Lesbian Blackmail: The Beginning

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I just froze. I didn’t know what to do,” Eliza recalls. “He’s just shooting the breeze with my boyfriend, and my boyfriend is trying to just play it off and is holding a conversation like I’m not even there. So I just stayed down there, perfectly still, waiting for him to go. He talks for what seems like is eternity (probably only two minutes). Then I hear him say, ‘See ya later… you too Eliza.’ I thought I was going to die of embarrassment.” Your daughter is desperate. She is trying to find out the worst [hence the snooping] because this tells her how bad it is. She is snooping because she doesn’t feel safe.”

John, who is ironically a marriage, relationship and sexual coach, shares: “My wife and I went out with some friends for bowling and beer. We both had a little too much to drink.” However, that didn’t stop him from initiating intercourse with his wife that night. “I was happily pumping away with a full bladder. I began to feel the urge to ejaculate (or so I thought in my half drunken stupor). The problem was that I was peeing instead of ejaculating.” 5. Caught in the act Stephanie Trilling, manager of community awareness and prevention services at the Boston Area Rape Crisis (BARCC), observes that for her queer female clients who have been assaulted by women, the first hurdle is simply understanding the assault as rape. Since this scenario is rarely portrayed in the media or in educational programming, "it can be especially challenging to identify their experience as violence," she says. "Many people have a difficult time believing that a woman could be capable of inflicting violence on another person."At the house I was shown to my room, a different one from normal. It looked like a large box-room and had several extra items of furniture, including a big old dressing table. The assistant district attorney on the case, Susan J. Loehn, says the Northampton police performed a "thorough investigation" and treated the victim "in a sensitive manner." According to reports, the victim alleged that what started as a consensual sexual encounter at an off-campus apartment turned violent when she was placed in handcuffs, slapped across the face after withdrawing her consent, slashed across the abdomen with a knife, and sexually assaulted as one of the perpetrators held down her legs. "There was an incredible amount of media attention about this case," Loehn, now executive director of Northwestern Children's Advocacy Center, remembers. Too much, in fact, for the case to make a real impact with a verdict. "This victim was overwhelmed by the media attention. Smith College is a small college. People knew all of the parties involved. There were camera crews on her doorstep." The survivor ultimately decided to drop the charges. Like many sexual assault charges that die in a courtroom, the case now looms as a cautionary tale.

These gender norms can directly contribute to distrust of a victim's claims, says Lisa Langenderfer-Magruder, co-author of a recent study of LGBTQ intimate partner violencein Colorado. "When someone is confronted with a situation that doesn't quite fit that major narrative, they may question its validity," she says. All of this amounts to a culture in which most research on partner violence focuses on heterosexual relationships. "So, in some ways, we're playing catch up." This exciting adventure was repeated every bedtime. Aunt Frances had a large washing machine and I don’t think she examined my pants before putting them in the wash, which was just as well! All went well for a few days. Then the sky darkened and the rain poured down! Uncle Mike was at his office, of course. Aunt Frances was visiting some friends for the day, and Clare said she would be at the farm attending to her pony until lunchtime. I couldn’t go fishing in that weather, so I said I would stay at home and read the set book from school, which I’d been told to read in the holidays. (It was The War of the Worlds!) After school, when I got a job, I stayed with her in her one-bedroom apartment, splitting the monthly bills between us. Weeks passed before Ella, 25, began to confide in her friends that she had been raped. While she didn't find them to be exactly unsupportive, there was still a consistent and major hurdle: "They are oftentimes surprised when they realize it was a woman who assaulted me." I am at my wits’ end. I feel like the world’s worst parent as well as feeling terribly sad about all of it.We’d sleep in one bed, she in her pajamas, I in loose shirt and underwear. The bathroom has no door and this has not been a problem since we are both girls anyway.