The only man who ever sexually assaulted me claimed to be a liberal card-carrying feminist

Why your political beliefs tell me nothing about you

I’ve never given much thought to what I would do if a man forced himself on me.

Why would I have to? I’ve only ever been loved by calibre men. From my father to ex-partners, I’ve been respected and loved.

So the day it happened, I was totally unprepared.

Worse than that, I was pathetic. Let me assure you - those self-defence videos on Youtube (…step back, use his weight against him, grab his crotch) are drowned out by absolute shock. And I am a confident professional woman who can hold her own.

What still gets me to this day, is that he was the last person I thought would be capable of that. He was vocal about women’s rights and left-leaning issues. I naively thought that this equated to respect for women.

The night it all went wrong

We were cast mates in a theatre play staged for charity. He was a superb actor. He carried around a philosophy book and we sat on the edge of the stage, improvising lines and writing our own.

He has tall and good looking and our scenes together clicked. I noticed him staring at my lips sometimes when we chatted, but it felt playful, not creepy.

So when he asked for a lift to the station after our last performance, I thought little of it. It was lashing with rain when we arrived and the earliest train was three hours away. It was a Sunday, so no shops were open. I did the hospitable thing- offered for him to wait at my house around the corner.

Keep in mind, that up to that point my experiences with men have been safe and protective. At most, I expected a few hours of banter.

And that’s exactly what it was. We sat on bar stools at my kitchen counter. I had a single glass of wine, knowing I would have to drive him soon. He spied a bottle of Jaegermeister in my glass display cabinet and with a “shall we?” he twisted the cap.

I didn’t keep track of how much he was drinking. We were acting out little skits, copying the accents and mannerisms of our cast members, when the energy started to shift. He went off on a bit of a rant about Jewish people causing problems in the UK Labour Party, (politically left). He saw them as undermining it from within. Years later, antisemitism was indeed investigated in the Labour party in the UK and brought all the memories of that night flooding back.

This somehow made him segue into women who needed to be “stronger” and stand up politically. It was when he said “all women are too busy having daddy issues and just want someone to strangle them during sex” that I realised something was really off.

I tried to lighten the mood, turning around to turn the kettle on and sober him up. I never noticed him walking around the counter, until he pulled me around and clamped his hand around my throat. I grabbed at his fingers instinctively, but his grip was like steel. I’d never experienced first hand how strong men could be. Within seconds, the shock made my legs go numb. Strangely, my mind offered up denials and defences first (“surely he’s just playing at this…) until it was too late and I realised he could do anything he wanted due to brute strength.

“You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever been with,” he slurred, a phrase that still gets me to this day. The “been with” implied that it was just a matter of time for him. It was then that I kind of woke up. I knew a fight would turn him on, so I submitted. Became pliant and leaned into him.

I stuttered something about going to the living room and somehow got him there. I don’t remember how. When someone tells me “I don’t remember”, I now believe them.

I kept him talking. At some point, he sat down on the couch and unzipped his jeans, taking out an enormous penis and bragging about how he could “destroy” a woman’s pussy with it and how the girls in the past have loved it.

I changed the subject back to his political rant of earlier and that did the trick. He simply seemed to forget what happened in the kitchen as his fervour took over. I let him wind down like a clock and he eventually fell asleep.

I somehow got him to the car and drove him to the station. I never heard from him again. I believe he moved to the USA.

This has not jaded my view of men, or even submissive/dominant eroticism. Because the latter is usually about trust and pleasure and that is not what went down in my kitchen.

His aim was humiliation and pain.

The aftermath

I have learned to pay very little attention to what people say. How they carry a card for a good cause or political leaning. His “safe” credentials and platitudes lulled me into a false sense of security, while a Hell’s Angels biker friend of mine who calls me “my girl” treats me like a treasured sister.

I have always been wary of someone who leans excessively to either side of the political spectrum. That fervour and obsessive focus on an issue, whether it be LGBTQ+, BLM or right wing Q-anon theories. I find it usually hides a rigid and cruel outlook of the world, where someone has to submit to their views or else. If you scratch the surface, that obsessive desire for others to agree with them often hides bullying and manipulative personalities.

I sometimes get a whiff of that same energy from people I meet. They are also easy to spot on platforms like Twitter, where they aggressively tweet about an issue. It’s followed by the rock hard opinion that anyone who doesn’t agree with them is evil and needs to be blocked. They usually have a handy posse of parrots and sheep who give them likes in their echo chamber, because they have blocked or banned anyone who disagrees with them.

As a liberal, I don’t force my ideas on anyone- that’s what a liberal stands for- liberty and freedom. So I have little interest in changing anyone’s political stance. But I now understand that (much like the tip of an iceberg) those traits probably percolate into their personal lives. There is a reason cult leaders are so charismatic, they manipulate others with “truth” which usually excludes any opportunity to object. If you do, you are shunned and excluded. Unfriended on Facebook; no likes for your tweet.

This guy was very charismatic indeed. And in a way, this experience has made me much wiser.

It’s shown me that people who proclaim their virtues loudly might only be doing that to hide the dark skeletons rattling in their closet.

Watch closely.