The Atlantic

[The report’s authors] argue that female perpetration is downplayed among professionals in mental health, social work, public health, and law, with harmful results for male and female victims, in part due to these ‘stereotypical understandings of women as sexually harmless,’ even as ongoing ‘heterosexism can render lesbian and bisexual victims of female-perpetrated sexual victimization invisible to professionals.’

If female victims in these cases are invisible to the people who are trained to recognize and help them, isn’t it imperative that a dialogue around this topic acknowledge these experiences?

The article also states:

Tellingly, researchers have found that victims who experience childhood sexual abuse at the hands of both women and men are more reluctant to disclose the victimization perpetrated by women (Sgroi & Sargent, 1993). Indeed the discomfort of reporting child sexual victimization by a female perpetrator can be so acute that a victim may instead inaccurately report that his or her abuser was male (Longdon, 1993).

This is telling; is it not important? Once we’ve acknowledged that childhood sexual abuse by women tends to go unreported, is there no moral obligation to de-marginalize the victims of these crimes?

In addition to the story I shared with you about my mother [in a separate email that Notes is planning to air with other stories of childhood sexual abuse], I’ve had numerous experiences as an adult with unwanted advances from women, and I’m a queer woman myself. I know I’m not alone, but I know that by my own research—not from the kind of open discussion that you’re currently engaging your male readers in right now.

The woman-as-nurturer assumption is pervasive enough that many women internalize it, believing that no show of their attention or sexual desire could be anything but empowering for the woman who receives it. To address this issue is to answer the study’s authors’ conclusion as Conor states it:  “...in a better world, those charged with responding to sexual victimization would be both gender inclusive, addressing “all victims and perpetrators, regardless of sex,” and gender sensitive, understanding how prevailing norms “influence women and men in disproportionate or different ways.”

Where is this inclusiveness in the dialogue you’ve begun?

The reader series can only be as inclusive and representative as the reader emails that arrive in our inbox. Some context: The callout for reader submissions I attached to Conor’s piece was deliberately as broad and generalized as possible: “Do you have a personal experience relevant to this piece?” That callout yielded 22 emails from people who say they were assaulted—to varying degrees—by women, and 20 of those emailers are men. The remaining two emailers are the two women featured above, both of whom speak of the assault they experienced as children—a separate theme we’ve been planning to air following these adult-focused stories, since childhood assault is of a very different kind. (Several emails of childhood stories also arrived from men.) But the door has always been open to stories of woman-on-woman sexual assault—in fact, I included an explicit callout along those lines in yesterday’s newsletter—so if you would like speak to that experience, please send us a note: hello@theatlantic.com.

A quick note about the overall nature of a Notes discussion thread: Its overarching title (e.g. “Stories of Women Raping Men”) is meant to change by design, since the discussion often evolves depending on the emails that arrive after the initial wave of reader responses. For example, early this week we changed the name of a long-standing thread from “Is the U.S. Government Properly Funding Science?” to “Is the Long Hard Road to Academia Worth It?” because the initial three installments about NIH funding were followed by three installments on the question “Is a Ph.D. Worth It Anymore?” followed by two more installments this week on race and academia—thus broadening the overall framing.

Anyway, back to our dissenting reader, she stated above, “I’ve had numerous experiences as an adult with unwanted advances from women, and I’m a queer woman myself,” so I asked her if she was interested in elaborating on those experiences. Her reply:

Thank you, Chris—I appreciate your kind words and I’ll definitely share these experiences in case they’ll prove fruitful for this discussion. I’m grateful to say that I’ve never been a victim of assault, and there’s no story, really, in the same way that my first letter [about childhood assault] or your current stories are, but there have been several instances in which a woman has made me feel afraid of what she was capable of, in a way that, incidentally, no man has.

Years ago, at a punk club in Chicago, I was sitting with a group of friends—all of us, including me, queer women—and I got up to go to the bar. This was an explicitly queer-friendly venue, and the atmosphere was generally open and relaxed. An older woman hit on me and I politely declined. When I got back to my table, though, she was still staring at me—unrelentingly enough that all my friends noticed. Still, I was with my them and we were in public, so I tried to keep my mind on the conversation and the show that would be starting soon.

A bit later, though, I got up to go to the bathroom, and the woman got up too. I hoped she was going to the bar, or maybe out to smoke, but sure enough, she was following me. The bathroom, I should add, was a single-person stall. “I’m going into the BATHROOM,” I told her, but she didn’t say anything; she just stood there. I locked the door as quickly as I could. The knob never turned, but when I came out, she was still standing there, and instead of going in, she followed me back to the tables and took her seat.

Now, I was actually scared: What had she been planning to do? What would have happened if I hadn’t locked the door? She was still staring, and one of the more imposing people in my group did what I didn’t feel safe enough to do: told her off.

While no one else in the club was remotely a threat, I wonder if we make dangerous assumptions about queer-friendly spaces and empowerment where women are concerned—if sometimes being open and accepting means we don’t have to follow the same rules that we rightfully expect decent men to follow. Not only had I sent no signals to this woman, I had already turned her down. This is what scared me: She knew I wasn’t interested, but she seemed to still be expecting something, even if I didn’t know what.

***

Another night, a friend and I walked past a homeless woman who started shouting at my friend, calling her names. I tried to keep my eyes turned away from her, but the homeless woman’s reaction to me was different. When she looked at me, she beamed. “YOU get it, honey,” she said to me. “I know you get it.” Before I could say or do anything, she pulled me into a very unwelcome embrace and started kissing my neck. “Yeah, you get it,” she said again. “Yeah, I know you do.”

I was stunned. “Did she KISS YOU on the NECK?” my friend asked. Yes. The experience of her grip—this woman, like the previous one, was much bigger than me—scared me motionless. In both of these cases, these women made me feel like they felt entitled to me. Like they never gave a thought to crossing any lines, to whether I’d invited them or not.

***

My single experience of being groped by a man was entirely different. I was walking down the street, and a frat boy in a group of friends reached out and grabbed my breast. It was disgusting, but I didn’t feel like he was taking something he thought was his. The opposite, actually—his thrill seemed to be in knowing this was wrong but trying it anyway, and when I fought back, which I did instinctively, he backed off. He didn’t look proud of himself anymore. His attempt had failed. He had taken a risk, knowingly, and wouldn’t take it further.

***

Both women made me feel like they thought they deserved me, like somehow, as a woman (younger? smaller? no idea if that plays into it), I was already theirs. The abrupt skin-to-skin contact with the homeless woman—her face, my neck, my cheek—was a violation because there was no connection there. She didn’t ask me my name or want to know anything about me. She already saw us as one. The worst part is the assumption that this “fact” was supposed to bring me comfort. This was something I was supposed to know, too.

Physical intimacy had been a source of some stress throughout our relationship because she was more sexually experienced than I was (a virgin), and due to my religious beliefs I intended to defer intercourse until marriage—a point of view I had explained to her many times in several discussions. Many times she attempted to take things to another level, but my verbal objections were sufficient to convince her to stick to tamer stuff.

