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Going only by well-lit streets. Not going into a park after dark when it's the quickest way home (even in germany where they're pretty well-lit and actually open after dark). Leaving things early to have less walking alone in the dark (I don't drive). Even having my keys clutched in my hand for several blocks with the pointy bits (not just my keys --I have a Realized Ultimate Reality Piton on my keychain) sticking out between my fingers in case I have to defend myself.
I've even stayed in my apartment for days on end for fear a scary man (who was following me around the grocery store a block from my house, after trying to hit on me --after asking about my marriage!) might follow me home and find out where I live. The first time I ran into him, my husband was away on a business trip for a few days, too, which didn't help. This guy has done this twice (in the last six months). When I run into this guy, I even fear going somewhere on the subway because the stop is right next to the grocery store, and I. Do. Not. Want. Him. To. Know. Where. I. Live.
The fact that I suddenly have big, unexpected tears welling up tells me this fear cuts deeper than I realized when I started writing that paragraph.
I am going out to meet friends for a little celebration right after work tonight. Last night, as I was planning an outfit to wear, my BF asked why I was so hung up over which shoes to wear. I told him that the shoes I normally wore with that outfit were fine for when I was out with him, but if I was alone they were a bad idea. He asked me why, and I told him it was becuase I could not run in them.
When I go out "escorted", as opposed to showing up on my own, I do not have to worry about how far the parking is from the event, or how practical my outfit is for flight, or whether I can find someone to walk me back to my car.
When I am not alone, I do not have to worry about running out of gas or being unable to get directions becuase there are men congregating outside the entrance to every station I drive past ( I will not run a gauntlet solo ). When I have a male person walking besides me, I have never heard an unsolicited hoot or holler or comment from some random stranger.
Just a little slice.
Another example: not long after I moved into this house, someone (probably bored teenagers with nothing better to do) put a bag of cat shit on my porch and lit it on fire. I was completely freaked out, and called 911, convinced that these people had some reason to target me specifically, and if I went to sleep at night they were going to break into my house and kill me and my son (yeah, maybe my paranoia was a bit inflated, but that's really how I felt at the time). The cops were great, and assured me that in all likelihood it was a prank, and there was no continuing danger - and fortunately, there hasn't been any repeat incident, so I think they were right. Still, the amount of fear that this incident created for me was very large, and it was several weeks before I really felt safe in this house again. And I was disturbed by the knowledge that, if I had still been living with my ex-husband, I wouldn't have been afraid. Somehow, just a male presence in the house would have made me feel like no one would mess with us, if they knew there was a man in the house.
Oh, and the article mentioned something about cops not profiling women. Which is true, but reminded me of one of my other fears. When I'm driving at night, if an unmarked car tried to pull me over (and maybe even a marked police cruiser, depending on the time and place), I would NOT pull over. I'd call 911 instead, and ask the location of the nearest police station, and go there to find out what the officer wanted with me. Not because I don't trust the police - I have the privilege of believing that the police are on my side (and yes, I recognize that this is privilege) . . . but I do worry about being pulled over by someone posing as a policeman.
Yeah. I have a fair number of fears in my life that I don't think I'd have if I were male.
Isn't it the case that you are more likely to be attacked and assaulted if you are male?
I'm happy to be cooreted if am wrong on this issue, and i accept that in the overwhelming majority of cases it is males who commit the assaults but I'd like to ask if we do a disservice by overexagerrating the likeliehood of someone beng attacked to a degree that creates a climate of unneccessary fear?
Graham upthread gave an example of a woman seemingly threatened by his presence even though he was not a threat to her.
How do we strike a balance between teaching people, both men and women, how to take care of themselves without reducing us all to gibbering wrecks every time we go out of our front doors?
Now before I get reamed by the board, please note I am not trying to diminish or dismiss attacks on women, I agree pretty much with most things written on this blog, I feel i have been educated since i started reading this site but I do think that we may be getting the balance wrong on this issue.
I always have my keys in hand before I leave wherever I'm leaving, just so I won't be distracted looking for my keys and get snuck up on. I always have my cell phone close at hand and fully charged. I always check underneath my car and in the back seat before and after I get in. I close the door and lock it immediately.
I never wear headphones if I'm walking by myself after dark. I also always assess my environment as much as possible. Who's there, what cars are there, what do they look like, are there any identifying landmarks close by, do any of the people around have identifying characteristics.
It sucks majorly having to be an amateur detective just to go to the gym after dark, especially since I work the evening shift at a newspaper, which means I'm out after dark as a general rule.
If there are lights on top and the car is marked, put on your flashers and pull to a well-lit location. Most officers will understand.
Of course, there are places here in Knoxville that I wouldn't walk around in at night. Thankfully, though, they're far enough away from where I live that I still feel reasonably confident. Although I have been known to clutch my keys between my fingers, and also ring my partner and tell them where I was and when to expect me home.
Graham, I don't even think I can tell you how much it means that you don't take that fear personally. I've had conversations with not a few men who were extremely belligerent about how women are being cruel (one even accused women of "profiling") when they get nervous about being followed or approached by a man when they're alone.
The thing is, I know a lot of women (myself included) feel shitty about that fear, because we know not all men want to hurt us. But what can you do when rapists don't exactly advertise the fact with signs on their foreheads? The potential is always there -- and men who understand that and don't take it personally when women are demonstrably nervous, especially men who, as you did, try to allieviate that fear even if it inconveniences them, are just so, so appreciated.
(((hug)))
For one thing, believe it or not, I have kept my "teh fatty" status partly because it helps make me invisible to certain predators. Not all of them, of course, but the catcalling ones. I am currently changing eating habits/starting to exercise because my blood pressure and cholesterol have climbed steadily over the years, along with my weight, and in my case I am pretty sure there's a correlation. I am surprised to find myself almost dreading what I will look like when I lose weight -- will I fall back into fuckable status? Or maybe, at 48, I'm too old for that anymore. Maybe my numbers will start to look healthier before I get too fuckable.
Sad, isn't it?
Along with that, I of course cannot exercise early in the morning or early in the evening, because of darkness. I've been followed once on the bike path, by a guy who walked his bike behind me as I was walking. He paced me for a long time. Fortunately I flagged a runner who was going past me, and was part of my boot camp, and asked her to slow down and stay with me.
I dropped boot camp after that. I was happy that the trainer said he was going to always make sure, after that incident, that there were two trainers -- one for the runners and one for the walkers.
But why does it have to be this way?
And no, I am not "blaming" other people for my weight gain, so don't bother with teh fatty shaming, any trolls who happen by. I'm saying I've found some collateral comfort in it.
And how exactly was she supposed to know that?
Making sure all of the curtains and blinds are firmly closed at night. Checking the backseat of the car every time I get in. Jumping to lock the car anytime a male pedestrian walks near. Choosing to drive rather than walk or bike after 6 pm. Constantly shoulder checking when walking alone after dark, even in the day depending on the location. Choosing not to go certain places unless my husband is with me, day or night. Feeling very nervous entering an elevator alone. Not riding in an elevator alone with an unknown man. Feeling very nervous anytime the cable man or a repair man have to come into my home. Crossing the street when walking alone to avoid groups of men.
P.S. I've been told that the putting your keys in between your fingers thing won't work because unless you are extremely strong, the keys will be more likely to push through the soft tissue in your hand than puncture someone else's skin if you were to punch someone with them.
So, if we can't trust those men, why are we supposed to trust those that have no vested interest in maintaining a positive relationship with us?
There's also the fact that non-involved people are more inclined to step in and break up a fist-fight or mugging between two men or two women than they are to step in and stop a rape. The sexual aspect of sexual assault makes people so thoroughly uncomfortable that most look away, which is not the same reaction people have to a non-sexual confrontation.
(See examples of not getting involved.)
Beyond that, I think most people intuitively understand that getting into a fight won't have the lasting effect that getting sexually assaulted will have, not in the same way. And that if someone attacks you (non-sexually) of the same gender, you are likely to get justice. Not so if you are sexually assaulted.
All these things play into women's reality.
That was kind of my point, we are in a situation where every male stranger is a potential threat, I can't imagine what it's like to have to consider every walk in public a potentially threatening situation. I'm simply trying to confront the issue of making sure the steps we take to protect people don't add to an already bad situation by creating a climate of unnecessary fear.
That's not what we're talking about. No one has said that every time they're in public, it's a potentially threatening situation. And I will thank you to please stop building strawmen to derail this conversation from its purpose, which is to allow people to speak freely about how the idea of sexual assault and/or street harassment affected their daily movements, without any implicit judgment of overreaction.
About 1 in 5 women will be sexually assaulted in their lives in this country. That's a ridiculously high number -- and it's enough that this conversation is warranted, without yet another exhausting intrusion of concern trolling a la "Gee, is it really rational for women to fear sexual assault?"
Just let the conversation happen, please.
"but I'd like to ask if we do a disservice by overexagerrating the likeliehood of someone beng attacked to a degree that creates a climate of unneccessary fear?"
I'd have to say that in my experience Cruithne, it's not really about the statistical likelihood of being attacked. I'm big and tall and by dint of my size and apparent strength alone it's statistically less likely that a perpetrator will choose me out of a particular string of women to try to assault.
Men's social and physical dominance are palpable though, in just regular verbal interactions, whether in the context of business or social settings, and the steps I take, like so many other women, to keep myself safe (the car key held in the knuckles, the hand scratching my cheek as I walk by an unknown man so my arm is in a position to land a blow if I need to deliver a quick defensive hit before hightailing it out of there, crossing the street to avoid any possible confrontation, plotting a winding course to my lunch spot to avoid all of the local construction workers, etc.) are largely a part of my reaction to those men, certainly not all men but it only takes a few, who give me the impression in what should be relatively benign conversations, with their words and conversational style alone that they either see me as a sexual object or someone whose natural assertiveness makes them feel insecure, or sometimes downright bitter. Assigned gender roles work against both men and women that way.
Having that constant sense of a potential seething bitterness keeps me on my toes, statistics and immediate necessity completely aside. One teaspoon at a time, every time you or I or anyone else find ourselves in a position to make a stand, over the course of a long time - eventually changing underlying behaviors and eroding gender role related insecurities in our society as a whole - is probably the only way to really effect change that will someday allow us to let down our guards when walking alone.
On her behalf--thank you, very much, for doing this. I know men aren't *obligated* to change paths, but I think it is the best solution in that kind of situation.
That doesn't matter, really, actual numbers of assaults. What matters is that women are perceived to be naturally in danger and are therefore responsible for violence committed against them when they go out. Society supports men who harm women.
Whenever I'm walking or waiting at a bus stop I put my headphones in so I can pretend I don't hear the catcalls, on the assumption that if I have an excuse to ignore them, the perpetrator won't get as angry at the lack of attention. I keep the volume down enough that I am aware of what's going on around me.
I made arrangements with my husband to drive me home after work in the winter when it gets dark earlier so I don't have to wait at the bus stop after dark.
One time when I was walking through an area I knew would be poorly lit, I put my hoody up to cover my hair and changed my gait to look more "masculine" in case anyone was watching.
I'll butt out.
Isn't it the case that you are more likely to be attacked and assaulted if you are male?
Without getting into a debate about statistics, the point you are missing is that it's not about who is a likely victim. It's a matter of who is statistically more like to be the perpetrator of the crime. Since the majority of perpetrators of violent crime are men, it is not irrational for women to fear strange men, particularly when a woman is by herself.
Indeed, if the point you are making is that men are likely to be victimized, the rational response is not for women to collectively breathe a sigh of relief, but rather for men to adopt a similar pose of caution. A certain wariness about unknown individuals is protective. What's depressing is how crappy it makes us feel to distrust humanity and how much it sucks to live in a state of insecurity, which surely has emotional costs along with its survival benefits.
I know that when I lived in a larger city, I would not open my door after a certain hour of night unless I was specifically expecting company, and that it freaked me out when strangers would speak to me in parking lots, especially at night.
Even living in a smaller city, I had a freakout moment a few months back when a strange man (homeless, by the look of him) tried to intercept me on the way back to my car from getting groceries. I altered course, he altered his to intercept anyway, so I stopped dead in my tracks about 10 yards away from him and demanded to know what he wanted. He said he was having trouble opening a bottle of water he'd purchased at a gas station and wanted me to open it for him. I distrusted his motive, thinking it was a pretext for him to get within arm's reach and either grab my wallet and run or else pull a knife on me or who-knows-what-else. I declined, and when he continued to approach me, I turned around and ran back into the grocery store, where I wandered the aisles for another 20 minutes before I felt safe enough to go back to my car.
I felt terrible about it afterward, because chances are that he really was just a harmless guy with joint pain looking for help with a stubborn lid, but I didn't want to take the chance that he would rob me or injure me. Better safe than sorry, I guess.
I know my guarded attitude is unusual for a guy, and I'm still likely to go wandering about at night if I feel like it; I just tend to be wary when I do so, and I try to be watchful for situations that are suspicious and potentially threatening. And I know most guys aren't as worried as me, though my instinct says that rather a lot of them should be. The idea that women must live day-in and day-out with the sort of nervous fear I've only felt a couple of dozen times total is completely heartbreaking. Though, obviously, not at all unreasonable, given the state of the world in which we live.
http://www.pennyharrington.com/drivingfemale.htm
I have only ever lived in fairly safe neighborhoods. There are a lot of things that I am afraid of because I am a woman, but walking alone at night isn't really one of them. Two months ago I went for a walk at one in the morning, just because I felt like I needed a walk. Here at college, I'm always crossing campus in the dark to get to and from political forums. (And if I do feel unsafe, there are escorts I can call.) I'm the exception, I know.
I am, however, nervous about walking alone during the day. There are just...more people there to commit the minor forms of harassment that no one cares about. For example, when I was 14, my two sisters (age 17 and 12) and I were walking home from a movie theater, and a group of I think four guys started saying nasty things to us. We ignored them. Then they threw rocks at us. We walked faster to get away from them, but otherwise didn't respond. Then I asked my older sister not to tell our dad, because I was so embarrassed. Shitty world.
I've worked nights off and on for years. The thing that made me quit my job working nights at a gas station wasn't either of the two times I was robbed (this was in Canada - the second robbery made the papers because it involved a gun) but the group of asshole men who would show up outside at night in a car and start taking photos of me at work. That's it, I was done.
I've certainly had men try and intimidate me at my current night job - obviously I *owe* them a room in my hotel if they show up drunk and disorderly at 3 a.m.! They try and loom over me and get very belligerent. Then when my male coworker comes by, they suddenly decide they're not going to bother any more. Has happened like that three times since starting the job in early September.
Mostly, I'm not affected by a lot of the stuff that women are told about how Dangerous It Is Out There. I don't know why - perhaps being influenced by growing up small towns where most people don't lock their doors and don't lock their cars (my ex-boyfriend used to leave the keys in the ignition, in case anyone needed to move his van). But people who love me are constantly afraid for me, and are trying to convince me to stop being fearless on the subject. I don't know how I feel about that - should I be afraid? Is there something wrong with me because I'm not? Am I just fooling myself?
I don't know. I know the statistics say that I'm less likely to be harmed than my husband is (with added bonus of him having a disability), but I don't think that's what's influenced me so much. Maybe it's the small towns, maybe it's because I've avoided watching the necessary "lone woman walking alone gets murdered/raped/attacked" movies and t.v. shows. I don't know.
I certainly don't think anyone who is concerned for their safety is doing something wrong. I don't think they're afraid foolishly. I think I'm just very sheltered and naive.
It's a huge, newfound sense of freedom that it gives me. I never thought it would be like that, but it is. I guess this is a part of why bicycling was a huge part of early feminism!
@cruithne: i appreciate the fact you are totally open to thinking about this situation in a different way, but i just have to wonder if you're a woman or not. cause i have never met a woman that didn't have this automatic thought process and reaction to leaving the house at night (or hell, even being home alone at night). some women only get around it by feeling comfortable in their own physical strength and ability to defend themselves. i know personally that i can't even rationalize my way out of feeling that fear. the only time i feel comfortable is when there are a lot of people out. i used to live in beijing and i'd walk home from work by myself after dark and never felt scared because there were hundreds of people still out on the street then too. man, just thinking about this topic makes me feel incredibly anxious and emotional, so i'm with you sunnyhello.
What she said. Thank you Graham.
Like most of the women on this thread, I've taken similar steps. One I didnt see anyone else note was that when I worked very late at night back when I lived in Boston, I'd take a taxi home instead of the subway and the bus. It had a financial impact as do many of these things which hasnt been mentioned.
I did try taking the subway, until my male boss found out and freaked. "I don't want you doing that at midnight, it's dangerous! If you dont have cash, tell me, I'll take care of it for you."
He had a good point, I cant tell you how nervous I was walking in the underground subway stations alone late at night.
Of course at my age now, I'm a bit less nervous - I think I'd be less likely to be a target at 50 than I was at 30.
I live in a not-great neighborhood, and I would like to live alone, but I have both a big dog and a roommate, both partially for security reasons. I take the big dog with me when I go for a walk. It does reduce the amount of harassment I get, but not from assholes in cars driving by, who still feel they can shout/ throw things.
Other things almost too mundane to mention. Don't go to bars alone. Don't go to shows alone. Don't accept drinks or anything else from people I don't know. Don't answer the door after dark.
Now, I'll avoid groups of teens since they nearly always feel like a threat to me, especially when they're all male. Only time the groups don't bother me as much are when I'm at uni, I think because I know why they're in that particular location.
I've had the same thing *many* times. I'm a very big guy; so I guess that contributes to it. When I notice someone feeling nervous around me, I do my best to create more distance, open the space up, etc... if I'm heading the same direction as someone who seems to be nervous about me, I tend to take an alternate route so I'm not 'following' them.
Some of it I know is just my own obsessive worrying - but the truth is so many women and some men live with very well founded worry about sexual assault... so if I can put anyone at ease through slight inconvenience to myself, its worth it.
I don't take the garbage out after dark. I don't leave windows open at night, ever, even when the weather is nice. I carry my cell phone and a small knife everywhere with me: After being raped by my boyfriend, who was supposed to be simply driving me home from a Christmas party, I don't just assume that I am going to be safe, even around people that I trust.
