For 'Tell Me What You Like,' Katie Simon Talked to Survivors of Sexual Assault to Understand How to Seek More Intentional, Connected and Pleasurable Sex

"A lot of people very eloquently speak to the idea that being assaulted doesn't change your sexuality, but being assaulted in a same-sex assault might open your eyes."

For their book, Tell Me What You Like: An Honest Discussion of Sex and Intimacy After Sexual Assault, Katie Simon wanted to understand how a person continues to heal after being assaulted. Ultimately, Katie concluded that for our sex lives to grow, we must both recognize our triggers and our turn-ons.

That’s why the book covers topics that include boundaries, panic, consent, regret, kink, false beliefs, breakups, and aftercare. A nonbinary survivor themself, Katie wrote Tell Me What You Like for all survivors across the sexuality and gender spectrum.

“I wanted to represent a lot of different stories and styles. It’s qualitative research, direct conversations with survivors,” Katie explains. “I was also very happy with the diversity of responses. Because you can't really determine in advance what is going on behind someone's bedroom door and who will reveal what.”

While this is a difficult subject, Katie and I had a wonderful, blunt discussion about “old shame,” being told they were “faking a sexuality” and having a complicated relationship with the sexual persona other people forced on them. Plus, we talked about why sharing stories can be healing for oneself and others.

My own hope is that this conversation and book will not only help survivors of assault, but it will be a resource for the partners of those who are survivors as well. For anyone seeking resources, you can contact RAINN.org and the National Sexual Violence Resource Center. Plus, the Trevor Project provides resources on how to help LGBTQ victims and survivors of sexual assault.

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Jerry Portwood: First, the book does a fantastic job of bringing in perspectives from a lot of different sexual backgrounds.

Katie Simon: I'm really happy about that. Also, I did say when I put together the book that I would not be doing a “side chapter” on queer people or one on “diverse experiences,” or something like that. I said it would form the main text of the book because those stories are, you know, mainstream stories. And it ended up being that more than 50 percent of the stories in the book were from queer survivors.

I think it's so cool how that happened, and this book is going to be shelved with “sex and relationships books,” not with “queer books.”

But I think, for queer people, we are often just discounted from narratives about sexual assault and also discounted from narratives about sex. We’re sort of put off to the side and said: ”You just do your own weird stuff over there.”

But the facts are that queer people—especially trans and non-binary people—experience sexual assault at way, way higher rates than cis straight women, who are kind of the center point. Centering those more diverse stories makes a lot of sense because those are the people that are being assaulted more.

Jerry: I also want to applaud you with your way of writing about, and including, asexuality—because I feel that is very rarely addressed in a book such as this. I mean, you have a lot of bisexuality included—which is also great, because there’s often bi erasure—but you do a good job of having people describe asexuality in different ways.

Katie: Yeah, I think a lot of the times—this is why I specifically wrote about sex after sexual assault, because there wasn’t a lot of research being done on it at the time—the only way to move forward and to enrich the conversation was to get people's personal stories and do qualitative research or journalistic research. And it was just so cool in all these less-talked-about niches that the people I spoke to were really well-prepared with metaphors and specific stories.

With asexuality, I love that that was coming up because I think a lot of people assume that sexual healing after sexual assault involves either sleeping with a ton of people or finding the best partner in the world and sleeping with them. And it always sort of goes one direction. And so I love when people break away from that.

Jerry: I'm curious about how you reached out to get subjects. That must have been tough, right?

Katie: I reached out in a lot of different ways. Some people found my articles and asked to be interviewed. Some people that I had worked with years before said they wanted to be part of the book. So it was really people coming from every direction.

Jerry: But it must have been difficult to get people to open up—even if you were anonymizing them?

Katie: Well, a bunch of people were pretty comfortable saying, “I'm a survivor of sexual assault.” But when it came to the subject of the interview—which was mostly about sex and relationship stuff—those same people might kind of clam up and not really want to talk that much.

It happened quite a few times with male survivors, who were like, “I want to be part of this.” And then, at some point, they would disappear. And it always made me sad because you hope you're creating a safe space for everyone. But these are too taboo for some, so there's only so much you can do to counteract that.

