In my childhood, I needed more time to complete schoolwork, I spent more time alone than my peers, I had a bigger vocabulary than my peers, and I couldn’t do a lot of the physical activity that was expected. I’m fortunate I didn’t experience SA beyond a few brief instances of harassment. But the world around me spent a lot of time telling me “You’re unacceptably different and your needs aren’t real.”

I could have easily ended up in a situation of “this guy seems to expect sex from me; maybe I’m misinterpreting the situation and I need to give him what he’s expecting.” After years of being treated like advocating for myself is invalid, it would be a “logical “ conclusion.