Not Quite Assault, But Still Not Okay: Everyday Sexual Violations That Add Up
Trigger Warning: This piece discusses sexual boundaries, pressure, early sexualization, and subtle consent violations. While it doesn’t include graphic content, it names experiences that may bring up discomfort or memories. Please take care of yourself as you read.
What Are Everyday Sexual Violations?
There’s a whole category of sexual experiences that many women have - unwanted, uncomfortable, confusing - that we often just brush aside. They’re the moments we second-guess, think about late at night, or just try to forget. The comments we tell ourselves were just “jokes.” The looks, the touches, the pressure that didn’t feel great but didn’t feel “bad enough” to call out.
And what would happen if we did call it out? If we called it all out? How exhausting. Better just move on.
But we still carry these everyday violations with us, not because they’re traumatic in the way we recognize, but because they slowly wear us down. It’s a burden that makes our back stoop. They teach us to silence ourselves. To question our instincts. To normalize being just a little uncomfortable, a little used, a little invisible. And definitely not to talk about it.
They rarely show up in police reports. But they show up in how we relate to our bodies, to sex, and to what we think we’re allowed to say no to.
The Early Sexualization of Girls
For a lot of women, this starts way too early.
It’s the feeling of being looked at in a certain way by adult men when you’re still a kid. You might not have had the words to describe it, or understood what it meant, but most women I have spoken to know the feeling. Realizing that people are starting to look at you differently. The sideways comments about your body. Being told to “cover up” because someone else might look at you the wrong way—as if that look is your responsibility.
Before we even understand what sex is, many girls have learned what it means to be sexualized. We learn that attention—wanted or not—might be coming, and it’s on us to manage it.
This early awareness isn’t empowering. It’s confusing. It pulls girls out of their own experience of their bodies and teaches them to look at themselves from the outside. This is how disconnection begins. And that disconnection makes it harder, later on, to know what we want—or what we’re allowed to want, or to say no to.
Unwanted Attention: Looks, Comments, and "Jokes"
Sometimes, it’s not even what’s done to us, it’s what’s said about us. Or said to us, piling on self-consciousness, pressure, uneasiness.
“You’d be prettier if you smiled.”
“Don’t dress like that if you don’t want attention.”
“Relax, it’s just a compliment.”
These comments aren’t harmless. They are a constant reminder that apparently our bodies are open for judgment, that our wants or needs aren’t important, and that being uncomfortable is something we should just accept to avoid being “too sensitive.”
Even when physical boundaries are not crossed, our emotional and psychological boundaries often are. There are so many examples, and sure, they are small, but it adds up. A joke at your expense. A comment on your body from a teacher, a coach, a friend's dad. That feeling of being watched, even in your safest spaces. And over time, you start to wonder if this is just what being a girl—or a woman—means.
The Blurred Lines of Consent in Young Adulthood
By the time we reach our teens or early twenties, many of us have already internalized the idea that our bodies aren't entirely ours. That sex is something we give, not something we share. That saying “yes” is expected—even if it’s not what we really want.
In the early stages of sexual experience, the lines around consent can get blurry, not necessarily because we don’t know how we feel and what we want, but because we’ve been conditioned not to trust those feelings. We've learned to interpret discomfort as a problem with ourselves, not with the situation.
It shows up in moments like these:
Feeling like you owe someone sex because they bought you dinner.
Saying “yes” to avoid making things awkward.
Having sex because they were getting annoyed, and it felt easier to just go along with it.
Thinking, Well, we’ve already started, even when you want to stop.
This isn’t “enthusiastic consent.” This is social pressure, conditioning, and emotional manipulation doing exactly what they’re designed to do. Leaving usdoubting ourselves long enough to surrender. And make us feel bad about the situation and ourselves at the same time.
Why It Still Matters—Even If It’s Not a Crime
A lot of women struggle to talk about these experiences because they don’t feel “serious enough.” Maybe there was no force, no yelling, no obvious violation. But that doesn’t mean there was consent in any real, meaningful way. We’ve been taught to think of sexual harm in legal terms: Was it assault? Was there violence? Did I fight back? But the law’s definition of harm is not the only one that matters.
There’s emotional harm in saying yes when everything in you wanted to say no.
