Consent: A Memoir of Unwanted Attention

by Donna Freitas

Since the beginning of graduate school, I’d been reading about the power of naming in the feminist theory in my courses. I was talking about, learning about, reading about, and writing papers about naming as a tool of empowerment and voice and transformation for women at the very same time that I was resisting this act in my own life. But to me, naming had consequences I was not ready to confront, that I never in my life wanted to have to confront. Naming abuse, naming sexual harassment, naming something like stalking committed by a professor, my mentor, a priest, was the kind of thing that happened to someone else, not to me. It was the stuff of gossip, hushed whispers, scandalized talk. It was something you knew happened to people, but those people are never you or the people you know. If I named this thing it would stick to me, sink into me, become me. Not only would it rot me from the inside but now the rot would be visible. It would cling to me, mark me, become my scarlet letter. I would have to walk around the world wearing it, and the world would see it on me and reject me for it. I would be ruined because of it. Naming meant loss. It meant the loss of a fantasy I’d held, that I still wanted to hold, about me and my intellectual promise, my academic talents, my appeal as a young woman and aspiring PhD. Because of his interest in me—well, let’s be honest, his devotion—at first I believed it meant I was special. Exceptional. But now naming this for what it really was ...