Jerry: So, I know you identify as cisgender and queer—

Katie: Actually, I identify as nonbinary. So that's changed since the version of the book you read. I have been out to people I’ve known for a much longer time, but I hadn't made a professional transition. You have a galley before that change was made.

I think it kind of came down to: It wasn't that I felt like I owed everybody a perfect, “close up view” of me. It was more that I was really uncomfortable going around and claiming space as a woman when that was not how I was acting in real life. So yeah, this book is a living document because that happened so late in the game.

Jerry: Well, you do say in the conclusion: “By the time this publishes, who knows how I'll feel about that.” So maybe I don't know if anything's changed in other ways either, in regard to your intimate relationships? I was going to save that until the end, but now I'm curious.

Katie: Yeah, I mean, obviously things keep changing. Yeah. And even I find my perspective changes a lot as I go through life and also as I meet different partners. I think you learn a lot from partners. Also, because I'm bi, if I'm dating somebody in a more hetero relationship, then that will change my headspace a little more than if I'm having a queer relationship. I'm bi in all of the relationships, but it's just true. It affects how you think.

Jerry: Yeah, and how you're presenting outwardly as well. So then I can say you're nonbinary, bisexual, and queer.

Katie: Yes.

Jerry: Well, so my question was about how your story differed from some of the other ones, but now that's already complicated. OK, well, it sounds like you had a really hard time finding cisgender straight men to go on the record and talk. Because you have a lot of bisexual representation, even asexual, queer, trans and nonbinary…

Katie: Yeah. I don't have a perfect answer about why that didn't happen. People have to choose to do it. I talk about how there’s really very little dialogue going on about sex after sexual assault. It's microscopic when it comes to cis straight men. So I think if you don't see yourself represented at all, then you might just feel like, “What are they gonna ask me?”

Jerry: It’s true. We have so little representation of it all. I think one of the few times is in the TV show Transparent, the character played by Jay Duplass talks about it. He’d always saw this relationship with his babysitter as being loving and then realizing that it also could be considered another way. I don't know if you remember that?

Katie: I didn't see it. I’m terrible at watching TV.

Jerry: Well, that's one of the few times that I've ever seen it represented. It triggered things for me and made me write about things from my perspective as a cisgender queer, gay male. Because yeah, people have a lot of ideas around implied consent when it comes to men.

OK, let's move on to this idea about when you were younger and you felt you were faking your sexuality. That's obviously changed. And it sounds like the book helped you talk about that even more, and to discover things.

Katie: Yeah. Well, I think you're referring to when I had an experience of people kind of bullying me and telling me that I was not queer. Because it did not line up with anything I told them before. It was a very bad experience, and it didn’t make me change my decisions or behavior—just not talk about what I was doing with almost anybody. That took many years to kind of unwind and get to a place where I would just tell people if I was dating a woman or about a crush or, like, I just sort of wouldn’t be open to talking about any of that stuff.

It makes me sad for my younger self that I went through that and that I genuinely questioned things that were very natural to me. I didn't think it was a big deal or, like, a weird thing. And I didn't announce it to everybody because I was just sort of like, “Oh, this is who I am, guess.” And that really interrupted that natural storyline. It kind of broke the storyline, and I had to get back to it.

Jerry: You also mentioned that your early sexual assault was with a young woman, and that also confused things.

Katie: Yeah. And that's something that I spoke to other survivors about for this book, which was a very cool experience personally—that the gender of the person who assaulted you, it can confuse things. Like, if it's somebody of the same gender and you are queer, it can really confuse people about why they're doing certain things; why they're attracted to people. It can be really, really confusing. But that is actually like super normal. And I think that's a really important message of the book for people to receive. A lot of people very eloquently speak to the idea that being assaulted doesn't change your sexuality, but being assaulted in a same-sex assault might open your eyes.

It’s sexual assault, so it’s hard. Because it's sex acts that are done against you, but there are sex acts that can also be done consensually and expose you to a different kind of realm of your sexuality that you hadn't consensually done before. And it can get really confusing for people. But that's why talking about it is so helpful. Because most people, if you're getting social support and you're speaking about your experience, that can be really, really helpful in untangling stuff like that.