Does that kind of thing ever happen to men? Shit no.
As far as the rest, there's the usual coordinating my outfit so I can wear shoes in which I can run, being alert to my surroundings, pre-planning my route so I'm not walking down any dark streets by myself, keeping an eye on my drink to make sure no one tries to slip anything into it, locking my car doors when I drive, etcetera etcetera etcetera...
I live about a mile from my work. For me, that's easy walking distance, but several blocks are through areas that are non-residential (hence somewhat isolated after business hours) and without much foot or car traffic. I often do walk, but when I do I am hyper-vigilant, plotting my route carefully, always aware if there are other people around. If it's after dark, I NEVER walk alone. My husband picks me up, or I take a cab, which costs $9 including tip for a 1-mile ride.
My office is in the downtown area of my city, and one thing I've noticed is that men outnumber women on the streets about 4:1 after dark. There are plenty of people in the business core, but I have to figure that women stay away (or leave before dark) because they, like me, fear dark parking garages or walks alone to outlying lots.
And there are SO many things I won't go out and do by myself, although I enjoy time alone. It really bothers me that my husband doubles as my bodyguard. I've been at pains to maintain my independence thoughout our marriage --and it bothers me quite a lot (although it's hypothetical) that in order to leave him, I would have to sacrifice a measure of personal safety.
I had this argument with an ex boyfriend frequently. He didnt seem to get why I wouldnt just go into a bar alone, sit down, order a drink and start chatting with strangers like he did.
I finally turned it around on him and asked him what he thought of women who were alone in bars. "Well, she's probably there looking to get laid." Duh. Because it was me and not some woman he didnt know, he figured it was fine. He didnt realize that the other men in the bar wouldnt know me, and would think about me exactly what he thought about women alone in bars.
I've had a carload of idiotic young boys leap out of a car that suddenly pulled onto the pavement in front of me, all waving their arms and yelling "Get in the car!". I quickly deduced that they were having a "laugh" - they were all giggling hysterically and none had any weapons that I could see - and continued walking the way I was going, to their confusion. This incident, whilst relatively tame, still shook me - what if these boys weren't having some sort of twisted joke? How "fortunate" for me that they were idiots thinking that pretending to abduct a lone woman is some sort of hilarious joke.
Right. A woman alone in a restaurant is either "looking for company" or an object of pity. It would be nice to be able to just be myself instead of some role someone else projects on me. How about I'm just a hungry woman looking for a MEAL?
Many years ago, when I was young and cute, I had a friend who was also young and cute. If she and I wanted to go out for a drink and be left in peace, we went to the local lesbian bar. In a "straight" bar we couldnt just sit and have a conversation without being hit on by various men.
-I'm a grad student, so my monthly pay is very low - auxiliary income, actually, but I live alone. In my first Philly apartment, the rent increased every year, so I was forced to move to a cheaper apartment. I also needed to find a place where I could walk home from a public transit stop and run the lowest possible risk of assault. I researched crime reports online and even tried a police ridealong to see if an affordable neighborhood was safe for me to be female and by myself. I felt extremely... trapped during this experience.
-I stopped wearing words on my shirts years ago, since I never went unharassed with those and occasionally go unharassed with plain, modest clothing.
-I have to take cab money into account while out. Usually I walk everywhere, but that's not an option when I'm dressed for drinking out at night.
-Neither is taking the subway after a certain hour.
-While downtown, I walk next to reflective buildings whenever possible. I do this because I've been followed, and like to see if anyone's behind me.
But really, while I take all these precautions to avoid the kind of creepy (but thankfully not harmful) encounters I've had in the past, I still know that the street is one of the lower risk locations for sexual assault. The real fighting-off begins indoors, trying to defend my right to drink at a bar with some friends without persistant harassment (friendly, respectful conversation is fine) and my right to dance without cock thrust into me (again, communicative, respectful dancing is fine!).
I can't jog alone anywhere except for right in the middle of campus in the daytime when there are lots of people around. I'd love to go running at the nearby state park, but it's just not safe to go running on a trail in the woods alone.
I know where all the emergency phones are on my route from my lab to my car, and I know that there is a stretch in the middle where there isn't one in sight, and I'm on high alert if I have to walk through there after dark.
I like photography, but I don't feel safe going out in most public places and focusing on the camera rather than keeping a watchful eye on my surroundings. So I either need to shoot with a partner or in a "safe" place, which really limits where I can go and shoot. I told this to my boyfriend, who is a photographer and loves just going out to shoot, and he said "Huh. Yeah, I can see that."
My boyfriend recently took a solo vacation, where he just rented a car and bummed around Nevada and California, with no real plan, assuming he'd just sleep in the car if he couldn't find a motel. I would not feel safe traveling alone that way.
Oddly, I felt a whole lot safer going out alone when I lived in Cambridge, MA for a summer. There was some street harassment, but because the streets were so populated, the harassment didn't make me frightened for my physical safety. I often went out by myself after dark, to get ice cream or go to the bookstore -- felt perfectly safe on the T and the sidewalks. I walked to and from work every day, and walked to and from the supermarket every week, and I actually do not recall ever having someone shout at me from a car.
Around here, no one walks. Walking makes you a target for harassment from guys in cars, I think because it catches their attention and makes them assume you must be poor, suffering car trouble, or otherwise vulnerable. If someone starts following you, it's likely that you're alone, isolated, without another person in sight or shouting distance, since no one else walks. And stuff is so much farther apart that you have a hard time getting to a well-lighted, populated, "safe" place of business. I feel much less safe walking alone here in the sprawly suburbs.
But I did want to say that taking a self-defense course and some martial arts (aikido was especially useful) really helped me to not be completely frightened all of the time. Seems fairly obvious, but just wanted to pass it on in case other women hadn't considered it.
Last summer they put me up at a hotel that didnt *have* room service, so I had dinner out of the vending machine every night.
I'm pretty lucky though, I'm tall with short hair and a slim build. With the type of clothing I typically wear, it's easy to mistake me for a guy and I feel this helps me.
-----
Ohhh, yes, this. I totally agree. It bothers me more than I can express that I consider myself a feminist, and a fairly independent woman, and yet when my husband is away, I can't sleep because every little noise has me up checking the windows and doors. It's insane. He's in the navy, and when he's away on deployment, I get ZERO sleep. I will go literally six months only sleeping a few hours a night, because I'm terrified to be alone after dark. I don't know many people in this area, so if someone were to break in and abduct/murder me, no one would know. No one would notice that I was missing. Only my husband, and obviously when he's away, he can't call every day to check on me. It makes me feel like a child to be so scared, and so dependent upon another person for my well-being and safety, but he's built like a brick shithouse and I consider him my bodyguard.
When I used to work night shifts, at my old work, my boyfriend would usually come and pick me up. If he couldn't do that, I'd call either him or my parents on my mobile (cell) phone for the duration of the walk home, which cuts across my campus. I know that rapists have targeted women there. I've heard that having a phone can actually incite attackers, but I'd continually tell the person I was talking to where I was, so they could call the police if anything happened to me.
The thing is, I know that this doesn't really change much-- every report of stranger rape that I read is different, and they are not, by any means, all at night. The targets of these attacks can be women exercising in the morning, or women waiting at a bus stop at midday, or women walking across a crowded area in the middle of the city at 5:30pm. Intellectually, I know that I'm probably not all that likely to be assaulted. I believe that the fear of stranger rape is overblown, because it lets society in general avoid recognising that most rape occurs in domestic spaces-- rapists are scary men in dark alleys, not husbands, fathers, boyfriends, friends and neighbours-- and it also conveniently gives another excuse to tell women to modify their behaviour. It lets people say that a double standard for men and women is "common sense", even though it's actually victim-blaming. It's one of the sublte ways that women's earning power is reduced, because it's harder to stay late at work, becuase it's harder to go "out with the boys" after work, etc-- yet making these "small" adjustments to our lives is so pervasive that it's just expected. It's as invisible as the air we breathe, to most people. And I think a big part of that is that we know that, if a stranger attacks us and rapes us-- however likely or unlikely that is-- we're the ones who will be blamed for it, in some way, for the crime of being there.
How sad is it that this caught my eye instantly? "Normal person" - a man or maybe a woman with a group, but not alone. (Not finding fault with you Broce, not at all; but these stories just make me so sad at what women have to go through daily, and then I noticed that and... ugh.)
(((more hugs for all))) its all I've got to offer.
You are absolutely right, JJohnson, and I noticed it after I posted it. Woman alone = not normal person. Yep. I've internalized this.
And thank you for noticing. You give me hope for the next generation :-)
I used to have a job that made me travel alone a lot- ugh. I usually ended up eating drive-through fast food, or getting room service (even though the job paid for meals, room service was NOT paid for- "extravagance') so that I would not have to sit alone in yet another restaurant. I swear every damn businessman I've ever met in a hotel restaurant was looking to cheat on his wife. Most of them didn't even bother to hide their rings before starting in on me- I'm alone in a restaurant, so I must be desperate, right? Nothing would dissuade them- books or headphones or whatever.
Exactly. And because you're "desperate" they arent even remotely charming or polite about it.
I've got a t-shirt that says "Powered by Polish Vodka" and this is apparently an excuse for every (male) asshole in my neighbourhood to get into a conversation with my breasts about Vodka or Poland. Last time it happened my husband and I were going out for Pizza, and when I didn't play along, the guy called me a bitch. I turned around pretty fast and said "I'm sorry, I don't think my husband heard you, could you repeat that?" Don's 6'10" tall. Asshole suddenly explained how he was totally talking to someone else, honest.
*sigh*
There's a group of older men who sit outside one of the local restaurants and cannot let me pass without comment. Maybe their beers will get warm if they do, I don't know. I'm refusing to not wear the shirt - it's one of my favourite - but sometimes I think I should just, you know, not.
Grr, now I'm angry again.
Strangely, my "Read Banned Books" t-shirt does not generate this response.
At night, I drive rather than walk, even if where I'm going is within walking distance.
Cat calling, often accompanied by threats or following by men in cars, means I'm afraid to walk, even in daylight, without someone else, preferably large, male, and gay.
Fear of rape by drugging means that I'm not willing to drink at parties, or let anyone purchase a drink for me at bars.
If surviving attacks by humans weren't an issue, I'd be going for solo rambles in the woods daily, often in the small hours of the morning.
I'd spend a lot of time out in the middle of nowhere alone with a telescope.
I'd stop carrying a weapon in my hand, prominently ready to swing, every time I'm outside my apartment. It doesn't stop the constant harassment, but it does tend to keep them from getting too close.
I'd drive with the windows down more than I do; when I do so now, I get harassed.
Why do women have so much to fear?
What an appallingly dumbshit question. I'm ashamed to share a species with you. I do thank you for the warning, though, that you are part of the problem.
Note the "we" when a man deigns to tell all us women we have something wrong, which conveniently doesn't affect him. This tells us everything we need to know about this scumbag.
I still do the car seat check, walking obliquely (checking shadows) to the car in a strange parking lot, sticking to well-lit sections., even though I'm middle-aged, because you never stop being prey. I automatically lock the door behind me, which drive my partner crazy if she's coming in after me, but it's this ingrained behavior.
Obviously that makes it rather hard as I certainly don't go out after dark to run along the streets or at a track by myself. As for why? Well of course, because I am women, and face harassment during the day when I go running, let alone what would happen at night! It honestly frightens me.
If I were a man I could run down the street at 2am in some skimpy running shorts for 5 miles pouring water on my sweaty body to cool off, and no one would think I was flirting, or asking for sex. Likely no one would do shit to me, and if they did it probably wouldn't be rape.
Last time I complained about this unfairness my very own brother said, "Yeah... well duh women shouldn't go out by themselves at night, it sends the wrong message, especially wearing workout clothes showing your legs etc". Because, yeah, exercising in comfortable clothes at the time that is convenient for me (which is perfectly fine for a man to do without repercussions) means I want/deserved to be raped/attacked. After all I should have known better. (/sarcasm). What gets me is the lack of culpability involved in this whole mindset. As if women are responsible for men's behavior, especially (some) men's inability to control their sexual desires BECAUSE THEY HAVE NEVER HAD TO DO SO (you know, it being a woman's fault)!
So, sadly, I confine myself to a gym most of the time, where some weirdo will still ogle me, but at least I have the safety of numbers. Not to mention that if he attacks me, the chances that someone will say : "well you shouldn't have been running at the gym!" would be pretty slim.
Oh, I wouldnt bet on that. It's always the woman's fault, ya know. You were probably sweating seductively or something.
I have never been raped. I have been sexually harassed, threatened, and nearly abducted, to the point that I'm nearly agoraphobic. I'd say about once a week someone talks to me or approaches me in a way that feels unsafe. Most of the time it is men hitting on me or commenting on my body. Sometimes it is people in my face, occasionally it is people yelling from cars. My husband is totally befuddled by it, because it happens even when he's with me.
When I was a teenager, I was very mad that I'd been raised to be so afraid of doing anything by myself. I was mad that my older brother had been allowed to go on off his own to have adventures since he was about 13. And when I was 19 and decided to go camping with two girlfriends, all our parents had a shit-fit about how we shouldn't be going somewhere ****aloooone**** without male protection.
It pissed me off so hard, we went anyway. It still pisses me off. The harassment pisses me off. Being a woman in this world pisses me off. There are times I wish I weren't.
When I was thinner, the sexual harassment was basically nonstop. People told me to take it as a compliment but, bafflingly, it never did anything to make me feel better about myself. I felt like a freak who had "VICTIMIZE ME" painted across her ass.
I'm a college student, and I have to work so that I can pay my tuition. I work at a restaurant about four block from campus, and two nights a week I have to close, which then means I have to walk back late at night. One of my male friends comes to walk me home one of the nights, but the other night I have to walk alone. I carry pepper spray, but it doesn't make me feel safer. The last time I walked home alone, a car was stopped at a stoplight next to me while I was waiting for the crosswalk to change. The guy in the car leered creepily at me, and when the light changed I kept walking, and the guy pulled his car over and parked on the side of the road. I started walking as fast as possible, and this guy got out of his car and started following me. He got closer and closer and eventually I started running because I was so scared. He also began running, and fortunately I got onto campus and ran into some people I knew before he caught up with me.
Usually I'm not chased on my way back, but I often get catcalls, and I never feel safe. Hell, I rarely feel safe walking during the day. The thing that really makes me angry about walking home from work at night, is if I complain to anyone about it, they tell me that I'm stupid for doing it in the first place, but if I don't take the chance of walking home at night after work, I won't have enough money to continue going to college. I have to decide whether I value feeling safe or an education more, and if I was a man I wouldn't have to make that choice.
Even if nothing out of the ordinary happens when I'm walking alone, I'm angry that I have to be so much more aware and concerned. I was walking to safeway the other day, which is about 5 blocks away, in the middle of the afternoon. As I was walking I saw this man who was obviously drunk, stumbling from side to side, slowly moving forward, a ways in front of me on the sidewalk. He was moving slower than I was, so I slowed down so that I could avoid passing him, but it became apparent that it would take me forever to get where I was going if I did that. I waited until he was near this group of men doing yardwork next to the sidewalk and then I powerwalked past him. At the time I was thinking that this way, if he assaulted me, there would at least be witnesses, even if they didn't stop the attack. I was also thinking about the fact that I was wearing a dress, and if he did assault me and we ended up in court, it would be used against me.
Fortunately, I walked past without incident, but when I stopped at the next cross walk he caught up to me, at which point he turned to me and whispered "I caught you" and then laughed. The sign changed and I took off across the street, and he just stood there laughing.
In this case, nothing really bad happened, but I just kept thinking all day about how if I was a man I wouldn't have to plan when to pass someone on the sidewalk so that if they attacked me, there would be witnesses, or worry about what I was wearing. I get angry that when my guy friends get pulled over their first thought is 'I hope I don't get a ticket,' but whena cop pulls me over, my first though (however irrational it may be) is 'I hope I don't get raped'.
I've been raped, I've been physically attacked on the street, I've gotten verbal street harassment more times that I can count, and I'm 19. I can't imagine that I will ever think the world is a safe place for me.
~Never staying at work or in downtown after dark, if I've walked to work (which is my usual routine).
~Always carrying my keys in my fist with the pointy bits outward.
~Always locking my apartment door when I get home and my car door when I get in.
~Not going out, period, if there is a chance I will have to walk even a moderate distance in an unlit, poorly-lit, sparsely-populated, or otherwise "unsafe"-feeling area. This includes having to walk to my car alone.
~Eyeing everyone and everything that comes toward me while I'm walking to and from work, till I'm convinced it's gone about its business.
And that's just off the top of my head. I'm sure there are others that I've so thoroughly internalized I don't even realize that I'd behave differently in a different world.
And my SO does NOT understand this. He does not understand why I won't come to his house or his office after dark. (Both require a walk of several hundred yards in the dark through areas where no one will hear or care if you scream.) It's simply not in his experience to guard himself against assault, every minute of every day, and he can't imagine it being so.
Yes.
"Even if nothing out of the ordinary happens when I'm walking alone, I'm angry that I have to be so much more aware and concerned."
And yes.
Another funny story: I once had a man follow me for about eight blocks when I was walking home from being downtown on a date at night. The guy was walking, at first, in the opposite direction on the other side of a busy street. When he saw me, he full-on stopped, jaywalked dangerously in front of a car that had to screech its brakes to stop, and began trailing me for a good 20 minutes. Eventually when I got near home, I turned around and did to him the human equivalent of what I once did to a dog who nearly attacked me: I barked, very loudly, STOP FOLLOWING ME and he ran off.
The funny part: when I tell this story to people, they give me a skeptical look and ask, "Yeah, but how do you know he was following you?" as if I'm being arrogant to assume some dude wanted to pay me the "compliment" of stalking and potentially assaulting me.
The whole thing is charming on so many levels!
Bigger things, like the scary guy grabbing me on the street in San Francisco a few years ago, or the dude who stalked me in school.. things like that are the reason that even in well populated streets in NYC at night, I never wear headphones, I always keep a running tab in my head as to "what can I use to fuck some guy's face up if he comes after me?" from the stuff I have on me and whatever's around me at the time.
I HATE IT. I hate hate hate it.