There’s psychological harm in being made to feel responsible for someone else’s experience
There’s spiritual harm in learning to ignore your own warning signals to avoid conflict.
This can leave confusion, shame, and silence.
The Connection Between “Small” Violations and Future Victimization
When a person’s boundaries are consistently ignored, minimized, or pushed away, it makes them more vulnerable to future harm. This isn’t about blaming the victim, but understanding a pattern.
When a girl learns to ignore her discomfort at sexualized looks at twelve, when she learns to keep silent about ‘a joke’ at fifteen, when she says yes out of guilt at twenty - she becomes less likely to recognize similar or more dangerous situations. Not because she’s weak but because this process has trained her to doubt herself.
Over time, the line between what’s okay and what’s not becomes blurred—not because she doesn't care about her boundaries, but because her boundaries have never been respected consistently enough to feel real.
And that’s how these “small” violations add up.
Sexual Autonomy and the Right to Say No
Let’s be clear: sexual autonomy isn’t about saying “no” all the time. It’s about knowing you have the right to—without guilt, without pressure, without fear of backlash or shame.
It also means having the freedom to say “yes” from a place of desire, not obligation.
But for so many women, that clarity has been blurred. Years of socialization, early violations, and internalized expectations have taught us to second-guess ourselves. To prioritize being liked, being wanted, being "cool"—over being honest about what we actually want or don’t want.
Reclaiming sexual autonomy means checking in with yourself.
Do I want this, or do I just not want to disappoint someone?
Am I choosing this, or avoiding conflict?
Am I connected to my body right now, or am I numbing out?
Autonomy means you don’t owe anyone access to your body—not because you're in a relationship, not because you've done it before, not because they’re “nice.” Your body, your choice. Every time.
Untangling Sex Positivity from Sexual Pressures
We don’t grow up in a vacuum. We’re constantly being fed messages about what sex should look like—especially now, with porn, OnlyFans, and hypersexualized content just a tap away and accessible at ever younger ages. (Anyone over the age of 30 probably remembers sneaky glances at dirty magazines, I’m not even sure people buy them anymore?)
Let’s be clear - I support sex workers and this is a sex positive space - many of the people I work with are or have been sex workers.
But let’s not pretend this topic is not without nuance. If the dominant cultural script shows women performing pleasure rather than feeling it, submitting rather than choosing, existing to arouse rather than connect—then of course we end up confused. Of course we internalize those roles.
Many young women enter their sexual lives feeling like they need to be “good at sex” before they even know what they like. They perform pleasure. They fake orgasms. They try things they don’t actually enjoy—because they think they’re supposed to. And when we don't feel entitled to real desire, to slowness, to safety, we start to believe that discomfort is just part of the deal. That “being good at sex” means being available, flexible, and low-maintenance. Not empowered, clear, and self-aware.
Being sex-positive also means challenging a culture where many people learn to perform sex before they learn to enjoy it, and where internalized expectations from media don’t reflect actual desires. Let’s encourage more conscious, consensual, connected sex. All consensual sex is valid and valuable - casual, kinky, romantic, solo, queer, paid, etc. Let’s allow people to define what’s right for them, free from pressure, shame, or performance.
Healing From Sexual Microaggressions and Reclaiming Your Sexuality
Healing from negative sexual experiences - especially the subtle ones, the ones that never got named, the ones you were told to brush off - is incredibly complex. There’s often no clear story to tell, no obvious villain. Just moments that linger. Feelings you can’t quite shake. A growing disconnection from your body and your own instincts. It’s easy to lose sight of what you actually want, need, or deserve.
This kind of healing is about rebuilding a connection to your body, your instincts, and your inner voice. It’s also about reclaiming your sexuality - taking back what is rightfully yours. Not the version shaped by shame or performance or someone else's desire, but the one that is rooted in your pleasure, your curiosity, your timing, and your truth.
Therapy can help you make sense of what you’ve internalized, challenge what no longer fits, and rediscover what desire, safety, and boundaries mean for you - on your terms. You are allowed to feel confused, angry, violated, or shut down about these things no one else noticed. These things you’ve maybe never talked about or the things you haven’t wanted to think about. You are allowed to want more from your sexual experiences. You are allowed to heal, even if no one ever said you were hurt.