In an interview with Oprah Winfrey on her show Super Soul Conversations that aired Wednesday night, Amy Schumer discussed being sexually assaulted by her boyfriend when she was a teenager. Though Schumer has mentioned the experience in the past—even in her standup—this is the first time she’s done so in detail.
Schumer says that she initially began telling the story about the assault—which she called “grape” or “gray area rape”—in her set to “make people laugh while they learned.”
“When we hear about rape when we’re children, and we’re being warned about it, it’s about a guy popping out from a bush…and some villain. They don’t say it’s probably gonna be a guy you know really well. It could be your husband. It could be your friend. And so you think, when that happens you, you say, ‘OK, this isn’t someone I want to see rotting in a jail cell, but what he did to me was wrong, and I didn’t consent.’ And for me, I lost my virginity while I was asleep. And that’s not OK. So, in my standup I would say, ‘If she’s asleep, that’s a no.’ Just hoping that a couple guys would see that and it would be met in that moment, like, ‘This is a no. I heard that somewhere.’
Of her sexual assault, Schumer goes on to say “The first thing he said was, ‘I thought you knew.’ I didn’t say anything yet, and he says, ‘I thought you knew.’”