OK Cucumber is an illustrated series of greetings and pickup lines from popular online dating sites. It is presented as a graphic survey to reflect on the experience of online dating as a racialized subject, using drawing as both a tool of contemplation and an embodied response. Emmie Tsumura is a multidisciplinary illustrator and graphic designer based in Tkaronto/ Toronto. COURTESY @OKCUCUMBER · WWW.EMMIE-TSUMURA.FORMAT.COM/GRAPHIC-DESIGN

Amy was sexually assaulted three years ago, and we matched on Tinder in June. Even though I’m a journalist and a stranger she met online, I’m one of the only people she’s ever told her story to.

It started when Amy, who lives in Yellowknife, agreed to go for coffee with a man named Paul. As the date was wrapping up, Paul asked if she wanted to go for a drive, reluctantly agreeing that they wouldn’t stray too far from home. To Amy’s alarm, Paul drove her much farther out than she expected—hitting the Ingraham Trail, they sped by the city’s borders in his truck, passing Prosperous Lake and Madeline Lake, more than 27 kilometres out of the city. When Paul finally stopped the car, Amy refused to get out, sensing something was horribly wrong.

Paul tried to pull her out of the car. Then, he forced himself on top of her, kissing her and pulling at her clothes. Amy fought back, screaming at him to stop touching her and take her home. Paul was furious: He told her she shouldn’t have let him waste gas if she wasn’t willing to have sex with him. Amy got out of the truck, and Paul drove away, leaving her stranded and alone on the trail at night.

Amy met Paul on the popular online dating site Plenty of Fish. (To protect Amy’s identity, both their names have been changed.) Online dating websites and the mobile apps that followed have made dating and hook-ups more convenient than ever. But conversations have emerged about how toxic these spaces can become for women and marginalized people. The technology makes it easy to forge meaningful connections with people—and to mistreat them.

Using accounts on different dating apps and swiping on users across the country, I searched for people who wanted to share their experiences with sexual harassment. Users who consented to being interviewed spoke to me about what they’d gone through and expressed their views on what apps could do to make their spaces safer.

There’s no doubt dating apps have a role to play in promoting safe romantic interactions, and in many cases, platforms have taken their responsibilities to heart. But sexual harassment and assault are social problems—and a culture shift is required if things are ever going to get better.

***

Online dating websites like Plenty of Fish and OKCupid have been around since the early 2000s, initially functioning as classified ads for potential mates. In 2009, capitalizing on smartphone geo-location settings, bisexual men connect with other men in their area. The subsequent launch of Tinder in 2012 revolutionized the dating scene by turning romance into a game: Users rifle through the profiles of potential flames like playing cards, swiping “left” to pass on a person, or “right” to express interest.

Marina Adshade is a professor at the Vancouver School of Economics at the University of British Columbia and at the School of Public Policy at Simon Fraser University. Adshade is an expert on the economics of love and holds a “techno-optimist” perspective, arguing that it’s hard to see how expanding the choice pool can have an overall negative impact on user satisfaction. From a purely economic standpoint, she tells me, dating apps solve a “thin market problem”: When there are too few romantic options for people in real life, it becomes difficult to find a partner without having to lower your standards.

But as much as dating apps have done for their users, they’ve also fuelled anxieties. Google “dating apps and hook-up culture” and you’ll get more than 10 million hits, including several ruminations on the abysmal state of love in the digital age. In the fall of 2015, when Tinder was already in its prime, Nancy Jo Sales published “Tinder and the Dawn of the ‘Dating Apocalypse’” in Vanity Fair, featuring testimonies from users who were both enamoured and disillusioned with dating apps and the role they’ve come to play in romantic life. (Tinder took to Twitter to accuse Sales of unfair reporting.)

There’s no question that some users have negative experiences on dating apps—a social media kaleidoscope of Facebook groups, Tumblrs, and Twitter threads have emerged to put some of the notoriously bad behaviour of app users on public display. Identifying harassment, however, is complicated by the fact that many users overtly seek out sexual experiences. Divergent user preferences—for hook-ups, for long-term relationships, for one-night stands—can result in unpleasant interactions when expectations collide.

***

It’s common for women on dating apps to receive unsolicited sexual advances from male users. A 2016 Consumers’ Research study found that 57 percent of female respondents, compared to only 21 percent of men, reported feeling harassed on the dating apps they used.

Anecdotal evidence seems to support these findings. Bridget, who goes to college in P.E.I., told me that men she knows from school will use Tinder to demand sexual favours, saying things to her online that she believes they would never repeat to her face. When Bianca, from Outaouais, Que., told a man on Tinder that she wasn’t looking for a one-night stand, he told her that “all guys just wanted sex” and that she was “so hot that every guy would want to jump [her].” Asma, an 18-year-old who lives in Mississauga, Ont., has received graphic messages on Tinder from men who are significantly older than she is. In an attempt to get a 49-year-old man to stop sending her sexual messages, she lied and told him she was only 16; he responded that “no one needs to know.”

A number of women also told me about receiving unsolicited photos of male genitalia—notoriously dubbed “dick pics”—from people they met on dating apps, either directly on the platforms or once they disclosed their contact information. During my conversation with Lena, whose name has been changed, she told me a man had just sent her a photo of his penis, apparently personified with the caption, “he wants ya.” Malindra, from Nunavut, estimates having received over 50 dick pics in the past three years.

