Why Do Our Friends Sexually Harass Us... and Why Are We Still Friends?

TW: Sexual Assault

I have been touched and made to feel uncomfortable by two people I would call friends. 

One situation was with a friend, actually a best friend, who I had known since the age of 15. He was, honestly maybe still is, one of my closest friends. We had went on a night out and, in true afters style, everyone on the night out had crashed in one room. We were in a bed, alongside our other best mate (so three of us in the bed) with about three people on the floor. At first he started by grabbing my ass, then stroking my chest. I pretended I was asleep - which didn’t seem to bother him. 

The second friend was a guy who I had once slept with. He came round my flat at uni one day and apparently thought there would be a round two. I told him no. He kept kissing me, despite the fact I said no. In fact - he kept kissing me whilst holding my arms and hands round the back. I walked to my room and closed the door. He came to my room, walked in, with just his boxers on, with an erection, and continued to try and convince me as to why we should have sex again. He pointed to the rug on the floor and said, and I quote, “it would only take 5 minutes.” When he left, I cried. When I woke up, I had bruises on arm where his arms had been. 

I still see both of these people. Why? I feel like a ‘bad woman’ for admitting that I still see them. But with both these guys - these incidents were two nights out of years of a friendship. Both these guys are people who are pillars of my social circles; if I refuse to see them I also lose seeing my other friends. His reputation would become a debate and it’s not one I feel I would win. Even more complicatedly, is it one I want to win? They’ve been my friends for years; essential to so many fun moments in my life - do I want to lose their friendship? I know what they did is wrong… and yet, somehow, my brain can’t make me *feel* it.

I see why - if you removed those nights from their record - they really are the archetypal ‘nice guys’. They’re fun to be with. Kind. The nucleus of the social groups. If I decided never to see them again, it wouldn’t feel like them losing, it would feel like me. I want all of the good parts of what our friendship is and was. I just want to pretend it never happened.

I understand how damaging this message is and not for one second am I trying to advocate silence; but I am trying to authentically analyse the reality of the situation for so many womxn.

We like to think of these situations as simple - as if the situation occurs and you’re presented with a leaflet that says ‘these are the next 3 steps to follow’, but, surprise surprise, it’s much more complicated. 

And it’s not just for me. I did a poll out of the Everyday Magazine community and out of 149 people, 131 people said they had been touched inappropriately or made to feel uncomfortable by a FRIEND. Of which, 48 of those people still stay in contact with the individual. 

The difficulty that presents itself when attempting to figure out how to tell people how to react to these type of these situations is even more convoluted when considering the experiences of the LGBTQ+ community and of womxn of colour.

Hrc.org reported that 46% of bisexual women have been raped, compared to 17% of straight women and that 40% of gay men and 47% of bisexual men have experienced sexual violence. Moreover, the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey found that 47% of transgender people are sexually assaulted at some point in their lifetime. 

What’s more, apa.org reports that one in four black girls will be sexually abused before the age of 18 and one in five black women are survivors of rape. 

If, as a straight white woman, who is inherently more protected by society, I find it difficult to treat the events with the severity they require or understand how to react to them - consider how it must feel as a member of society who is discriminated against far more often, who faces the day in and day out consequences of institutional prejudice and racism and a justifiably fraught relationship with the very system that they are told to report the crime to. As now.org state in their report on this issue, “for women of colour, reporting crimes of sexual assault are rooted in relationships to institutions of power and commitments to community.”

As magazine Creative Director, Heba Tabidi, writes about - members of a marginalised group in society are expressively taught to not stand up for themselves, to blend into the background, to forgive, time and time again, the shit they are put through.

Now combine all of this - an increased likelihood of sexual assault occurring, institutions of power representing, not justice, but even more fear and doubt, and a taught ideology of staying quiet…and we wonder why so many crimes go unreported? Or, we wonder why, in social groups - it’s sometimes easier to pretend it never happened? 

But let me say this clearly - for myself and for other womxn - a show of trust is not consent. I spent so much time beating myself up, for looking through every lens which casts me as the idiot, but, at the end of the day, we let our guards down around people who are supposed to be our friends - like we would be comfortable doing with countless womxn. Sharing a bed with someone (which you will see in the following stories is such a common thread) is NOT a show of consent, it is a show of trust - which is totally, and utterly destroyed. Physical proximity is not consent. Getting drunk with somebody is not consent. Feeling comfortable enough around a friend where you don’t feel the need to police your closeness, is not consent. It is friendship. It is not us who abused that.

What is so upsetting, to me, is NOT the misreading of the signals. If my friend had tried to kiss me when I was fully conscious, standing next to him, I could have politely declined; we could have even laughed it off. I understand how a close friendship can sometimes feel like something more - but to do what he did, when I am sleeping next to him, in a dark room where my ability to tell him no is conflated with my willingness to highlight the situation to six people in the room, it is cowardice. It shattered near 10 years of friendship, it has tainted our memories - the moment he made me feel like a piece of meat; a body that turned him on because I was in a bed, less than 1 metre away from him.