But on this particular night, she only reacted more aggressively when I told her “no,” which was entirely out of character based on my previous experience. I recall her forcing her hand into my pants in an effort to manually stimulate me, but her movements were so violent that they were actually quite painful and initially unsuccessful. Even as this was happening, I was continuing to try to placate her—“You know how I feel about this, please just listen to me, etc.”—but it was like she couldn’t even hear me.

I remember that I finally resorted to the excuse “But I don’t have a condom”—and was shocked when she produced one from her bag. As far as I knew, she had never purchased condoms before, so this indicated to me that she planned for sex even before we had met up (despite being aware of my feelings).

I contemplated some kind of physical resistance when she climbed on top of me, but my mind immediately flashed to an imagined scene with me trying to explain to a police officer why I gave my girlfriend a black eye. I understand in retrospect how insane it sounds that in the midst of being raped I was actually weighing (and ultimately rejecting) the merits of hitting my assailant, but the idea that men should never resort to physical violence against women is deeply ingrained in my psyche. I also feared that I might be accused of attempting to rape her if I accidentally injured her in some way.

So I just fell silent.

***

Apologies for the extensive details, but I wanted to give you an idea of the similarities I noticed when reading that blog post. I actually emailed the girl who wrote it, thanking her for sharing her story. I admitted to her that something quite similar had happened to me. It was so strange to me that when reading her story I could immediately recognize what happened as “rape,” but that even when comparing it to my very similar story point by point (previously making clear my lack of interest in intercourse, verbally objecting in a variety of ways to no effect, considering violent resistance but rejecting it because of my relationship to the assailant), it was still difficult for me to apply the same label to my experience.

I’ll put it this way: it is very easy for me to look back on my story and call it nonconsensual sex, because I know that I never at any point offered any form of consent. But calling it “rape” still felt somehow inappropriate, because up to that point I operated under the assumption that rape was something that happened exclusively to women.

I know why I never reported my own rape. I felt like I would be laughed out of the room if I tried to tell my male friends that I had repeatedly refused sex with an attractive girl. I imagined how humiliating it would be to explain to a college administrator how I had sobbed into my pillow during my first sexual encounter.

I spent more hours than I care to admit reading about the science behind erections in order to prove to myself that I was not inadvertently responsible for my own assault. As Conor’s article points out, nobody would accept that mere physiological reactions indicate consent on the part of a woman—and they shouldn’t! And yet I suspect this would have become a major question of interest if I had ever attempted to explain my story to anyone. I’m glad that “being made to penetrate” is now becoming a more widely accepted definition, because it’s definitely a real thing.

Most of all, I am glad that there are now hard numbers on female-on-male sexual assault. It was difficult to find any information at all on this phenomenon when I was a scared and confused 19-year-old searching for some external validation of my own experience. (I noticed that Lara Stemple’s first study was published in April 2014, and I would have been scouring the Internet for data in the fall of 2013.)

It is depressing to recall how deeply I distrusted and questioned my own memories of the event—“Did I actually say no or just not right now? Maybe she just didn’t notice that I was crying”—and I am now ashamed to admit that I felt so crushed by the loneliness of my ordeal that I considered suicide during this period. I am saddened to read the surprisingly high numbers of reported assaults among men, but also reassured that another kid in the same position I was will be able to locate solid evidence to prove to himself that he is not alone.

The months and years of anguish during which I felt that I could not even speak about my experience for fear of being misunderstood were, in some ways, more damaging than the actual rape itself. So thank you for casting light on stories that are real, even though they remain rarely told.

This next reader especially struggled over the fact that his body was aroused when he brain was screaming no:

My story has long been a source of shame for me and I’d buried it deep. I’m kind of hoping if I just share it like this, it will stop haunting me.

I’m a man and was sexually assaulted by my female partner a couple of years ago. That’s a tough sentence to write, being a man.

We had always had something of a rocky relationship that revolved around consuming alcohol a tad too excessively and having wild, passionate sex. It was good for a time. We lived in a remote community in northern Canada, so that’s a rather common pattern.

I’m middle-aged and of an average build. She’s younger and carries what was once called a “voluptuous” figure. Just because of her weight, she was often able to overpower me, and we often played on that in our sexual activities. It was a turn on for us both.

As our relationship began to wind down, however, I began to decline her sexual advances more and more. I began indicating that I wanted to leave the relationship, but she did not accept this. Her sexual and emotional drives increased as though in contradiction my half-hearted moves to quiet things between us and a few lame attempts to end them.

One night when were were both completely sober we went to bed together after an argument. I made it clear that I would not have sex with her, but I wasn’t brave enough to sleep separately from her.

Once we were both under the covers she immediately began to reach inside my pajamas and fondle me. I brushed her hand away and told her, no, I didn’t want that. She waited for a time and took my hand and put it against her genitals which were wet. I pulled my hand away and again told her no. I pretended to go to sleep, though my mind was racing.

She repeatedly reached for my genitals and pulled down my pajamas, and I repeatedly brushed her away and turned away. She pulled me onto my back and pulled down my pajamas. I pushed her away. Despite my repeated resistance and my repeated use of the word “no,” she eventually began to perform oral sex on me. That’s when my organ betrayed me and became hard.

I tried to brush her away again and again. I should have gotten up and left the bed, but I thought if I just pretended I was asleep and uninterested, she’d stop.

She didn’t. She made me touch her. She forced me onto my back. I was tired and resigned. She climbed on top of me and rode me as I forced my body to lay as still as possible, turned my face to one side. I told her “no” several times, but she didn’t stop. I said, “Please stop." But she didn’t. I just laid there. I hoped it would be over soon. It wasn’t. She climaxed several times, and she kept asking me if I had too. I hadn’t, and I didn’t. I became non-responsive. She lifted my hands against her breasts and when she let go my hands would fall limply against my side. My body was still. I went inside myself, then I exited my body. My body was no longer mine; I just felt it move under her weight.

She stopped eventually, tired. I was still erect. That surprised and disappointed me. It was quite possibly the longest erection I’d ever had and I couldn’t figure out why. I was angry with my body. She laid down and slept. I stared at the ceiling until I saw the morning sun rise on it.

When she woke up she looked at me and started to cry. She said, “I raped you.” I said, “yes.” Then I got up. I was hollow, ashamed. This doesn’t happen to men, I thought.

This next reader is the least uncertain of what he experienced at the hands of his girlfriend:

I fall neatly into that category of men who have been raped by a woman but may not have viewed it as such. In my early 20s, after an evening of entirely more drinking than is good for anyone, I bid my friends goodnight and showed them to the door, stumbled upstairs, and passed out on my mattress. My girlfriend at the time had gone out for the night with her girlfriends, so I left the front door unlocked for her.