Jerry: Right, right. Yeah, no, I think there's many stories that I've heard about young boys, if they're sexually assaulted by a man, and then they're gay, they wonder if that made them gay. And then, of course, it's like, well, no, maybe it's just that those facts overlap. But it doesn't mean that that experience changed them. But there's been decades of people thinking that as well, right?

Katie: Yeah. And when it came to the abuse I experienced when I was a kid, I kind of just associated it for, like, 10 years or something, with female bodies being kind of dangerous. So I would be attracted, as a kid, to girls. But I would be, like, “No, that is a bad thing.” And I had to pull that apart really slowly.

Jerry: Absolutely. You mentioned that the process of researching the book and writing it was therapeutic for you. Of course, it's always complicated with this type of writing. We don't want it to sound therapeutic, but at the same time, you are a human, right? And you're healing; you're having experiences. Especially with the aftercare chapter at the end, you talk a lot about that. Were you surprised by the healing element?

Kaie: Sort of, because I found the writing part of it to be, I don't think triggering—that’s too strong a word… Having a deadline where you have to produce something that will help other people; I found that to be pretty stressful. But the research phase, where I was talking to so many people and learning more about this thing that I was interested in, that was very healing to me—just to be in conversation.

So, whenever I got stressed out with the writing part, I would just sort of go back to the research phase and those conversations would help. Writing is never 100 percent therapeutic when it's for other people. And this book really, to me, is about the readers and the audience and like who it can reach and help. So it was not going to end up being a therapeutic project.

Jerry: I thought it was wonderful how you embraced these broad definitions of sexual assault and have people tell stories from different perspective and you're sharing these stories. But at one point, I started thinking, “Wait, are we able to have sex for fun and pleasure? Is all of this going to be traumatic in some ways?” And, of course, the point of your research and writing is that we can, right? That you can have healthy and fun moments when having sex.

Katie: Well, I actually titled the book, Tell Me What You Like, because it sort of evokes “tell me what you don't like”—which is a more common question to ask a survivor. How do we prevent something bad from happening? And that focus on the trauma, the fallout, all that heavy stuff, it just kind of makes it seem like the future is so heavy. But the reality was most of what I was talking to survivors about was solutions and sort of innovating and iterating on how sex works today. But how could it change in a way that would be more trauma-sensitive or just address trauma better.

Jerry: And a lot of what people found was very positive

Katie: I always say this book is, it's sexual assault survivors voices, but it's about a solutions-oriented take on sex. Not just for survivors, but for everyone.

One really specific example of what I'm talking about: A bunch of survivors spoke to different versions of embodied consent, which is the idea of incorporating reading body language cues and physical actions as part of consent. So that could mean: You agree that if you tap each other on the shoulder, you pause. It could be that, or it could be more along the lines of: If you notice your partner is breathing too heavily, something changed, you check in. So you act on the body language cues. And a lot of survivors spoke about that.

It is kind of at odds almost with the mainstream narrative about consent and what survivors want—that it should always be really verbal and this very sort of strict thing. But that’s really more about laws and preventing crime than a functional definition. So all these survivors were speaking about embodied consent and how it worked for them and variations on it. And that's something that anybody can learn from.

There were just many moments where I was interviewing people and I was like, “This is a good idea, and they just figured it out because they needed to.” They found an available solution, and they didn't like the mainstream narrative. So people experimented and they came up with really cool results.

Katie has created zines that you can make and share.

Jerry: Yes, and you also talk about how kink is built around safety. One of the people you interviewed said she wished she had learned about this stuff in sex-ed because we're not taught this, but you can learn it from other communities. Was that something you were already aware of before you worked on the book?

Katie: A lot of survivors have taken it upon themselves to go explore kink and BDSM or explore non-traditional relationship dynamics. They sort of went out and did this self sex-education and learned a lot.

I think that's something where I feel like survivors have to offer the broader population: They've kind of done the research on how to navigate sex better. We've been kind of forced to do that because of the life circumstances that we've experienced. But now we have all of this new information that we can learn from and share with other people.

But with kink, I think people—especially people I know who are really into kink—sometimes see it as this kind of “perfect system.” But it's not. It's just another framework with more built-in, you know, safety nets, but it's not a guarantee that nobody will be assaulted. Somebody I interviewed for the book re-taught me to stop saying “safe spaces” and start saying “safer spaces”—because there's no guarantee that nothing bad will happen. You kind of can't guarantee that. And also, I spoke to survivors that described partners calling the abuse kink or BDSM and abusing the language around it.

