Rape Support Group
If you or someone you know has been the victim of rape, this is the place to find support and get advice. If you want, discuss your experience, share your feelings, and meet others going through a similar situation.
so every thursday after class there are a group of people, including me, who stay after for an hour and practice-sign language-and we practice and give eahc other advice etc. etc.....well there are 2 guys in yhe group......they don't look like my rapist so i'm okay......well i WAS okay.......there's this one guy that i kinda feel unsafe about...he's really nice and he's pleasant, but something tells me that he's not right....well today i was talking to him and he said something and he touched my back......and i flinched......i wanted ot scream and say,"back off!!" or "get your hands off of me!!!" but i knew that i would hafta explain my behavior.........i dunno how to handle this......i don't know why i feel this way about him....but trust your intuition right????? i dunno.....anyone have advice or any ideas on how to accept his touch???? i'm not gona let him touch my inappropriatly, but how do i get through these slight, light, friendly touches????
I can't really give you a good approach to handling this because I know telling him feels awkward but if you don't want him to touch you, don't feel like you have to let him. Even if it's the social "norm," if you don't want to do something or let someone do something to you, don't. Everyone's different. I'll even tell people sometimes that I don't like being touched. One person was weird about it and was like "everyone likes getting hugs." (He wanted to give me one. Also, fyi, this was before anything had ever happened to me.) And I told him, "Well my parents weren't really huggers or very physically affectionate." And he still tried to get me to hug him by saying that it was sad so I need a hug but I just backed away from him and repeated that I don't like hugs.
Try to address it in someway that makes it clear that you don't want him to. Walk away when he does it or, better yet, if he does it again if you can just calmly and as much between the two of you as possible, tell him you don't really like being touched.
Being raped isn't the only reason for it and it's reasonable to say. As long as you say it as something that's just a fact, depending on how well you know him, you should be able to just drop it there. I know it might be scarier to say something than to just deal with it but it's better to not put yourself through unnecessary things like someone touching you when you don't want them to.