Picture this: you enter a large and darkened room full of hundreds of dancing bodies. The DJ is playing rap or techno or skrillex, or whatever the kids are listening to these days. It's hot and you can't see a thing. But you and your friends join the dancing mob. As you sway to the beat, you notice somethings. As all the women are moving their hips from side to side and playing with their hair suggestively, an outer layer of men are watching attentively. Together, like lions spotting gazelles at the watering hole, the men infiltrate the mob. You continue to dance with your friends. You're having a pretty good time. Good DJ. Good friends. Good dancing. But all of a sudden you feel a pair of cold and clammy hands wrap around your waste from behind. Before you have time to process the situation, those hands grab on tight to your thighs and something else is rubbing up against your derriere. This is called grinding, though many people like to call it "dancing."The definition of grinding is simply: the rubbing of ones genital area against the butox of another. It requires no eye-contact or any verbal communication. This is not just an occasional occurrence at high school or college dances It has replaced all forms of dancing. Walking on to the dance floor, you are going to see hundreds of people grinding up against each other. The further you go into the crowd, the more crude the "dancing."It's essentially a large mass of intensely hormonal students.
This description may sound funny on paper but it is a serious problem. I cannot recall a dance where at least one guy did not grab me from behind. It happens so fast that women, most of the time, submit to it. I have. The main reason why most young people attend dances it to meet people. So if the only way to interact with someone is through grinding, then we feel we have no choice. But there is a choice. What should stick out to you as the essential problem is that men or women (but mainly men) do not wait for consent when engaging in this intensely sexual act. So when you go up to a woman and rub your pelvis against her body, you are sexually assaulting her.
Grinding is a form of sexual assault. If a woman doesn't say anything it doesn't mean she likes it. As Sandy Banks from the LA Times puts it, "Silence is not consent. Body movements and...moans are not consent, and grinding on the dance floor is not consent."
In my experience with grinding, guys certainly leave the situation more satisfied than the partner. It becomes a form of competition to men. Who can grind the most girls? Women are something to be dominated and thrown away. As a woman, you are left feeling empty and vulnerable. Your body has just been used and everyone just saw it. Your friends call you "slutty" while everyone gives a pat on the back to your partner. You never saw each other's faces and never spoke a word. It was completely anonymous. "Take away the music and turn on the lights, and grinding dances quickly turn into sexual assault charges," writes Joshua Lipson of the Harvard Crimson.
The more we submit ourselves to this treatment, the more men will think it is okay to do it. But women are not the only victims here. Men find themselves under an enormous amount of pressure from their male-counterparts. It's a sign of masculinity and creates the identity of "the player." Not all men want to grind. They are just convinced that there is no other option.
Dances are meant to be fun. Instead, the majority of women leave dances feeling dirty and embarrassed. The CDC recently reported that 1 in 5 women have been raped or have experienced sexual assault. I believe grinding is very much a part of that statistic. This means that I have been sexually assaulted. My friends have been sexually assaulted. Most of the women I know have been sexually assaulted.
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