Every 98 seconds, an American experiences sexual assault. But America does not talk about this.
My junior year, in English class, we were given an assignment: create a six word short story. It was due the next Thursday. I thought and thought, but came up short each time. How could I strike an emotion in the reader? Make them feel something? I sat in my 10th period American presidency class writing down different lines. Words. Topics: child abuse, abduction, sex, rape, rebellion, suicide, sexual assault. I settled on the latter.
Sexual assault, by definition, is any type of sexual relation that occurs without the clear consent of the recipient. And it was a touchy subject. Growing up, we’re taught about our “private parts” and how not to be violated. As a young girl, I always had to hold my parent’s hand – for they had instilled
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Thursday morning. I walked to my English teacher and handed her my short story. I was the first to turn it in. She labeled it with the number 1 in the lower left-hand corner. That afternoon, I was walking by and saw it stapled to the board with everyone else’s, but it stood out. It was printed in size 48 font and it was titled, in big bolded letters, “Sexual Assault.”
“I was probably asking for it” was written under it.
The next day came and we were told to vote on the best one. When I got to the board I realized that mine was missing. It was not there. At the end of the period I asked my teacher and she said she did not know what happened to it – maybe it just fell, she assured me.
My phone vibrated. It was a text from my teacher: “It was just brought in to me. A teacher took it down, they found it disturbing.”
I was infuriated. I thought that that is what literature was supposed to do – evoke a feeling, an emotion. I felt achieved. I had made someone feel something so strongly that my work was removed. But it was more than that. They felt disturbed about a topic that is very real. A topic that needs to be talked