Billie - youth activist and rape survivor
Okay, so, my name is Wilhelmina, but no one could spell it, no one could pronounce it. My mom was 46 when she got pregnant -- which is kind of too old -- and it was a big old accident. So I’m born and everything seems fine except I won’t open my eyes. Two weeks later everyone’s pretty nervous, my and brother is holding me and singing Billie Holiday songs to me. And I open my eyes! So my mom is like, “Done!” Billie opened her eyes, it’s done. We don’t have to call her anything else. So that’s how I got my nickname.
Right now I work for a place called Safe Homes of Orange County, which is a domestic violence agency for all of Orange County in New York, which is where I live. I am the Youth Educator, and I write all of the programming and facilitate it. I’m also an advocate at that same agency.
High school was wild. When I was 15, I started dating this guy named Max. I dated him on and off for like a year and a half. He was emotionally manipulative. He wouldn’t call me for a really long time, but this kid was supposed to be my boyfriend. I’d be like, “Hey if you’re not going to talk to me then I don’t want to be with you.” And he’d be like, “You’re right, I’m terrible, I don’t deserve you.” It was like that on a calendar. It was impressive how consistent it was, that pattern of coercion. And I just missed it.
In high school I really focused on being a good friend. I specifically was friends with people who were outcasts. So even though everyone had told me that Harrison was a pretty bad guy, I got really close with him. On New Year’s Eve, he posted on MySpace that he really needed someone to come over. I went there and his whole family had gone out. He said that they all abandoned him and left him to watch his younger brother. He was drinking and he was watching the ball-drop show and he kept offering me alcohol. I didn’t drink at this time. So the ball drops, it’s over, and I’m like, “Cool, I’m going to go home actually.” And he’s like, “What, you don’t want to stay here? Like you’re supposed to be here to comfort me, you’re supposed to be my friend.” And so I stayed there.
So he kisses me and we’re making out, and that part of it, I was fine with. Then he went to put his hand down my pants. And I grabbed it and was like, “Nope! That’s a no go. I don’t feel good about that.” He’s like, “It’s going to feel good.” So for like three seconds, I’m thinking about it, and he just went for it. It was very uncomfortable, and I was crying. I told him, I think I’m bleeding. He was like, “You’re not bleeding you’re just being a baby.”
Eventually he apologized for that and two years later, we’re still friends -- I have like a high tolerance for shit I guess. I went to his house, and we’re watching this moving. Meanwhile Harrison is texting me, “Hey, are you going to spend the night, like maybe we’ll have sex, are you into that?” At that time, I consented to having sex with him. So we go into his bedroom, and I tell him that I want him to wear a condom -- he is very reluctant. Then we’re having sex, and I’m telling him, you’re getting kind of aggressive, that’s too much. And he looked like a completely different person, like totally crazed. At one point he flips me over and pushed my head down into a pillow. And that was when I was like, “This is not okay.” At this point I stop engaging with him, and he didn’t seem to notice at all. Afterwards I get on the bus home, and and I’m like “I don’t think that that was consensual.” I’m not like naming it rape, but I’m like, “That feels like sexual assault, I don’t feel good about that.”
I tell Luke, an incredible person with such a big heart, about it. He gets so mad, he wants to like go fight Harrison. And he’s like, you have to tell Melina, my boss at the domestic violence shelter, that these things are happening. And I’m like, I don’t want to tell anyone. I pushed back against it so much. I don’t think I’m experiencing what people anticipate to be typical trauma from it.
I definitely internalized a lot of those things. I went to Harrison’s house and I knew that he was sexually attracted to me, like I knew something was going to happen. But it took a really long time for me to say, “but I didn’t want to get raped.” Because no one wants to be raped, that’s ridiculous. So now I’m experiencing the empowerment of naming those things.
When I was sharing all of this with the school board here, I wrote it all out, then I read it to my current partner. I was like, do you think there is something wrong with me? And she was like, “No, of course not.” And I just really needed to hear that from someone who cared about me and loved me.
If we’re not having conversations with young people about sex, sexual assault is going to happen way more. Because I didn’t know I was allowed to say, don’t do that, or that doesn’t feel good. We especially don’t tell young women, like sex is supposed to feel good for you. So if it doesn’t feel good, it’s not happening right. Consent is always the thing that I’m driving home with any conversation that I’m having with young people. That’s my biggest thing, just leaving space to have conversations about the sex that young people are having and whether or not it feels good to them.
