What do you call someone if they're not a survivor?

[the_drifter]

So far today, two of my friends have posted with amazing bravery about being survivors of sexual assault. The things they said inspired me to make a post of my own.

I have been alive for 25 years and eight months, and as of today, I have never experienced sexual abuse or assault.

Comments

[bironic]

This is a wonderful post. I have never been sexually abused or threatened, and yet -- even aside from your very valid point that this should not be a result of luck -- as a female the same age as you, I still feel nervous or fearful to walk in certain places at certain times, and that is utterly unfair. I need to shape my plans around worst-case scenarios; ask myself things like: Should I take the train into the city from the town where I work or from the town where I live, because at the station near where I work, I have to walk two blocks alone at night? Just now, I thought of your post and other posts today as I walked from my driveway to my front door, in what feels almost always like a perfectly safe suburban neighborhood, quickly and with keys in hand and without stopping by my mailbox at the street, just because there was a car idling at the sidewalk and I didn't know who it was. Why is it -- why should it be that a girl needs to imagine a man stepping from the car and accosting her, and assess the risk of walking the thirty feet into her house versus pulling out again and coming home later?