Beverly Engel - Im Saying No!: Standing Up Against Sexual Assault, Sexual Harassment, and Sexual Pressure

Beverly provides much-needed strategies, information, and support for every woman who has or is still being traumatized by any kind of sexual misconduct, whether it is in the workplace or elsewhere. I strongly recommend it for all women no matter their age or circumstances.

Gretchen Carlson, television journalist, best-selling
author of Be Fierce and empowerment advocate

This book is an excellent resource that helps women who have experienced sexual assault, sexual harassment, and sexual pressure to use their voice to speak truth and take a stand. An empowering book that I highly recommend.

Raychelle Cassada Lohmann, author of
The Sexual Trauma Workbook for Teen Girls

In her latest book, Engel provides readers with useful guidance for saying no to would-be sexual abusers and encourages readers to practice what it feels like to use those two simple but imperfect lettersN-O!a skill that benefits people of all ages.

Holly Kearl, founder of Stop Street Harassment

Its easy enough to tell women to say no but, in reality, there is nothing easy about saying no if you are a woman. Engels book doesnt only shed light on why this remains true, even in the age of MeToo and TimesUp, but it provides readers with critical, pragmatic tools and strategies designed to confront and report gender harassment, sexual assault and childhood abuse effectively.

Soraya Chemaly, author of Rage Becomes Her: The Power of WomensAnger and Director of the Womens Media Center Speech Project

Copyright 2019 Beverly Engel

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, digital scanning, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, please address She Writes Press.

Published 2019
Printed in the United States of America
ISBN: 978-1-63152-525-4 pbk
ISBN: 978-1-63152-526-1 ebk
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018964766

For information, address:
She Writes Press
1569 Solano Ave #546
Berkeley, CA 94707

She Writes Press is a division of SparkPoint Studio, LLC.

All company and/or product names may be trade names, logos, trademarks, and/or registered trademarks and are the property of their respective owners.

Names and identifying characteristics have been changed to protect the privacy of certain individuals.

Dedicated to all the brave women who have taken up the challenge of changing the way women are seen and the way women are treated in the world.

W hen I was four years old, my little friend Joey and I were taken under a large bush by a teenage boy. Once there, he proceeded to get us to take off our clothes and to show us what grown-ups do when they get married.

When I was nine years old, I was sexually molested by the new husband of my mothers best friend, Ruby. He was babysitting me while my mother and Ruby were at work. The abuse continued over the span of several months.

When I was ten years old, a Peeping Tom was caught lurking outside our windows, watching me as I took a bath. I had felt someone watching me for months, but when I told my mother shed just laughed at me and said I was being silly.

When I was eleven years old and on my way home from school a man exposed himself to me. When I was twelve years old, I was brutally raped while on a date. The man who raped me was twenty-four years old.

The fact that I was sexually violated so many times before I even reached adolescence may seem unusual to some of you, but unfortunately, it really isnt that uncommon. Many of my clients have had similar experiences, starting when they were young girls. And unfortunately, throughout the world, the question doesnt seem whether a girl will be sexually violated but when she will be.

You may be one of those women. You too may have been violated in largeand small ways, from being sexually harassed by men on the street to being molested or raped.

Just because sexual violations occur so often doesnt mean they should be normalized. No young girl should have to suffer from any of these intrusions. One by one, these events traumatize a girl, making her feel more and more helpless, more and more objectified and used. Each sexual assault is also an assault on her self-esteem, her self-confidence, her self-concept. With each violation, she becomes more convinced that she has no power.

If you identify with me or with the situation of being violated, this book will be especially beneficial for you. It will encourage you to realize just how damaging sexual violations are to girls and women and teach you to have compassion for your suffering instead of minimizing the damage or blaming yourself for what is clearly only one persons faultthe perpetrators. It will hopefully help you to connect with your righteous anger and empower you to begin to stand up and say NO! to sexual assault, sexual harassment, and sexual pressure.

Hopefully, this book will also help you to feel less alone. Many of us who have suffered these types of violations feel isolated. I hope that reading the chapters to come will make you feel more connected to other women and girls who have gone through similar traumas. I hope you will learn from their experiences and become empowered by their experiences.

For everything that gets taken from you,
Dont let your voice be one of them.

Anonymous

T he #MeToo movement has provided a safe avenue for more women to tell their stories of sexual abuse, sexual assault, and sexual harassment anonymously. It is empowering women because its making them feel less alone, and because theyre finally getting the opportunity to tell their story and feel heard. Now, more than ever before, we are having important conversations about the rampant abuse of power in nearly every industry, including: the entertainment industry, the music industry, the political world, the sports world, and academic and military communities. It has become abundantly clear that the climate of secrecy weve all lived within for years has continued to exist due to the fact that women have been afraid that should they tell their stories, they wouldnt be believed.

In many cases, it has become clear that their fear was warranted.

Now we have the Times Up movementanother sign that things are changing. With the money and attention the celebrity founders of this new movement have access to, it is likely that real change will come regarding sexual harassment in the workplace.

While it is possible that the tide may be turning and we may actually be looking at a major cultural shift when it comes to the way men treat women, it is also possible that this, too, will pass. We are already experiencing signs of a major backlash as men begin to push back and the focus has changed to worrying about men being falsely accused.

There certainly is a risk that people will tire of hearing about sexual harassment and assault and will focus on something else to distract themselves from the problem. After all, the rampant sexual violation of women is a very uncomfortable subject, especially for men. And any real change can only come from exposing the roots of the pervasive problem of powerful men systematically taking advantage of less powerful, and therefore vulnerable, women.