The fact that some men treat women like sex objects is not exactly groundbreaking. But the internet can provide a separation from reality that emboldens users to say things they would never even consider in person. Even Adshade, who has a Tinder account of her own, has been flabbergasted by what men have said to her on the platform.

Most users can brush off an offensive message or two, but faced with relentless or vindictive advances, the impact can be severe. Bridget says the crude comments she receives on dating apps, both from strangers and from people she knows in real life, make her feel “worthless” and less trusting toward men in general. Repeated unpleasant interactions can also provoke defensive changes in behaviour. After numerous men sent one woman I spoke to lewd comments about her breasts, she self-consciously cropped the pictures on her Tinder profile so that she was only visible from the neck up.

Victim-blaming is a common facet of harassment. Complainants who face harassment in physical spaces are often accused of being disingenuous or naïve for wearing certain clothes or not taking what are perceived to be appropriate precautions. On dating apps, swiping right, messaging first, or even having an account in the first place can be perceived as “asking for” sexual advances.

Fed up with what she perceived to be toxic user culture on Tinder—and in tandem with a sexual harassment lawsuit she launched against the company—co-founder Whitney Wolfe left the app to forge her own path. Her brainchild, Bumble, is a self-proclaimed feminist dating app: It gives women the exclusive ability to start conversations with their matches. Alongside other policies and campaigns, the company has also proven impressively willing to publicly shame harassers on their platform. In 2016, one user forwarded Bumble a vile rant she’d received after she rejected a man on the platform; Bumble published an open letter condemning the man’s conduct and sparked the viral Twitter hashtag #LaterConnor, named after him.

The efforts of apps like Bumble recognize something important: Though dating apps can facilitate harassment, they can also help stop it. But while some of my sources reported positive experiences with Bumble’s approach, in Lena’s opinion, giving women the reins has the potential to backfire. Because men on Bumble wait for women to make the first move, they might think the women who do so are looking explicitly for sexual encounters—which is why Lena believes some men have been aggressively forward once she reached out to say hi.

When users log onto dating apps, they do so without shedding their pre-existing conceptions about how the world works. It’s unsurprising that the interactions users have in these spaces come with the baggage of real-life misogyny. Bianca told me that her negative reactions to unsolicited advances have sometimes caused men to blame her for their own bad behaviour. Much to her frustration, she’s often heard the same refrain: “You’re on Tinder. What do you expect?”

***

The wonderful thing about apps like Grindr, Adshade points out, is that they can help marginalized people connect with one another in a way that may not be possible in real life. Simultaneously, marginalized people can find themselves particularly vulnerable targets for online perpetrators. Users on dating apps can direct bigotry toward queer, racialized, or disabled people by pestering them with offensive comments or questions, ultimately making the platforms more difficult to navigate for people who experience multiple forms of oppression.

One common form of bigotry is fetishization: when users sexualize others’ identities or feel entitled to sex based on erroneous stereotypes. Four women who identify as lesbian or bisexual told me about being constantly pressured for threesomes by both men and women on dating apps. Natalie, who lives in the Greater Toronto Area and whose name has been changed, is frequently propositioned for threesomes. She considers this behaviour homophobic, and equates it to being treated like a “sex toy.”

Transgender and non-binary people are also frequently sexualized and targeted with intrusive lines of questioning. Cam, a person of colour from Toronto whose name has been changed, told me about receiving both transphobic and racist harassment from one user who repeatedly referred to him as an “oriental.”

Much of the harassment marginalized people experience online mirrors what they go through in real life. Some users I spoke to felt they were regarded as inferior, which in some cases has led to them feeling excluded from the dating scene altogether. Jadyn, an Indigenous woman from Yellowknife, told me she’s had numerous negative experiences both on apps and in person. “Where I’m from, Indigenous people are looked at very negatively,” Jadyn says. “That alone can make at least a quarter of the men I speak to put off by me.” When people Jadyn meets realize that she is Indigenous, many of them regress to racist stereotypes: they bring up her treaty card or accuse her of leading an easy life. But when people mistake her as white, they treat her with much more respect.

Kristen, who lives in Brampton, Ont., has cerebral palsy and commonly encounters people who are blatantly rude about her disability on and offline. On dating apps, she gets intrusive questions, like whether she uses a wheelchair or needs a hip replacement; in real life, people just stare. “Disabled people are often rejected by the people found on dating apps or just not seen as the type of person who would even want to date,” Kristen says. “Almost as if they don’t have a love life simply because they have a disability.”

***

When I asked Amy if she ever tried to track Paul from Plenty of Fish down, she told me she was too afraid. The last thing Paul told her before he drove away was that if she didn’t let him fuck her next time, he would find her and “do it either way.” Amy didn’t file a report with the dating site, and even if she had, it’s hard to know what the app’s staff could have done. If dating apps already struggle to control behaviour on their platforms, it can be virtually impossible to intervene when users go offline.

Amy is far from the only person I spoke with who experienced or was threatened with assault. Jarryd, from Newfoundland, met a man on Tinder who seemed “perfect” at first; he later found himself trapped in the man’s apartment for hours when the man refused to let him leave until they had sex. On holiday in New Zealand, Joe was raped by a man who had lied to him about his HIV status. Though Joe filed a report with the police, he ultimately decided not to press charges.