I came to several hours later, naked on my back and being ridden by her. I woke up just in time to witness her finish, slide off me, and immediately roll over and go to sleep. To be frank, I was more annoyed that she finished and I had not than at the fact that I had been drunkenly used without my consent.

This, in my mind, is a grey area. According to many people, it’s rape despite the fact that we were in a committed relationship and I would have been more than willing had she been able to rouse (all of) me.

I have a daughter now, and the thought of her as an adult in my position, used the same way, is troubling. I would probably be genuinely upset if it bothered her but mildly indignant on her behalf if it did not.

In hindsight, I look back on my experience and laugh about it, and I simply cannot consider it rape. Rape is a slippery concept because it involves all the foibles and emotions of one of the most intimate and powerful interactions two people can have, and paring it down to something as basic as a simplified version of consent ignores things like naivety, lust, confusion, regret, intent, and communication—things that often go hand-in-hand with the act of sex, and things that people experience with different understandings and awareness.

As men, we’re often subtly (in some cases, not so subtly) coached that sex is always a win, as long as the other is willing. It’s often an assumed given that the man wants it, that he consents, and that attitude informs our viewpoints as we develop, to the point that far too many people believe there is no such thing as a female raping a man. I was raped, technically, but I have a hard time calling it that. The act of rape is something despicable, disgusting, damning, and damaging, and mine bothered me so little that we laughed about it, both before and long after our wedding.

I spoke on the phone with another reader, Donna, who had written in to say she’d lost a longtime friend over Thanksgiving weekend when an email exchange about Trump’s election got heated. Donna now feels that “the friendship lasted possibly only because I bit my tongue for 30 years.” The following has been condensed and edited from our conversation:

We were friends for 30 years and he had always been very right-wing. But we had a lot of things in common. He and I share a love of the arts and humanities. Even there, his opinion would slip in at times, in ways that I thought were unfair. I would just listen and maybe once in a while say something very general.

Ironically, the breaking point came over a question of unity: The friend had described a national zeitgeist in favor of Trump, says Donna, and she was so irked by the apparent assumption that most people agreed with him that “I guess I couldn’t fake it anymore.” She wrote back to him saying she was upset and didn’t agree. In his reply, he said he didn’t want to know her anymore.

I asked Donna whether she regretted staying quiet for so long to preserve the friendship, and she wasn’t sure:

He feels so strongly about what he believes, and I don’t think that anybody could change him much. Had I spoken up, I don’t think I would have changed his mind.

After he wrote this long email, I really had a hard time getting to sleep, I was so upset. I had to take a tranquilizer. But last night [after he ended the friendship] I felt a lot calmer, maybe because I finally told him.

Have you ever lost a friend over politics—or found a way to repair a relationship that politics broke? Do you have close friends with whom you disagree on fundamental issues? We’d like to hear your stories: hello@theatlantic.com. I, for one, could certainly use the advice.

But we’ll end on a more cheerful holiday note with Bill and his wife, two liberal Democrats in Tucson who were apprehensive about an invitation from their conservative neighbors, “who couldn’t be further from us on the political scale of things—or so we thought”:

The third couple they invited, also neighbors, are also Republicans. We are all friends, play a little golf together and share a meal occasionally, but we have not spoken since the summer, as we were away at our summer home and arrived a few days before Turkey Day. We were nervous, but we accepted when the host, over the backyard fence, casually mentioned that they had banned all news from their home and are enjoying getting caught up on repeats on the Home Channel.

The afternoon was lovely. No one brought up the election. At one point, as we were discussing in general terms the difficulty in finding anyplace to put our savings and earn anything, the host said he thought the market was going to crumble soon anyway since the President-elect would probably be indicted and impeached soon. His grace at the dinner table was lovely and asked that the healing in the country start right now. We all said a big Amen.

Later, as we discussed health issues, as we tend to do at our boomer ages, the other Republican mentioned that at least we would soon have a single-payer system, e.g. Medicare for All, since the Republicans are going to screw up the current system that seems to be helping an awful lot of Americans and a single-payer system will be the only solution to fix it … a lot of “about time” chiming in around the table. Another shocker.

Hillary’s name never came up. I was all prepared to use my current approach, “I hope HE is successful and helps all Americans.” Never had to.

So, we were pleasantly surprised to say the least, and we thanked all our neighbors for a graceful dinner and their “act of kindness” toward their distressed/depressed Democratic friends.

Did your family or friends surprise you by coming to an understanding? Let us know. And, in case you missed it last week, here is Sage’s illustrated take on Trumpsgiving:

I don’t remember details and have no sense of the time involved, what was said, what anything felt like, or even what I did during those images. I just remember a series of images that do not seem real. I don’t even remember falling asleep.

I woke up in the morning, confused, face down, and naked. She was on the edge of the bed getting dressed. On the floor were two used condoms that I do not remember even having on. She smiled, kissed me quickly on the lips, and said,”That was fun, but I gotta head out this morning. Bye!” She said that in a cheery, normal, not-hungover-at-all voice and walked out the door.

I didn’t even respond to her. I just watched her walk out. I did not even know what to say. I still don’t. I still don’t know how to classify this.

Yes, I know that getting black-out drunk is always a bad idea. Yes, I know that drunken one-night stands happen. I also know that I did not want this, and that everyone there knew that I had gone to sleep early because I was too drunk. I also know that when I think back on this I am equal parts angry, disgusted, and disappointed that I didn’t stop it.

For some reason, I decided to tell this story to two separate female partners in the time since. In both cases, they listened attentively, and then responded in almost identical fashion, “If you were on top, then it wasn’t rape.”

I do not know how to respond to that statement. I honestly don’t fully know what to call this story. I just hope that this story is helpful in some way.

Another reader suspects he was drugged:

I’ve decided to share my rape experience. Unfortunately, I don’t remember much of it, but I will do my best.

I was living in Orlando at the time. Like most young people living on their own for the first time, I had a favorite bar with a good price on drinks.  It was Thursday night, and a few friends and I went there because I didn’t have to go into school until very late on Friday.

We took one of their tables, and we all ordered drinks. I got about halfway through mine and we got up to do some dancing. Retrospectively, that was a bad idea. When we returned, I finished my drink and ordered a second. I don’t even remember getting the second one. All I remember of that night beyond that point is a few flashes of an unfamiliar room, and two different women on top of me.

I was woken up by a police officer poking me in the ribs with his nightstick around 10 in the morning. I was sleeping behind a bush, about 30 miles from the bar and my home. He asked me exactly what happened, and I told him as best as I knew. He offered to give me a ride home, which I accepted. When he dropped me off at home, he told me to be more careful in the future and drove away.

I hadn’t really absorbed what had happened yet. I went inside, showered, and got ready for class. I was still a little unsteady, so I asked a buddy of mine to come pick me up for class. He advised me that one of my other friends (a woman) was very mad at me and I should avoid her, since I went home with a stranger the night before, and he had never seen anyone get so drunk from one drink. He then proceeded to make fun of me for being a “lightweight.” I’m not.

