I just realized this!
So when I was a Sophomore in college I went to this tiny community college in Northern MN. While I was there the dorms were mostly populated with the football team, bc most of the guys were from the south and didn’t have a place to stay in the area. This meant that there weren’t many girls in the dorms, I was fine with this bc I got along really well with most of the guys I even gave some of them messages after practices and games bc i was good at it and they were cool. One guy who I had given messages to in the past started flirting with me and I never flirted back but usually wasn’t “rude“ in how I asked him to stop usually just laughing it off and telling him to shut up. One night while I was playing cards with some of the guys he was very persistent and I got sick of it and started telling him to stop. Like not in a joking manner I was very firm. His response was “I love when you get angry it is hot.” I told him to shut up many many times but no longer laughed. A few days later while talking to another one of my guy friends who was an RA “like me” this guy started up again and my friend could tell that it was bothering me and told me I should write a report on it. I just said “nah that is just (name) it is cool.” But then I started thinking about it and it was really bothering me and later that night he made a very lude gesture at me and I was done I couldn’t handle it anymore to I went down to my friend and wrote the complaint. At first the dorm director seemed to be very concerned about it and was very good about making sure the situation was taken care of. After talking to the kid he came to me and said that it sounded like I had flirted with this kid and so he didn’t know it was bothering me. When I told him that i had asked the kid to stop and it persisted he just kept asking me if I was sure that I hadn’t flirted with this kid or made it seem like it was ok to be flirting with me. I just realized that is all of the victim blaming and now I feel really gross like i did that night and want to talk to the school about it but I’m scared that they aren’t going to take it seriously bc the kid doesn’t go there anymore and the director has changed. I was totally fine and now I feel dirty and gross like I did that night all over again! I hope the new director is better than the old one bc holy shit what happened to me isn’t ok! This was like 3 years ago and I’m just noticing it and don’t really know how to process it.