All of these experiences started with a message or a swipe, but there’s a case to be made that the apps act as mere interfaces for the worst sides of human behaviour. In 2017, the Vancouver Police Department (VPD) launched a public safety campaign focused on online dating and alerting the public of ways to avoid dangerous situations. Adshade has publicly criticized that campaign, as many of the situations the VPD highlighted—including a woman who met her romantic partner online and later found out he had HIV—could just as easily occur when people meet in person.

It’s telling that social media sites often explicitly carve out provisions in their terms of service that shed them of legal liability for the behaviour of their users. The actions of developers and staff are also rightfully bound by concerns about data collection and threats to user privacy—think of Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal and the infamous Ashley Madison hack.

A week after I spoke with one of my sources, she emailed me out of the blue. After one of her matches sexually assaulted her, she finally decided to delete Tinder. It’s hard to tell whether an app like Tinder can, or should, be held responsible for sparking initial interactions that later turn violent. Assault is a horrifying reality of many women’s lives, whether or not they meet their aggressors online. Could Plenty of Fish really have prevented someone like Paul from assaulting Amy?

This is not to suggest that apps are relieved of all responsibility toward their users. Certainly, facets of online dating can aggravate existing risks. Elements of anonymity on certain apps make it difficult to hold users accountable for their terrible actions. Aside from the car Paul drove and the name he had given her, Amy has no information about the man who assaulted her—he deleted his profile shortly after they met, and she hasn’t heard from him since.

Adshade points out that, unlike Plenty of Fish and OKCupid, apps like Tinder and Bumble require users to sign up with Facebook, adding an element of verification that promotes user safety. The other side of that coin is that an easily identifiable Facebook profile or a synchronized Instagram account can put users at risk of being tracked down. After Rose, who lives in Toronto, posted a selfie to her Instagram story, one of her Tinder matches figured out where she worked, showed up and watched her until she got security involved.

Specific features of the apps can also make it easier for stalkers to get their way. One Grindr user took a picture of Jordan and sent it to him while he was working his restaurant shift in Montreal. To his distress, Jordan realized the user had tracked him down using the app’s narrow distance settings, which can specify geo-location down to the metre.

Initial sparks on apps like Tinder might too foster a sense of one-sided familiarity that makes users feel entitled to attention in real time. One Tinder user, Alyssa, told me a man she’d never seen before approached her and her children in a grocery store just to ask why she didn’t swipe right on him. Stephanie, who lives in Fredericton, was once followed home by a Tinder match who recognized her in a bar. The man walked six metres behind her the entire way to her apartment, and when she neared the building, she rushed to the door so he couldn’t enter.

An element of “stranger danger” is normalized in any internet space, especially spaces that users flock to for potential partners. But new technologies, as disruptors of everyday life, can foster fears beyond our wildest imaginations, resulting in scare stories that are too often fuelled by misinformation. Jadyn told me she’s been apprehensive about using dating apps since she heard a gruesome story from a friend. A woman’s Tinder date drugged her in her home, and when she woke up from her stupor, she was horrified to find her furniture cased in plastic and power tools lying on the floor. A quick Google search revealed the story was a viral hoax.

***

When I asked my sources whether the apps they use could have made things safer for them, many said no. Given the onslaught of misogyny and bigotry they receive in real life, many women and marginalized people on dating apps expect to be objectified or targeted.

While it’s unreasonable to expect an app to provide a quick fix to harassment, they can change the game. The largest dating apps have hordes of staff working behind the scenes, imposing a sort of governance on their users, and relatively contained online spaces can provide a solid landscape for social change.

Most dating websites and apps have robust policies in place to protect their users from harassment, and the platforms themselves from liability. When I reached out to major dating and hook-up apps for comment, Tinder and Plenty of Fish affirmed their broad commitment to their existing policies, and encouraged users to report any offensive behaviour they encounter Grindr didn’t respond to my requests, and, disappointingly given the app’s mandate, Bumble didn’t either.

There are also specific ways apps can tailor their services to their consumers. Users I spoke to had a number of suggestions for improvement: allowing users more agency over what information they share, sorting users into categories depending on what kinds of interactions they are looking for, and making information about consent more visible on the apps themselves.

The efforts of apps to address harassment have often been met with mixed results. Bumble was launched with the intention to create a positive space for women and LGBTQ people. The company, however, faced backlash for a public safety campaign that appeared to be focused exclusively on harassment faced by women and perpetrated by men, ignoring non-heterosexual users.

In 2017, Tinder launched a “Menprovement” initiative geared toward improving the behaviour of its male users. The strategy’s new “Reactions” feature armed female users with the ultimate weapons against harassment—emojis. The promotional material for Tinder’s Reactions showed women bravely fending off creeps by firing off red Xs as strikes or tossing virtual martini glasses at their screens. Critics were unimpressed.

An overwhelming number of my sources wanted apps to take reports more seriously. When I asked Tinder to explain their reporting process, a media representative said that Tinder takes “appropriate measures” to respond to reports, which may include removing profiles or banning users. (Everyone I spoke to who filed reports on Tinder told me they didn’t know what happened to the person they reported.) It’s unclear whether Tinder’s policy is to follow up in these cases, and media relations declined to elaborate.