One of them got actively pissy with me over it. He adamantly refused to try to converse with me in any normal fashion, and got downright angry that I wouldn't engage with his stupid PUA-isms. His last-ditch effort was to try to play "wingman" for the other one, but when I refused to engage with him in that vein either, he degenerated to just plain sulky-pissy.
The other one would default to human when his buddy was out of earshot, but snap back to PUA-idiot-speak when his buddy could hear. It was sad, really; he was conversable enough when he chose to speak normally, but painfully dim with his buddy looking on.
This reminds me of this post from BitchPhd. Don't read it if you're already feeling emotionally vulnerable from reading this thread. It is titled "Misogyny in Real Life," and the comments thread stands at 341 posts. Each and every one a personal account.
I will never understand how it can be that there can be so many of us who live these experiences on a daily basis, yet feminism is believed to be unnecessary and our concerns are dismissed.
I think I'll go have a quick cry, now.
I'll have to remember that one.
The only dance club I've been to in many a long year where I could dance without getting groped was a bondage club.
I shared a house where to get to the off-street parking, I had to drive down an alley shared by a houseful of utterly creepy assholes. One night when they'd been drinking, one of them decided to stand in the alley blocking my car as I tried to return home, with his beer in his hand while he laughed at me and gestured at his friends to surround my car.
My brother-in-law mailed me a cell phone and paid the bill until I could afford to pay it myself.
It's men who've internalized this and make it their business to harass, assault, and blame women alone.
I dont know what this is
I don't barricade my door with a homebuilt security device out of some nebulous fear, but from the bitter experience of standing in my living room while my abusive ex tries to break in, knowing that the police won't do anything.
Fun, that.
My first college roommate always locked the door at night, cause the first week of school some guy wandered into the room while she was sleeping and wouldn't leave (I wasn't there.) I really don't think that I should have had to take my keys with me if i got up to pee in the middle of the night.
While I was living alone last year, there were some very large bushes in front of one house on the street. The were so overgrown that the covered half the side walk and were about 8 feet tall. They made me really nervous when I'd walk by them at night. In order to stay on the sidewalk (necessary if there's a foot of snow, as there was all last winter), you can't avoid being nearly in them. I always wanted to knock on the door and ask the owners to cut their damn bushes so that women wouldn't be nervous walking past their house, but I never did.
Another urban problem: a guy pierces a woman's tire in a parking lot and follows the woman until her tire's flat and offers to "help."
Luckily it was a station with the resources to send a squad car to follow me home, but then I had to deal with arriving home alone in the middle of the night with a solo male police officer. Sigh. Now in a semi-civilized world, they'd have sent a woman to escort me home.
I still dread picking up the phone when it rings, and I'm not entirely convinced it has nothing to do with that episode.
Has anyone here read that play "Little Murders" by Jules Pfieffer? Because there's a monologue in there by Patsy that always really got to me, because it is so (I think unintentionally) realistic when it comes to sexual harassment:
"Alfred, do you know how I wake up every morning of my life? With a smile on my face. And for the rest of the day I come up against an unending series of challenges to wipe that smile off my face. The breather calls...ex-boyfriends call to tell me they're getting married....Someone tries to break into the apartment while I'm dressing....There's a drunk asleep in the elevator....Three minutes after I'm out on the street my camel coat turns brown...The subway stalls....The man standing next to me presses his body against mine....The up elevator jams....Rumors start buzzing around the office that we're about to be automaticed....The down elevator jams....All the taxis are off-duty....The air on Lexington Avenue is purple...A man tries to pick me up on the bus....Another man follows me home....I step in the door and the breather's on the phone....Isn't that enough to wipe the smile off anybody's face?"
All of those things are pretty rare occurences for most people, I'd guess -- except for the sexual harassment ones. I've never been stuck in an elevator, or found a drunk asleep in one, or been trapped on the subway, or had trouble getting a cab downtown, or seen the air turn purple, or my camel coat turn brown. But most of the other things? Check, check, check.
I'm a late-age graduate student. I chose to rent a slightly apartment near campus because the complex is gated, and my doors have triple locks built in. There are also four police officers who live in the complex.
Although the campus installed a stronger alarm system with call boxes after the Virginia Tech murders, my classmates and I always walk to our cars in groups. If anyone is parked in a far part of the lots, we give them a ride.
Self-defense courses for women are extremely helpful and usually free to at a very low cost.
Hope that's not off topic.
re: Guy companions as bodyguards - several of my friends and I have noticed that, when we go out the guys run all sorts of interference for us. It's nice, but sad - presumably they would rather have fun, not physically protect us from creeps. But I still appreciate it.
I always lock my doors as soon as I get in my car. If I'm the last one left at work, I lock the door and set the alarm. If I get called in late, I leave the alarm on until someone else comes. I always have my keys out before I leave a building. And those are just off the top of my head....
@cruithne - I appreciate that you're trying to wrap your head around something that is so utterly foreign to you. But I suspect that, reading these posts regarding our fears AND our actual experiences, you'll understand why it is that women are forced to be so paranoid.
Age may not protect you from violence, but it has a big impact on how you're treated by sexual harassers on the street.
This is so true. I'm volunteering as a rape crisis advocate, and I can promise you that being older, or heavier, is no protection. Neither is being with a man you know or trust, with friends, or dressing conservatively. Honestly, I don't know what is - except what Liss and Echidne and all of us here are doing - fighting back. With words and actions and educating and listening and supporting.
I know that's supposed to be helpful, and I suppose it is to some extent, but when I was stranger raped (rare, but it does happen) nothing I was taught "worked." Perhaps free classes should be made available to men so that they can learn how to make women feel safe, what fear really is, and their role in the safety of the streets.
I have some level of resistance anyway, because too often not having done so is used to victim blame. "Well, if only she'd been smart enough to take self defense courses like she should have...." or "If she'd practiced her martial arts more..."
Oh hell yeah. My name is not actually Helen Huntingdon. Ginmar is the only person on the planet who knows both my real name and my pseudonym, and it was a major decision to allow that knowledge out for the first time even just to one person.
I try to do the same things as Graham - keep a distance, try not to end up following, stay where I can be seen, that sort of thing.
Reading these comments is making me feel so mad. Hugs to everyone.
Oh yeah, I used either crutches or a cane for seven years, and that does make you feel very, very vulnerable.
I've experienced some fairly vile harassment online because in a nonfeminist community I started a thread for rape survivors. (And general survivor populace partcipating in the thread has been subjected to repeated unpleasantness.) And that's actually with extremely supportive and effective moderation. I don't think I would ever do it in another community, which is more than a shame given how helpful the thread has been.
Back in real life, I just remembered how scary it was when I was a courtesy clerk pulling carts at a grocery store at night. I know I said earlier that walking at night doesn't get to me, but there's something different about a dark, empty parking lot, where your attention is necessarily on untangling the carts rather than on your surroundings. I only asked my boss one time to send out a boy to do it for me, and I felt sooo guilty afterward for wanting special treatment. Out there at night, I didn't do my job fully, because I wouldn't go to the very back of the parking lot out of sight of the store.
Now that I'm 40 and wobbly on my feet, I feel as though the sort of unwanted attention is different, though no less horrible. I don't get many of the comments about my body, but I do feel as though men look at me and see a potential victim because I obviously can't run away. This is a pretty shitty way to live.
That is true, but all any good self-defense class will teach you is that physical confrontation is total chaos and that you're more vulnerable than you think. I have very good training in self-defense, and that means I am more afraid of attack, not less. My teacher had several black belts in different arts plus combatives training, and he always said that he'd have a 5-10% chance in a fight if he were caught off guard. This from a guy who taught us how to kill people on the first day of class!
Ultimately, we can't expect to make ourselves safer using individualistic responses to violence. There need to be changes at a societal level.
I teared up reading this, because it's exactly right. Men get to own the whole wide world, and women have to work so hard to find little spots to feel safe in.
Accepted.
Most of the other spouses of the battalion can't understand why I don't live on post ("I wouldn't feel safe living with the locals!" when I met my husband here, I am a local). Most of them DID 'go home' and moved back in with mom and dad. I can understand it with the 17-19 year olds, to an extent, but women in their 30's?
Also, I hear you on the cane thing. I used one for years, and hated going out. The number of people who had no problem with 'checking' if I really needed it, or my handicap tags, was shocking. Teenagers would knock me over if I went to the mall. Men at work or at church would offer to shake my hand, then pull. Then never apologized when I came crashing down. I still bow when offered a handshake as a reaction to that. I got yelled at for using handicap stalls in the bathroom, or the designated parking. I had to show security guards my license with the handicap symbol on it a number of times, when some asshat started screaming in my face about being lazy and faking.
Now? I'm rarely out of the house at night. Really, I'm rarely out of the house at all, unless I have an appointment or need to go to work or the store. A few days ago was the exception. Oddly enough, I felt perfectly safe while getting a tattoo, although the (male) artist and I were the only ones in the shop (and it was on my upper back, so I was rather exposed). But after I left, walking to the truck and having to stop by the store late at night? I was very on guard, and jumpy. It's sad.
Also, one of the men (probably in his 50's, I'm under 20) was sort of stroking one of my hands with his thumb when we were dancing, and it made me feel uncomfortable.
Ugh, gross. That reminded me of something my older sister (who's now 21) told me she went through when she was at a club with our mother a few weeks ago. She was just getting drinks with mom, and they both ended up dancing with a few guys. Then this older guy, late forties, when mum was off somewhere else, comes on up to her. And he puts his hand on my sister's thigh and says "Flex." Just like that. And she tensed up, not because he said to but because she was thinking "what the fuck?" and he seemed satisfied with that.
Then he told her to stand up. And she said "why?" And he said "Well, I've already gotten a pretty good look at your tits and now I want to see your ass."
And when she told that story to me, she was obviously unhappy, but in more of a "can you believe that creep?" way than a "I am rightfully outraged/frightened/upset" way. She's just internalized that that's something that you have to put up with, like a sore throat that's nobody's fault.
Nope. Chances are, you were 100% correct. If he were harmless, he would not alter his path and then keep approaching you after you said, "No."
Gavin de Becker, in The Gift of Fear, talks about scenarios very like this one. Good for you for listening to your instincts.
That book is my bible, since I have no use for the "real" one.
The street harrassment is the hardest to deal with. Especially when I don't respond (I'm the "cold shoulder" type) and that makes them angry, like I fucking owe them something. Usually, I wear headphones no matter what time of day it is, so I can drown out assholes. Only recently have I set my mp3 player on a lower volume so I can be *more* aware of my surroundings.
About 4 years ago (when I was a teenager), I was waiting for the train on the platform, minding my own business when a loud and obnoxious man headed straight for me. He basically straddled my side and began asking me questions like we were on a date or something! I just smiled wanly and prayed that he would just leave me alone. I can't believe how powerless I felt on a busy subway platform! Eventually he called me a "fucking bitch" and walked away, while singing some stupid song (a disgusting one, at that). I was on edge for about a week after...
I get that too, feeling that I'm being oversensitive. Then I think "as held to what standard?" Often the answer is "more sensitive than men."
And yeah, no, even if he didn't realize he was being inappropriate, you certainly have the right to define what touches are ccomfortable to you, and no one has the right to tell you your boundaries are wrong. But I think most people would find the handstroking creepy anyway.
And I agree that being "oversensitive" is smarter than the alternative. It's my reality that I've been sexually assaulted, and that I've been harassed, and that I have to be careful. Anyone who thinks I'm "oversensitive" hasn't walked in my shoes.
I have something along the lines of this http://www.defensedevices.com/catkeychain.html on my keychain... my mom gave it to me when i moved to this neighborhood. it looks like a cute cat but it's actually brass knuckles. (actually illegal!)
(And thanks for thinking about a dog for me; it's definitely something that I might consider in the future, but for now, I am doing okay without one.)
My mom is awesome when it comes to defense, she's a blackbelt and teaches a class. On that note I was reading the comments about canes and crutches and my heart goes out to you- but my mom would say, a cane can be one of the most amazing weapons possible.
she even has one that has a pointed, reinforced bottom- even more deadly!
I remember one time my ex-boyfriend and I went to a coffeehouse and there were some jock type dudes sitting in front loudly making comments about everyone who went inside. They might have been making comments about men as well as women I'm not certain but what I AM certain about is that they weren't making those comments to any big mean jock looking dudes only gentle looking, solitary, vulnerable people. And I just lost it- I got so mad I almost turned over the table on them. When they called me a cunt I remembered something I read in one of Carrie Fisher's books about a Gore Vidal comment so I said it to them, "I'd call you a cunt but you lack the depth and charm"!!!! The thing that just pissed me off was their privilege, the way they just felt so free so safe sitting there insulting "easy targets".
Of course if I wasn't with my boyfriend I probably wouldn't have said anything-because then they would have felt more free to pursue me and even if I had a gun I wouldn't consider sophmoronic jocks worth the jail time.
Dont put being polite ahead of your safety and comfort. If he asks you to dance, tell him no. If he pushes it, say as loudly as you can "Because you're a creep who fondled me the last time I danced with you."
HE will be the embarassed one (I should hope) and with luck he'll be embarassed enough never to approach you again.
He only has this power over you if you let him.
At first, we were really uncomfortable, but finally I said as loudly as I could "Hey Mister, did you know your zipper is undone and your thing is hanging out??"
He got off the subway VERY quickly at the next stop.
And oy, I just read through the entire thread, and it brought back memories. Like when I was in HS, and my boyfriend broke up with me and wouldn't drive me home from school (for gravy, he'd dumped me because I told him I was sexually abused)... and my parents told me to find my own way back. So I started walking the 12 miles home, carrying a bookbag full of heavy text books.
A man started following me, yelling comments. A big, probably drunk man. I walked faster and faster, with him screaming and waving behind me, as cars kept zipping by. Then I started running, I was completely terrified. So many people passed, it was a busy road... he'd almost caught up with me before a woman in an SUV pulled up, popped the door, and said, "Do you need help?" I cried all the way home as she drove me, trying to make me feel better. My parents got angry at me for accepting the ride (she was mad at them for not picking me up, and had words with them). Yes, they would have rather I get assaulted than be called bad parents.
God, I wish I knew her name, and I wish I could thank her. I know that I did, over and over again in her truck, with the sand on the floors... but still.
Then there was the times my father had me sit alone late at night at his usual 'stop' (he owned a horse & carriage business), so that I could tell customers where they could find him. Until 1 am, on the main street, out of sight of him. Twice, twice old men tried to drag me off, and the local teenage boys (likely gang members, I realize now) rescued me both times. They surrounded me and my attackers, then sort of cut me away with their bodies, and two would walk me back to my post. Maybe because I was 12 when that started, the boys never harrassed me. They called me 'the little girl' until I was 16 and my father had to shut down the business (my mother's price for staying with him after she found out he was sexually abusing me). How sad is it that I felt safer with gangbangers than in my own home? After all--they had never, ever done anything to hurt me or make me uncomfortable. And they were always there, watching me, keeping me as safe as they could. Damn it, it makes me cry now, that I was so obviously considered dispensable by my family that they, people you would normally mark as being dangerous, felt somehow compelled to protect me. And how can I ever thank them? I never even knew most of their names.
Bees, one of those men who dragged me off started with the same grabbing my hand and rubbing it with his thumb. When I tried to pull away, he gripped harder and ran and started dragging me. I believe that the man you encountered was doing it because he wanted to do more. (And it was your post that reminded me of the incident, heh.)
I'm sorry I'm so long-winded. I know that most people haven't believed me when I brought this up... It sounds so out there to them. :(
- Broce
Genius. Freaking Genius.
Turn that shit around on em.
@Helen - You are indeed correct. I do my best to call other guys out for this shit, but I admit, I don't do as much as I should. I don't intend to stop trying though.
I might not have been so brave if I'd been alone or if I was older, I was probably 12 or 13 at the time and pretty fearless.
There would be a couple of flashers a day, who sat opposite you and exposed a pale worm from a slit in their trousers when the carriage was empty enough. A friend, who I met too late for my journeys, used to look at them hard and say very loud, "Well, it looks like one, only smaller". At thirteen, I was too embarrassed to say anything.
I can't begin to comprehend how hard that must have been.
I am so sorry everyone.. even when I *think* I'm starting to understand how hard it is for women in this country, stuff like this comes out and it shows me that even at my worst, I have it so easy in comparison. I am so sorry any of you have ever had to deal with this stuff, it should never have been this way.
And for what it's worth, I believe you, and I know the angels don't make up for the scum. And I'm glad you posted.
To Bees: Your problem is not minor, certainly not in the sense of not being worth bothering about. It seems to me this guy is relying on the rotating partner system to trap you. I can't think of anything better than what Broce said, though I know how much easier it is to suggest such a thing than to do it. What is the instructor like? Would they be sympathetic to a complaint, and request to avoid that partner*?
* Or that he be kicked out of the class.
I wish I found this hard to believe, but I know it's all too true.
I wish I found this hard to believe, but I know it's all too true.
Not trying to derail here, but people suck. When I was first on crutches, I also had a brace on that went from my foot to my thigh, so my leg was utterly inflexible. I was standing on the subway platform, heading into a subway car. A man came flying down the stairs and I guess wanted to make sure he got onto that train. Since I wasnt moving fast enough to suit him, he *shoved* me out of the way. Due to the brace, I went right over - I couldnt stop myself. In addition to being hurt, I was also, and gods only know why, terribly embarassed as I was lying there on the concrete like an upturned turtle.
When I was 17, I was home alone one day doing nothing much of anything. My neighbor, who was 23 at the time and who I'd lived next to since we were both kids, asked to use the shower as his water had been shut off. I let him in. After he was done with the shower, he came downstairs and started doing and saying things that set off my alarm bells (although it took a while because he was just this kid next door, you know?) I told him to leave, but then he got angry and lifted me out of my chair and threw me to the floor and raped me...and I don't like to open the door anymore. So that's affected my daily movements. The first person I told didn't believe me; she said it didn't make any sense, no one just rapes people for no reason. So after that I've only told internet people, so it will hurt less if they don't believe me.
