I was 13 years old when I was at a slumber party with my closest friends from high school. We got drunk on bacardi breezers and started playing Truth or Dare which soon turned sexual and I remember enthusiastically participating in the game, which involved things like taking each other's clothes off and pouring alcohol over each other's bodies.
Later in the night, I was lying somewhere with my eyes closed and three of my guy friends started touching and fingering me. I froze and didn't know what to do, so I just pretended to be asleep/passed out. The next day at school, they started bullying me about it, saying I was a whore and that they had also fucked me that night. They lifted me on top of a desk and started making penetration movements with their hips. A teacher came over to ask if I was okay and I felt embarrassed. I laughed it off saying that yes of course I was, and that we were just friends messing with each other! In my mind it was all just sexual experimentation followed by some innocent teasing.
In hindsight, I can see that it was indeed sexual experimentation, but that it didn't go the way it should have gone. There have been a few other situations where I froze and pretended to be asleep, because I didn't know how to say no - I was afraid to hurt the other person, or to hurt the friendship, and the words just didn't manage to come out of my mouth. I don't think any of these people meant any harm whatsoever, but that, as children, we've been left alone to discover and navigate the intricacies of sex and consent, without being given any proper tools how to do so. Had we been given the tools, I might have known how to say no, be it verbally or non-verbally, and they might have known that you should never touch someone who is asleep, passed out, or unresponsive/frozen.
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