With millions of subscribers around the globe, and without resorting to Big-Brother-like surveillance, it’s understandable that apps trying to address harassment might experience hiccups along the way. It’s much easier to change a platform’s settings than to tackle the internalized bigotry and entitlement of the people who use it for evil purposes.

Put aside for a moment that harassment on dating apps is difficult to address—many people don’t consider it a real problem. In a context where many users are comfortable with sexual attention, others may feel entitled to it; the boundaries that would exist in real life tend to evaporate when people take to their screens.

Though most users I contacted on dating apps were eager to share their stories, I was also mocked for my efforts when I posted a call for submissions in Facebook groups. Some people laughed off the idea that consent could even apply on dating apps, and one user told me (in far less cordial terms) that I was going through an awful lot of effort to get laid.

Underlying the resistance to being proactive about this problem, there appears to be one logical way for users to stop harassment on their own: unmatch or block the people that are causing them harm.

Still, many users reported unmatching or blocking people who simply found them on other social media sites. Other platforms, like Grindr, don’t use a matching system at all, and users can message anyone.

Focusing on the responsibilities of users also places the onus on them to take precautions. But apps that foster certain digital dynamics, and certainly apps that make users pay for their services, have an obligation to the people who occupy them. Beyond elements of social responsibility, platforms that don’t do enough to promote online safety may find themselves losing customers: A number of my users, fed up with the way they’ve been treated, have decided to keep their distance.

***

My career as a Tinder journalist is over, and not by choice. A week and a half into my reporting, Tinder suspended my account and placed it under review indefinitely. Over the span of a month, I went back and forth with Tinder’s team to figure out why they barred me from the platform. Some of the sources I’d been in the process of interviewing undoubtedly believe that I abandoned them, and I don’t blame them. Telling a stranger on an app about experiencing sexual harassment and abuse isn’t exactly easy.

Tinder’s customer service team told me I’d been suspended because users had reported being “solicited” for their experiences. “Although we encourage everyone on Tinder to share their views, solicitation and spamming of any kind is against our Terms of Use and Community Guidelines,” the email reads. “We are committed to maintaining a positive user ecosystem and take any reports of behaviour that is contrary to our Terms of Use or Community Guidelines very seriously.”

Tinder eventually deleted my account, copy-pasting the same message when they notified me I’d been removed from the platform. Media relations had little to say beyond linking me to Tinder’s policies and claiming that I was using the platform for an inappropriate “commercial” purpose.

It is disappointing, not to mention ironic, that Tinder suspended a journalist for using their platform to report on harassment under the same policies that are supposed to protect their users.

Given the dissatisfaction my sources expressed with Tinder’s reporting process, some people believe the company is not paying attention to their stories. When I tried to make those stories public, Tinder pulled the plug.

Apps can do better—and people can too. Technology is part of our lives, and dating apps have a huge role to play in fostering modern romance. For better or for worse, online dating is here to stay. We should embrace the innovation dating apps have brought about while insisting that they do more to ensure their platforms are equitable for everyone.

“My body is mine, no matter what the situation is,” Amy tells me. I hope that one day, online spaces will be hers too.

Created in support of Ryerson University’s Office of Sexual Violence Support and Education, We Believe You is a colouring book for survivors of sexual violence. Toronto speaker and educator Farrah Khan and artist Karen Campos Castillo are behind the project, offering affirmations for those affected by sexual and gender violence.

When Krista Dale was 11 years old, she awoke from a sleepwalking episode to find her stepfather on the couch next to her.

“He was trying to have sex with me,” she remembers, 18 years after the incident. “I freaked out.” She ran to the bathroom, locked herself in, and began yelling for her mother, who was sleeping next door.

Dale, whose name has been changed to protect her identity, told her mother what happened, but her stepfather suggested Dale dreamed it all. Dale insisted that wasn’t what happened, but her stepfather was adamant. Eventually, Dale caved under the pressure and, against her gut instincts, agreed she had probably imagined the whole thing.

“In the morning, I was so embarrassed. I thought I had been sleepwalking and accused this man, who was like a father to me,” she says. “I apologized to him.”

In the weeks and months that followed, however, Dale’s stepfather continued his visits, this time in her bedroom. Sometimes he would touch her, sometimes not—sometimes, she says, she would wake and he would be in her room, watching her. “You’re a kid. You don’t even understand what’s happening. I just assumed this was something girls had to deal with,” she says.

In her early teens, Dale became increasingly depressed, even suicidal. At 15, she began drinking heavily, staying out all night to avoid sleeping in her own bed. “It’s pretty fucked that, at 13, I was thinking about killing myself,” she says. As time passed, the abuse continued.

Some of these encounters took on a “hazy, surreal” quality. She caught him, once, trying to put something in her drink. She began to suspect he was drugging her. That same night, Dale decided to try to catch her stepfather in the act. She waited, pretending to sleep. He opened the door to her bedroom. She sat up, and her stepfather, stunned, stopped in his tracks. He turned away and left, shutting the door behind him. Dale confronted him the next day but he denied his actions. Her mother and five other siblings continued to stay silent. A week later, he emptied the bank account her mother and he shared, and disappeared.