A guy cut me off in a horrible rainstorm in front of my business a few years ago and than got out and came at me in the middle of the street threatening to "fucking kill me" because I honked back at him. For years, and I mean years, he harassed me, threatened me, gave me the finger, etc. He told my husband that he would "put me in a ditch." The police did pretty much NOTHING despite the fact this guy had priors for assaulting his ex girlfriend (whose current boyfriend is a police lieutenant) and the fact that my husband's bother is a police sargeant. And the dude lived down the block from my business. I am fearful every single time I am alone in my town. I don't go out to my favorite bar by myself, I don't go to the pharmacy after dark. It has so changed my life.
I wish this was the only instance, but it's not. I've been ogled, propositioned, followed, fondled, cat called & then harassed for ignoring said catcalls pretty much the bulk of my life. It's not flattering, it's frightening. I am so hyper aware of malls, parking lots, strangers. I've had men masturbate in front of me in Central Park, in parked cars, in a SCHOOL. It's unbelievable.
Thanks to all the Shakers who shared their stories. I wish there were fewer than there are...
So sorry about the subway incident, Broce. What an asshole.
"Men at work or at church would offer to shake my hand, then pull."
That is… just disgusting. I've always felt that people with disabilities should deserve even MORE respect for having to patiently cope with a burden that many of us will never know.
On that note, if I see someone with a cane trying to open a door, is it appropriate to ask if they'd like help, or is that offensive/ assuming they can't deal with it? Sorry if that's an ignorant question.
I don't go out to a bar at night unless I'm with a man I trust. I have a very definite "fuck off" vibe to reduce the number of approaches. It's easier to do that than to take the time and energy to gauge every guy, and it creates an automatic screening system, so if they approach without invitation I know there's something "off" about them.
Every time a man approaches me, in a parking lot, on the street, I make sure there are ways around him. If a guy talks to me too long in a checkout line or something I keep one eye on him when I leave. If they approach at night I give them the straight-on look, so I don't look like an easy mark. I've been lucky. What sadder still is I KNOW exactly how lucky I've been.
Why do women have so much to fear?
Isn't it the case that you are more likely to be attacked and assaulted if you are male?
I'm happy to be cooreted if am wrong on this issue, and i accept that in the overwhelming majority of cases it is males who commit the assaults but I'd like to ask if we do a disservice by overexagerrating the likeliehood of someone beng attacked to a degree that creates a climate of unneccessary fear?
Women have so much to fear because of men. Jackass. No, it's not over-fucking-exaggerated. No, it's not unnecessary fear. Try being smaller than half the population, being the class that's expected to like this amount of uninvited attention, and dealing with asshole questions like yours every time we try to protect ourselves on top of it. Now imagine that instead of just being smacked or robbed, you had to worry about someone shoving a body part, OR WORSE, inside you.
Fuckwad. How DARE you take the attitude that because it doesn't happen to you, it's exaggerated. Cretin. Talk about a poster child for fucking privilege. We "bring it on" ourselves with "unnecessary fear", my ass.
I am a grad student and feel generally creeped out if I'm ever on campus really late - the buildings are so big and get so deserted; that said, I did live in the dorms for awhile and loved how brightly lit and central the exercise room was in one of them, and that was a brief and blissful period when I could actually work out at 1 am if I felt like it. Upthread, Helenhuntington wrote: "If surviving attacks by humans weren't an issue, I'd [...]" and what I would do would be to walk and jog and generally wander around from midnight to 2 am, when I'm still awake and cooped up. But not in this life and this world.
I was very cute when I was young, and the catcalls and the harassment got to be very, very tiresome even if it wasnt necessarily scary. I found eye contact encourages men, so I don't do it.
Thursday I had occasion to take taxis to the doctor and later to the hairstylists. I had a cab driver I've had several times before, and he's a nice young man. We chatted. And halfway home from the second trip I realized he'd been looking in the rear view mirror to talk to me, and I was staring out the window rather than meet his eyes. I felt sort of badly about it, he's a nice kid and he was just being pleasant. But it's such an ingrained habit that even when I became aware of it, I was back staring out the window in thirty seconds.
Maybe two months ago I was walking in Manhattan, wearing a dress I never wear unless I'm going out with Mr.Luci, 'cause I have enormous breasts and I've heard enough shit about them to last the rest of my goddamned life. I had my headphones in, saw a guy with awesome dreads and a frock coat come out of one of the design schools and thought to myself, "Ah, that's cool." Then guy with frock coat followed me for five blocks, and when I crossed the street he followed me, sort of yelling that he was talking to me. Like, oh my goodness, how dare I not pay attention?
I was so pissed off, and while his behavior was creepy, it was midday in a highly-trafficked (read, heavily policed) area of town, and I didn't feel threatened, which is I think why I let my guard down and politely (of course; I can't seem to get away from that particular trait of mine) let him have it. Normally I ignore, occasionally I flip people off, but this guy? I told him WHY I wear headphones, and that most (if not all) women are harassed on the street and no, we don't find it flattering, and his tactics were unappreciated. He seemed genuinely baffled that women look for ways to hide like that, or even that we have reasons to do so (lol your self-awareness). I think he walked next to me for about a block before he let me outpace him and I jumped into a shop with a security guard and walked about until I could stop shaking.
It was seriously my weirdest street harassment experience ever, as well as the scariest, but dammit I SAID SOMETHING. I have never done that before, and I am still so proud of myself for it.
I so desperately wish this would all just stop. For the love of all that is good and green and right in this world, why can't women be allowed their fucking humanity?? I'm so exhausted, and I'm only 26. Sometimes I feel so utterly trapped by this stuff.
Bees, I am so angry for you. It's not right that this asshole is making you hesitant to do something you love, and yes, he is doing it deliberately. I hated being a teenage girl for, well, a lot of reasons, but assholes like this guy were a big part of it. I hope you figure out something you're comfortable with.
And I totally want one of those keychains.
I also don't feel all that safe when I'm with a man in many of these situations, in part because I had a serious boyfriend in high school who was short for a guy (5 ft 6 or so) and a real wiseass, and I witnessed him get beat up at school one day. He also used to make us walk along the train tracks in our suburban town ("make us" meaning I went along with it) and I never felt safe, it would get dark and I would fret, and he would reassure me that he'd throw rocks at hypothetical attackers, but I didn't buy it; seeing him get beaten combined with the sketchy situations we were in left me feeling like if someone wants to harm me or me and my companions, there's little we can do unless we can physically overpower them. So if my boyfriend and I are out walking late at night, I feel slightly safer, but not much. And truthfully, then I worry that if we were ever assaulted, and I was sexually assaulted while he was there, then he'd have to witness it and how much would that devastate him and me in addition to the actual assault...I'm simultaneously marveling as I type that this kind of worrying/hypotheticals is probably not surprising/unusual for readers here..anyway, if my boyfriend would leave my old apt late at night I would really worry until I got his text or his call that he was home safe. So at night or in certain situations I also worry for his physical safety, but no, I rarely think he'd also be at risk for sexual violence like I would be.
All that said, I also find that I've gotten used to his presence, and I now feel LESS safe when I'm alone than I did when I was single. I don't quite fully understand this yet, even though it upsets me because it makes me feel less independent than I used to be in a way not of my own choosing.
Broce, I'm sorry about the subway. *hugs* People are shitty, eh?
@ everyone else: Thanks. So many people just don't want to listen, or accuse you of exaggerating, or outright say that you're lying. :( Heh, and at the time, it didn't seem terrible, it seemed normal. Now I intellectually know different, although I still have trouble internalizing it (and I'm 29 years old now). People don't understand why I'm demophobic, why travelling terrifies me, why I've never been to a bar or club, why I have panic attacks easily, why I have PTSD ("Don't you have to have been through combat to have that?"), why I need to have my back to a wall when not in my home. Although now that I live in Hawai'i, no one blinks when I bow instead of shaking hands. They just assume I grew up here in a Japanese neighborhood, lol.
I have not experience catcalling much; I'm thankful for that. I also have very little chest, and two of my best friends have big breasts and I was amazed talking to them about it, how much of even men's conversation is directed at their chest.
I also don't mind eating alone, though I usually do it at the bar and quite often with something to read. It doesn't exactly drive the men away, but more often than not, I'm ok.
I'm an urban planner, and I'm wishing I knew more about everyone's geographic/spatial locations in these stories. I have only lived for extended periods of time as an adult in Manhattan and Boston, and I definitely cling to the idea of safety in #s. I grew up in the Boston suburbs, and that's where my mom taught me when and where to walk at night, etc. I'm much more uneasy in suburban and rural settings than I am in cities, generally speaking, and I know others feel differently about this.
And like everyone else, I choose my routes, try to avoid walking under bridges, etc.
Same reasoning - my company gives 5-year and 10-year anniversary gifts of very nice jackets. They were monogrammed with the company logo and employee's name. It had never occurred to them before I hit my 5-year that a woman walking alone somewhere might not want just everybody to know her full name.
Come to think of it, having a guy I trusted so easily betraying that trust might have to do with why I'm less afraid than most of walking alone. I just don't see how it makes much of a difference, guarding against strangers, when there's nothing I can ever do to make myself safe from my own judgment. *shrug*
I raised hell at work when management demanded we put our photos on the internal website. There are over 150,000 employees worldwide who have access to the site. All of the women on my team were concerned about this - stalkers, guys doing who knows what with our pictures. None of the other women would say anything, so I sent a note off to the managers (3, all male). Only one of them responded saying "Huh. I never thought about it that way before. "
I explained the concept of privilege as nicely as I could. "S, you never *had* to think about it that way. I didnt have the luxury of thinking of it any other way."
But a week later, word came down that we didnt have to do it.
This. Yes. Very, very well said.
Me too, though Im in Colorado now. I was raped in 1973 in the Boston suburbs, and of course, it was my fault for being outside after 6 pm while having a vagina.
A few weeks later, one of those older men got attacked from someone hiding in the dumpster enclosure. He got a steel pipe repeatedly to the head. He was former military, carried a gun (with permit), it didn't help. When he got out of the hospital, he said that he was glad that it wasn't me. That's when they finally put lights up where the delivery cars were normally parked.
As I'm writing this I'm feeling the impact of what others upthread have been saying - that we're so conditioned as women to take precautions that the implication is we're somehow at fault just for being there.
Broce, that's excellent. I do want to share a more affirming moment I had when I was in college. I was walking downtown with a male friend who worked in those days for the state bureau of investigation. Downtown was a deserted place on a Sunday afternoon. We turned a corner and were headed toward a small group of guys, all of them bigger than both of us, and suddenly my gut went cold and I said, "we need to get off this street. Now." My friend just said OK, but when we were on the next block he stopped me and put his hands on my shoulders and said, "I want you to know I am not humoring you. When you say it doesn't feel right, I want you to know I BELIEVE YOU. I want to tell you to always, ALWAYS trust your intuition. Don't EVER let ANYONE make you doubt your intuition about danger."
Same friend bawled me out one side and the other a few years later when a man saw me through my apartment window, staked himself out in my parking lot to watch me, and I didn't immediately call the police.
This might sound weird, but in a way, I'm not. Even at 14, I *knew* somehow that it was about control and not sex, and that the reactions of people around me who blamed me were wrong. It pissed me off, and it's probably one of the strongest contributing factors to my becoming a feminist. I saw sooo much of this crap in the 1970s - I dont think I knew a girl who *wasn't* forced into sex by the time she graduated from high school, and this was a "nice middle class" suburb.
If I were forced to pick a 'day' when I 'became' a feminist, the day after my assault would be it.
I'd a lot rather apologize to an innocent guy for over reacting than spend the evening in the ER having a rape kit done, yanno?
Quixotess, it really wasn't your fault. You had no reason to believe he would harm you. *hugs*
I know, I know. And thank you. It's just...I can't go around trusting no men. it starts with my father, and my brother. Then my uncles and my male cousins, I trust them too. And some other men. And all to various degrees. But the fact that I trust them...I've learned that doesn't mean much. It's a weird sort of doublethink, and I'm having trouble expressing it. Just...my judgment wasn't the problem, but it was still off, it failed me, really nothing could have protected me, and I've ended up figuring I'm just as vulnerable no matter what I do.
@Sunnyhello: Oh, that's lovely. It's always such a relief to be validated and believed. Good for both of you.
I don't consider myself aggressive, or physically strong by any means, but in situations where I am engaged by strange people and my instincts tell me something is wrong, telling myself not to be afraid and to stand my ground in a non-aggressive manner has gotten me out of a lot of dangerous situations. A lot of people do these horrible things because they think they can get away with it. If I act afraid, they will see me as vulnerable and be more likely to attack me. If they think I might be more trouble than it's worth, they will likely leave me alone. If a sleaze approaches me and starts leering at me while talking about the weather, I'll say "Yah, it is a beautiful night, have a good one!" and continue walking toward a busy street (with my hands on my keys in my pocket.) People have told me I'm beautiful in sleazy ways and I just say thanks and try not to allow them to keep up the conversation by saying I'm going to work and can't chat. Sometimes I've been followed, so I'll keep a steady pace until I find someone to ask for help. I'm not saying this is a 100% safeguard or anything. I still feel horrible when I'm harassed, and I'm pretty sure this isn't always going to work for me. One day I
might see myself in a horrible situation I can't get out of, but so far it's working. I've ended up screaming at people who touch me though, loud enough for people around to see. I'm pretty lucky, I live in a city where most people will help you out if worse comes to worse.
People I care about sometimes get upset at me and do the whole "OMG! That's DANGEROUS! Take a cab for god's
sake.NEVER walk alone at night!" This usually ends up getting me pretty offended.
If I'm planning to go somewhere that's near a bad area, I don't mind people advising me, but it's the way they do it. There's a difference between saying "Just so you know, that's a bad area. Be careful. I'll keep my phone on just in case you need me." and threatening to wrap me in bubble wrap and a trench coat and carry me to my destination. I love my friends and family and I'm glad they care, but I don't like being treated like a fragile doll. It makes me feel less confident and that doesn't help me.
And imagine if something did happen. I would feel like I was in for a lot of "I told you so."
This may be a cultural thing, because I'm in Canada and people here just seem to be in general a lot less willing to impose on other people's personal space, but the worst harassment I've ever had to deal with was a bunch of guys yelling "faggot" at me out the car window, and a stupid teenaged boy demanding that I give him my seat on the bus and move over one so he could sit there. I told him to get lost. I was a little nervous that his friends were going to make some trouble for me when I got off the bus, but that was mostly because I didn't want to get into a five-on-one fight. I didn't sweat it too much because the bus drivers usually jump on that sort of thing if it happens. Mostly the yelling out of cars thing just makes me go, "HUH?!" I've also never, ever had a problem with eating alone, and I probably do that at least once a week.
The rest of it may be that I'm 5'6" tall, broad-shouldered and stocky, and have an impressive street glare. I'm pretty blase about being assaulted, mostly because I spent most of my childhood and teenaged years being beat up, taunted, and (later on) sexually harassed. I learnt after years of being told "Ignore it and it'll go away" that the best way to make it go away was to hit back. So at this point, I'm basically jaded, I guess. (Cue "Lonesome, Ornery, and Mean...")
I think that probably does help. I have an impressive enough street glare, but I'm 5'2, small boned and weigh between 105-110 pounds soaking wet. I do not look intimidating no matter how much I glare. I'm more likely to get an "oh, isn't that cute!" response when I try.
A simple example: the assaults, after a while, begin to blend and the learned behaviors become so natural that the reasons for them blur. I'm middle-aged, and our ideas about boundaries have changed dramatically. When I was in high school, one of my friends was raped by her father every day and we talked about this. We knew nobody would do anything about it, and no one did.
In the here and now, I have never had a published phone number for so long I forgot I was hiding from my daughter's father. Then one morning, his voice was on my work voicemail because the university where I work is kind of stupidly open about publishing phone numbers, maps and meeting schedules online, where anyone could find them. And anyone did.
Now that my daughter is old enough to make her own decisions, she is free to construct her own relationship with her father but she knows she has to leave me out of it. How does fear modify my behavior? The funny thing is I wouldn't say I live fearfully. But...I must, mustn't I?
I have a torn ACL and I'm waiting for surgery, and this has affected the way I think. I can no longer run to get out of a situation. I can't kick. If my knee gets twisted or too much pressure on it, it collapses, leaving me helpless. I live in a very safe neighbourhood and I still consider this before deciding to go anywhere.
I give off a strong "fuck off" vibe so I haven't been subjected to very much harassment, but I still carry my keys in my hand, check my backseat before getting into my car, lock the door and drive away immediately after getting into my car when it is dark, walk in the middle of the road if I'm walking at night, watch my shadow so I know if someone is sneaking up behind me, and on and on and on.
I have to add - the comments in this thread made me cry and made me angry. Our world is so fucked up that for women this is all 'common sense' and yet men are both completely oblivious and the entire fucking problem.
Of course, my experiences in a far-away, nice US suburb were not much better.
But unfortunately, but parents couldn't protect me from assault. The first was in third grade, when a (male) classmate offered to walk me home; we took a shortcut through the woods, and he made me french him. I had the sense to run when he asked me to take off my clothes, but it still really shook me up. The second was in sixth grade, when a (female) friend invited me to spend the night. She was having orgasms, so I guess it was sex, but I didn't really get it at the time. I was pre-puberty, she was a few years older and post-puberty. I remember her making me touch her breasts, and me making her keep her undies on because I thought she was peeing on me, and her talking me into letting her have just one kiss... that was a recurring event, actually, until we got to 7th grade and started going to different schools. The third time was my (female) gynecologist, who coerced me into a pelvic exam and surely got nothing out of it but nevertheless absolutely shattered me. She tore my poor hymen and it fucking hurt.
So, naturally, to protect myself against a fourth incident, I guard against adult male strangers lurking in the bushes. Intellectually, I know that's not how things go, and that's not even how it happened for me, but I just can't shake the blind terror any time I'm alone at night (or seeing a doctor). The hardest part of my freshman year of college was working up the nerve to go to the gaming group every Thursday, because even though it was light when I went in, it was dark when I left, and depending where we met, sometimes I had to walk though a forest. I'd either get someone to walk me home (though they always interpreted this as a come-on, leading to the most awkward coming-out talk ever) or I'd talk to someone on my cell phone for the whole walk.
