tell anyone at the time. But over time my head got obsessive about the question, “what happened to me?” I thought, I didn’t consent to that, but I did consent to what we were doing before, so it can’t really be rape, despite all the knowledge I have about what consent means. My friend told me, “if this had happened to me, you would tell me that it was sexual assault and that I would need to leave him immediately, and that is what I am telling you,” but I just could not wrap my head around this being sexual assault when it came to me. It just didn’t seem like the right word to