This is the part that continually shocks me to this day, but I didn’t realize I had been assaulted. I knew I had to have been drugged, but the concept of being raped by a woman didn’t even enter my brain at this point, at least not consciously. I started having lots of nightmares on the subject, however, and didn’t realize it was rape until I tried to argue against someone that it wasn’t and realized I couldn’t defend my position.

I decided to seek out the services of a psychologist. Otherwise, I figured this would haunt me forever. I told him the whole story. After I had finished, he started to counsel me, and it went ok at first. I was making progress. Then on the 6th visit, he said something I will never forget: Until I take responsibility for what happened, I will never get past it.

I left, and I never sought therapy again, although I probably should. The nightmares never left. I feel like I can’t tell anyone. Only my wife knows and sympathizes. She also has to deal with some sexual difficulties, although I manage ok. But I can’t help shake the feeling mentally that, other than her, nobody knows, and nobody would care if they did. It’s very isolating.

This next reader also blacked out—and owns up to that fact:

First, I’d like to start by saying that I’ve been a huge fan of the Notes section since its inception. It’s very rare to find a comments section worth reading, and I’m sure I’m not the only one who has benefited from the myriad perspectives and stories you’ve published thus far. This is the first thread I’ve felt qualified to contribute, which I suppose is a bit of a mixed blessing. Hopefully someone out there can take something valuable from my experiences.

***

Sex has been a difficult issue for me since before I had any grasp of what it actually was or entailed. My first sexual experiences happened at an extremely young age, something that was not due to molestation or rape at the hands of an adult, but rather child-on-child sexual abuse initiated by an extremely close friend. It’s a complicated subject—one that has no easy answers or identifiable parties to blame. There are only victims.

Needless to say, my views on sex and intimacy have been cast in the shadow of those early experiences. Due in part to unresolved issues that blossomed from them, I have had many problems with mental health in my life, including depression, disordered eating, suicide attempts, and substance abuse. These have all blended together in ways both positive and negative with regards to my love life; I have never had a relationship that wasn’t either extremely passionate or crazy or both. Clinginess is a part of my romantic personality, as are jealously and a propensity to shut down.

On the flip side, I can be extremely sweet, caring, and tender, to levels that my partners attest they haven't experienced in past relationships. In spite of all these hurdles and difficulties in my private affairs, I’ve managed to become a somewhat regular guy in the public realm, with a well-paying steady job and a small circle of close friends.

I preface the story with this information to let you know that this is not a clear-cut tale of “woman rapes man.” It is confused and messy, an experience that can’t come down to a simple act of someone else exerting their power over my person. I felt in the aftermath of it, and still feel now deep inside, that I share some of the blame for what happened to me.

***

I had just graduated from university and was in a rut. My partner—the longest relationship I had ever had at that point and a woman whom I loved dearly—had graduated in the same class but was clearly bound for bigger and better things. Our relationship was the most stable and regular one I’d ever experienced. That was not just my opinion; we were such an item that our friends referred to us as the “old married couple,” a moniker we took great pride in.

As the college days began to recede, however, the fear of abandonment and loneliness set in. I became afraid that she would leave or that I wouldn’t want to follow, and I began coping by drinking and closing myself off. The relationship obviously began deteriorating at that point, which only further exacerbated my paranoia and despondency.

One weekend, she and our mutual friend group left town to go to a concert in the country. I was supposed to meet up with another friend at a local bar, and since it was a Friday, I went out early and had a few drinks beforehand. Six beers, and then to the other pub. The friend never showed, but another mutual friend did. He bought me a drink—some sort of mezcal martini that’s popular at that particular establishment.

That’s where my night ends.

There are a few blurs of consciousness in between; I see a seat belt out of the corner of my right eye; the flash of pines and brick buildings flying by; the reflection of a sedan in the storefront windows. Nothing more.

I woke up the next morning and couldn’t see. My glasses were gone. I didn’t recognize the apartment, or the futon where I was sitting upright, my genitals exposed, my pants around my ankles. I had no shirt on. My head was so fogged that I was convinced that this could not be real. Time didn’t seem to move correctly. This wasn’t reality.

A woman enters the room after a time. She apparently owns the apartment. I tell her that I can’t find my glasses. She looks on the counters while I crawl on hands and knees reaching under the furniture. Eventually I find them and put them on, but they do nothing to remove the blurriness from my perception.

She tells me that I fell asleep in the middle of it, and so she went to bed after she couldn’t wake me. She invites me to bed. I agree. We have sex, again apparently. She takes a picture of me with a Polaroid camera and writes my name on the white border, then slips the image into her drawer.

The dream doesn’t end, and that’s when I start to be afraid. I tell her I need to go home. She drives me to my place, which looks surreal in the morning light. She gives me her phone number, then a kiss, and then drives off.

I went inside and sat down for an hour. Nothing changed. Nothing became clearer. My head hurt worse with every passing minute. And then I knew that none of this was a dream, and that I had really just done this.

After what seemed like years, I took a shower, dressed myself, and walked to my girlfriend’s house. She opened the door and I told her that I needed to talk. I told her I had cheated. I had. There’s not much in my life that I would like to eliminate from my memory, but the look on her face when I said those words is one of them.

We didn’t speak for two weeks, and then she called me to tell me it was over. Frankly, it would have been over at some point, but to have it end because of what I did, and didn’t even remember, was terrible. I dropped out of all my social circles, deleted Facebook, and didn’t leave the house for about three years. Two months after this happened, in a fit of severe depression, I called the number my rapist gave me, convinced that she was the only one who would have me now. She didn’t answer and didn’t return my message.

***

Things have gotten better now. I have new friends, good friends, a new partner, and a better job that has brought some financial stability to my life. My friends are hard-drinking, rambunctious, and crass—a personality type that suits me well—and we’re unafraid to get into taboo territory with our conversation. I’ve told some of them about what happened. They are sympathetic but I can tell that they don’t really believe me. My partner doesn’t fully believe me either. That a late-20s male who’s over 6’5’’ could be taken advantage of seems absurd. It’s more likely that I got drunk and wanted it, isn’t it?

I know that I really didn’t want any of it, or any of the consequences, but that’s how life works.

My rapist is still in our town, and I see her regularly. We neither speak nor acknowledge each other, though my friends are close to her. Just a few nights ago, a new addition to our social circle got swept up in conversation with her, and she began acting aggressively. My friend (who knows) tried to wedge herself into the conversation while I took my buddy to the bathroom to fill him in. I don’t know if anything would have happened, but I’d like there to be no more Polaroids in her collection.

This next reader didn’t appear to be drinking a lot that night but was fast asleep when the incident began:

I still can’t bring myself to use “the R word” in reference to what happened. I’ve had other friends—ladies, mostly—say yes, that’s what Jane did. But, I still can’t say it in reference to myself. Instead, I say I was forced into sex because I felt I had no good exit given the circumstances. Changing the name of it doesn’t make it any easier.

