Katie Simon’s debut book, Tell Me What You Like: An Honest Discussion of Sex and Intimacy After Sexual Assault, comes out this month and opens the floor to share stories of survivors and the sexual intimacy after an assault. Simon believes it’s important to have conversations that help survivors navigate their sex life and take control of what they like.
Simon’s research over several years led them to speak to different survivors, discovering there wasn’t a tool that could help them navigate intimacy. They found this to be true since nothing they looked into after their assault reflected what they were looking for.
Simon spoke to us about their upcoming book and the importance of starting this conversation for survivors.
Eulalie Magazine: What motivated you to write this book, or what pushed you to put it out in the open?
Katie Simon: I first had the seed of an idea about this book back in 2011 which was after I was raped when I was a teenager. I went into bookstores and tried to find something that would help with this. Because I’m a nerd, the book angle worked for me, and there really wasn’t anything that helpful. There were a couple of books that were pretty old that technically were on the same topic, but they pathologized being gay, and said everybody is supposed to get married.
There was a very prescriptive, overly prescriptive path. I was starting college, and everybody was hooking up, and I realized that this was not helpful to me. Over the years, that seed of an idea grew, and I ended up writing articles about the topic and interviewing survivors for those articles. I would always ask at the end of the interview, “Are there any resources that would be most helpful to you related to sex after sexual assault?” All of them said unanimously that they wanted to hear more stories, real stories of people like themselves. That was when I realized I could do that, and I knew how to do that. So, I wrote a book proposal, and here we are.
Eulalie Magazine: I think that’s something that’s necessary, because I feel like it’s still such a taboo topic. I wanted to ask, because you talked about the perspective of being queer and how to move on with this. So, do you think that within the community, it’s still a taboo topic, or because the community has faced other challenges, they’re a little bit more open to being receptive to this topic and talking about it?
Katie Simon: I think something interesting has happened since #MeToo. I think a lot more people are willing to come forward and say, “I was sexually assaulted. I am a survivor of sexual assault.” But there hasn’t been a parallel growth in people coming forward and saying, “I survived this trauma, and it affects my sex life.” People are not making that jump yet, but I’m really hopeful that with more discussion about it, and more media coverage, more people writing more books, there’s more language people can use. To see a story in the news and say, “Oh, yeah, this person said they struggle with this. I also struggle with this,” and that can be a conversation starter with their partner, friends, a therapist, or whoever.
There just needs to be more stories out there in order for that to happen. It’s easy to think of like the queer community as being more sex positive and stuff like that. But when it intersects with sexual assault, I think everybody is still really struggling to talk about it.
Eulalie Magazine: You just said that people may need the language to know how to talk about it. Do you think that’s one of the reasons why people still find it so hard to talk about sexual trauma, or because there’s also judgment coming to people who come forward?
Katie Simon: Yeah, I think it’s both. There aren’t that many examples in pop culture. I’m not a pop culture expert, for sure, but from what I have found, there aren’t that many examples of how to navigate these conversations, or what the impact of having that conversation looks like in a relationship or even in a hookup. Without those examples to look toward, I think people are operating, and I used to operate like this, really through trial and error, and that can be painful. I know that if I had had this book I wrote 10 years ago, probably my life would have been a lot easier.
Eulalie Magazine: It’s also good that now you wrote the book, so someone who was maybe in the same situation that you were, or other survivors, they’re able to look to your book and find what you were looking for.
Katie Simon: What’s cool about this book is that it’s a mainstream sex and relationships book. It should be shelved with the other sex and relationships books. It ended up being more than half of the survivor stories in the book were queer and was really self-selecting because of who was down to be interviewed for this. It’s a difficult topic, so it ended up that way.
But I think it’s so cool that it is being treated as mainstream. I feel like 10 years ago, if a book had this many queer examples, they would be in a chapter at the end, like in an appendix. But just to have this much and have it still be a book for everybody, I think, is a really cool, exciting thing that came out of this.
