Miranda Belle Brent

Trigger warnings: stalking, sexual harassment, sexual assault, revenge porn, rape.

I’ve written two previous articles for this magazine about finding relationship partners through online dating. In both, I cast my experiences in largely positive terms. I still think of my experiences as mainly positive. But there was a darker side to the experiences too, which it would be a disservice to readers to minimize, especially readers who may be following my advice in lieu of getting other advice or feedback from people who know them in real life.

As a recap, I have only had three boyfriends in my life: R., whom I met when we were both in a nursing home, K., whom I met online, and my current boyfriend, A., whom I also met online. There was a ten-year gap between my relationships with R. and K., and I didn’t date at all during that time, nor had I dated in high school or college. I was still a virgin when I met K. I didn’t have a lot of romantic social experience, and for the most part, that’s been a good thing. Still, it’s gotten me into trouble. 

In my first article, I wrote about not connecting with romantic prospects on social media too soon. I warned about not sending photos to men too soon and not before knowing your rights if they’re shared against your will. And even though I didn’t say this in the articles, I included those things because I made all those mistakes and suffered for them. There was the guy who I matched with on Bumble who I friended on social media because I really liked him, and because he had dated a high school friend of mine and she said I could trust him. I ended up having to threaten to file a police report. He was angry with me because I missed answering one single text, after which he threatened to end our relationship. I was disturbed by his possessiveness and hair-trigger temper and told him I didn’t want to see him anymore either, to which he responded by texting me from another number after I blocked his. A simple Google search will tell you that’s the first part of a stalker’s behavior—and since we were friends on social media, he knew not only where I lived but could figure out where all of my friends and family lived! I ended up having to threaten to file a police report

Then there was the guy who said we could be friends after I became involved with K. He kept trying to get me to send more photos, to the point where he was willing to pay me for them. I decided to ghost him (to abandon all contact without explanation). He got angry with me when I missed what was, in his mind, a scheduled chat (he got the date wrong), and shortly thereafter texted me to say he had shared my photos with all of his friends and that I was fat and ugly. That’s revenge porn. There’s only one lawyer who handles this in the entire state of Illinois—I think there used to be two, but the other one stopped accepting these kinds of cases. The revenge porn lawyer cost $1,400—exactly the amount of my COVID checks from the government. At the time, my mom was very ill, and I didn’t feel right about spending that kind of money on justice for me when that money could go to something lifesaving or quality-of-life improving for her. As advised, I paid a hefty sum to copyright the photos in case they were ever placed on a porn site so they would be easier to take down. So now I am very much in the Library of Congress, and not for something I, as a writer, ever wanted to be in the Library of Congress for.

After the revenge porn happened, I was asking my friend for some help finding legal advice because he was a lawyer. He said, “You should have only sent [the photos] to people you trusted.” Blame the victim, I thought. I did trust the man I sent my photos to. Moreover, the law says that you have the right to assume confidentiality when you send any such photos to anyone, regardless of what kind of person they are.

Then there was the guy who I matched with who described himself as shy and reserved. Within minutes of matching, he was asking me about my chest size and speculating on the strength of my thighs. When I told him that I was unmatching, he proceeded to try and match with me over and over again until I blocked him. Then he found me on every other app I was on and tried matching with me on those until I blocked him there too.

There were the guys that I thought were friends, but who made passes at me in what they thought were my vulnerable moments, even though they knew I was in a relationship with K. There were the guys I reported for having questionable or outright fake profiles on apps—I came back online two years later and found those same guys back on the same apps.

And then there was G. I need to back up before I talk about G.

When Brett Kavanaugh was appointed to the Supreme Court, I read articles about survivors of sexual abuse. I was very confused about how they could not know that they were raped. Since this was a characteristic of many sexual abuse cases, I decided to accept this lack of knowledge on faith. I figured survivors knew what they were talking about.

I never expected that I would be one of them.

In March 2022, I was date raped by G., a person I had considered a friend for two years. G. and I met in summer 2020 when I was first exploring online dating. At first, G. told me he was no longer interested in finding a relationship. I had many romantic prospects at the time, but we friended each other on Facebook. He was a fan of ’80s karaoke nights and traveling. I sent him some recordings of covers I did of ’80s songs and [ML1] commented on his beautiful travel photos from pre-COVID vacations. Things quickly progressed. Suddenly, he was typing, “Forget about those other guys. Focus on me.” I reminded him he wasn’t interested in a relationship. He replied that I was special and that maybe he had found a relationship when he wasn’t looking for one. We had some incredibly intimate video calls (our clothes stayed on; the intimacy came from waking up together, talking, and making extended eye contact). We agreed to meet, and he took work calls during, and he was over two hours late picking me up. As much as I liked G. as a person, I decided to invest my time in K. I called G. to let him know my decision. “If it doesn’t work out,” I said, “maybe we can try again.”