If 10 years of friendship are not more instructive than the shallow, mis-thought out symbolism of a bed and physical proximity - we need to start considering how deeply ingrained this issue goes. 

If our friends are the ones who can make us feel uncomfortable - if we cannot understand there is no ‘good guy’ and ‘bad guy’ but only what we are taught and what we choose to unteach ourselves - if we do not start acknowledging the complexities of the situation for what it is, there is no progress; just a poor imitation of one. It is nothing more than the flamboyance of Instagram liberalism; of soundbites that can be presented nicely on an iconographic - this is not one of those situations. This is not something you can share two sentences of and understand - I mean, who does understand it? This is why I am so against judging the situation as simple - because yes, I know technically I know this makes my friend a twat, but also, in my head also there are a torrent of thoughts that seem to contend with that and/or make this thought seem impractical to live by.

What situations like these require are thought, consideration - the time it takes to digest something complex and think about what is required moving forward. Not on an individual basis; on a societal basis. How *do* we make this situation simple? What does society need to do to raise people who understand consent? 

Because, what is so crucial and what is said time and time and time again - is that the villains are most often not hiding in the shadows on walks home by ourselves, it is our friends who cannot share a bed with us without paralysing us with discomfort, it is the men who cannot hear the word ‘no’ without leaving a bruise on your arm. Yet, we hear this and we look around our social circle and say ‘but not us, right?’ 

Whilst, even more surreally - knowing various stories in our heart that prove it is OUR friends, it is OURSELVES even. It is all those moments we laugh off or choose never to talk about again.

To end, I’m not going to deliver an attempt at a conclusion - I don’t have one; like I said, I’m still figuring things out - what I am going to do is leave you with a selection of some of the experiences that were put forward by womxn and members of the LGTBQ+ community about what happened to them, by a friend. And, what I am going to do, is urge you to consider, why all of the people in this - myself included - feel the need to justify their reactions and what led up to the incident, pre-emptively defending themselves from judgement. 

For me, when I think about it, what does it show? It shows how the notion of ‘asking for it’ is very much alive and kicking - dressed up in a modern outfit, and sleeping in our bed. 


The Experiences:

  • “A guy touched me in my sleep when I was 13 and everyone loved him, so…”

  • “I was raped by a friend at “afters” before lockdown, never told my pals because of the awkwardness of it.”

  • “My friend was seeing this awful guy who gave me a nipple cripple in a busy club so I slapped him as an automatic reflex (get off of my boobs?!) and then I was vilified by the girls because violence is never the answer…”

  • “I have two. One with a former friend, and one with my boss. The friend had me pushed against a wall and once I forgave him, few months later on a school trip we were hanging out and he, let’s say “touched me inappropriately” while I was frozen. I only recently found the guts to unfollow and unfriend him. The boss case is happening now. He came out to me and I came out to him and since then he keeps asking super inappropriate questions  about my sexual life even though I have told him repeatedly that it makes me uncomfortable.”

  • “My friend kept tying to kiss me while I was drunk and SOBBING and just having been broken up with. It almost destroyed the friendship because his behaviour was so wildly inappropriate. ALL of the girls in the friendship group have had him behave like that with them at some point. We were sick of it but “allowed him the time he needed to grow up.” I can’t think of a parallel where you’d the same - if a friend kept stealing from you, you wouldn’t let them “grow out of it.

  • “A boy would sexually assault/harass me all the time but I was nice to him because I didn’t want him to feel lonely because people would pick on him sometimes.”

  • “I had a friend who was always so "touchy feely” with me but excused it saying he wasn’t attracted to me. I’ve had full on kisses on the mouth and touching my ass - as well as being generally uncomfortable with how close they always stand. I do feel they wouldn’t get away with it if I wasn’t aware it could ruin an age old friendship.”

  • “The worst one I’ve experienced was that a male technician from my university showed up at a club after I casually told him what I’d be doing that weekend (celebrating a friends birthday at said club). So he turned up, hammered, and kept trying to buy me drinks I didn’t want. The more drunk he got the more handsy he became and I was constantly fighting him away from grabbing my hips. I ended up in the toilets where my phone had died, separated from my group abs knowing he was waiting at the end of the corridor for me so I had to ask some random girl to go to the bar and ‘ask for Angela’ to get security to safely escort me into a taxi out the back door..... he then sent me a LONG ASS text explaining himself and saying how depressed he was about his breakup and I felt so enormously guilty about the whole situation I avoided the dept he worked in for 3-4 months.”