Eulalie Magazine: I think it’s something that doesn’t only affect queer people, so the fact that it is for everybody, opens the door for many survivors to be able to connect with it. One of the things that you mentioned is seeing these stories represented in the media, and how it’s not often talked about in the media. So I wanted to touch base on this, because there’s this trend of younger people talking about how they don’t want to see relationships or sex in the media and TV shows and movies. How do you think this affects, on one end, how survivors come forward about their sexual trauma, and also how it affects how people connect in relationships and dating moving forward?
Katie Simon: I think you don’t need media depictions to heal. That’s not a necessary check box, but having examples can be really helpful. When there’s a subject that’s very taboo and not that many people speak very openly about it, like, this might be happening to a good friend, and you don’t know about it, you don’t know they’re struggling with it. That’s why bigger-picture media examples can be helpful for people to point to. But if you have access to social support and other stories of people you know who are handling it, that is definitely just as valuable.
If you can turn to your personal community and learn from each other, that is great too. There are just a lot of people who are really isolated. I think a lot of the conversation about sex after sexual assault takes for granted that the people in your life want to hear about what’s going on with you, or that your partner wants to be supportive, and that is not really a given. Not all people are in that situation. So that’s why it can be helpful to have a bigger picture or conversation going on for people to tap into.
Eulalie Magazine: I think it’s important to add this to the conversation and to keep the conversation going. I’m sure the goal is to have other people connect with this and use it as a healing tool, or have it in their healing box to refer back to. But is there something in particular that you would like people to take away from this book, or even people who may approach it and not have been victims of sexual abuse, but take a look at this book, what would you like to stay with them?
Katie Simon: I think individuals survivors of sexual assault have so much power to heal themselves. There’s definitely an assumption that going to therapy will help. But the reality today, and I think this is starting to change a little bit, is that most therapists are not trained to have conversations about this topic at all. That’s not part of their core training or their continuing education. And so having other sources of support, like social support, friends, family, but also things like sexual assault support groups, or calling a hotline, or finding support from someone in your community that maybe isn’t exactly who you would think of to get support from.
Some people whom I interviewed for my book found that medical doctors, like PCPs or specialists, ended up being good people to talk to. I mean, some of them found them to be terrible. But there are a lot of ways to access support that you might not think of initially. It’s so upsetting and disappointing if somebody you trust, like a therapist or your best friend or the person you’re supposed to talk to, doesn’t have a good response. But there are so many people out there, and there are many people dealing with this, and you can find support to orchestrate your own healing plan.
You are also going through a sex sex education Renaissance after being assaulted, and being like, “Wait a second, this is broken. How do I want to heal? What am I interested in? What do I want to learn more about? What can I learn that will help make me stay safe and healthy and everything?” But if your sex life comes to a halt, then you’re rebuilding. And some of the survivors I spoke to turned it into a project to learn more and explore more. I think that’s such an empowering and post-traumatic growth angle to take in your own healing journey. You can not only get better, but you can get better. You can land somewhere that is really positive for you.
Eulalie Magazine: Do you want to continue researching this topic and possibly write another book, but also speak with more survivors? Or do you have any other ideas you’d like to expand on moving forward?
Katie Simon: I have so many ideas. I already made this little zine that is a sex ed zine based on what trauma survivors said in the book, and I give it out at events. I give it out to people, and they really like it. It’s approachable because it’s not a whole book.
The book is 80,000 words, but the interview transcripts with survivors I did were over half a million words. There’s just so much more material to do something with. I’ve thought of doing research and collaboration with researchers, and making more resources for survivors. Turning this into a film or TV project, just making the information accessible to more people in different ways. I’m going on a book tour all over the US in August and September, and that is also another way that I’m transforming the material into conversations in real life.
Tell Me What You Like: An Honest Discussion of Sex and Intimacy After Sexual Assault comes out July 29 and is available to pre-order now.
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Lara Rosales
By day, Lara Rosales (she/her) is a solo mom by choice and a bilingual writer with a BA in Latin-American Literature known as a Media Relations Expert. By night, she is a TV enjoyer who used to host a podcast (Cats, Milfs & Lesbian Things). You can find her work published on Tell-Tale TV, Geek Girl Authority, W Spotlight, Collider, USA Wire, Mentors Collective, Instelite, Noodle, Dear Movies, Nicki Swift, and Flip Screened.