Dale never reported the abuse, nor did her mother, including the missing money. “I think we were all just happy he was gone.”

***

Now 29, Dale is a fast-talking, kind-eyed, funny young woman who loves music. Although her stepfather is gone from her life, Dale says the impact his actions had on her mental health was deep and long-lasting. She attributes her mental health issues, including depression and severe anxiety, to the trauma of the abuse. “It just broke me down, I guess. Sex with men was really terrible for a long time,” she says. “I felt like a pretty useless human being. I felt like a piece of meat.”

Stories like Dale’s are unfortunately common among women. A 2015 study from the journal Psychology Medicine found that, compared to 12 percent of men and seven percent of women in a control group from the general population, a staggering 40 percent of surveyed women with severe mental illness reported being sexually assaulted. Meanwhile, a 2006 paper by the National Resource Centre on Domestic Violence noted that victims of childhood sexual assault were five times more likely to be diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) than non-victims, and up to 65 percent of women who experienced sexual trauma as adults reported symptoms of PTSD.

It happened to me, too. I was sexually assaulted in the fall of 2016 by a man I trusted, someone I thought was my friend.

The assault itself was the culmination of several months of verbal, emotional and, at times, physical abuse by a man who was emotionally and mentally unstable. Following that act of violence, I suffered a clinical nervous breakdown.

The breakdown manifested itself in a depression so thick it had a physical weight that made each step and each breath a gruelling act of will. Anxiety and chronic insomnia dominated my nights. I suffered panic attacks, dreams that the man who harmed me was in my house, hunting me down. I drank constantly, spiralling into outright alcoholism. The thought of suicide dogged me, a ghoul that whispered unceasingly in my ear.

The #MeToo movement has done a lot to bring attention to sexual assault, but not enough has been said about the long-term effects of that violence. The movement has largely focused on male entitlement and toxic masculinity, which manifests itself in acts of sexual assault and harassment. Failing to discuss, support, and connect the patriarchy-endorsed violence against women with its long-term mental health effects is a sign of how deeply entrenched male dominance is: We focus on the immediate male-centric acts of violence and harassment, and downplay the emotional, female-centric suffering it creates.

Dale and I are excellent examples of this: We both lived in Whitehorse, a small town of about 21,000 people, and knew each other well enough to give the other a nod at the grocery store. She was a bartender at one of my favourite watering holes, but it wasn’t until we chatted for this story that I had any idea what she had experienced. Likewise, Dale couldn’t have known, as she poured me pints of IPA, that I had recently been sexually assaulted myself.

I’m not exactly sure what that means about human beings in general, except to say that perhaps we should be gentler with each other.

***

How the medical system deals in the aftermath of sexual assault with the resulting mental health effects is “quite complex,” says Bailey Reid, the sexual assault services coordinator for Carleton University in Ottawa. “We medicalize trauma response to the violence, which results in mental health issues that are a normal response to this kind of violence,” says Reid. “Physiologically, this is how our bodies respond to this kind of trauma.”

When a woman seeks treatment for a mental health issue following a sexual assault, the focus is identifying and categorizing symptoms caused by the trauma—depression, anxiety, dissociation—so they can be treated like any other mental illness. While this is practical from a health care perspective, it puts effect before cause and assumes that all mental health issues, regardless of their root, should be treated in the same way. It’s akin to treating a patient with brain cancer the same way as someone who has a concussion; the symptoms of headaches, memory loss, and behaviour change may be similar, but the treatment required to make a patient well again is very different.

As Diane Pétrin, a women’s advocate with the Victoria Faulkner Women’s Centre in Whitehorse, notes, an assault— and, if reported, the legal battle that may follow—are sources of extreme emotional stress: A woman who “was fine, who had a life” prior to an assault might develop depression afterward. If a woman was already experiencing mental health issues prior to the assault, she “might find them intensified.”

“There are assessments, phone calls, appointments, court appearances, they’re dealing with trauma… there’s no one to keep [women who report] going and [the police] aren’t really good at explaining what is going to happen [after an assault is reported],” Pétrin says.

Even more troublingly, if a woman is diagnosed with a mental health issue and decides to press charges against her assailant, the defence for the accused may use it to make her look unstable, says Pétrin. The use of drugs or alcohol prior to an assault can also be used to discredit their reliability.

When it comes to reporting sexual assaults, Reid says, the legal system can be problematic for survivors. “It’s heavy on this burden of proof [on the victim], which is really impossible,” she says. “If you’re outside this perfect legal paradigm of what a victim looks like… the legal system has a way of warping around you [that] is not really respectful.” As Pétrin says, “People think [accessing the legal system] is about whether or not a woman has suffered. It’s not; it’s about the legal system’s version of the law, and whether that law has been broken. It has nothing to do with the suffering of the individual.”

This burden deters some women, like me, Dale, and Shonagh McCrindle, from pursuing charges. McCrindle says she was sexually assaulted by a man she knew casually during the 2016 Dawson City Music Festival, an annual Yukon event known for its heavy drinking and drug use. She says she can’t remember much from the time of the assault, possibly due to trauma. Although she had a rape kit done, she decided not to pursue charges; she didn’t feel strong enough to undergo such public scrutiny. “I wasn’t stable enough [to go to court],” she says. “It definitely changed my mental state. I definitely suffered very hard for over a year.”

