As a survivor of sexual assault, I’ve learned that trauma, healing, and the memories of violence don’t operate within neat paradigms or conform to any intuitive, linear structure. I was raped a few years ago by a person I’ll call Sami, a software developer now based in Seattle. But I’d somehow been able to find some semblance of closure a lot more straightforwardly than the single time I got molested, almost a year after my encounter with Sami. 

On February 25th 2023, I was at a bar in the east of Singapore, attending a now-defunct monthly social mixer with about 50 people, a mix of close friends, acquaintances and strangers. The purpose of the mixer was to meet new people. In fact, the organisers had explicitly stated that the mixer was not a platform for dating or hook-ups, and that in the past, they’d taken varying degrees of action against predatory or simply greasy behaviour. Still, it wasn’t uncommon to meet attendees who treated it like some sort of speed dating activity. 

There were also consent stickers on every attendee’s name tag, colour-coded to indicate how comfortable we were with physical contact (red for “don’t touch me”, orange for “ask me first”, and green for “touch is okay”)—only of the sort that would be appropriate in a public venue where the occasional young family would dine at. I had an orange sticker on that night, which meant anyone, especially strangers, who wanted a friendly hug, or to initiate any physical contact at all, would need to ask for my consent before doing so.

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