Jerry: That's a form of gaslighting, I guess.

Katie: Yeah, it's super hard to do that because then you don't have the language to describe what's happening to you or you're being gaslit and you have trouble describing it and getting help. But it’s a really important point to not just sort of take kink as a magic wand.

Jerry: Yeah, definitely not. One of the things you wrote is that these stories are survivors, but the broader picture they paint is for anybody “seeking more intentional, connected and pleasurable sex. With the knowledge that rape culture impacts sex for everyone.”

I thought that was really powerful. It’s at the point in which you talk about Matthew, who is one of the gay men who you spoke to. He talked about the lack of a cultural narrative around sex abuse among gay men, who aren’t sure about the boundaries. Obviously that can be applied to other people, but I was wondering how you felt that it was distinct from some of the women or non-binary or other people you spoke to.

Katie: I always like to take people at their word and not question it too much unless, you know, somebody says something really unsafe or something. And Matthew did talk to me a lot—beyond what made it onto the page–about how sexual assault is viewed in the gay male culture that he lives in. He went beyond what you just said and talked a lot about not mentioning it in sexual situations, or only talking about that with somebody that you're actually dating—even if you're mostly sleeping around.

That can be very isolating. When it is sort of built into your sexual culture or your community of who you might sleep with, it would feel really bad to constantly have the feeling that anytime you talk about something—even if it is to protect yourself or to sort of have healthy boundaries—it would just feel so bad to constantly come up against that. I think that's what he was talking about, and it’s not like he has had a few experiences like that. He notices this is the popular dominant narrative.

Jerry: Absolutely. I mean, I'm so glad you said it. Because you also conveyed these moments of sharing and of disclosure of past experience—either before sex or during sex or after. But couldn’t someone be worried and think, “Is this a red flag? Should I run away from this person?” If they’re telling you about a sexual assault experience, is it something that I should be concerned about in our current situation if it becomes an issue?

Katie: Well, it's always up to everybody to decide who they want to sleep with or date or anything like that. But I think, in terms of how somebody communicates—or a popular word to use, how somebody discloses—their trauma history matters a lot.

It's not just a black-and-white checkbox. One person I personally slept with who was just having a really bad day got upset about something. And he just said, “I want you to feel better, but I can't actually hear about any details of trauma today.” And that, for me, was a very helpful thing, and I hadn't really had anybody ever spontaneously do that before.

Now I tell everybody I sleep with because it's a good idea. But you don't have to, at all times, be available to hear about trauma. And that comes up for me a lot because I hear about trauma from work all the time. So sometimes, in my personal life, I might sort of make a little boundary or make a little space to not do that all the time.

How you handle that discussion matters a lot, and it is valid to not want to talk to somebody about their trauma history. So, in general, I think that responding in a compassionate way sort of goes a very long way towards making them have a good resolution.

Jerry: Well, you do say that one of the people you interviewed said that if she finds out a person has had some sort of sexual assault or trauma, she does run away and does say: “I'm not interested.”

Katie: Yeah, that person was super interesting. She was one of the people I sort of most-frequently came back to. I interviewed her three or four times over five or six years. And she would look back and sort of reflect on the stuff that she had said before and say how it had changed.

I think it's valid to land in the space of: “I have my own trauma, and I don't really want to deal with somebody who has similar trauma.” But she's just a really good reminder that people grow a lot and what they want changes. I think when I first met her, she was only sleeping with women. And when I later touched base with her, she was only sleeping with men and, later, it was a mix. So people change a lot, and it's OK to have your opinion change.

Jerry: You have a whole chapter where you talk about disclosure, and I'm just going to read what you wrote: “One of the topics survivors struggle with is whether or not and how to share our trauma histories to people we choose to be intimate with.”

I’m curious: Why do you think this type of disclosure is so important?

Katie; So, I do not have the actual statistic, because it's from a research study that has not been published yet, but I was speaking to this researcher about how everybody talks about how you should report sexual assault to the police or go to the hospital. Do something with an authority figure. And the reality is, so many people don't do that. And there's a lot of reasons. That's a whole discussion.