***

I met Jane (not her real name) around 2012 on a dating site. She had several things going for her that I found attractive, such as her interest in the arcane and odd as well as art, music, and a dark sense of humor. From a physical standpoint, Jane was fabulously “Rubenesque”; I found that attractive since I like women with curves. (I’m over 200lbs and six foot two.)

Over the course of a few dates, Jane and I found out that we had a lot in common, including friends, but we also realized that we would not work as couple. Instead, Jane and I found ourselves as great “friends with benefits.”

I’ve been in horrible and great versions of such an arrangement. The worst is when sex is all that’s there. The best is when sex is part of a broader friendship focused on enjoying time together.

About a year after we started being “friends with benefits,” I moved out of state. We’d chat from time to time and maintained a presence in each other’s lives because, like I said, we enjoyed each other’s company and the sex was great.  

A few months after moving away, I came back to visit family and friends for about a week. Among the friends I planned to spend time with was Jane. In fact, the plan was for me to stay over at her house on my last night in town and then catch my flight home in the morning.  

Because, it had been a long day of running around town, I met Jane at the bar where a band we both loved, featuring some mutual friends, was playing. It was a great show. But I was exhausted. So, after our friends ended their set I told Jane I was going to head back to her house to sleep. I asked if she wanted to come along as well. Jane decided to stay back, have another drink, and chat with friends. “No problem,” I told her, “I’ll see you when you get home.”

It must about been 1am when I slipped into Jane’s bed. As I expected, I was out by the time my head hit the pillow.

When Jane returned home I wasn’t sure what time it was because I didn’t hear her or see the clock when I was partly roused when she got in bed. As I said, I was exhausted. Not fully awake, I felt Jane cuddle and then start running her hands over me. Sleeping naked, it was easy access for her to fondle me. After pushing her hands away, she became more aggressive. At one point, she grabbed me and started giving me oral. That’s when I was started to wake up, realize what was going on, and I told her I was too tired, I needed to sleep.

I tried to rollover and forget what just happened. But she wouldn’t stop.

Jane started to touch me even more. She even took my hands and placed them her breasts and then between her thighs to show me how in need of sex she was and how I should also be turned on as well. I wasn’t turned on. In fact, I was the opposite. I tried to move my hands off her, but she kept grabbing me and putting them back on her body.

I told her “no” again and again. I told her again that I was tired, and that now was not the time. She didn’t want to hear it.

I could tell she was drunk. I begged her to stop, but she didn’t. In fact, she started to use her strength to push my head towards her crouch. I was now almost completely awake, upset, and trying to assess what I should do.

I felt there were several possibilities, all of them equally bad. I could get up, get dressed, gather my things, and try to leave. But, with her being drunk, rough with me, and refusing to take “no” for answer, I realized that it might lead to a fight in order to escape. With my plane leaving in about six hours, I saw that scenario leading to medical treatment and/or legal problems for one or both of us.

Also, I thought if the cops were called she might turn the situation on me, claiming I raped her because there could have been evidence of the sex we had earlier that day. Plus, such a complaint by her would fit the script of what normally happens: man attacks woman, right? Since she was drunk and unstable, I had no idea what she would do given that Jane was not willing to respect my pleading “no.”

Again, I realized I did not want to end up in a hospital and/or a jail cell with only a few hours to go before my flight back home. At the time, I felt like it would prolong the problem and I would have to deal with the fallout of this horrible night from two timezones away.

So, I did what I felt I had to do in order to get out of the situation as fast as I could: I gave her what she wanted.

It probably didn’t last more than 10 minutes, but it felt like hours in my head. After giving her the oral she demanded through her vice grip on my head, I faked an orgasm after a few minutes of doggy-style sex just to get it over with.

As soon as I was “done,” I got up, went to the bathroom, splashed some cold water on my face, and tried to gather myself mentally and emotionally in the mirror. When I returned to the bedroom, she was barely awake, lying in bed, about to drift off to sleep.

I looked at her as I got back in bed. While I might have looked calm outside, inside, I was seething—shaking and angry. I’ve never hated anyone so much for what they had done to me.

Here I was with someone who was my friend. Someone I had shared laughs, tears, and great intimate times with that I trusted with my body and secrets. Someone who took something I enjoyed in my life, sex, and turned it into something so horrible and painful. How could she put me in this situation? Why did she not respect me? I didn’t deserve to be treated like this.     

As I rolled over, away from her, facing the wall, I closed my eyes and started to feel tears rolling down my cheeks. More tears streamed down my face as I buried it in my pillow.

It probably took about 20 minutes as I waited to hear the sounds of her soundly sleeping. I got up slowly from the bed, trying to not to wake Jane. I gathered my clothes, went back to the bathroom, got dressed, gathered my luggage from the other room, and left. My watch said it was about 4am.

As I got in my rental car to leave, I felt so cold, alone, and violated. Because it was so early, I don’t know what to do or who to call. I just started driving—no idea where I was going to go. But I remembered a 24-hour diner nearby, so I headed there. I sat down, got something to drink, and wrote in my journal.

Then I received a text; my flight out of town was going to be delayed an extra day due to weather. Great, I thought, I have to stay here another day when all I want is to return home, see my cats, sleep, and get back to normal life.

As the sun was coming up, I left the diner, called a good friend of mine from out of state, and we talked as I sat in the car in the parking lot of a big box store. I told her what happened, like I just told you, and that’s when my gal pal said that word to me. My friend said she felt what happened to me was rape.

I couldn’t bring myself to say it.

After the sun rose, I started calling friends for a place to stay for Sunday night. Luckily, I had a place to go for my extra day before my rescheduled flight left early Monday morning.

Then around noon I started to get calls from Jane. I refused to answer, so she left a voicemail wondering where I was and why I left without saying goodbye. I texted that I did not want to talk to her and I never wanted to see her again after what she did.

“What happened?” she texted.

At first, I didn’t want to respond. But I did. “You forced me to have sex with you last night. I told you NO … but, you wouldn’t stop.”

The phone rang again. I didn’t pick up, so Jane left another message. “I don’t believe what you are telling me. I’d never do anything to hurt you. I don’t remember any of this. I’m so upset. Please call me. We need to talk.” I could hear the concern in her voice.  

I texted Jane back, again, and wrote that she did not deserve to talk to me for what she did. I added that if she didn’t remember what happened, she’s a bigger danger to herself and others than I could ever imagine. Because the only way Jane could have done what she did was if she was blackout drunk and, if that was the case, how did she make the 30-minute drive home from the bar?

Jane texted apologizing, again, and said she wanted to talk. But I told her she would never hear from me and to never contact me again. “Have a nice life!”—my final text to Jane.

***

“How does a woman rape a man?” The whole situation put me in an odd place—emotionally, and at odds with how our culture views men who have been sexually assaulted. I guess I refused to see what happened as rape because, like many, that word is reserved for what happens to women—and to be honest it’s often related to physiology. When you look around the culture, you see the idea of a woman forcing a man into sex as either not a bad thing—because men are always supposed to be ready to go—or that it’s physically impossible.