***

If I had to do it over again, I wouldn’t have reported my assault, either.

My experience with the justice system was a major factor in my nervous breakdown. Interactions with the police were pointless and disempowering at best; at worst they were combative, intrusive, and accusatory.

In early 2017, I attempted to get a peace bond against my assailant. Although the assault happened in B.C., procedure dictates that you must first file with police in the jurisdiction where you are presently living; for me, that was Montreal. When I called and said I had been sexually assaulted, I was informed that, whether I wanted to or not, an investigation had to take place. Shortly thereafter, two male police officers showed up at my Plateau-area apartment, fully armed. Neither officer spoke passable English, which meant I had to repeat traumatic and highly personal details multiple times. During questioning, the elder of the two officers asked me—over and over, as if hoping to catch me in a lie—why, if things were as bad as I claimed they were, it had taken me several months to file a report. He asked this so many times his partner finally had to tell him to stop.

Once I had reported to the Montreal police, I found I also had to give a statement to RCMP in Whistler, this time on a recorded phone call. It meant telling another strange man the intimate, sexually explicit details of my assault. To add insult to injury, there was a delay of nearly a month between the time I filed with the Montreal police and the time the RCMP contacted me. The Montreal police had recorded my phone number incorrectly.

In addition to these highly personal statements, I also provided the name of someone I had called in a panic after the assault, text messages between me and my assailant, and pages from my private journal to help create my case. I did all that was asked of me. I waited.

And nothing happened.

Months passed. I was told my attacker could not be found in the small coastal B.C. community where he lived, which meant the peace bond could not be served.

Six months later, I received a phone call informing me the Crown had decided not to pursue charges. The Crown did not feel they could go forward with the case, due to an “inconsistency” in my testimony. This “inconsistency” amounted to the fact that, in my statement, I stated the accused had initiated anal sex against my will, but in a submitted text message between me and the accused, I said he had “tried” to “stick his dick in my ass” against my will.

If you really must know, he got about one-third of the way in—unlubricated, without a condom—before my yelling, pushing, and striking made him stop. This is apparently not the legal standard of “fucked in the ass” as the Crown defines it.

***

Shortly after my case was dropped, my attacker showed up unexpectedly in Whitehorse, where I was then living. I was having a beer with a colleague after work, and bam—there he was. This man, an emotionally volatile person with a history of criminal involvement, was standing at the bar holding a pitcher. Smiling.

I panicked.

I immediately went to the RCMP in Whitehorse. I pressed again for a peace bond, and considered appealing to a specialist regarding my case. The RCMP were sympathetic but told me it was outside of their jurisdiction; anything I claimed against him was being handled in B.C. They sent a pair of officers down to the bar, but when they arrived he was gone.

I saw my attacker twice more after that; I don’t think he saw me. I was afraid he would see my name in the newspaper I wrote for, wait for me outside the office and attack me. I was afraid he would do something to my dog, or sabotage my vehicle. I was afraid he would find out where I lived, come to my home at night, and murder me. He lurked, physically and mentally, beyond the edge of every shadow.

There was nothing I could do. At the advice of my doctor I took medical leave from work and went to stay outside of the territory with friends on a farm in the Okanagan. I was a nervous wreck, but the fresh air and trees helped. I lost wages and travel expenses, but I got a little better.

That was until I had to come back and resume my life, still not knowing where he was or when I might run into him. Then I got worse all over again. If a photograph of a “complete mental breakdown” might be taken, it could have been a candid shot of me, sitting in the messy backseat of my car on a Tuesday, frantically pounding cheap red wine from a used coffee cup in a Canadian Tire parking lot just to get through the day.

***

Following my breakdown, I found therapy a useful release valve. I received eight sessions of cognitive behavioural therapy as part of a victim services program in Whitehorse. When I had used up all those sessions, my work insurance did not cover additional therapy costs. I could either pay for treatment myself, cease treatment, or start over with a new therapist. Considering the high costs, I chose to discontinue treatment, although I feel I would have benefitted from more.

According to my doctor, my therapist, and several documents, what I was experiencing leading up to my breakdown was PTSD, brought on by abuse and the trauma of the sexual assault. It was comforting at first to have some kind of a label, to be able to box the bruises and the gaslighting, the shouting and the constant fear. Now that I’m doing better, though, I understand it my experience differently: some messed-up shit happened to me, and the people who were supposed to support and protect me—the police, legal system, and government, represented by the Crown—failed to help me in any meaningful way.

My assailant has never been charged, and neither Dale nor McCrindle pressed charges against their assailants. Dale, who is a server and bartender, paid for her therapy herself. She says her therapist never mentioned programs that might be available to help her pay for treatment. She has never completed treatment. McCrindle, meanwhile, had “extensive health benefits” through her job and received therapy. She also had a good support system of friends who helped her recover, she says.

The reality of many sex crimes is that, when charges are dropped or aren’t laid, survivors must find ways outside the system to protect themselves, often by restricting their own choices and movements, even as their attackers move freely. We live in a state of constant fear and hypervigilance; even if the threat is more perceived than actual, this is emotionally and physically draining.