But mostly, I just...don't leave. I'm looking forward to being in a different dorm next year, since the building has a restaurant in it; if I get hungry after dark, I don't have to just wait til morning, I can go get a muffin without ever going outside.
It's difficult to get used to this fact about myself, since I actually prefer to spend a lot of time on my own. Hell, I even went on vacation to New York for a week by myself because I wanted to go and no one wanted to go with me. But it was like I was constantly daring myself to do perfectly ordinary things. "I double dog dare you to eat breakfast!" I'd say to myself, and then I'd spend twenty minutes freaking out before walking a block to a great breakfast place. I ultimately didn't let it keep me from doing what I wanted, but it took a lot of nerving myself up to it and there was always this lingering fear, which I never had as a young child, and which, I suspect, men never have.
Oh, privilege. Sometimes I wish I could pass for male as easily as I pass for straight. It lifts such a huge weight, to get a slice of that privilege pie. But I suspect I'd just lose my "straight" privilege without gaining any male privilege if I ever tried it.
Now being raped, that's a whole other bag of shit. You rarely get over that shit, Cruithne. You distrust your own body, your own judgment, it's common (though not of course universal) for rape survivors to have much worse-than-average relationships, people blame YOU for what happened, you blame yourself for what happened and convince yourself you deserved it (as if anybody could ever deserve to be raped) and you eventually learn to keep it a big goddamn secret because people will wield it against you like a weapon. Those two experiences have actually helped me understand why hate crimes legislation is necessary, because it is more horrible when you're victimized for an inherent part of your identity than when you're a random crime victim, and of course it causes that entire group to live in fear, as we've seen in this discussion.
Also, it seems extremely likely to me that men get attacked more by strangers on the street because they're out on the street more after hours, as anybody who looks around after dark should notice -- it's just a simple matter of mathematics, and it of course doesn't mean men are "asking for it" by exercising what should be everybody's right to walk down the goddamn street. It's like saying that because in Minnesota more white people are crime victims they're at a greater risk, when the simple fact is there's MORE white people here so it follows that more of them would be crime victims. But since it would be extremely difficult or even impossible to quantify how many people of each gender are on the street at any given time and calculate the real risk for each gender, all we get is data that don't reflect the reality that women are underrepresented in those statistics because of how determinedly we avoid being on the street after dark.
Also, reading over some of the things a lot of us have experienced and how normalized it is, how many women report attacks and threats unless they're pretty damned serious? And we all know how common it is for police to not even record half the shit we report or not record it as a crime because they think crimes against women are just "fluffy" things unless they're pretty extreme. Like the time some dude grabbed my ass really hard while I was walking down the street in Melbourne with two friends -- I didn't report that to the police, and neither would probably 95 percent of the women out there, because we know we'd just get laughed at. The cops in Melbourne typically laughed at women who came in to report being pickpocketed and treated them like crap, so obviously they're not going to take an ass-grabbing seriously. (For the record, though, that was the only type of harassment I ever encountered living in Melbourne during the summer -- I never even encountered verbal harassment, which is why I love that city in spite of the drive-by ass assault.)
Other things...In one European city some guy came up to me in broad daylight in the middle of a market and grabbed my arm and yanked it so hard it left a bruise afterward, when I ignore men who catcall me they've threatened to follow me, I've been called names for ignoring nasty comments on my body, some guy came up to me at the bus stop last night and hovered menacingly over me before saying "nice legs" and today some guy followed my friend and I down the sidewalk on his bike doing a running commentary on my outfit, then flipped us off when we stopped and moved to the side of the sidewalk so he wouldn't be behind us anymore. And of course, there were a few catcalls and many rude stares while my friend and I brazenly walked on the sidewalks today as though we were equal citizens or something. Arrogant bitches we are, I know.
So yeah, that was my weekend, Cruithne. How was yours? Any strange guys follow you around ridiculing your clothing or invade your space and comment on your body? How many times have strangers grabbed your ass in the last few months? How many straight guys have pinned you against the wall in a gay club and grabbed your chest this year? (I forgot to mention that one earlier, sorry!)
Oh, and how many guys at your friend's after-party for her birthday have tried to feel you up at the bar and gotten pissed at you when you pushed them off? Ooooh, and the great thing about that one is that the bouncers didn't kick this guy out even after I practically got in a fist fight with him over his groping, but when he fell off his fucking stool much later they kicked him out with much pomp and machismo. At the same bar a few weeks later my friend was really drunk with a bunch of her good friends, and some guy was LITERALLY trying to drag her out of the club and into his car. Her friends all backed her up and got him off of her, several times, and of course the fucking bouncers did nothing. Because it's nothing to them if a woman gets assaulted at their bar -- hell, it would probably be good publicity for them and men would flock there knowing they could do whatever the fuck they want to women there!
And these things all add up -- if you're a woman harassment happens pretty much every time you leave the house, and eventually your entire mind and existence is consumed with figuring out ways to make it not happen next time. Quite frankly, I'd rather run the risk men do of being beaten up once in a blue moon than being treated like dirt and assaulted in smaller ways every goddamn time I leave the house.
I was raised on a farm, so I never got taught to be really "street-smart"--if I was in the city at night I was always accompanied. Now that I'm in the city to attend university, there are all these things I don't do (or that I *do* do--the culture of victim-blaming is so strong I think of my own behaviour as strange/wilful/dangerous, even while I'm reluctant to make those concessions to "safety". I walk alone at night downtown while using an aluminum cane that would be useless as a weapon).
I always wonder if I should be more afraid and take more steps to protect myself, but I've never been harassed in public or by a guy I didn't already know so I don't know how effective it would be.
My biggest obstacle, because I am practically a hermit, is in-home repairmen. I have panic attacks and honestly am about to have one now just thinking about something breaking in my house and no one being able to be with me when the repairman comes, because it's never been a repairperson, always repairmen.
What Arkades said early on resonated with me: If a homeless-looking man approaches, I move away and refuse to speak to him, no matter what he is saying. From there I've found myself refusing to acknowledge panhandlers. Low-level fear makes me a meaner person than I want to be. I have to work to get over my barrier and come up with a dollar. Mental effort for no reason except the reality of assault--it's tiny compared to what other people live with, but it's still a burden.
When I was living in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania with a friend of mine (both of us American-born, me white and she white/Latina), we were drunk and at a bar where many ex-pats hung out. This older, white/British guy joined us and would NOT STOP touching me. We called him on it and admonished him repeatedly, but in a polite, even somewhat deferential way, as if we could cajole or at most scold him out of his inappropriate behavior. Eventually, this white British-African friend of ours arrived...the touchy guy may have left by then or not, but either she recognized him in person or we described him sufficiently, and she was like, Oh Yeah! We all call him "the groper." He's always like that. (She was born in Kenya and living in Tanzania for several years now with a network of family and friends there; we were both there for a less than a year for work/school.) My American friend and I were stunned at her acceptance of his behavior and presence. Yet, we also sort of took it from him. To this day I remember more clearly her casual recognition of him than his actual behavior.
Like, I'm not sure I'd be willing to live on the 1st floor of an apt building (the only living I've known as an adult) because of its proximity to the street.
When I lived with my parents, my dad used to lecture me about meeting my friends at the bar because of what men think a woman who shows up by herself is "looking for".
I always check the back seat of the car to make sure no one's inside and I lock the doors first thing once I'm in. Then I set my purse and packages down in the passenger seat, once it's safe(r). I don't let the gas gauge drop below half a tank so I never have to worry about running out of gas and being stranded. When I stop at a light, I don't pull up close to the car in front of me so I'll have some maneuvering room if I need to get away from someone. I avoid parking garages and unlit parking lots wherever possible and I move fast when I have to cross one. I won't walk next to parked vans, panel trucks, or SUVs; I'll walk to the end of the parking row and cross there if necessary to avoid them.
When I use an elevator, if there's only me and a man I don't know in it, I stand with my back to the side wall facing him. It always makes him uncomfortable and usually I feel kind of bad about that but I do it anyway. I want it clear that I won't be taken by surprise.
I avoid groups of men whenever possible, especially young men. Cross the street, go back into the mall, get back in the car and drive somewhere else - whatever seems reasonable in the circumstances. If I have to pass them, I make a point of looking them in the face, letting them know that I know they're there and I'm watching. I hate that. Even the ones who don't say anything creep me out. I feel like I'm walking past a pack of wild dogs, and without knowing if they're hungry or not.
I do feel safe at home and work, though, which is a tremendous relief. None of my current co-workers worry me; I've worked late with a lot of them and never had a problem, so they've all moved into my mental ok-to-be-around category. My current neighborhood is quiet and safe, so if I have to take the trash out after dark, that's all right. Still, if I do have to go outside at night, I want someone to know where I'm going and when I'll be back.
After my divorce I had lots of trouble sleeping, the kind of trouble I never had when I was single. I guess when I got married I let my guard down and when I was alone again, I was ill prepared for the noises in the night - and I was living in a stand alone, 2 story town home. Circumstances forced me to move from the suburbs at the edge of town into a small apartment building downtown - and I'm feeling a lot more secure. I've gotten to know my neighbors, there are other single women here, and we keep an eye on each other's comings and goings.
Sorry to say that being older and overweight is effective as well, although I know its a false sense of security where rapists are concerned. It does cut down on the day to day harassment however.
I live in a city where strangers make eye contact and say hello on the street. I'm originally from NYC, so it took some time to feel safe with that level of friendliness. But I don't walk in the dark with out a friend or a dog (except in the summer, where it feels safer because it isn't dark).
On the rare occasion when I am harassed, I become loud, rude, pushy and obnoxious. It works for me.
I had an occasion in a parking lot (open air) at night, where a man began to approach me, looking for a cash handout. I raised my voice before he got too close and told him to go away. He kept approaching and I started to yell at him, and pushed the panic button on my car door opener. He got all pissy and acted like I was offending him! He called me a crazy old bitch and I agreed, and told him to move away or I'd get in the car and run him over. Of course by then, other shoppers began to pay attention and I got in my car and left. (It gets my adrenaline up just thinking about it...)
I've found that men leave me alone if they think I'm going to attract attention or if its possible that I'm crazier than they are. I learned this behavior from a feminist comic named Ivy Bottini. She did this stand up routine about being threatened by some men on the street and she turned around, smiled, struck a sexy pose and drooled. A big, long, sloppy drool that oozed out of her mouth, down her chin and onto the sidewalk - she actually did this on stage, it was hysterical and really gross - I guess that grossed out her "admirers" and they left. Just typing this I'm realizing how sad it is to have to all these ideas about how to get out of danger - what a lot of room this takes up in my mind.
One last thing. The most practical book I've ever read on this topic was written by a man, Gavin de Becker. It is called "The Gift of Fear" and it helped me to pay attention to and to rely on my fears and my feelings about my safety, and because I can rely on the fear as a clue, somehow, I feel safer. The book does have case studies that will trigger some people, so take care if you decide to read it.
Bless you all. Be Safe.
I was talking strictly about being harassed, ogled, fondled, etc. by strangers. When your fuckability is non-existent, you don't get as much of that.
But I don't EVER believe I am safe from rape. Neither is any woman.
That book is my bible"
Mine too. I've read it at least four times, and I'm going to give a copy to my daughter (I'm sure much sooner than I'd like to).
I once walked six blocks in the middle of the afternoon to the grocery store to pick up a few baking supplies, and had a carful of guys circle the block repeatedly yelling things at me, their words getting nastier and nastier when I wouldn't reply or even look at them. Finally they came around, started to swerve toward me, and honked. When I jumped, they laughed and drove off. I didn't see them again once they'd gotten their response, but I stayed in that store for a half-hour over what was necessary, afraid I'd go to the exit and find them waiting in the parking lot.
Had a guy at work repeatedly sneak up behind me and yank on my hair. Told him to stop it every single time; he just laughed and so did his friends. Boss didn't seem too concerned. Finally I snapped and screamed at him, and headed to the back room in tears. I could still hear snickering out there, so I called my husband, who is not a small man. He came in, asked which guy had been bothering his wife, and told him to never, ever touch me again. For once the laughter stopped. I'm not at that job anymore, but I still remember how it felt to walk in to work every morning and know I'd have to deal with him ignoring my very goddamned simple request to just not. be. touched. And as much as I want to be glad that for my last few months there he didn't bother me, I hate that the guy only paid attention when my 'owner' spoke up. I feel like I played into that cultural narrative by calling him in.
As for today, I went to visit my parents and they drove me home so that they could help me check every room before they left me alone in here with my baby. I never go to sleep until my husband gets home from the late shift.
Thank you for this thread.
I wonder what you expected to happen when you posted the OP, and what you think of what did happen.
Edit: Bahaha! Figured it out!
As a survivor, I often (usually) don't go into the details of my own sexual abuse -- I sometimes think that my own story is so shocking that it will simply be discounted as an anomaly -- as "well, sure, sometimes really bad things happen to a few people" -- so I shut up about my experience. When I read a thread like this, I am reminded (tragically) that my experience is not uncommon at all. As I said, this is simultaneously distressing and oddly comforting. (Comforting as in: "Oh, I'm not crazy after all!")
Here's a comment that I left at Echidne's post: "I think one of the problems with really getting to the reality of "what do you do daily to keep yourself safe" is that so much of the behavior that I've adopted (which I have adopted as a woman specifically because of the specific risks I face as a woman) is, by and large, not even conscious anymore -- at least for me.
This is true for me as a queer, too. For example -- there are restraints in the way I speak to my partner in public that are so automatic that I'm hard-pressed to name them.
There are things that I am conscious of, though, about how I safeguard myself as a woman that I do not believe most of my male counterparts would perform.
One of those is automatically noting the gender of people that I am alone or in small groups with. But even this cataloging seems to take place automatically for me -- it isn't like I consciously think: "OK, that's a man standing over there in the parking lot, but there are two women over there by a car" -- it's an instantaneous assessment that I perform, usually without conscious consideration.
This is what is insidious about sexism to me -- it's so ingrained that it's often difficult for me to determine how I alter my behavior -- not because I'm a woman, but because I'm a woman living in a sexist/misogynist culture."
There are no allies. I told my brother some of these stories during a debate; he didn't believe me and said I was exaggerating.
My boyfriend, my wonderful boyfriend who I've stayed up with debating feminist theology and who has always had my back, we were having sex. I wasn't in the mood and I pressed gently against his shoulders and said: "I'm not feeling it..." he thought I meant his penis and rammed harder. He held me all night but I could tell he was confused as to why I was crying so hard. He tries but its never enough, how can he understand how a rape survivor sees the world?
It is so damn hard.
First, I'm really glad you're out of that job. A nasty coworker is one thing, a boss who won't do anything about him is just a new level. Please don't feel guilty for calling your husband; I never think anyone should feel guilty about taking whatever actions they had to take in order to be safe. *hugs*
Second, OMFG I was sure I'd remembered everything, and you just reminded me of another incident.
When I was in 6th grade I was a quiet, withdrawn girl. *Really* quiet, actually--enough to interest one of the boys in my class. He grabbed at my wrist, arms, and back a few times when we weren't at our desks, and when I twisted around to grab his hand, it seemed to...I don't know, make him want more. Finally, it happened that we were at our desks and he began stroking the back of my bra. I turned around and punched him in the arm. My teacher (a woman) saw the whole thing and said "THANK YOU, [Quixotess!]" And I don't think he bothered me after that.
The kicker? Sometimes when I've told this story, people react by saying "wow, your teacher was sexist!"
Arrgh!
I don't know what the deal is with young boys who act like that one did, anyway. It's not right.
@PortlyDyke: Yes! Taking census, the proportions of men and women, and that affecting greatly how safe I feel. If the guy/girl ratio is too large, I don't feel comfortable. (So I'm pretty screwed on the internet, lol.)
I once got randomly asked by some utterly - PERPLEXING dumbfuck if I would sleep with him for money. Just out of the blue, broad daylight, while was on my way to the YMCA job workshops I was doing then. All I could think was, 'fuck you, idiot boy, is that your dad's car?' I said no, he went 'awww pleeeease' in this hilariously petulant way, then sighed and pouted and drove off when i refused again. I wish I'd gotten his licence number. but at the time I was totally bemused and couldn't stop snickering at the WHINING.
I've also been hit on by a fucking inebriated telemarketer. "You have such a nice voice, I bet you are a beautiful woman, I can give you a discount~" "Uh, what is it you're calling about?" "*more drunken flirting stupidity*" and I did the librarian voice and requested that he please inform me as to the reason he was calling immediately before I hung up. He said he was sorry and did that for me. I hope he was hung over the next day. Or got fired. I mean, seriously, he SOUNDED bombed and I could hear the call centre people in the background. Maybe he got put up to it by someone, maybe not, but it was so fucking annoying.
I - refuse to put any onus on survivors of harassment or assault. I was bullied for fucking EVER in school, and 'boys will be boys' was the usual response. The girls got enabled too, but the boys got away with much more. Basically, I got told that it was my fault for being nerdy and weak and a perfect target. I totally asked to have to hide in bathrooms and 'chimney' on stall walls so no one would look under the door and recognise my sneakers.
It infuriated me and I won't make anyone else feel so awful. I will not be that kind of asshole, ever. What separates survivors from non-survivors is chance. it's the presence of an offender, and whether or not the offender thinks they can get away with it. Blaming the survivor is a sign of weakminded unrealistic thinking, and utter ignorance. When that whole issue went down in the Savage Love column, in which the dumbfuck boyfriend decided he had the right to barge past his partner's hard limit and get him some backdoor in spite of her health issues and - for fuck's sakes, A HARD LIMIT IS A HARD LIMIT. It is no-person's-land until the submissive SAYS the territory can be entered. People who don't know how the hell BDSM works in the least should have kept their idiot mouths shut about that. I'm a n00b about it and -I- know what a hard limit is. That was her hard limit. She said 'no, not ever, because of this', but she didn't NEED a because, shouldn't have had to GIVE a because. A hard limit is where you do not go. Safe-words are for business within your boundaries, and perhaps on the periphery of these. Hard limits are not anywhere near those boundaries. They are territory way the fuck over on Mars somewhere.
Arrrghh. Sorry. That's been stewing in my brain for a while...