The majority of talk around men being raped in our culture centers on sexual violence committed by men in positions of power on young boys, like what happened in the Catholic Church. Or it’s inmate-on-inmate rape in prison. My scenario was neither of those.

Also, there’s an aspect of feeling like I put myself in a bad situation. Sure, I could have got out of bed, got dressed, and left. But, like I said before, I was concerned for my own physical safety and having to deal with the legal system on my last night in town. Was it the best choice to just give in? Maybe not, but, I felt like I had few options.

We can play “Monday Morning Quarterback” now, but that doesn’t change the facts of what happened or how I’ve been left to process this violation of my body and emotional trust at the hands of someone who I considered a dear friend. I admit, there’s part of me that feels that I should have done something else. But then again, isn’t that just another version of blaming the victim?

***

Two years have gone by, and I’ve only told a few select people—friends, lovers—and they have been supportive. But it still haunts me from time to time. I want to believe it hasn’t hurt my intimate relationships since then, but it still gets me angry thinking about it. That, sadly, is a typical male reaction to trauma: anger instead of sadness.

Some days, I feel trapped with this horrible memory. I’ve often thought that because my scenario is relatively rare, or at least I believe it to be, there is no infrastructure in place to help men like me.

That’s not to say things are better for women. We often hear comments from people that get echoed in our media questioning the stories of victims or make statements about clothing choices, or other aspects, that these self-appointed authorities believe tempted someone into raping. When you couple such ignorance with problems in the legal system, like the massive backlog of rape kits in cities like Detroit, you can understand why so many assaults go unreported.

At the same time, because women face the majority of the assaults in our culture, there appears to be a better—although far from stellar—support system in place for our sisters, mothers, and daughters when they become victims. But where can a young man go when he’s facing a situation like mine?

She became upset, crying that I must not like her, and mumbling semi-coherently until I heard the word “married.” I asked if she thought I was married, to which she clarified that she was in fact married. She’d wanted a divorce for a year (they’d been married for two) but he wouldn’t divorce her until she found someone else. She hoped that coming to Australia for a year would cause him to find someone else, and she wanted the same.

At this point any remaining vestige of doubt was out of my mind that I would absolutely not sleep with her. Like an idiot, and concerned for this seemingly unstable woman in my bed, I let her share the other side of the queen bed for the night. I didn’t sleep much that night.

The next day we toured around the city as I do with my guests, just a bit more anxious than before. I figured we laid it all out and there wouldn’t be an issue the next day. Maybe her marriage was really bad, and she did say she’d been tipsy earlier, so it happens. New country, new experiences—maybe she figured that’s how things were in Australia (with an American, no less). That night I again set out the sofabed and we went to bed, and I was confident that it was closed out and settled.

I don’t know when I woke up, but it must have been somewhere around midnight. She was in my bed again, then I thought “fine, she just crawled in again, whatever.” Long after that, I was awoken again and my boxers were off and she was on top of me. Maybe I’d been dreaming, but I’d become “ready” and she was on top of me.

I confess, for the first few bleary moments I went with it, but it was only that. My brain realised where I was and what was going on and I felt shocked and ... well, the words don’t come easily to this reaction, but my body was acting against me. I pushed her off, repeating “no no no no no.” She was smaller than me, and despite some tenacity (she repeated some lines about how much I would enjoy it and to relax and things like that), I was able to push her away.

This time she had a new story. She had become pregnant last year, and she asked her husband if she should have an abortion. He told her it should be up to her and he wouldn’t give an opinion. Between sobs, I pieced together that she wished he’d told her he wanted the baby and stepped up passionately. I’m not sure that’s fair to him—hell, not much of all this is—but whatever.

She asked me, explicitly, to “give [her] a baby.” She pledged to take care of “it” entirely herself, that she didn’t need me in the kid’s life but she just wanted to have that baby now.

Again, I had no idea how to handle this. My emotional patience was also starting to come up against the fact that I felt like I’d been, well, assaulted. It didn’t sound like she’d had an easy life in China by any stretch, and while I wanted to help her, I was feeling violated, taken advantage of. For what? Because I seemed like a future partner? Because she wanted to get out of China? Because she wanted a divorce? Because she wanted a child to make up for the one she didn’t have?

I took a deep breath and tried to calm her down. Then, again, I let her sleep in the bed with me. I know how that sounds, and I feel like such a moron even typing it out.

The next morning turned out to be our last time together. I had barely slept, taking every slight shift or sound shocking me awake and check my surroundings. I was jittery as we prepared for the day; I was set to take her over to one of the beaches. I was trying to stay upbeat and energised despite my brain having a thousand conflicting sensations at once.

“You look fake,” she said. “I don’t like it when you look fake.” Her face was very serious,  as though I’d lied to her and she was my partner.

“Well,” I replied, “to be quite honest I am pretty uncomfortable right now. I just want to go about our business and go to the beach and last night ... well it really got to me.” I was shaking slightly at this stage, my voice pitched a bit higher.

She proceeded to go into the bathroom and slam the door, blasting sad Chinese music from her phone as she took a half-hour shower. I didn’t know what to think, worrying that she was cutting herself or worse. I did not want anything bad to happen to her especially under my supposed watch.

After a few knocks she emerged, saying she was fine but looking despondent. As I gathered my things for our outing (yes, I was still trying to be a host), she grabbed me by the shoulders and pushed me towards the wall. “I want to have sex now.” I raised my arms in the air as if to say “don’t shoot” and turned my face away. I twisted away and grabbed my backpack and headed for the door. “I cannot do this. I think you should go.”

Then I left. Yes, I left my own apartment. I didn’t want to stay for the time it would have taken her to gather her things. I headed down to my favourite local cafe and sat down, worrying whether she’d follow me there. I spent three hours sipping coffee wondering when to go back and what I’d find when I got there. Then I got a text message from her saying she’d left and gone to a hostel. It was two days before her original planned last day at my place.

This all makes little sense; I should have kicked her out earlier; I shouldn’t have let her in my bed; I shouldn’t have left her alone in my apartment after that last morning; I shouldn’t have gone forward with those activities together after that first night even. It’s why I've never told this story, and I don’t know yet how to summarise it. I still don't know how to categorise what happened, how much sympathy to have for her situation, how much anger I should have.

I haven’t hosted anyone since then, because I don’t even know what I’d do if it happened again. Could it even?

Anyway, you probably can’t do anything with a story this long, but I thought I’d get it off my chest ... whatever it was.

If you have your own story to share, please drop us a note. Update from a reader who also experienced unwanted sexual aggression while living abroad:

I very much enjoyed the article on female sexual predators, though it was a little difficult to get through. I find that even using language to express sexual predation is difficult for men. We don’t have an easily accessible vocabulary. I’ve found when I try and talk about my experiences, I am met with a lot of confusion and judgement even from people who should know better.

