I asked for it once. I was bored. I needed a distraction from my homework. I'd had one drink, and there wasn’t anything good to watch on TV. He seemed almost too eager to oblige, replying to my vague request for a picture with a promise that he was out eating but would send one as soon as he got home. Not even an hour later, he did.
I didn’t really want to see it. But I knew that he wanted me to, a fact I became increasingly aware of when the night’s conversation didn’t end at “good night.”
The very next afternoon, he sent me an invitation to join Snapchat, a mobile application that allows users to share photos and videos that the receiver can only see for a matter of seconds before the images are deleted. I knew exactly where he wanted things to go.
A few times in the past, he had asked me to send him a video of myself "twerking," and I imagined that this is what he was trying to get this time.
“Don’t you dare think that you’re going to get a video of me via Snapchat,” I told him. He said he understood, but not even 10 minutes later, I was hit with another inquiry.
His justifications for asking so persistently ranged from the idea that he “couldn’t be expected to forget” about times we’d spent together to asking if I wasn’t sending anything because I was scared.
The next morning I woke up to a text from him at 7 a.m. asking for “just one” video. He was getting pushy. I told him no.
Again, he acknowledged my answer, but minutes later asked, “But it’s like, why not?” An hour after that, he let me know that he had sent me a “glorious” Snapchat video.
I was truly shocked by what I received and felt extremely uncomfortable. When my only response was to let him know that I had just seen it, he said, “You’re welcome.”
The details of the conversation from that point on sound like a broken record: I respond sharply, he keeps asking, because “it would really make (him) happy,” because he “wants to see it,” because he “needs it.”
This isn’t about trying to slut-shame the man in question. I am all for people doing what they want and being free to express themselves in whatever ways they want to and all of that good stuff. But in situations like these, the persistent party’s desires are prioritized over someone else’s comfort and right to say "no" (and mean it). What about what I want?
We all need to understand situations like these include a wider range of experiences than we think. If I’m at a bar dancing with friends, and we see a guy dancing nearby and don’t say anything but move away as he gets closer, verbally telling him "no" when he doesn’t take the multiple hints, that means no.
It should end there. Stop trying. We don’t want to dance with you, and we would appreciate it if you left us alone. Take the answer and respect it.
It is a very easy thing to express how unsettled we all feel about the recent rape case in Steubenville, Ohio, or the slut-shaming of rape victims in general.
We should be unsettled. We should be upset. But if we’re going to argue that these events are a reminder to us about the importance of consent defined as not the absence of a “no,” but as “yes” and only “yes,” we should all probably try to live out this same idea in our own lives.
When I am sent explicit videos without the other party asking first if I wanted to see them or if I was even OK with the idea, it is violence. When someone is pushy with attempts to get me to send and show them things that I have repeatedly expressed I do not want to, it is abuse.
Maybe it isn’t packaged in the same way as things we’re seeing on television and in media, but that doesn’t mean it is any less important or any less deserving of our respect and understanding.
Even something like sexting that starts as consensual can quickly turn to an uncomfortable and unwanted experience. "No" still doesn’t mean "yes," even if I did ask for it one time.
What I didn’t ask for is all of this. What I’m asking for now — what I’m demanding — is that you take me seriously.
Reach the columnist at andrea.c.flores@asu.edu or follow her at @bowchickaflores