I can’t publicly name my attacker without fear of libel or slander. Many assailants are protected by the legal bodies and social mores that have failed us.

At its core, being raped is less about the physical act and more about what it symbolizes. To be raped is to have agency over your own body taken away from you, a complex psychic attack completed through base physical violence. Someone else uses your body—sometimes goes inside your body— without your consent, demeaning the very will within you that otherwise defines you as a human being. Rape is a despicable act of violence, but the scar it leaves is in a quieter, deeper place in the country of the self than the mere crude physicality of the act would imply. It is the dirty bomb of the gender war; long after the blast is over, the dispersed pathogens remain.

And let me assure you, from the front lines, this is a war.

Story after story broke with revelations about so-called trusted names in news accused of sexual misconduct in the workplace. I began reconsidering my new career in media.

Some, like Mark Halperin of MSNBC, were accused of propositioning employees and engaging in unwanted sexual touching. A Vox investigation alleged that Glenn Thrush of the New York Times placed several young female reporters in uncomfortable romantic situations before spreading disparaging rumours about them in the workplace when his advances were rejected. Ryan Lizza was dismissed from the New Yorker for what the magazine cited as “improper sexual conduct.”

I began to think that being a woman in media meant condemnation to a lifetime of small injustices: mentorship conditional on acquiescence, fear that collegiality will be interpreted as romantic interest, weathering vengefulness after rebuffed advances.

While an individual incident might not have lasting repercussions, experiencing a pattern of harassment over years has likely prompted many women to reconsider their careers, if not abandon the industry entirely. Was a life in media worth it? I wondered if there were other aspiring journalists who shared my anxieties. Had these scandals made them reconsider their career plans?

Ann Rauhala, an associate professor at Toronto’s Ryerson School of Journalism, is a 29-year veteran of news media in Canada, having worked at the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, and the CBC. She’s seen this problem play out throughout her career. “This is an old story that is finally getting the light of day,” Rauhala says. But now, the public appears to have reached a “critical mass” moment with survivors of sexual harassment coming forward. “The whole #MeToo response, I think, is serious and important,” she says. “It is based on decades of outrageous behaviour that women in workplaces have endured. It’s pretty gratifying, to tell you the truth, to see it emerge.”

While many stories of misconduct have revolved around American outlets and reporters, Rauhala suspects that similar allegations may soon emerge in Canadian institutions as well. “I do hope that there are some sexual predators and sexual harassers who are not sleeping well these days,” says Rauhala. “Good. I’m happy that they’re not sleeping well.”

Days after I spoke to Rauhala, CTV News broke the story that two women had accused Ontario Progressive Conservative leader Patrick Brown of sexual misconduct, stemming from separate instances. Within hours, Brown resigned. In response to coverage of the Brown story, former broadcaster Bridget Brown described in a blog post an incident in which an unnamed CTV reporter is alleged to have forcibly kissed and exposed himself to her. Soon after, the outlet suspended Queen’s Park correspondent Paul Bliss.

Like me, Moira Wyton was disheartened by the plethora of allegations against prominent media men, those we trusted as reliable sources of information or held as sources of professional inspiration. Wyton, features editor at the University of British Columbia’s student newspaper, tells me that she was saddened by the implications of these numerous allegations. “I think about all the women who weren’t able to fully participate in the industry and who weren’t able to fully practice their craft,” she notes, “or were practicing it with fear and intimidation.”

At the Varsity, I spoke to Josie Kao, one of our associate news editors, who plans to pursue journalism after graduation. While media scandals haven’t altered her career plans significantly, Kao says, it has forced her to acknowledge the many barriers between her and a secure job in the journalism industry with “respect and decent pay.”

Still, she was hopeful that this public outcry would set a precedent for herself and other young female reporters. “I’d like to hope that if anything like this happens [to me],” Kao says, “I’d feel more confident speaking out against this, now that I know people in the media have done this before… and not been harassed out of existence.”

Both Wyton and Kao cited journalism’s strict hierarchies and competitiveness as potential reasons these incidents may occur more frequently. “You eat what you kill,” says Wyton, adding that by virtue of the job, journalists relinquish responsibility of their work to a hierarchy that decides its final form.

One’s desire to speak up may also be outweighed by the instinct to protect a professional reputation. “Women are incentivized to stay silent, because you just want to prove that you can do it, and that you can function in the industry,” says Wyton.

Student journalism is often where many begin to seriously consider careers in media, says Sierra Bein, editor-in-chief of Ryerson’s student newspaper, the Eyeopener. The platform enjoys a certain power to serve as a staging ground for implementing changes to workplace culture. “It’s definitely given us, and myself, a reason to look back at our newsroom,” says Bein.

The news presents an opportunity to examine why these issues may occur, and what steps can be taken to ensure a positive and valuable newsroom experience. As student journalists, “we’re not in the mainstream yet,” Bein says. But, she adds, “we’re going to be there very soon. So it’s something for us to be watching and whispering about on our own.”

At the University of King’s College in Halifax, assistant journalism professor Terra Tailleur runs a newsroom of more than 20 journalism school students. Aspiring reporters need to know their options when encountering workplace harassment, she tells me, including finding allies or mentors in the office.