I experienced what I call unwanted, repeated, systemic sexual advances when I was an English teaching assistant for [a prominent U.S. organization]. I taught at a low-performing public high school in rural Malaysia. My school and community was 100 percent Malay/Muslim. The male choir teacher and a wheelchair-bound female secretary made a difficult placement exponentially more so. I received strange texts, invitations, poems, and at times, unwanted touching and intentional isolation during my year.

For a woman, they could reliably use the language of harassment or stalking. There are legal as well as social definitions for these behaviors. I’m not sure if that describes my experience. I didn’t report the incidences to my school—it was the last year our program sent teachers there—but I did to the program officials. Despite our cohort being three-quarter female, who themselves have a very difficult time, it was understood that men, especially white and straight, couldn’t experience these things. I was told as much by our gay male coordinator.

The second episode occurred last year at a hostel in Oaxaca, Mexico. I was the only person staying in a 12-person dorm. I was cornered in my room by the girl working there. I tried to explain I had a girlfriend, in Spanish, but she continued. I call that “forced, non-consensual touching” both giving and receiving. She finally left. I locked the door, woke up at 6am scared, and left secretly. It was a shitty morning.

The third incident occurred this April. I was raped in South Africa by an Italian PhD researcher. I like the language the article uses via the CDC: “being forced to penetrate.” After the initial confusion, helplessness, betrayal, exhaustion, and violence ended, I immediately tried to make sense of what happened. Was this assault? Was it rape? How is this similar or different than what happened previously?

It was rape, and I have no problems saying that nowadays.

If I typed out the story and hid the gender of each actor, you could very reasonably assume a classic male-assaulting-female narrative. Person one gets two drunk, forces unprotected sex, argues it is okay, and doesn’t think anything is wrong even sober the next morning. Person two feels awful, dirty, helpless, and without any recourse to authority formal or informal.

Was she hot? Men ask. Did you like it? Women assume. What’s so bad about that? Future sexual partners inquire.

It makes me sad how many men I have shared my experiences with and they relate similar stories. I haven’t been public about any of this on social media, just private conversations. Most people are supportive, but it surprises me how, for example, a human rights lawyer working with women’s issues in Africa can make rape jokes and think it’s okay. Roles reversed, I’d be crucified.

It’s a frustrating and understandable double standard. As the article observes, huge strides have been made in decreasing the stigma of reporting sexual violence against women. But compassion isn’t finite. Instead of choosing misanthropy, I embrace love and openness. I have had a few very positive experiences since.

I didn’t seek retribution against my perpetrator. I told one person in charge that I trusted and moved on with my life. I probably looked like an asshole; some guy arriving in a community, hooking up, and abruptly leaving.

What was I supposed to do? Get a rape kit? I guess I should have taken pictures of the bloody scratches and bites. Women, fortunately, are taught these kinds of things.

Update: Here are four readers who say they were sexually assaulted by women while under in the influence of alcohol and/or drugs.

Unlike many academics, I view work as a part of my life and not life itself. There are many things at play when it comes to creating a life, but the academic job market really limits most your options with a lot of those things. Seriously, why would I live in a town of 30,000 and be one of few people of color when I can take my same degree have a full life somewhere else?

This black woman did just that:

Your notes on this subject really struck a nerve with me. My PhD is in the social sciences rather than STEM, but I went along much the same journey as your previous readers. As a kid, my family was lower-middle class in its best years, and it was drilled into me from early on that the path to a solidly middle-class life required higher education.

Like many people who pursue a PhD, I am intrinsically motivated by the desire to explore, learn, and grow. However, I emphatically do not buy into the notion that in order to do this work, I have to sacrifice my financial well-being. Many other professions provide the opportunity to learn and grow in your chosen field while also providing a very nice living (software engineers and physicians, for example).

We live in a society that, in part, signals the value and importance of an occupation (or its workers) by how much organizations are willing to pay to have that work done. When scientists and social scientists willingly forgo appropriate compensation and financial stability for the “privilege” [as a reader put it] of working in their chosen field, as a group, we are saying that our work is not valuable or important. I refuse to go along with that.

Now, six years after getting my PhD, my “luckier” compatriots are working 60+ hour weeks to gain tenure and my less lucky compatriots are weighing another move to another town where they’d rather not live in the hope of joining the tenure track. I, on the other hand, am working at a research consulting firm, in a management position, in my preferred area of research. My research has concrete, positive impacts on people’s lives. I work 100 percent remotely for my company, allowing me to live where I want and still do the work I love. I earn twice as much as newly tenured professors at my alma mater, which affords me the home ownership, annual vacations, and other perks of a middle class life.

Overall, I made the best decision for me, even if it’s not great for minority representation in STEM (or social sciences).

Your reader makes an important point about refusing to label Trump but learning how to deal with him and his personality traits. Ironically, his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, owns a newspaper, The Observer, that wrote an opinion article in January 2016: “How to Deal With a Narcissist: 5 Secrets Backed by Research.” It now seems like a cry for help. We now know why there are reports of Kushner being quiet when Trump talks. It’s one of the five strategies outlined in the piece. I also found an article from Psychology Today when trying to deal with a narcissist in my life: “8 Ways to Handle a Narcissist.”

A prominent person in the tech industry remarks on how the Trump is trying to play us:

Great blogging from Fallows and your readers on how the media can deal with Trump. Trolling, fake news, his lying—very serious issues for the media. I believe he and his folks are doing a lot to point “fire” when they want to distract from something else. For example, KellyAnne and the Romney thing take the heat off the conflicts of interest [here’s a link to the latter]. Trump saying something moderate on global warming or Obamacare, then, his minions/Republicans working behind the scenes destructively. Friends are reporting to me that they’re getting calls, a Trump recording, telling them to ask their representatives to push to repeal Obamacare. This is absolutely one of the hardest politicians the media has ever seen and he has an astonishing ability to manipulate.

Another reader, Mike, tries to keep us all focused on what really matters:

In addition to Fallows’ Time Capsules, I have collected a small list of similar resources:

• A running guide to Donald Trump's highly abnormal presidency (VICE News)
• Donald Trump’s Conflicts of Interest: A Crib Sheet (The Atlantic)
• Trump's conflicts of interest take White House into uncharted territory (The Guardian)
• A running list of how Donald Trump’s new position may be helping his business interests (Washington Post)
• Trump’s Lack of Transparency Again Exposed by the Routine Openness of a Foreign Leader (The Intercept)
• Data firm in talks for role in White House messaging – and Trump business (The Guardian)
• Trump to scrap Nasa climate research in crackdown on ‘politicized science’ (The Guardian)
• Trump Foundation admits to violating ban on ‘self-dealing,’ new filing to IRS shows (Washington Post)
• In Scotland, Trump Built a Wall. Then He Sent Residents the Bill. (New York Times)
• Trump could gain the most from his own tax plan (CNBC)

Of course, this barely scratches the surface. I mean for Christ’s sake, he still hasn’t released his tax returns!