  • “One of my very close male friends was having a hard time a few years ago and he text me something a bit worrying after a bad day/evening like he "didn't know what he'd do" if he stayed alone that night. He was staying alone in a family home and I was genuinely worried he might attempt suicide. I told him to come to my house which I shared with a mutual friend but he wouldn't. My housemate was going to bed as I think it was about 11pm and she had plans the next morning, so I got a taxi alone up to his house, and when he didn't want to talk I asked about watching tv together in the living room. He instead said we should go to his room. We sat on his bed and watched something and he basically started touching me, I think stroking my arm. I just froze, I didn't know what to do. Our friendship had always been platonic, but I was scared of rebuffing him because of his delicate state. I eventually pretended to sleep, facing away from him, and he cuddled up behind me. At one stage he whispered asking if I was awake, and I pretended that woke me up and tried to move away. I told him he should sleep. He again cuddled up to me and wouldn't stop stroking me, I honestly don't remember being able to sleep at all. I felt so uncomfortable but felt like I couldn't leave because I genuinely think if he was alone he might have harmed himself. I felt that he wanted some physical comfort and so I didn't discourage him. We never spoke about it after that night, but I never felt the same about him, like he had broken my trust by acting like that. I started to notice he was drinking heavily and doing other self destructive behaviours. I just started contacting him less and now I haven't seen him since the pandemic started. It's sad, we had been friends since we were 11 and now I'm 28, but I just can't forget him acting like that, and how I felt like I couldn't say anything (when I'm usually very direct!) because he was a friend, and was pretty depressed.”

  • “I went to meet a friend in Europe for a gig and he had a girlfriend but we’d been mates for years. We went to the gig and all was fine, then we went back to the hotel and we were sharing a bed (which was normal - nothing dodgy just sleep) and he started making moves. In the end I had to sleep on the floor.”

  • “I was travelling to France on a school trip, I woke up at 1am with a hand on my chest. I was so scared I pretended to be asleep and rolled over. He was supposed to be a mate.”

  • “One pal tried to finger me whilst I slept - it then became a running joke in our group.”

  • “A guy my friend was talking to said he was “looking after me” for her when I was drunk… “

  • “The worst one was when I went out for a "quiet drink" with a friend so she could have a night out after having a baby. We ran into a guy who we both used to work with for a few years who invited us to have a couple of drinks with his friends. So we were keen to catch up. His mates bought us a couple of shots, and we stayed a bit later than I planned, but it was nice. We talked about what we'd all been up to after leaving that job, our girlfriends/boyfriends, gossiped about other people we knew and what they were doing so I was happy to have a few more drinks. I suddenly realised I was quite a bit drunker than I thought and decided I needed to get a taxi home. My guy friend said not to worry, he knew I lived just up the road, he'd walk me home. He kept trying to hold my hand, but I kept brushing it off. When we got to my house, he pushed me up against the front door and kissed me quite violently. He had me completely pinned and forced my hand into his trousers. I managed to twist a bit and push him away enough to get through the front door and slam it shut, but he started pounding on the door for me to let him in. It was pretty scary. It's a small town and I've often walked home from a night out with no issue, never been approached by a stranger in the dark. It bothered me more than it was a "friend" who spoiled the safety of my little hometown.”

  • “Once after a night out I was sharing a bed with two guys, both my friends. I was interested in one of them and we ended up leaving the room and sleeping together, then we went back to go to sleep. The other guy in the bed started feeling me up and I told him to stop and kept pushing his hands away but he said no, and that it would be ok. I eventually just moved to the floor but it sucked that the guy I had just slept with heard it all and did nothing. This was when I was like 17 and I still occasionally see them both. The same guy did a similar thing to another one of my female friends and she was vocal about it to our friend group but all of the lads brushed it off.”

  • “A male friend who I used to see about once a week in a group had recently broken up with his girlfriend. He was in a bit of a mess and had come to me for emotional support the previous two weeks. I got home around 1am one Saturday night and he called me asking if he could come to stay at my flat because he had locked himself out. He was clearly really drunk and I was worried given he was emotionally fragile, so I said yes and sent him my address etc. He was clearly quite drunk when he arrived. I had flatmates so said he could just sleep in my bed instead of on the sofa, not wanting to disturb them. I gave him a lot of water to drink and we went to bed. I had a double bed so we were sleeping on different sides. When in bed, he started to touch me up, fortunately only over my pyjamas which feels like a ridiculous thing to say but it's how I felt. I didn't say anything and it's a common feeling I've heard from many friends, that it's easier to let it happen. I was running through the outcomes of telling him to stop then feeling uncomfortable all night, it ruining our friendship and I just pretended to be asleep until he stopped.”

If you have been affected by any of the topics raised in this article, please see the resources below:

  • Voluntary organisations, such as Women's Aid, Victim Support, The Survivors Trust or Survivors UK (for male victims of sexual assault) are all accessible during lockdown.

OpinionJessica Blackwell