Why #MeToo is Not About Bringing Down Men, but About Respecting Women

By Melanie Schoo — BRAZEN

This article recounts a personal sexual assault incidence and may upset some people.

It’s funny the role that our senses play in memories. Whilst the way things looked or sounded might have faded around the edges, certain smells have imprinted so strongly on me that they act like a time machine.

Last week, watching the testimony of Dr Christine Blasey Ford, all I could smell was Calvin Klein Obsession for Men.

That was the aftershave worn by the boy who sexually assaulted me at a party when I was 16. Whilst I’ve done my best to move on from that experience and put the hurt that it caused away, there are still occasional pinpricks of stimuli that bring it back into focus. No amount of therapy is going to make this go away. When I smell this fragrance or hear about similar experiences, I’m haunted by something that happened more than 20 years ago.

Here’s what I remember. I was at a birthday party for someone I sort of knew. He was the boyfriend of a girl I was “say hello to, but don’t really interact with outside of school” friends with. It was at his parents’ house, there were probably about one hundred kids from my school (the local “catholic ladies college”) and our brother school. The party was…