Many of these stories pop up and then fade away with the next news cycle (usually brought on by whatever new inane thing Trump has tweeted), so it seems to me like nothing really sticks: he is The Teflon Donald. He peddles paranoid conspiracies with a pathological persistence, and when journalists do their job, he hits back with claims of a “biased”, “rigged”, “phony”, “failing” media. This is, as they say, problematic.

This next reader thinks that even Fallows isn’t going far enough in “calling it like it is”:

In the spirit of your own blogging, in addition to using the words Lie and False and Cruel and Amoral, etc., when they fit, please use the word Propaganda. This is an intentional pattern and strategy of our Propagandist-in-Chief. Please stop calling it “a furry creature that barks and chases squirrels up trees” and start calling it a dog.

Another suggestion for the media comes from reader Greg:

I believe journalists should stop using the word “tweet” to describe the tweets that Mr. Trump so often issues. Now that he is President-elect, his tweets carry far more significance than just the off-the cuff rants of an impulsive campaigner, as was often the way they were characterized in the past year. Calling these soon-to-be-presidential statements “tweets” only reinforces the tendency to not take his comments so seriously. But these are now presidential pronouncements. They express policy, positions. If Mr. Trump is going to continue to use Twitter as a major form of communication, then give these communiques (another good word for them) the gravitas they deserve. If The Atlantic still feels a need to source them to “Twitter,” then do it a final sentence or somewhere else in the story.

Another suggestion comes from another reader named Mike:

It would be interesting to see a new Time Capsule series focused on one issue: who in the media is vying to be the next Judith Miller and Matt Cooper. Both of these individuals were totally played by the GW Bush administration and wittingly played along for their own career success. I’m sure you remember the whole Iraq war thing. Sadly, I have no doubt that a new generation of reporters have no concern for truth or hard investigative work. They are too busy fluffing their nest today. Not to mention all the financially focused, false-news web sources that have exploded in number.

Investigative journalism needs to call out its own pretenders. I believe that should be a guideline for the media in reporting on the upcoming liar-in-chief administration.

This last reader, Rob, proposes an extremely unlikely but interesting scenario:

Donald Trump has upended the political and ethical norms of American presidential campaigns. This has been said so often and has been true for so long that observers may be numb to it. The list of unprecedented acts and statements is long and varied. [Fallows assiduously chronicled them here.] None of these acts are strictly speaking illegal. Yet they are shocking nonetheless because, taken together, they reflect his view that he may do anything that is strictly speaking legal to advance his narrow personal interests. That is, Mr. Trump has implicitly rejected the idea that extra-legal social, political, and ethical norms support our democracy and enable it to function even when the nation is deeply divided.

If Donald Trump the norm-destroying candidate were to become Donald Trump the norm-destroying President, the consequences for the stability of our democratic governing institutions could be grave. Freedom will not flourish where the conduct of those in power is regulated by law alone. Those who want to “give him a chance” implicitly hope, even if they don’t necessarily expect, that the weight of the office will transform Mr. Trump into someone more attentive to the importance of long established norms.

But hope is not a plan, especially when the stakes are so high. So I am proposing that the House of Representatives prepare, and have at the ready from Day 1 of the Trump administration, draft articles of impeachment that will do what Donald Trump may be unwilling to do: enforce norms rooted in fundamental constitutional commitments.

I have drafted templates (modeled on the Articles of Impeachment of Bill Clinton) and appended them [in my email]. My examples highlight two constitutional principles worthy of protection through threat of impeachment. The first three articles deal with the potential for Mr. Trump to use his office for financial gain, either his own or that of family members or business associates. The last article deals with the potential for Mr. Trump to use the vast powers of the executive branch to impose costly, embarrassing, and disruptive investigations on his political enemies and critics.

Both kinds of abuse of power may not be strictly “illegal” in the sense of violating any governing statutes, and they are unlikely to be within the reach of courts to prevent. For that reason, it is all the more important for Congress to rise in defense of them.

I am not naive. I recognize that the House of Representatives (and the Senate) are presently in the control of the same party as Mr. Trump. The House is not going to impeach the President on the first day of his administration, and it shouldn’t. But that is not a reason to refuse to prepare them. In fact, there are several reasons to prepare the articles even if they remain in a drawer during the entirety of the Trump administration.

First, the act of publicly preparing the draft articles themselves will serve as a marker of important constitutional norms that Mr. Trump transgresses at his and the nation’s peril. Drafting model articles of impeachment will inform not only the President himself, but also those in his administration. There are constraints on the President built into the deliberative process within the executive branch. Articles of impeachment pre-drafted by members of Congress could strengthen the hands of those in the administration who see public value in restraining the self-serving impulses of the President. And, of course, drafting articles of impeachment would inform the public as well, providing a baseline against which to judge Mr. Trump’s choices.

Second, publicly preparing the draft would itself be a valuable assertion of Congress’s role in regulating the outer edge of what is a vast area of discretion committed to the executive branch. Defining the boundaries of permissible executive discretion is not a job only for the President or the Supreme Court. The President always has an interest in advancing the power of his own office. And transgressions that affect the political culture writ large may well prove out of the Court’s reach. Congress has an institutional interest in overseeing executive branch abuses. Under the unprecedented circumstances we face, with this incoming President so cavalierly expressing a willingness to abuse the powers of his office, it is especially important for Congress to declare its readiness to police the conduct of the President himself.

Third, sometimes the credible threat of deploying power is all it takes to encourage better conduct. For example, the President possesses the veto power. But he will commonly issue a veto threat, after careful internal White House deliberation, in an effort to encourage Congress to take a better course of action. Likewise here, a credible impeachment threat may be all it takes to encourage President Trump to take a better course of action.

Fourth, it is no secret that the President and many members of the Republican congressional delegation do not see eye to eye on matters of policy and personal conduct. By declaring their intention to police the President on matters of constitutional principle related to his personal conduct, the Republican leadership would be able to maintain separation from a President they have reason to fear may disappoint for lack of experience and competence across a wide array of his responsibilities. Republican members of Congress may not wish to tie their political fortunes so tightly to this President. If some meaningful number of Republicans could stand on Constitutional principle and endorse the drafting of potential articles of impeachment, Congress would be credibly threatening actual impeachment should Mr. Trump not alter his behavior.

I recognize the irony of proposing an act that runs contrary to a political norm (Congress threatening an incoming President with impeachment) in defense of political norms in general. But the damage from the election and transition process is substantial. And Mr. Trump has shown almost no indication that he is approaching his new and rather awesome responsibilities with a respect for the dignity of the office and the power it carries. Scolding the cast of a Broadway show via Twitter, and baselessly asserting that his opponent’s popular vote lead is the product of “millions” of fraudulent votes suggests that this President-elect has learned precisely the wrong lesson: that indulging his petty, self-serving impulses works. The only institution with the authority to declare that he is wrong is Congress.