It’s Not Just Men: Female On Female Rape Exists

When people think of rape or sexual assault, the most common scenario we think about is a man raping a woman. Other times, men will talk about men getting raped by either men or women. What most people never think about is one woman forcing herself on another woman. Sadly, it’s a scenario that happens more often than you’d think. Here’s why people need to think about rape as a non-gendered issue, with thanks to author Sofia Zambenedetti of The Tab.

Sofia Zambenedetti is a writer who had been sexually assaults. According to her, it happened at a party where she was drinking with friends. It was just the usual thing - beer, cigarettes, and chilling on the back porch. Before the assault, she wrote, “We were having the time of our lives.”

She needed to go to the bathroom, and decided to go alone… And that’s when the assault happened. She wrote that she was “raped on the floor of that bathroom, on the night, listening to my friends laugh outside oblivious to the state of horror I was in.” But, there’s something a bit unusual about her assault.

Unlike what most people would expect, her rapist was a woman. She said that it was something she had never seen coming, and that it was “not the person I had pictured in my nightmares.” In fact, her assault was totally bizarre on many levels - primarily because she never would have thought that girl would sexually assault her.

According to Sofia, the girl was actually very popular. And people thought she was pretty, and fun. The girl had asked Sofia if “it was true” that Sophia was bisexual. Sofia said “yes,” but quickly told her that she wasn’t interested in her. In other words, she didn’t consent. At all.

The girl didn’t take it well. Sofia’s rapist began to cry, and then threw a fit. “She threw herself on me, and as I tried to reason with her I went numb,” wrote Sofia. The girl had begun to attack her - and it got very ugly, very fast.

The rape was mostly oral. Sofia said that the girl had ripped her pants off and had her way with her orally. It took a while for her to get the girl off her, and she collected herself near the sink. “When I turned around she was gone,” she wrote, recalling the traumatic moment.

What startled her was that she just didn’t listen to the word “no.” Sofia noted that since she was openly bisexual, her rapist had “assumed this is what I wanted, that no didn’t mean ‘no’ to her.” In other words, there’s a misconception about the fact that women can rape other women. Most people think it just doesn’t happen.

Weirder still, the rapist calls herself “straight.” Sofia thinks that she took her drunken state as “the time she was going to experiment.” She then rightfully says that being drunk isn’t an excuse to rape someone else. What happened to her was not right - and the sad fact is that it’s a lot more common than we’d like to think.

Sofia notes that it’s impossible to tell how many women are raped by women. Simply put, rape is underreported - and it’s not only male on female rape that isn’t reported to police. Sofia admitted that she never had reported the rape to police because she didn’t believe police would believe her.

The fact is that she only told two people about the rape, and still faced a backlash. The fact was that very few people understood what she was going through or supported her. She wrote, “Months later everyone was talking about how I was the aggressor, I wanted it. I already felt ruined, and hearing this, it felt like I was being kicked while I was already down.”

The fact is that she knows she’s not alone. She had another friend who had been assaulted in a similar way, by a woman at a party. The two of them had confided in one another what happened. And, being raped was a lifelong fear of her friend, too.

The media almost always shows the news stories about rape and sexual assault. And to a point, both Sofia and her friend “had assumptions about our personal attacker.” She said that it was basically assumed that a rapist would be an “overbearing, large aggressive man.”

And they expected it to be very brutal. She said that it was basically imprinted that it’d most likely be, “not a gentle rape, but one you couldn’t stop because maybe they drugged you. Or maybe you drank too much.” And yet, there are women out there who are sexually assaulted by other women - and their experiences are nothing like what we’d assume.

Sadly, women who are assaulted by women stay in silence. Primarily because it’s so rare, they often feel silenced. But, Sofia wants to point out that rape is no one’s fault but the perpetrator.

The question remains - why isn’t more attention being paid to this? Moreover, why is it that so many people forget how many different ways sexual assault can happen? Do you have any opinions on how we can curb sexual assault? Tell us in the comments below.