It’s usually a friend, partner, family member—somebody in their personal life that's not an authority figure—that they speak to. Those conversations are happening, but so many people I spoke to describe those conversations going badly. And it's because nobody is trained to have them.

That is something that would be amazing to add to a sex-ed curriculum: How to hear a story like this, and then you know what to say. People just don't know what to say. Many people spoke to me about telling partners, and those partners’ reactions being just sort of very self-centered and about how much information they had and if they felt like their voice was represented. When, really, it was more of a sharing type of situation.

The disclosure is a big deal because if you don't do it, you can state all of your boundaries and interests and needs, and you can still have sex and have relationships, but the cause of a lot of your choices are completely obscured. And it just makes it more difficult.

It wasn't just men who didn't want to disclose, I spoke to a straight woman who said she had a boyfriend, and she had never told him. She was like, “I'm never going to tell him.” And I touched base later, and I think she was engaged or married and she said: “Yeah, I never told him. I'm never, ever telling him that.”

So, some people do that, and they might be more comfortable with it for all kinds of reasons. But a lot of people are seeking those conversations, and they want them to go better.

Jerry: Right. And you mentioned your subject Ignacio, who said that disclosure of trauma was this form of storytelling that was healing. Yet, when I talk to people about it—even with personal essay writing, which is something that I deal with constantly—they're like: “Why would you ever tell people this stuff? Why?” But you do it as well, so why do you think that is?

Katie: So that's a huge question that a lot of people have their own angles on. I would say Ignacio and I have something in common, which is that we tell our stories as part of our work identity, not just our personal identity. I am, and there's another person in the book, Stacey, who's a consent educator, who spoke directly about this. About how she can be fine disclosing an abuse history to a crowded room that she is giving a training to. But, then, not wanting to even tell her closest friends details of what happened.

She brought up a really good point, which is that in these professional environments, most of the time, if you disclose to somebody, the potential negative impact is just not that big because you're probably not going to see them every single day. But if you already have a strong relationship with somebody and you tell them what happened, and they have a bad reaction, or they don't believe you, or they say something really negative or dismissive, that kind of ruins a support system that you have.

So it's kind of this high-risk, high-reward thing and people land all over the place with it. But I think the reason why people like me and Ignacio and Stacey do choose to share a lot has to do with that professional-personal divide.

There's research that shows that if you hear a story or read a story, you start to take on some of the emotions of the teller. So, if I tell a story about sexual assault that includes how I got better, or how I asked for help, or just some positive thing, I think it translates. That might give readers and listeners hope that they could do something similar in their life.

Jerry: It was really fascinating that you had several instances of people explaining that, after sexual assault or some sort of trauma, they remained with those partners. People might be surprised, but it's more common than people want to admit. Were you surprised by that?

Katie: I was aware of that reality by the time people were telling me their personal examples of it. That is super hard; it was super hard for me as the author/journalist, being in that position, because it's not really my job to intervene or help. What I tended to do was just sort of ask them more questions about the support that they did have just to, sort of, make sure they were aware of the support that they had access to. But it's so hard.

I think it gets hard when somebody is sexually assaulted by a partner or somebody they're dating and doesn't leave right away because we have this narrative that sexual assault is the worst thing ever and victims would do anything to get away and anything to prevent it from happening again. But if you are inside somebody else's abusive system—like coercive control and stuff beyond just the actual abuse—you can be really isolated. Then you feel: “Where would I go?”

There's just a lot of other factors that go into why people don't leave—beyond the sexual assault, which doesn’t just happen in one moment, at one time. And then there's this whole other relationship going on that is often designed to keep people from leaving. It's an intentional thing that the abuser is doing. It's not like the survivor could just walk out the front door and the abuser doesn't care.

So those are really, really tough situations. And I would say to anybody in that situation to get access to help. Particularly with seeing the reality of what you're dealing with. I know that the National Domestic Violence Hotline actually does a really good job if you tell them: “This abusive thing happened in my relationship.” They're not just gonna say: “Oh, let's not focus on that. That's too bad.” They actually ask questions, pretty wide-ranging questions to figure out if there's other abusive stuff going on that maybe the victim didn't know was illegal or didn't know was something they could get help with. And that's a free hotline. There are ways to get help, but it's very tricky when you're stuck.

