While I was working my peers said loudly they’d like to SA me and how and now I don’t know how to react

TW: Talk of SA, but nothing happened

I’ve (now 23m) had PTSD since I was 12 and tend to dissociate mid-conversation and overly plan things. Overall I think I function well after years of adjustment. I’m pretty easily startled though. I try to live like a dog where I’m in the moment so I don’t think about my past and just charge forward in life.

But a couple of years back I was 19 I was working as a lab monitor at my university as a student employee. Pay was minimum wage, but I had so much fun and I enjoyed the quiet once everyone was done with class and I could just clean the lab and help people doing personal projects.

While I was wiping down a table covered in paint and dust, one student loudly announced he would like to rape me and that he’s never been with a Filipino or Guatamalen before. His friends, two women and two men, all sitting at the same table, laughed and made comments guessing my ethnicity, guessing Mexican and Spanish next. They all said they’d like to rape me and went in detail about it. And I mean graphic detail, which I won’t discuss because it makes me feel gross.

I knew I should’ve booked it, work be damned, but my brain just kind of shut down and I kept cleaning the tables while it was happening. All I could think about was wanting the tables tidy and I didn’t want to lose my job or get blacklisted for saying anything. I don’t known why I didn’t leave that could’ve turned really badly really fast. An instructor was close enough to have at least overheard parts of it, especially considering how loudly they were discussing rape and he just stared at me, not them, and didn’t say anything.

I just moved towards some students across the room and just cleaned the tables there until they left.

I don’t know, I feel stupid for making this a big deal. I dealt with actual stuff in the past. And I feel even more stupid because I’m a guy and when I bring up two of the people were women making those comments, people don’t take it seriously anymore and find it funny. I’m gay and 5’0 if that makes any difference.

And nothing actually happened, but now I am nervous when there’s groups of people laughing. Don’t know if this incident just caused a flair up. I tend to overthink things.

I usually just joke about it because they never guessed my ethnicity correctly and people used to laugh at the story but I recently told the story again and people said it was really disturbing. I don’t know what to think.

So any advice about how to think about this? I don’t usually like thinking about such things. Was this serious or am I just overthinking things? Was this just normal sexual harassment?