BetaCandy has an amazing article about non-survivor privilege that pretty much explains Cruithne's attitude up top.
Thanks. :-) And man, that kid in your 6th grade class-- he sounds sadly familiar. How alike many of these stories are . . . I don't know whether tp be relieved or freaked out.
I commented over on the Echidne thread that years ago I made the decision that I was not going to limit my life by living in fear and not doing things because I am a woman and therefore more vulnerable. This was a real epiphany for me - I had not realized how omnipresent the fear was until that moment.
I remember how constant cat-calling on the street when I was a young teen confused me terribly about sex - I was a shy, sort of bookish smart kid, and the image these men had of me did not fit the image I had of myself at all - did I want to be "feminine" if this was what "femininity" meant?
I was in a band for years and I used to come home really late at night after gigs. Where I lived there was no parking so I'd be walking through the streets of Venice after 2 AM with my bass. Really nothing to be done about it. One night after a gig I noticed that a huge black pick up truck seemed to be following me - I was still in my car. I thought, I'm being paranoid, but oh well, and went through a series of evasive maneuvers to lose the guy. Thought I'd done that, parked my car and started walking home.
The big black truck pulled up next to me. The guy said something...I forget what. Did I want to go with him or whatever.
It was weird because I wasn't really afraid. Before he got more than two words out, I turned and started yelling: "You son of a bitch! You have no right to fucking follow me! I have your license plate and I'm calling the fucking cops!"
Here's the funny - he got so mad at me! Called me a "fucking hippie slut" and drove off.
I didn't get the hippy reference, to be honest.
- avoided walking on certain routes
- avoided walking at all, taking a car or taxi instead (though taxis aren't safe either, as anyone near Claremont knows)
- done the key-clutch, and rehearsed using it
- checked that the doors of the house are all locked, every time someone goes in or out
- walked with a dog instead of alone
- done the headphones thing
- pretended to be on the phone, or actually called a friend, and conspicuously told them where I was
- avoided cycling on certain routes where drivers would tend to try to run me off the road, catcall me, or come up close behind me and honk
- accompanied friends places out of my way (and vice versa)
- called security to walk me to my car (whether this makes me safer or less so, I have no idea)
- avoided public transport, as my jobs typically got out after dark or were shiftwork
- parked under bright lights, close to entrances
- crossed streets, turned corners, slowed down, sped up to avoid other walkers who may have been a threat
- gone home early
- left social events that I really wanted to be at
- taken taxis instead of walking
- left myself for hours without a water supply at home when some yahoos turned off the mains at night
- put my car door locks on when stopping to ask directions, or answering another person's question
- answered the front door with the chain on, accepted parcels through the gap
...and I consider myself relatively incautious where my public movements are concerned. I've done plenty of things that rape apologists would label "irresponsible" or "silly".
i have never felt safe anywhere.
my parents could not keep me safe. my roommate in the bed across from mine could not keep me safe. i could not keep myself safe, even with a black belt in karate.
i adore my husband, and my father. i trust them.
but.
i still watch my daughters closely for any possible sign that they might be being harmed. i worry every second that my girls are away at their dad's (every other weekend).
i am uber-vigilant. i have no other choice. i never have had any other choice.
1. There is a problem. A huge, ugly, terrifying problem.
2. Part of what makes the problem so intractable is that it keeps itself secret or taboo.
3. Part of the solution, then, will be making it known we have a problem.
So, when you talk about the problem, you are personally contributing to the solution--but this problem is so good at self-perpetuating, you continue to be shocked that it exists (as one big problem, rather than as freak isolated incidents) even as you explore it with others.
I think. So we're freaked out at "discovering" the problem, but relieved that there's work being done on it (making it not-taboo) at the same time, because talking about it accomplishes both of those things at once.
Based on my completely meaningless personal experience, not all and indeed MOST males are harmless and friendly. It is possible that 10-20% of males humans are bolloxing it up for EVERYONE.
I say 10-20%, but I really have no statistics; I do think however that a whole lot of the "harmless" (those are sarcastic scare quotes) behaviors are indulged in by guys who are mostly doing it, cat-calling etc, because THEY KNOW the OTHER members of society won't stand up for women. Many behave in these subhuman ways because the law doesn't take harassment seriously, and even fails to take rape and stalking and murdering women seriously (when it is done by exes).
Also, regarding the guys following around in cars, man that must be scary, otherlisa you're really brave for standing up to that dude :)
What it brought to mind is this:
I just cannot find it within me to think that "Lucky" = "not being sexually assaulted/raped"
IMO, "Lucky" is winning the multi-mega-millions lottery, or hitting the trifecta in all three races in the Triple Crown, or finding $10,000 stuffed into the vacuum cleaner you just bought at a garage sale for $10.
Here's what I mean by this: When a man travels out-of-town for work and accepts a drink from a seemingly-friendly stranger in the hotel bar that isn't dosed with a drug that will render him unconscious, he doesn't usually consider himself "lucky" that he didn't get drugged and raped -- rather, if he experiences having his drink dosed by said stranger, he would consider himself particularly and pointedly "unlucky". IOW -- women watching the source of their drinks = just good common sense -- men watching the source of their drinks = Dood! Why are you being so paranoid!?!?!?!
However, take a look at that, because it's turned on women from both directions -- when we question the seemingly-friendly stranger, we're being paranoid -- but if we don't question the seemingly-friendly stranger, and "get ourselves raped", then we weren't being vigilant enough.
All just part of the amazing, complex, fucked-up maze that women navigate every day in this culture.
i'm not just going by my own (depressing) experience. every woman i know has been assaulted (and this is in "safe" canada) and many have been assaulted by more than one man. and most of the men i know are just completely oblivious to the amount of privilege that they walk around with in the world.
i mean, i only talked about the really egregious stuff that happened to me -- not the stalker ex-boyfriends or the emotional abuse from my daughters' dad...
it really worries me how normal sexual and gendered violence appears to be.
pd, i had never thought about it that way.
you are so right.
Once i was in a bar with a female friend I hadn't seen in a while, and we were catching up, and this guy next to me started trying to pick me up - I engaged with him for a minute or two, went back to talking with my friend, and then he started making really crude remarks about my breasts, and I finally got really pissed off and said, you know I'm just out trying to have a nice time with my friend - you have no right to intrude on me this way - I mean, he was tossing lit matches at me at one point - and finally he said, "you're such a pussy. I bet you wouldn't dump that beer on my head." I said, "you think I wouldn't?" and he said "you wouldn't."
I said, "Well, you're wrong." And I did.
I don't mean to be spouting heroine stories here, especially after reading the incredible sad litany of abuse and assault and fear - stuff that happened to me could have just as easily had an unhappy ending as a happy one - and as many have commented, it's just so fucking ubiquitous. I mean, when I was 10 or 11 years old and walking to school, I had the creepy middle-aged guy in the scary sedan offer to "give me a ride." It turned out to be this big deal - I told the teacher, after a lot of hesitation - I felt GUILTY for causing trouble! - and got called into the principal's office and talked to police detectives and all that. And I managed to completely forget this even happened for decades, until a couple of years ago.
And you know, I look at my own life and the choices I have made about getting involved with men and there is just no way I can deny that all of this hasn't affected my choices, that my subterranean anger and isolation aren't a direct consequence of it.
For me... I avoid eye-contact. I'm completely uncomfortable around men I don't know, especially young men. I walk fast. I bring my dog everywhere possible, because even though he's medium-sized he's black and heavily muscled. Any dog is a deterrent, although I'm fairly certain he would never harm a human being. If we're out at night, I don't discourage his exuberant lunging at peoples' faces for kisses, either, if they get too near. I'm extremely unfriendly when approached in public by males, and I simply wont walk near groups of them. When I'm with my girlfriends I only feel a little bit safer at night.. but I still keep a sharp lookout. I always have my eyes peeled, regardless of the time of day. So many little things that everyone else has listed. It's all so fucked up that we have to do this.
I believe I mentioned upthread that I considered what happened to me to be 'normal'. I was taught from a young age that I was supposed to be submissive to men, and that whatever my father, pastor, or ANYONE THEY DESIGNATED wanted, then I was supposed to let it happen. I wasn't supposed to act like I wanted it (in fact, I pretended to be asleep when my father was abusing me--even when he fisted me when I was 12, I made no noise, didn't move, and kept my face composed), but I was told straight-out by the pastor that what my father had done to me was a valid choice for him... But if I told anyone, that "No decent woman will be your friend, and no decent man will have you."
The pastor's wife told me that I should thank god that this had happened to me, since I could tell other girls how to deal with it.
But I was damaged goods, anyway. Still, the entire subtext was that this happened to lots of girls, it was normal, and it was the man's right. I was, literally, property. My father could do with me as he pleased (another quote, btw); he could also give me to anyone. They did try to arrange a marriage for me when I was 16/17, to a Korean man who barely spoke English and was in his 30s (said man almost killed the women he eventually married, because she wasn't Korean).
Later I found out that the pastor had actually counseled a woman that "If your husband kills you, then that is god's will for you."
But I went off on a tangent. Maybe they were, like a stopped clock, right in one way. That sexual abuse/harrassement/assault IS normal. Not right, like they were saying, but yes, in our society, normal. And THIS is what has to change.
Victims need to stop being shamed for what happened to them. Police need to take them seriously (I was lucky when I turned my father in, the detective had the ADA there, watching on closed circuit, while I gave my statement, so that he could get to work on the case immediately; they called the police in the town where I lived to keep an eye on my safety; the ADA held my hand while my father gave his statement; they made SURE he went to jail).
And again! I consider myself LUCKY that the police listened to me! And I'm pretty damn sure that the reason they did was because I had been the Chief's babysitter, and the detective? He had been my DARE officer when I was in school. And said detective had gone to school with my father, and knew his temper and character. Without that, who knows?
For the love of little green apples, society needs to frelling grow up and turn on the lights! 1 in 4 women, is it, that report sexual assault? And how many more DON"T? By Rigel, this needs to change!
this.
i didn't tell my parents about my grandad abusing me (he lived with us for 6 months of each year) until after he was dead, because i didn't want to wreck his life. i didn't want to cause trouble.
'S true. Just like a lot of the time we'll see men who want to be praised for not committing rape or assault or harassment. No, they can't have props for that.
but if we don't question the seemingly-friendly stranger, and "get ourselves raped", then we weren't being vigilant enough.
And this thread? PUTS THE LIE TO THAT SO HARD.
I was actually told what happened to child molesters in prison, in graphic terms. Then I was told that if I turned my father in, that this is what would happen to him. And if it happened to him, it was because I wanted it to happen to him. Therefore, turning my father in was being rebellious and wishing harm, and rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, e.g. I would go to hell.
Then I was asked if I felt he should be turned in. They use this to say that I CHOSE to not turn him in. /snorts
Is it any wonder I didn't turn him in until I was 22?
the only rape i ever reported was the last one -- and that was just to the campus police and the sexual harassment office on campus. they proceeded to use my story without my consent, and completely screw up on holding my attacker in any way accountable. he was supposed to be barred from our campus (he went to a different school) but sure enough he was up there within weeks. interestingly, the guy who lived next door to me was from the same small town as my attacker -- when his girlfriend and other female friends found out what the attacker had done, they told me they were not in the least surprised -- that the guy had a really bad reputation amongst the girls from that town. the guys, of course, refused to believe that what he had done was rape (forced fellatio).
Sad truth, when I finally told my dad about what the doctor had done, he didn't want to do anything about it. I had to tell him over and over again that it bothered me that he kept going to see this doctor and getting prescriptions from him--but my dad made the excuse that it was just so much more convenient than getting another doctor, you know, one who hadn't assaulted his daughter.
I just have a few quick comments:
JennD: I don't think you are aggressive, I think you are assertive. You are claiming your rights, not forcing yourself upon others. Not trying to be an asshole "correcting" you but often women are taught that asserting their rights is the same thing as being super-aggressive assholes.
Bees: if/when you go back to the dance class and have to dance with that creep again, and he strokes your hand that way again, you could try looking at him like completely WTF?? and say something like "Uhh (hello? weirdo?) are you aware that you are stroking my hand????" Sort of like what Broce said on the subway to that creep. And you could even act like you are giving him some friendly help by pointing out his "mistake" if you are uncomfortable with confronting him too directly. I think if you call out the behavior and make it clear you are aware of it he might get the message. If he says no, he'll have to at least pretend to apologize and stop doing it. I doubt he'll say yes, but if he does, you have a pretty good case for getting him kicked out of class I think.
And one other thing: I remember reading somewhere that most intruders will run away after attempting to break into a house (no matter what their purpose) if they are caught by an alarm. You can get a "breaking glass" alarm that goes off because of the sound of breaking glass. I remember them being about $30 and you need roughly one for each floor of your house (or certain sq footage). Apparently the alarm is very loud-- loud enough to wake you up and scare away the intruder. I think that would be a good solution for some of us that can't afford an alarm system that comes with telephone support or whatever. I have two dogs who bark like crazy at people even walking by so I feel somewhat safe but I'm thinking about getting a couple of these.
I definitely avoid things I want to do and spend a lot of mental and emotional energy on trying to protect myself and I hate that the cause of so much fear and anguish is invisible to most? of the population despite it being widespread and in plain sight. I hate that I can only really talk about feeling afraid amongst others who know the feeling, because I'm afraid I'll be ridiculed or insulted for being afraid. I hate that I remember these feelings going back to a very, very young age, when something instinctual just knew about trying to avoid...certain fates. I hate that fear of men is probably genetic at this point in humanity's history, like fear of snakes or spiders but it's still something that we're not allowed to talk about (no, I don't think all men are predators).
Thanks again everyone for speaking up.
my husband, daughters and i live with my parents. and they think it is totally unreasonable of me to object to them putting up photos of my abusive grandfather.
note that they do not put up any pictures of my other grandparents.
I wish that there was a way I could make them understand for you.
And abusive doctors - damn. I had a creepy gyno a number of years ago who kept slapping my ass while he was doing the pelvic and asking me about my sexual activity.
I walked out of there and I swear to god, I saw a great big owl - a horned owl - perched on one of the buildings. This was at Planned Parenthood in the Santa Monica Promenade before it got yuppified, when it was half-empty stores and a lot of homeless people.
I saw the owl after the creepy doctor experience and all I could think of was "Athena" because the owl is one of her symbols. Father-dominated, yes, but also Warrior Woman.
The owl made it all okay.
When I was a kid, like eight or nine years old, I had a sexual experience with my older brother (he was 14 or 15 at the time). He didn't attack me or anything, he just basically exposed himself and got off and pretended to fuck one of my dolls. I had no idea what was going on at the time, but since I was raised in super-religious Mormon family, I learned soon enough that because I had seen this stuff I was pure evil. I felt awful and guilty and had no idea what to do. Finally, when I was twelve or so, I tried to tell my mom what happened--I wasn't trying to get my brother in trouble because I didn't blame him at all, I was just trying to repent. My mom came back a few days later and told me that my brother had denied everything and I should just never mention this again. Earlier this year, I wrote about this experience on a blog. My family somehow found it and for a few weeks, I was basically disowned. My dad was yelling at me about it and his exact words were, "I can't blame a guy for something he did twenty years ago (I'm twenty-eight now, so the stuff with my bro would have been twenty years ago), but you WROTE about it." The family really has no problem with what my brother did. They have a huge problem with the fact that I have the gall to bring it up.
the thing is, they continue to function only to the degree that they can deny the reality and/or severity of what happened to me under their very noses.
i know that they had no idea. i worked hard to keep it that way.
in most other ways, they were and are awesome parents. but i think it would emotionally kill my dad to accept what his dad did. and my mom, well she has always been a survivor (she lost her mom at 13) and i think she thinks she knows what i've been through, when she really doesn't.
needless to say, this shit drives my husband round the bend when it comes up. he can't even understand how i can talk about the good memories i have of my grandfather, or how i can say that i did love him. which i did.
I have another answer to the question: I purposefully seek out female gynecologists. I have endometriosis, which is debilitating enough, but once in my twenties I was so ill that I was curled up, on my side on the examining table, when my (then male) doctor made me roll onto my back, despite my protestations of pain, and gave me a pelvic exam, although I asked him not to. I could kind of see the necessity of it, so I consented. Then he began to poke and prod me, roughly, and with his hand inside me, ask abut my sexual positions and whether or not this one hurt more than that one. I was openly weeping on the table and never went back again. His questions got more vile and callous toward the end of the exam and were capped off with "I think it's mostly in your head." I felt as violated as I had felt from the molestation and date rape.
So yes, I seek out the female doctors. In general. And I make sure there's an attendant in the room. Pelvic exams are hell on me for more reasons than one, but being demeaned and belittled by that man was so sickening I vomited in his trash can.
And to this day I beat myself up that I never reported it. But it was the doublethink, the 'no one will do anything" and the "well, maybe he was just doing his job..." The former may be true, but I have been told by other doctors in the field that his behavior definitely was not.
don't beat yourself up for not reporting. it is not your job to take on the patriarchy every. single. time. it's not up to us to fix the offenders. we are the victims. we deserve justice -- whatever form that takes.
And, yeah, I only go to female doctors now, because of that. And I still avoid doctors! And I ask myself why my blood pressure goes up whenever I do go to a doctor (when it's perfectly normal the rest of the time).
And Sophiefair...I don't know what to say, except that I can understand how you could still love your grandfather, in spite of the horrible horrible things he did.
it's watching my daughters, and seeing them such whole, strong young women (they're 11 and 12).
i was already broken at that age. i tried to explain to my parents once -- it bothers me, more than anything, that i will NEVER know who i could have been if my grandfather hadn't sexually abused me.
i know now that i'm not "damaged goods that noone decent would want", but i still will NEVER know who the little girl that i was would have grown into. i'm not sure i can ever get over that.
but seeing my girls, out in the world and not afraid, that makes me so proud. that i've managed to carefully watch over them without poisoning them against the world, or making them fearful. i get a glimpse of who i might have been...
this place makes being a woman, and a rape survivor, and an incest survivor, just a little bit easier.
that's a lot about melissa, but it's also a lot about the commenters here. i don't disclose to just anyone, but i never doubted for an instant that it was safe to do so here.
hugs to everyone.