During the year and a half I was K.’s girlfriend, G. and I chatted platonically. From time to time, he would ask me how my relationship with K. was going, and I would tell him briefly because that was a major part of my life at the time. But I was careful not to cross lines.

He invited me to some group events and to his housewarming when he got a new apartment. K. didn’t like G., so I was reluctant to accept, and there was COVID safety to consider. When K. and I broke up, I hesitated to tell G. I didn’t think I wanted to date him again. But a month after the breakup, it was G.’s birthday. He was sad about not having anyone to share it with, and I wanted to spend some time with a friend. To be honest, I wanted to spend time with someone who found me attractive. So I asked if we could do something COVID-safe. “Come to my house,” he said. We made plans for the afternoon on March 27. We were going to hang out and watch a movie. Those were the words we used. If we had said “Netflix and chill” that would have meant something different, but we didn’t. (For the uninitiated, that means watching Netflix or having it on in the background, while mostly having sex. It was a big part of the early pandemic, at least for couples who were already established.) 

The day before I was scheduled to meet him, I thought, Maybe I should clarify things. He doesn’t know how recent the breakup was. Maybe he thinks this means more than it does. I pushed the thought out of the way. No pandemic experience would be complete without a little Netflix and chill. If something happens, it happens. He was cool with having sexual contact when we saw each other the first time, so I thought he might be again, and if he was, I wanted that too. I thought maybe he had changed over the past two years. So if he wanted to get physical, I didn’t mind that. If a guy had had the same attitude toward me, I would’ve been livid. But at the time, I was only thinking about things from my perspective.

He picked me up about four hours after he was supposed to. Yes, four hours. He woke up late, having worked till all hours the night before, and then he needed to clean. He offered to call me a ride to his place, but I told him I was uncomfortable using a rideshare service as a single woman riding alone. He picked me up. Netflix happened for the opening credits and then there was the chill part, which was considerably more intense than I expected. 

But I was down for it. Until he started saying stuff like, “Why are we using condoms? Aren’t you a virgin?”

“It’s not my first time.”

“It’ll be our first time.”

  “Have you ever thought about birth control pills?”

“Anything hormonal is not good with my bipolar disorder.”

“Oh—” he said. I was about to tell him I have an IUD when he finished with, “Can’t we just use Plan B? Please. It [his penis] wants to feel you so bad.”

“No.” I said. What the hell? Plan B! He wants to rely on Plan B! I already told him no once, and this penis having its own desires is too weird. I am not telling him I have an IUD. He’s just going to get more aggressive if he knows about that. Plan B is contraception for emergencies. You’re not supposed to rely on it. That’s why they call it Plan B. But that didn’t stop him. He kept insisting that “it would feel so much better,” and that if we only did it once without a condom, it wouldn’t be that risky. (Um, no. It only takes once to get pregnant, and he was under the impression that I could get pregnant.)

When he was saying all these things, I got scared about getting home. It was at least twenty minutes from my house to his. Even if I called my dad to pick me up, G.’s neighborhood wasn’t the safest and it was already dark. I wasn’t sure I could find a safe place to go if I had to run. Years ago, when I was still a little girl, my mother had told me what I should do if I ever found myself in a nonconsensual situation. She said, “Don’t risk internal injuries. You’ll only hurt yourself more if you fight him. Just go with it and get the hell out of there when you can.” If my mom had been alive, none of this would’ve happened, but she wasn’t.

I did what my mother had told me to do. I let him enter me. It hurt like hell. “Please stop!” I said, twice, and he said simultaneously, “It’ll get better. See, this is why we shouldn’t use condoms. It would be better for you without condoms.” He finally stopped. He made me bleed. K. had never made me bleed, especially not when I gave him my virginity.

Then G. suddenly said in an accusatory tone, “We used so many condoms [because he couldn’t stay erect]. You made me wait two years for this. You were such a tease. And I thought today was going to be your first time.”

He’d thought I would not just have sex with him, but give him my virginity on what he thought was our second date. And he was acting like I owed him sex, which was bad enough, but it was worse that he acted like I had owed him sex for two years. Were two years of conversations just to get me in bed? The misogyny! The arrogance! I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t believe what had just happened. I wanted to leave. He asked me where I wanted to eat, noting that most places were closing. I said, “We can just skip the meal.”

“What? No, we should still eat. I’m just trying to think of where.”

We ended up at a gyros place. I was still stunned. He started asking me detailed questions about my life. He term dropped Maslow’s Hierarchy theory of Nneeds^[1] like I wouldn’t know what that is. And then he started talking to me aboutwent back to me and my income and how he could find me some side hustles so we could travel. He asked if my dad knew I was with him, and I said yes. He said something like our relationship was off to a good start, especially with my dad being supportive of it. Our relationship!

