"I was Strangely Sexually Excited by How You Stood Your Ground in There": My Auto-Ethnographic Story of Sexual Harassment in Higher Education (Report‪)‬

Scene I: The King (1) and I With his free hand, he opens the door to the conference room for me. I take my seat at the conference room table next to him, eager to please him with my pages full of edits and my best navy blue suit on, a recent graduation present from my parents. "I'd like to start by thanking the committee", he says, "for all their hard work on Mark's thesis proposal". As he's speaking, I pull the skin off my thumb until it bleeds, a habit from childhood, a nod to the familiar nerves I feel inside. It's trance-like, this picking ... pulling and picking ... picking and pulling until the skin breaks free from its mooring ... not thinking ... avoiding the thoughts of fear, panic, weakness, and lack of control I feel inside. The pain is instantaneous and breaks the stronghold of the trance, bringing me back to the present.