"Friends" who denied and minimized my sexual assaults are bummed about Drumpf's stance on women and I'm not sure how to process it.

So on two occasions, I was aggressively groped in a bar in front of friends. And on both occasions, the friends who witnessed it tried to deny or minimize what happened to me and have both attempted to gaslight me and discredit experiences in the past several months.

The first instance was years ago but still fresh in my memory. A guy was buying drinks for all of my friends. Usually I don’t accept drinks from men (especially not anymore), but in this case, I thought he was “safe” since he was buying drinks for all the girls. I was wrong. He ended up pinning me against the bar and shoving his hands down my pants while everybody looked on and did nothing. Total Kitty Genovese/bystander effect stuff in action. To this day, my “friend” who was right there when it happened denies seeing it and tells me that my “mind plays tricks” on me and that I must be exaggerating/making it up.

The second incident happened earlier in 2016 and caused a big falling-out with another friend. We went to a bar. She got super drunk. A creepy guy was creeping on all of the women and offering drugs—which she wanted. He decided to stick his hand up my skirt. I told him to fuck off, and my friend got bitchy with me and told me that I needed to “lighten up and go with the flow.”

When I tried to confront her about it, she still denies it ever happened and says I’m making it up.

So now fast forward to the election and inauguration of Drumpf, and both of these women are just OUTRAGED that we have a known pussy-grabber in the oval office. Posting all kinds of stuff on FB about their apparently newfound feminism and how bad they think sexual assault is.

I cannot even describe how it makes me feel. These women I’ve known most of my life only care about sexual assault when it’s in the abstract, but anything else is probably too “messy” for them to touch. The fact that can witness it happen right in front of their eyes to a childhood friend (“best friend”) of 15+ years and try to minimize or even flat-out deny what happened is sickening. Why am I’m supposed to shut up and take it?

This whole experience underscores my feelings of trauma and betrayal, and I’m not sure how to process their hypocrisy or what to say when one of them tries to engage me in a discussion on the general topic of sexual assault.