While her newsroom’s previous discussions about harassment in journalism had focused on external concerns, Tailleur says my query about misconduct had prompted her class to discuss how to hold her accountable in creating a safe work environment. “I’m not just a classroom, I’m a newsroom,” Tailleur says. “I have to create an environment where they can learn and they can thrive and they can do their jobs, which means that I can’t have anyone harassing these students.”

Hearing that, I felt satisfied—at least for now, hoping that I had helped fellow student journalists feel secure in their job. The burden of improving this industry sits on all of our shoulders. Future journalists, I believe, are doing their share—it’s time for our elders to step up, too.

UPDATE (04/13/2018): A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that Terra Tailleur is an associate, not assistant, journalism professor at King’s. This regrets the error.

On January 20, 2017, women across the globe marched in resistance following President Donald Trump’s inauguration. The marches were symbols of protest, as a man with multiple sexual misconduct allegations against him had joined public office. As 2017 progressed, women began stepping forward, speaking up against misconduct, harassment, and rape, sparking an international movement, dubbed #MeToo. One year later, Canadian women reconvened to march on—to show their strength, to stand together. In Vancouver, even the tiniest of protesters raised their voices: Aria Brain, marching with her mother, sported a cape, the words “girl power” scrawled

Aziz Ansari at the 2017 Golden Globes. Photo courtesy of Reuters.

On January 7, 2018, Aziz Ansari won a Golden Globe in a black suit adorned with a Time’s Up pin, a symbol of solidarity with women in the industry. Six days later, he was accused of sexual misconduct.

Ansari has spent his career displaying his understanding of nuances—of the dating world, of gender inequality, of racism. Through his acting, directing, and writing, he has shown that he gets the awkward moments and complications that come with living as a young person in the world.

His encounter with “Grace” was not one of those awkward moments. In a piece published in babe, Grace painstakingly details her date with Ansari, where, after bringing her to his apartment and ignoring her multiple verbal and nonverbal cues of discomfort, she left crying. It was not, as Bari Weiss put it in the New York Times, simply “bad sex.” Grace says it left her feeling violated, upset and awful. But it wasn’t illegal or inherently violent; in fact, it sounded more like an everyday, uncomfortable occurrence. However, what’s so insidious about this incident lies in how relatable it is.

For many women involved with men, the feeling of having one’s boundaries ignored is eerily familiar—the feeling that her body does not truly belong to her. It’s knowing that something is wrong, but also feeling like you’d be weak for saying so. Or because it’s not a big deal. Or because you don’t want to be rude. Or any of the multitude of reasons both men and women use to explain away the grey area between consent and coercion. They are not the same, but they have become linked—coercion leads to (reluctant) consent, because it’s romance. Because women should be chased. Because saying “no” makes it a game.

Or because, like Ansari, he’s a “nice guy.” He is known and applauded for his liberal values: he identifies as a feminist, he talks about racism and Refinery29 dubbed him a “Woke Bae” in 2016. The issue with rewarding men for having basic human decency is that it leads to seeing people in absolutes—he’s either a “woke activist” who can do no wrong, or an evil rapist. Public perceptions of sexual assault become limited to one scenario where a woman is violently attacked by an armed stranger—everything outside of that is invalid. And since Grace agreed to go on a date with him—since he’s a feminist and has a Netflix show and is an all-around cool guy—nothing that he did afterward could be wrong.

Instead of being praised for well-intentioned but ultimately performative gestures, men should be expected to re-examine their own behaviour and figure out how they contribute to a culture still so weighed against women. Anyone identifying as a feminist should be educating themselves on the way the movement and its causes are changing—such as the way feminists want to redefine consent.

“Culture changes very quickly, and we are all coming to understand heterosexuality in new ways than we had before,” says Judith Taylor, a women and gender studies associate professor at the University of Toronto. “[The babe piece] is an extraordinary game-changer that enters new possibilities into public discourse and public practice.

In response to Grace, Caitlin Flanagan wrote in The Atlantic, “In so many ways, compared with today’s young women, we were weak… But as far as getting away from a man who was trying to pressure us into sex we didn’t want, we were strong.” Flanagan argued that while female sex education was lacking in the past, Grace had written “3,000 words of revenge porn” in response to feeling romantically rejected by Ansari. She ended the piece by saying women today are “angry and temporarily powerful,” and that they had “destroyed a man who didn’t deserve it.”

The piece sparked even more conversation—feminist author and speaker Jessica Valenti, whose tweets in response to the original babe piece were quoted in the Atlantic op-ed, called Flanagan’s piece “so bad and irresponsible” and “much more dogmatic and singular than the very nuanced conversation happening right now.” It’s a real-time look at the increasing disconnect between older women, who identify as feminists, and the new generation, who also identify as feminists. We are embracing the nuances—that, as writer David Klion put it, sexual misconduct cannot be solely defined legally if we want to change the overall culture around sexual consent.

“One of the marks of social change is that you see that newer generations see that they don’t have to put up with what other people of prior generations have,” says Taylor.

The argument was never about whether Ansari’s actions were criminal or unforgivable, but about why so many women can relate to Grace’s experience, and what should be changed about heterosexual encounters in the future. Perhaps the question now isn’t how a woman chooses to “get away” from an unrelenting man, but what makes that man feel so entitled to sex with her in the first place.