My Response

I'm choosing not to engage in a discussion with you about this matter, but if I did, this is what I would say in response to your message, one line in particular in which you said "the fact that you insinuated you could claim I sexually assaulted you when you were blackout drunk has made me lose all trust in you and lose all respect for you whatsoever.":

The fact that you sexually assaulted me isn't a claim I "could" make. It's a claim I did, and still DO make. I made the claim to my therapist and we worked through your abuse for months. It's something that creeps up and haunts me when I least expect it. I tried bringing it up to you at the time it happened and you brushed it off because you had other things to deal with.

I wasn't blackout drunk, I was unconscious because I was concussed. Even if I was blackout drunk, I was still not conscious. But in either case, I was unable to give consent. In either case, I was not in a position to be consciously and consentually engaging in sexual behavior. I was in a vulnerable and unprotected position. And you did take advantage of me. You may not have meant to, and you may not have done it maliciously. But you did engage in sexual activity with someone who was unable to consent. That's sexual assault. The fact you had to tell me that we had hooked up the next day should have been a major red flag.

I don't give a shit if you don't trust or respect me anymore. When you sexually assaulted me, you broke my trust in you. And when you sent me this uninformed, and quite nasty, message, you completely obliterated any and all respect I had left for you. So honestly I don't care what your opinion of me is. Think what you want.

The fact is, I left that encounter feeling taken advantage of. I knew that if I had been in a mindset to make rational choices, I would not have chosen to hook up with you that night. The fact I have made different decisions on other nights does not invalidate the fact that on that night, I would have said no. That's the reason why I made that claim.

[Sexual Assault] Education is Key

How do you explain to the man who sexually assaulted you what consent means?

This isn't a rhetorical question: I'm in this position. This weekend, I saw a friend of mine who sexually assaulted me about a year and a half ago. We got into a drunken shouting match, one thing lead to another, and the incident got brought up. He told me then that I was the reason that all women in tech get a bad rep for calling 'rape'. He told me again, just now in a Facebook message, that I, by implying that making out wasn't consensual when I was unconscious, made him lose all trust in and respect for me.

So here's my conundrum: how do I inform this particular individual that the definition of consent includes a part where you have to be conscious to make a decision about what activities you engage in? That someone who is under the influence of alcohol, or concussed (like I was), does not have those mental capacities engaged at that point in time, therefore can't give affirmative consent? How do I tell him that I'm not just crying 'rape', that I put myself back in counseling because of his abuse, that it seriously fucked me up inside, and that it wasn't just a consequence of me being unconscious?

I can't. I'm not in the position to inform him of these things. Because it would be so difficult to even have the conversation with him, because it wouldn't be healthy for me, and because quite frankly, he wouldn't listen to me at this point.

I know so many women in my life who have been raped and sexually assaulted. Until this weekend, I didn't fully understand how difficult it is to navigate the waters of being a victim/survivor of sexual assault, especially around your assaulter. And I don't know where to go from here.