Journalist calls out sexual assault of women by gay men
By Will Stroude
Shannon Power of Australia’s Star Observer has hit out after a gay man sexually assaulted her at a Christmas party last year.
Describing the incident, Power said that she’d gone to the loo while looking for a friend, when a man “proceeded to put his hand up [her] dress and grab my private lady parts.
“You read right, a guy who I did not know, to whom I did not give consent, reached down to my nether regions and GRABBED MY VAGINA,” she continued.
According to the journalist, the man tried to brush off his actions.
“‘Babe, relax it’s ok, I’m just having fun,’ he told me before giving my boobs a squeeze,” she wrote.
This wasn’t an isolated incident, however, and Power revealed that she almost expects it to happen when she goes out. She then went on to call out gay men who use their sexuality as justification for groping women.
“What a lot of guys say to me after they’ve groped me is: ‘it’s ok babe, I’m gay!’ she writes.
“Well ‘babe’, I’m here to tell you it’s definitely not acceptable to sexually assault someone under any circumstances.
“Your sexuality combined with my gender are not exceptions to that rule, just don’t ever touch someone without consent.
“Grabbing women’s breasts, bum, or in my case, their vagina, is not cute or funny. It doesn’t build some kind of unspoken solidarity between us, it violates me and my sense of safety in public.
“Someone reading this might be thinking, ‘if you don’t like it, don’t go out’, but I am just as entitled to hang out with my friends in the venues we enjoy going to without fear.”
Read the full article here.
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