LOL, actually, my current doctor is female, and her nurse is male. He's a sweetheart, but it is kind of funny to watch him trying to do his job as chaperone, while at the same time trying to position himself so that he can't see anything he shouldn't (the room is shaped oddly, he can't really stand by my head). What's better is that he's ginger... and he's beet red by the end.
Actually, he was shocked and horrified when I very calmly reminded my doctor that I have PTSD due to sexual abuse. Like he couldn't believe I could be so matter-of-fact about it. *shrugs* I've had to describe it in detail to so many people at this point that saying it doesn't bother me.
But I figured you all could use a giggle at the poor nurse's expense. :)
It is hard for me at times to grapple with the concept of justice for the entire way we all as women have been forced to live.
But again I thank everyone here for their stories and support.
Even so, I am always aware of my surroundings if I have to be somewhere after dark. I take evening classes (the MBA program I am in does not offer classes before 5:30 PM on weekdays, to better accommodate working students) and have to walk from class to my car at 9:45 PM three nights a week. The area of campus I am on is well-lit, as is the parking garage, but having to leave so late means I never park far from the entrance. I do not park on the street, even if the option is available. As I walk, I carry either my keys or (more often) a mechanical pencil with a metal tip that could seriously wound someone without much difficulty. I take the elevator to the fourth floor (where I have to park if I want a spot close by the door/elevator) rather than enclosed stairwells after two students were assaulted and robbed in the stairwell of one of the buildings last year. Before I open my door I glance in the backseat to make sure it is empty, and I lock the doors as soon as I get in.
My hair is over three feet long, and I almost never wear it down in public. Doing so seems to give others the impression that they have the right to touch me and pet my hair, or pull on it (to see if it's real, I suppose?). On the rare occasions that I wear it in a braid, it is almost always in my hand to avoid offering strangers a 'leash' to grab onto.
My brother shows up at our house with his friends at random intervals. I have a 13 year-old sister whose bedroom is right up a flight of stairs from our back door. On nights when my brother and his friends are here, I stay in this room, where I can hear anyone coming in the back door or going up or down the stairs. I do not go to bed until his friends have left, or until they pass out. I prefer it when they leave, and I can lock the door behind them. My brother has a history of hanging around unstable, untrustworthy people, and the thought of someone hurting my sister terrifies and enrages me more than anything else. He sees no problem with bringing his friends around without notice, and dismisses my argument that his behavior effectively traps my sister in her room (she does not come downstairs when he and his friends are here, unless she has to print something out for school).
This same sister has already been harassed by schoolmates. She tells me about "Grab-Ass Fridays", a game started by boys at her school to see who can grope the most girls without getting caught. Last year, several boys were making obscene phone calls to her cell phone. They were eventually caught, but I do not know that they were punished. She dumped her first boyfriend after he got upset that she refused to send him scantily clad pictures of herself. At twelve, he felt entitled to his middle-school girlfriend's body. At twelve, he was indignant that she would dare refuse to do what he wanted. My youngest sister is pretty, and there is a very good chance she will turnout to be stunningly beautiful. I am so scared of the harassment that is only going to escalate from here on out. I am sick that in addition to telling her that she is amazing and smart and talented, I have to tell her that there are going to be people who try to hurt, disparage, and devalue her. I hate that I get frustrated and almost yell at her when she forgets to charge her cell phone battery, or changes plans and meets up with someone at the mall without letting us know, because nothing SHOULD happen to her, but having that phone or being in a safer group of people might be the difference between coming home safe and happy and possibly not coming home at all. I hate that I have had to tell her that if something happens, she can be certain I will believe her. I hate that I have to teach her to be afraid.
Is it strange that, as a guy, I'm so *happy* to see that statement? Because seriously, its just being *human* to treat others with respect and dignity - nobody should expect some sort of reward for just being a decent person. I've caught myself thinking that way on occasion, but I'm grateful for being smacked back out of it in short order (either by myself or by others).
This thread has made me SO ANGRY. That anyone - even one person - should be raped is a horrible tragedy; but that its so common - that more than likely women I've known for a long time have been abused in some capacity and never thought they could trust me enough to say anything... (and really, why should they? After the posts in this thread its pretty clear how rightly hard it would be to trust ANYONE again) ... and I'd never suspect a damn thing.
Its just resolving me that much more - I am a feminist, and I will not stop being one until this shit is a thing of the past. I don't want any recognition for that; I am what I am because dammit, its the right thing to do - at least I had a *choice* about it; all of you survivors - you are strong even if you don't feel it. Never doubt that.
(((hugs))) I'll shut up; this is your thread, not mine; I just had to say *something* because I'm positively shaking with rage here.
I believe that there are allies, and that men are not evil. On the other hand--and I'm going to be really honest here--I have a voice in my head. That voice says "Kyle Payne, Kyle Payne, Kyle Payne..."
While it's surely not as late for me as it is for those of you on the Mainland, I'm still up several hours later than I usually am, so I'm headed to bed. I'll check in in the morning. Take care, and *hugs* to all.
@DRD1812 and Quixotess - Thanks, I'm glad you two don't feel I'm inserting myself into conversation I shouldn't be in... I guess I'm just having a hard time figuring out "Where can I be most supportive and helpful?"; and I don't want to stop people from feeling comfortable telling their stories if that's what will help them heal. I dunno, there's just... its like I feel like I *need* to say *something* to help - but I don't want to be an impediment to those who need to be able to share. I guess I'm just happy to know I'm not "in the way".
I should probably go back to bed myself; its 4am here (not that thats 'late' for me; I'm up at all hours <x.x> but I'm tired)
All in all I've been lucky - I tend to live in safe cities, dense, with lots of pedestrian life. Fear is a negative feedback loop: keeping women off the streets through fear means that there are fewer women on the streets watching out for each other. In cities, we depend on, and are part of, a web of anonymous watcher-outers. If this web fails, the creeps win.
The most harassment I've experienced is while exercising outside. Exercising outside is a lot of fun - I have to work indoors all the time - should I keep myself cooped up when exercising too? Pisses me off.
i don't like to talk about my experiences with rape and harassment much, but the times that I've brought it up in small groups of women, the response is always for several other survivors to speak up. I had an epiphany one day, that if so many women are victims of sexual violence and harassment, A LOT of men walking around, a good percentage of the men I know, must be rapists. The mentality most of us have is to spread awareness among women, teach women to recognize potential danger and fight back. The girls at my school were given a talk about avoiding danger from men, but the boys were never schooled on not assaulting women. My parents were typical in that they were extremely concerned about the safety of their daughters and relieved that there was less to worry about with their son. Does anyone have experience with that as a parent? Have you sat your son down like you would sit your daughters down?
First of all I'd like to apologise to everyone for my earlier comments, whilst I never intended any harm it is now clear to me that I should have just kept quiet and listened to what you all had to say before offering my ill informed opinion.
I wrote and apologised to Melissa and she graciously explained to me how people in positions of privelge need to learn the habit of sitting back and letting others talk, before we start opining ourselves.
I honeslty had to idea of the sheer scale of the problem that exists, reading the stories here have shocked me, most of all because of the number of times these things happen to the majority of women.
I have read angry comments from a few of you, aimed at myself, and to those people who were angered by my posts I make a specific apology.
I guess all I can do is learn to keep quiet in future and listen to what people say before opening my mouth.
Keep well everybody.
In the spirit of sharing things with strangers that you'd never say to your friends: my father sustained a head injury in a car crash about ten years ago, and was helped out a lot (still is, in fact) by a charity attached to our local hospital. When I was sixteen I decided I wanted to give something back, and started volunteering there. It's a sort of day centre for those with head injuries, and one of the men who went there had, since his injury, developed a fascination with young girls. Of course, I didn't know that, but they did. Didn't stop them telling me to help him practice his reading and putting me in a room with him, by myself, and shutting the door. He pretended to read for about two minutes then assaulted me. When I explained what had happened and said I wasn't going back, they treated me like a toddler throwing a strop. I was persuaded to return, and heard one of the care workers laughing and joking about it. I'm twenty-three now, and have yet to find anyone who will take me seriously. The few people I have told have either said, "So what? It's only a couple of bruises" or they look at me like I'm an idiot and say "Well, he was sick" as though that somehow makes it less horrible. The closest I got to support was my ex threatening to kill him, but I think that was mostly to do with another guy touching his stuff, as it were.
We'll see how long that lasts once my hormone treatment starts.
Flossing Chrost, what on earth - getting oneself raped. I don't even understand the mechanics of that train fo thouyght, what do they think HAPPENS!? It's like, 'oh, shit, you know - I totally tripped and fell onto one of those damn disembodied airborne penes that are so common hereabouts one night' -
I decided that I refused to shut up and let people be ignorant at the cost of my own sanity. Mean, selfish, not niiiiiice giiiiirl behaviour? I only consider it the latter. if I go along with the old lie, the one as old as 'dulce et decora etc.' then I am perpetuating the climate of shit that makes it so easy for women to be assaulted. If I let people remain stupid, I feel like I'm complicit.
...It frustrates me so much too that women seem to be so very willing to fling other women to the wolves under the bus when it comes to issues of sexual assault. I had to sit on my hands to stop from mash-keying at a yunger friend who, when confronted with the prospect that her friend was enabling a stalker and homophobe, asked 'what would move someone to do that'. That sounded SO much to me like 'well, if she'd just put a little more effort into being a niiiice giiiiirrrl and making the physically and emotionally abusive stalker happy, none of this would have happened, you know?'
She does not understand how rumour mills work. She does not understand that people will Make Shit Up and try to screw up lives because they did not get what they wanted. I want badly to tell her the story of my high school friend J. Elle, who dated a guy for a bit until he got too clingily creepily whiny for her, and too pushy about which base he wanted got be at when.
When she ditched him he ran around crying to everyone that she'd totally WICCAN CURSED HIM. When one of the twitlier VPs called her down tot he office and DEMANDED she stop cursing this poor boy IMMEDIATELY, it should have been funny. But it wasn't. The VP was a woman who really thought we were all micro-sluts in the making, and she REALLY DID BELIEVE THAT J. ELLE WAS CURSING THIS GUY. J. Elle was kind of an irritating loudmouth about her apparent magickal prowess, but she didn't curse people. I have a strong suspicion that her lack of being caucasian made it easier for that idiot VP to believe that OMNG cursing was happening. J. Elle is Caribbean-Chinese in heritage. OH NOES, 'voodoo' and scary Oriental. Double racism whammy plus pitiful throwback-Catholic misogyny equals 'wow, you idiots.'
Yes, dear Flyfly, people are that cruel. If they are denied the snu-snu they think they have earned, they can be awful.
I don't have any care for the woman who stalks my friends. I cannot make myself like this person. She has said she thinks of herself 'as the man', and...unfortunately, it looks like she's embraced every horrid societal stereotype about what 'being the man' means, about what manliness is, and what men are and what they do. I think this is idiotic, and that this person is due for a rude awakening when she tries to pull her grift-line on the wrong people. Predators will eventually find one another, and when they do the explosions are INTENSE. For her sake, I want her to wake up before then, and stop being such a base douche. I don't have any respect for the kind of people who assume that the paganism, bisexuality and polyamoury of their roommates mean that they should be allowed to barge into an established union of three and get sex whenever they want with whoever they want, because their roommates are secretly total sluts who just won't put out because they're mean.
But I don't think they have abuse or the same as they dish out 'coming'. A rude awakening, yes, but not violence or abuse. Unfortunately, the latter is likely. There's a reason it's called a cycle.
If this nimrod was falling off a cliff I'd save her. if she was on fire I would put her out etc. but that doesn't mean I think she's the bee's knees. It's hard for me to think of people as beyond redemption; if people can be beyond redemption what does that say about me and my god-awful temper and so on? I'd prefer to believe that most people who have made themselves base and vulgar can choose to become decent. Idiots have the potential to become less idiotic. I don't have much hope for this one, but hey, 0.0001% hopeful for reform is something. I'm not a total heartless ass. Just mostly one! Or something. I don't know.
Rumours bother me. Careless talk bothers me. It leads to attitudes like the one inspiring that tittering tabloid shit about omg tee hee what if Sen. Obama was RAVISHED BY A KNKY BAY MAN AS A MERE BOY. Harmless talk? Don't make me laugh, dudes. Words sting. Just ask any survivor of emotional abuse.
Blahblhblh I'm too loud in this post. And disjointed. Just - (((((((EVERYBODY)))))))
Also, thanks you Cruithne for the sincere apology. I understand why you started out how you did - it reasly is very nauseating how common abuse is, and it's really hard to believe that we move around in such a sick sad world when we're supposed to be so MODERN and ADVANCED, but it's better to be aware of bacteria in the drinking water, as it were? That simile kind of sucks. D: The coffee's brewing too slow.
Generally, however, I just try and do it anyway and to look grumpy and not at all approachable while doing it.
J. Elle never CLAIMED TO curse people, nor did she curse them, was what I meant to type. And she was hideously offended when the VP accused her of 'voodoo satanism', because uh, the two are not synonymous, and J. Elle's attitude was 'you don't practise vodoun if you don't know what you're doing and you don't have a good teacher because those are big energies and if I went into it callously and disrespectfully it'd be like a toddler driving a monster truck'. I don't blame her being offended; the VP (as well as being an idiot) essentially accused her of being the magical equivalent of a drunk driver, or kids throwing lawn darts at each other for kicks.
With regards to not being believed, I absolutely got this after my boyfriend raped me. He told everyone that I was a slut, and when that was no longer enough to shame me into silence and I told my friends that he had raped me, word got back to him and he confronted me. He denied any wrongdoing, said that I was lying to make him look bad. THAT was what made me shut up. If the guy who fucking raped me in the first place said I was lying, what the fuck was even the point of speaking out?
I feel like I do a lot of agreeing with others on this thread, and on this site in general, but I can't help it. YOU UNDERSTAND. You have all been there, in one capacity or another.
When I was 10, I opened the door to a delivery man who murdered a woman two blocks away the following week. So I'm very picky about opening the door to anyone. I lean out the upstairs window, which is over the front step, and try to do things verbally. If a repairman has to come to the house, I get on the phone to my partner before I open the door and make sure the guy knows he only works a minute away.
When I was 20, the man my roommate was seeing took her keys while she was sleeping over and let himself into my apartment at 4:30 AM. I got out okay, but I have never felt safe at home again. I would never sleep with a window open, and I live with a man. And yes, I too have planned ways to get out of my house if an intruder comes in.
The one time I took my trash out after dark (back in college) I was attacked and beaten pretty badly, so no trash-carrying after dark.
When I lived in NYC I developed a whole system of walking so as to minimize daytime street harassment (wear sunglasses, turn head slightly in direction of groups of men so they're not sure if you're looking at them or not, veer slightly towards, not away from, them when you walk past, take up more space, not less, etc. Again, this was for day in populated areas). It was not uncommon for some kid on a bicycle to follow me down the street, saying he was going to follow me home and rape me, so I made a habit of going to other buildings than my own if it looked like someone might be following me.
I rarely go out alone at night anymore, but even when taking walks during the day, I vary the route and time randomly and never wear headphones. Not long ago, I passed a guy on my walk who said "out for your walk again, eh?" I felt unnerved and scrambled my routes up more. He was possibly just being friendly, but it's sad how oblivious men can be to what we deal with.
There's more, of course, but I'm going back to reading for a while...
It just never ends, does it? It's disheartening to see that things haven't gotten all that much better since I was a young woman.
For the poster who asked about how we teach our sons as opposed to our daughters - I only have a son. But you can bet your arse I've taught him that this shit is just not acceptable, and that includes the "minor" shit like street harassment.
I also taught his girlfriend that she didnt have to tolerate that. We were out one day a couple of years ago - she's a very striking looking girl, tall, blonde - she stands out. Some creeps in a car went by yelling obscene things at her. She was visibly shaken, and I could see her literally shrink. I pointed out that they didnt have the right to interfere with her day that way, to insert themelves into her life and consciousness. She looked at me, stunned. That had never occurred to her before.
The next car of assholes who went by and yelled shit at her was treated to a very loud "Fuck you, who the fuck do you assholes think you are?" type lecture from her :-)
I just wanted to add to Unree said about not being as nice as person because of this stuff. Now that I'm older, I think it's somewhat mitigated, but it used to make me so mad that I couldn't just chit chat with strangers the way that men I knew felt perfectly free to do. It's just too upsetting when you get crap to bother. But it does diminish my humanity that I can't interact freely with those around me. Why should I be pushed inward emotionally because of sleazebags and creeps? Sh*t ain't right.
Cruithne, thank you for the apology, and for my part I'm sorry I tried to tear your throat out through the computer screen.
The thing is, we hear this shit all. the. time. It truly is endless. There are people in the world who sail on a cloud of privilege, oblivious to others' experience, and think that the way life is for them is the way it would be for everyone if they'd just quit whining and ignore this stuff. It's simply untrue.
Wild dogs are more civilized than young men in groups.
I avoid all groups of boys or men, since when men get together they think they have permission to behave like a herd of wild animals.
My sons have been told that they should quietly leave a group of men or boys who talk about women in a sexist or demeaning way. I am not comfortable with my sons calling out a group of men, since I fear that they themselves will be attacked.
I won't get on an elevator with men. I just don't get on. Who cares if they are offended?
I wear baggy clothing at all times while I am in public, in an effort to be asexual and invisible. I only wear clothes that fit when I am with my husband.
Oh, and I read every single comment, for what it's worth.
Does anybody have practical suggestions for what's to be done about this? I'm really feeling the urge to do something. Like, right now.
Speak up when you see this stuff. Tell other men it isnt acceptable. Hearing it from women does zero good. Hearing it consistently from other men may make some difference over time.
And if you and the husband wind up raising kids, teach them differently!
Call, email, and send hard copy letters to every elected representative that you have demanding that they pass resolutions naming crimes against women by men in our country a human rights crisis.
In a war-torn, poverty-stricken country, PD, "lucky" is surviving the war and finding food.
Yes, I've been "lucky".
It's unfair and completely philosophically wrong that that's the case, but it's true. That doesn't mean I think the world is OKAY as it is. Something being the norm doesn't mean we think it's right. I want to make the NORM different.