Jerry: To slightly change gears—but it's all connected, obviously—you have a character in the book named Mia. She's a Black bisexual woman, and she talks about how she didn't really ever see herself represented in healthy and happy relationships.

When I'm thinking about wanting to share these stories that involve trauma or sexual assault, then I go: “Do people also need those happy stories?” Because they don't see the possibility of happiness if you only hear stories about trauma, especially in certain communities and subcultures. Then everyone thinks, “Oh, that's just the way it is. That's normal.” We've normalized it. Is that scary that we might be doing that?

Katie: Well, I would actually point to something else Mia said something about how woundedness should not be a requirement. That it's OK not be OK, but you don't have to make it your entire life in order for it to be valid.

Jerry: Let me quote it:

“Allowing people to be wounded is important, but ‘woundedness shouldn’t be a requirement,’ for people after they’ve been assaulted. Mia wants more space to define for herself what post-traumatic growth can look like, disregarding the expectations of her community.”

Katie: Right. She was really speaking to the idea that it's an individual experience. So there may be a ton of cultural narratives interplaying there, but you should be allowed to heal, and you should allow them to feel broken, and you should be allowed to just have this whole range of reactions without that changing the fact of what happened to you. There are many ways to heal and many different paces to go at.

Jerry: It's interesting because we've had this reaction even since you started writing the book against the “resilience narrative.” This idea of resilience is connected to this woundedness, right? That you're always going to be able to overcome. You're always going to be able to spring back.

Katie: Yeah, I mean, I have publicly shared about being assaulted more than once, and I have received verbal compliments that are sort of—somebody told me: “You're the most resilient person I know.” I don't want to be that.

Lexi, in the book, is a somatics coach. And she told me about this metaphor that what you're trying to do in terms of resilience is that you take a rubber band, and it can kind of only stretch so far. But if you push it a little bit at a time, over time, it gets more flexible and gets more resilient. And that's what you're trying to do with your response to the world.

This might offend people, since, as long as you survive, you are resilient. It’s true: As long as you sort of make it through, you are resilient, and it can be really messy. It's a very trauma-focused way to look at it, instead of saying: “How did you grow?”

The idea of post-traumatic growth is becoming more popular, which I really like. ‘Cause it's focusing on the idea that there might not be inherent meaning in trauma or sexual assault, but you can create meaning from what happened to you, however you choose. And I think that's stronger.

Jerry: In the final chapter, when you write:

“Instead of following prescribed ideas around what relationships can look like, we’re approaching them with our particular needs front of mind. The partner of a sexual assault survivor may act differently from how a typical partner is expected to act. Sometimes we don’t need sex—we need support.”

I think that’s true. You end the book on this note also that this isn’t trauma porn. It's not just about wallowing in victimhood. It's about trying to figure out how to survive and to thrive.

Katie: Yeah. And, in terms of sort of ending where I left it, it all kind of ties back to this idea of how sexual trauma survivors are reinterpreting the narrative and figuring out what needs they have, how to fulfill them that don't necessarily rely on systemic changes. A lot of people talk about, “I wish my therapist was better.” But then they talk about three other ways that they get help that are working. And I sort of challenge that idea that we need to create something different. Maybe we just need to pay more attention to what survivors are already doing to heal and what survivors are already sort of describing, as I spoke earlier.

I left it on the note of community support because I think that's something that people can always find a way to access, and find a way to get help from. Even if you leave an abusive relationship, move across the country, don't know anybody, aren't really sharing your identity or story with anybody, you can still go to a DV shelter support group and find support there. There's always a way.

Jerry: Absolutely.

Katie: I chose to end with that particular relationship of mine that I described that was a little bit sexual, but it turned into this sort of vehicle for growth when it became a friendship. That was the first person that I really came out to as nonbinary. It was the first person that I talked to a lot about safety planning and how you can have human relationships with people that don't necessarily look like the predominant narrative.

It's baked into a lot of pop culture stuff, that if you have sex after sexual assault—or if you get married after sexual assault—that is healing. And there are so many alternative endings to relationships that can probably be more healing. I just don't want people to ever feel that, because they're single or because their relationship isn't going well, they're stagnant. That doesn't have to be true.

Katie has created a zine that you can download, make and share as well!

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