On the way home, he answered a call. Before answering, he said that his friend was with his niece, which I thought was an oddly specific detail. 

\ And then his friend said, “Yeah, I’m with my niece. She gave me the stuff. If you want to pick up the stuff, this is kind of a limited-time

 . . . package.” Great. They were talking about drugs.

When we were at my house, I said, “Well, thank you for dinner and . . . other things.” We laughed. And then I got the hell out of his car, cursing myself for being flirty and for thanking him, for God’s sake. How much was I at fault? How much was he?

That night, I noticed there were bruises around my nipples. They hurt. I went to bed wondering how to frame this experience. I had said to stop, and he hadn’t. He had pushed me to do things after I said no repeatedly. Had I been raped or was it just assault? Certainly part of the night was consensual, or he had reason to believe he had my consent. But the rest of it? If it was criminal, I knew I didn’t have a good case without DNA evidence, nor did I have the emotional or financial means to prosecute.

I spent the next day messaging my OB-GYN and googling what I should get tested for. And then I realized that I wasn’t sure if he had used a condom every time. I started freaking out. I emailed him that we were done and why and then blocked him.

I tried making an appointment to get tested, but I also tried using medical transportation. Big mistake. I am never using medical transportation from Medicaid ever again. I missed the appointment on April 5 (the soonest my doctor had) because transportation didn’t show up on time. Then it was my period (and I took a pregnancy test and googled ectopic pregnancies just so I was sure it was a real period). I didn’t start using terms like “nonconsensual” with my OB’s office until the middle of the month. So I wasn’t able to get an appointment to get tested until April 28. Then I had to wait for the test results, which was nerve-racking. They were mostly negative. I did have bacterial vaginosis, but technically that’s not an STI. But even though I tested negative for HIV, symptoms could develop within three or six months. So I had to undergo two more HIV tests after the first one. Thank God, I was negative.

I found out at a subsequent appointment that G. had been so violent that he partially dislodged my IUD.

Almost a month later, I did tell my therapist what happened. I couldn’t look at her while I did it. When I finished, I brought up the Zoom window again. She said that G. was totally at fault because I said no. She said that it wasn’t wrong that I felt sexual needs. “Would we even be having this conversation if you were a guy?” she asked. She said even if I enjoyed myself some of the time, even if I wasn’t always clear about what I was comfortable with, G. was still at fault. She said I was taking a lot of responsibility for what happened, and it wasn’t justified.

My stories are unfortunately all too common. The National Organization for Women (NOW) says, “One in three women are victims of intimate partner violence and one in five women are survivors of sexual assault. . . . The disability community experiences one of the highest rates of sexual assault in America . . . [but] . . . is hardly included in conversations around sexual violence. . . . as many as 40% of women with disabilities experience sexual assault or physical violence in their lifetimes and that more than 90% of all people with developmental disabilities will experience sexual assault.”^[2] Another commonly cited statistic is this: “Between 68% and 83% of women in the US with intellectual or developmental disabilities will be sexually assaulted at some point in their lives, which is much higher than” for nondisabled women.^[3] In her book Being Seen, Elsa Sjunneson says that “83% of disabled women will be sexually assaulted in their lifetime, in some form. And we are also more likely to experience intimate partner violence.” She adds in a footnote, “Of that 83%, 40% will be victimized again. And again. And again.”^[4]

Since then I’ve gotten library books about sex and disability and sex ed in general, a lot of it aimed at teens and younger women. I wanted to see what is taught now, since I had sex ed a long time ago when I wasn’t anywhere near planning to use it. I’m still working through it. It feels good: I’m reclaiming my sexual health, and I know more about communicating with a partner. And I have found A., an incredibly sweet boyfriend who knows about all my disabilities and my complete history with men and who accepts all of it.

 I am not a victim, nor will I ever be. I am a survivor.

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[1] Maslow’s hierarchy of needs states that a person’s most basic needs (including sex) must be met for people to realize their true potential and for people to achieve full happiness in their lives.

[2] “The Disability Community and Sexual Violence,” National Organization for Women, https://now.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Disabled-Women-Sexual-Violence-4.pdf. Accessed October 16, 2022.

[3] Laurie Graham, “The Intersection of Sexual Violence and Disability,” Orange County Rape Crisis Center, https://ocrcc.org/2013/08/13/the-intersection-of-sexual-violence-and-disability/. Accessed October 16, 2022.

[4] Elsa Sjunneson, Being Seen: One Deafblind Woman’s Fight to End Ableism, (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2021), 143,144, n. 5.

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 [ML1]Leave the punctuation mark with 80s. It’s correct, even though most people don’t know that except copyeditors. Please remove this comment in layout.