I'd rather know I'm "lucky" than think I'm doing something right and that's why it hasn't happened to me. If that makes sense.
It's hard for me to imagine in my lifetime that I might walk freely in a world that doesn't ask me to constantly monitor whether men see my body as prey. But yes -- I can imagine a world that begins to realize I'm not making that shit up.
The men in your life who matter to you, have serious conversations with them about how one goes about not being a part of these things. Talk about strategies for fixing one's own thinking. Talk about strategies for calling out other men. Talk about strategies for getting this into the legislative consciousness by getting those resolutions I mentioned passed. Don't only have these conversations when triggered by something someone does.
You don't have to have those conversations every day, but you do have to have them. Not having them makes you a collaborator.
Thank you to everyone who has participated. I've just read the whole thing, and I'm just fucking ENRAGED by it. And beneath that, I am mourning for us all, mourning the human experience free of fear that we don't have.
I wonder what you expected to happen when you posted the OP, and what you think of what did happen.
I don't know what I expected. This, I guess. And yet I was nonetheless unprepared for it. I am still overwhelmed every time we collect women's experiences of any kind of largely unspoken inequality in one place. I imagine the injustice of it will never fail to amaze me and inspire in me a unique rage.
I am particularly struck (once again) by the number of women who have been assaulted multiple times, and the number of women who have been assaulted by healthcare workers. Something I've rarely spoken about to anyone is having been molested by a physician's assistant when I was 16 while getting an MRI. I didn't tell anyone because I'd just been raped a few months earlier, and I thought that everyone would think I was either lying about two incidents so close together or think I was some kind of fucked-up abuse magnet.
I wonder how many women can catalogue multiple sexual assaults, but don't, for the same reason. Who only talk about having been raped, or molested, or whatever their "worst" assault was, and leave the rest out. I do that. I talk about having been raped, and say it as though it was only the once, even though he assaulted me multiple times. And I feel extremely uncomfortable saying I was repeatedly raped, molested by a healthcare provider, sexually harassed and groped (once quite seriously) multiple times on public transport, and harrassed and groped on the street on numerous occasions. I hate the litany. And I hate even more the reason I don't like providing it -- because I am worried that I will be judged for it, and because I am worried that all my work will be tainted by it and, worse, dismissed because of it. "Oh, she's just that angry chick who hates the world because she's been sexually assaulted a bunch of times..."
I'm not. Cruithne, your use of "we" in "we may be getting the balance wrong on this issue" combined with the rest of your post was so vile that it's simply beyond any excuse or apology.
Accept that you and your behavior are really that bad.
If you don't like it, change.
I totally get that at the philosophical, comparative level, OtherCara -- I guess I'm just really galled by how often I see that language. I think I want a re-languaging of it -- maybe like: "It is just a matter of circumstance that I have not been sexually assaulted (or that I got away, or whatever)." And what you say there, about a war-torn, poverty-stricken country, details exactly what environment we live in -- in a misogyny-saturated, rape culture, any woman who is not assaulted is "lucky". Blech.
"because I am worried that I will be judged for it, and because I am worried that all my work will be tainted by it and, worse, dismissed because of it. "Oh, she's just that angry chick who hates the world because she's been sexually assaulted a bunch of times...""
This is often why I don't go into detail about my experiences.
It's an excellent way to frame the discussion. Let's get these truths about our lives out in the open.
I'm not going to list the things I do because of fear, because so many of them have been listed already. One thing that infuriates me is when the precautions I take because of fear of sexual assault clash with the way I want to live according to my ideas of social justice. For instance, a few years ago there was a homeless man who hung out and asked for change on the block where I worked (teaching evening classes). I saw him several nights a week and I would always just say "no" when he asked if I could help, and I would walk very quickly away, because I felt very vulnerable and scared as a woman walking alone in the dark -- it made me feel safer just to charge ahead. I'm white; he was black. One night, after I once again walked by him quickly, he yelled out, "Oh, you're just racist, aren't you" after me. At first I was really angry in the typical "privileged white person is called racist and has kneejerk defensive reaction" -- but after I calmed down and thought about it, I realized that our interactions seemed to him to be guided by racism on my part, and they seemed to me to be guided by my fear of sexual assault. I'm still confused about how to understand that situation, years later.
The other example is not any one incident, but the fact that (like several people mentioned upthread) I will not live on the ground floor in my current city, where most buildings are walkups. This means my apartment is inaccessible to people with mobility impairments -- including my own mother if she visited. I hate that what makes me feel safe -- that my apartment is not simple to access -- also prevents me from being able to invite certain people over. But I've been trained to be afraid of assault for as long as I can remember -- and with good reason, as this thread demonstrates.
I hear you, Liss. And one thing a lot of us do not do is count as assaults the times we were "pushed" into sex when we didnt want it, saying "well, in the end I consented."
For the men out there who sleep with women, never forget the context you're operating in. If your partner isnt interested, that's the end of it. No cajoling, threatening, pleading, insulting, etc. Because I can guarantee you that what is in her head is "If I don't, he'll break up with me like my boyfriend when I was 15. If I dont he's just going to continue to harass me until I give in. If I dont, he's bigger than I am and he could force the issue and I dont want to find out the man I love is a rapist."
Yeah. She thinks that shit even about YOU. How can she help it, given the context we've laid out for you here about how we have to live our lives? That's really *not* what you want your partner thinking while you have sex with her body.
Yeah, that's pretty much it. That's what we're thinking about every single one of you.
I've been doing some reprogramming of my own brain lately though; if I indicate disinclination and you take that as anything other than an absolute no to be taken cheerfully and without question, I now KNOW you are a rapist.
He knows that. He knows he's just picking on you because he's a misogynist asshole. He knows that he's just throwing the racism charge out there because while it's a lie, it might "work" on you by getting to you.
Thank you all for sharing your stories. I had no idea how much harassment women receive from strangers in public, and the extent of the fear this causes. As a man, I have the privilege of being able to go out at night with headphones on, not being aware of my surroundings, without fear. However, after reading all these comments, I will try to be more cautious and aware of how other people perceive me, as Graham and others have mentioned, so I don't contribute to the problem.
It's disgusting and shameful that society treats acts of harassment, violence, and assault as acceptable or natural, and unimportant because they only concern women. I feel bad that I have been oblivious to this problem, and I feel for all of you who have been victims in some way or another. (((hugs to all)))
The time I was on a bus with a friend and the man sitting behind me tried to feel me up, and I barked loudly "Get your fucking hands OFF me!" and he did... and then the friend (sitting facing me) saw he was groping the woman seated next to him. So she shouted at him, and then I turned round and saw what was happening and we both stood up and glared at him and told him off... and the woman moved to another seat and the man sat there by himself and complained loudly that we were harassing him, he wasn't doing anything.
The endless number of times some creep has yelled at me in the street, or thrown something. I will not let myself be trapped in the house by fear. But I resent having to be brave to walk home at night. I really do.
The comment I got on my blog after I posted about a clueless het guy blaming me for being alone on a path at night.
When I'm walking home by myself from a friend's place, I don't take the short way through the parking lots and garage-way alleys for the apartment complexes that make up our neighborhood. I stick to the sidewalks, because it's more likely that someone could hear me scream, or that I could make it to someone's window and yell for help. I take the shortcut if Mr. A. is with me.
I always have the right key at the ready when I reach my car or apartment, so I don't have to waste time fumbling with them. I want a new car, so that I don't have to take the time to physically unlock the door with my key.
We live on the full second floor (the first level isn't a garden-level basement, but on the main level), and no matter how nice the weather, I shut and lock the patio door at night, because someone might be able to climb up. I don't do this as compulsively when Mr. A. is around.
I would never go downtown by myself at night, and even going ten feet to my car at night, when I worked downtown, made me fearful and on edge. I read the sexual offender notices in the paper. I'm small and not strong, and I'm acutely aware that if someone really wanted to assault me, there's nothing that I could do that would make a difference.
And I'm "lucky." Christ, it makes me fill with a sort of saddened rage to call it "luck," that I've (yet) not been assaulted or raped. Just....no words left.
I hear you, Helen. The passive-aggressive "we", as it's often used, has that effect on me, too.
I just figured his response meant he was willing to listen from now on--and that's certainly rare enough. If that's the case I'm content with my "hey, sorry I cut your throat, dude" remark.
Right. Because racism, we're taught, is a legitimate concern. Sexism on the other hand, well, it's in the eye of the beholder, and the kind of harassment you experienced from this guy just isn't "serious." You were just being overly sensitive. Or you're a racist. The idea that you could have a real concern here is dismissed out of hand.
In reading the other posts, although I feel so sad and angry that such terrible, horrifying things have happened to so many women, I am also very uplifted by the strength of the posters in their ability to write about their experiences. You are my heroes.
I think overcoming the shame may be one of the greatest obstacles, but I think getting past it is essential to the turning of the tide, so to speak.
We have to learn how -- in forums like this one, even with the babiest of baby steps for a survivor -- to try and speak out about our experiences, because then people cannot EVER say again, "Why are women so afraid?" or "I had no idea the extent of the problem." To educate the seemingly dumbfounded public-at-large, our stories have to be told.
That being said, I am not preaching here, or doing anything but encouraging. I understand the shame. I feel everyone's shame as deep as it were my own. Yet think of all of these comments we've received here from grateful young women thankful for a place to share their stories. That makes me weep tears of joy, rather than the tears of anger. It is a victory.
We need to reclaim the right to share without shame if we are to advance this cause, this war, that we all fight daily. I know it's easier said than done, but thank you, Melissa, for giving some young women a place to start. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.
Hugs to all, especially the survivors and the men who have spoken out here with their support. It means more than you know.
Another thing I noticed is how many people suffered their first assault when they were in grade school, and by grade school boys. I can't even think about what it means that I wrote "first assault" knowing that so many have suffered so often.
This is fucking craziness.
I thank Liss too, but please be aware that a lot of the women posting here are *not* young. Some of us are on the "wrong side" of fifty. The reason I mention this is to point out that this shit has been going on FORFUCKINGEVAH.
I think we're so often left on our own to deal with it that when we see it as something "young women" deal with, we tend to think we're the only generation who has had to come to terms with this. And we let that separate rather than join us together.
And it needs to change.
Tangentially to this, it was years before I realized that the time it took me three hours to convince a guy that "no" didn't mean "try again in a few minutes" was a VERY close call with date rape.
And I'm still uncomfortable with saying "I was nearly raped" because in a way I'm afraid that it would be disrespectful of women who were violently raped.
When my mother was ten, in 1944, she was sent to the store for a loaf of bread. She had apparently started to develop a little bit. Some asshole group of guys on the street made comments about her barely beginning breasts. She was mortified, put the loaf of bread in front of her chest and ran home in tears.
She locked herself in her bedroom. It took my grandmother several hours to figure out what had happened...but she did. Without my mother telling her, which must mean this shit was stuff *she* had to deal with 40 years earlier (my grandmother was born in the 19th century, mom was a change of life baby).
So...we know this happened all the way through the 20th century at the very least.
(My grandmother took my mother bra shopping that afternoon)
I didnt take it as a diminishment, I just really wanted younger women not to think they're alone in this. It's been going on, as you can see from my later post, at least since my grandmother's time, and owing to the circumstances, she was really old enough to be my great grandmother, and I'm 50.
As for the anger, breathe deeply and slowly, in through your nose and out through your mouth.
Start writing letters. Channel it.
I'm mostly not angry; I rarely bother to get angry because I just don't care for it. Much as the Cruithne's of the world would like to flatter themselves in their oozy privilege that my comments to them are anger, it's just contempt.
But when you do have anger, I say grab onto it and find ways to use it. I swing a heavy keyring in one hand when I walk, and I'd say good use for anger is actively looking for an excuse to swing it at some jerk in self-defense.
My grandmother already tells everyone that I lied about what my father did (and he proudly admits it, he told everybody). Then she sends me letters wondering why I don't go and visit her when I'm in town. Oh, and always throws in some bs line about how if I forgave then I'd be happy.
The other side of the family thinks my fibromyalgia is all in my head, although they directly attribute that to my abuse ("What can you expect, with what was done to her?"). Nevermind that I was diagnosed at frelling Johns Hopkins.
In short, I know that anyone who wanted to get out a charge would just have to go to my family, both sides of which have cut me off (father's side for turning him in, mother's side for being 'mean' to her, when she insists on repeating that her husband is a good man). They would gladly testify that I was off my rocker, that I see sexual assault where it's not, that I'm either evil and vindictive, or sadly insane.
I act like I don't care what people think of me, but in reality, I'm terrified of bad opinions. I've always been socially awkward, due to my upbringing. Now, after years of therapy, and some good friends, I understand that I don't understand the social contract (if that makes sense). I don't know how to read people. I go into paralyzing panic attacks when I even think of asking even the best of friends a favor (yes, even when they've clearly offered). I never know if someone means what they're actually saying, because growing up, I had to guess what my parents really wanted, despite their words. And when you hear your father described as a good man who has a natural touch with children, knowing that the speaker KNOWS he's a proud child molester... Does what's said actually mean anything concrete anymore?
So I mainly communicate with others online. The rules are different. I can navigate. I can't in real life.
I'm curious, and genuinely not trying to inflame - *why* can't you just tell him to fuck off?
I've been experimenting with this lately in public places (I'm a recovering 'nice' person) and am finding it's working quite nicely, thank you very much. The sky does not fall; the world does not end. So some people look away uncomfortably or turn their backs on me; fuck 'em. And occasionally someone applauds, and joins in.
I'm thinking of a scales (you know, for weighing things), and each choice we make adds a little weight to one side or the other to tip the balance.
oops, sorry Jesurgislac - didn't read your whole comment before posting. Guess you *do* stand up for yourself. Never mind.
It's been a personal revelation, too. I was assaulted by a doctor, and until now, until this thread, I didn't realize it was an assault. Even writing this feels weird; I keep making mental excuses for him, like he was conducting an examination and he probably didn't mean it that way and there were other people in the room and they didn't try to stop him, so it must have been ok. But he came into the room where I was being prepped for emergency surgery and decided I needed a pelvic exam first. And without even talking to me or telling me what he was doing, he jammed his hand up inside me to the wrist in one go. I let out a shriek my friends in the waiting room could hear, lifted both feet off the table, planted them on his shoulders and shoved him so hard he hit the far wall of the room and slid down it. I can still see the shock on his face. One of the nurses prepping me squeezed my hand and said everything would be fine; none of them helped him up or even paid him any attention. I knew what he did was an assault then - why did I rewrite it all later?
I'm wondering if it's not like Melissa wrote. I was raped a year later by an acquaintance and some of his friends. That was much worse than one insensitive doctor, and you only get one rape story before you're branded a permanent victim/temptress, so the doctor dropped off the list. Along with the neighbor boy who tried to tear my underclothes off, and the boy at school who kept grabbing my almost non-existent breasts, and the high school teacher who kissed me and grabbed my ass. You only get one story or it's you who's causing it all.
I'm getting seriously pissed off again.
Exactly.
I lived in several cities, and aside from avoiding high-crime areas in general, I didn't worry too much about getting home after dark. Now, part of that is because I was trained to fight, usually armed, and incredibly angry all the time in my 20s. When followed by a group of teenagers as I walked by the projects (in daylight), I was more likely to turn around and ask if they wanted to be hurt because I was more than willing to break bones if that's what it took to get them to back the fuck off. People are afraid of crazy people, which I figured out pretty early. Looking back, I realize how incredibly stupid and dangerous that was. I would never do that now.
I am probably more worried about something happening to my young sons than I was about something happening to me - which is not only the affect of parenthood but also an indication of how little I cared about myself when I was younger. It's also because I now know that children are always at risk, regardless of gender. I had no idea that men could be sexually assaulted when I was growing up. It was a constant for me, of course, which was why I was taught to fight. I now know that it wouldn't matter that I thought I was tough, or that I was armed. The astounding ignorance of my youth makes me realize how lucky I was that I did not get assaulted on the street. Of course, that didn't stop it from happening in a relationship, which was one hell of a wake up call. It's not just going out that is dangerous. It's being female in this world. I cannot tell you how sad and angry that makes me.
It's not anyone's fault that they have been assaulted multiple times. Too many women have been. And for those who cannot raise their voices out of societal shame and fear, I do so every chance I get, because IT IS NOT OUR FAULT.
Yeah, getting a little angry over here, too. I personally have never felt the way that many of you describe, and that was before therapy, but I empathize and I am so, so sorry. It's beyond bullshit that you feel like you get that one story or you'll be labeled. It's beyond bullshit because it's true.
I always "back" my car in the garage, parking lot, or slot. Never "pull" in.
I always have a "list" of where I am going, what I am doing, and how I am doing it. If I go to the grocery store, I know exactly where everything is, what I need, how much, and how much I have to take to the car.
I drive around the neighborhood and learn new routes, and new neighbors, who is going, who is leaving.. Who is near me, etc.
I remember details about people I don't know. License plate numbers, types of cars, color and in which direction they were headed in. I remember if they were wearing red jacket, vs a blue jacket, if they were tall, short, muscular, or scrawny, if they were female vs. male.
I am leery of certain individuals who's identity can't be immediately identified and I avoid them at all costs. (when I am alone)
I don't leave the house unless I have a damn good reason to.
I open and close the windows to have a bit of "freedom" from constant vigilance, and sometimes purposely leave the windows open to prove I am not an idiot.
I lock the doors coming and going, both in the house and in the car.
I wouldn't let my children out alone until they were nearly 15, for fear their lessons didn't hit home. It didn't matter, 1 daughter has already been raped. No amount of vigilance would have changed it.
I purposely and definitively stare down strangers to make sure they know I am there, and I am aware of them. This tends to garner all sorts of negative feelings and resentment. Which women are more likely to attack me over. (where I live it does)
I refuse to wear dresses/skirts to ANY occasion for ANY reason and I purposely do not own either and will never own another. I have no problem telling people why I am not dressed "UP". I look at them and say why do you need easy access to my private parts? (this tends to leave me in hostile territory until someone breaks the tension)
I was kicked out of my own church for the above reason, i wasn't dressed nice enough to engage in a prayer in the chapel. I have since told religion to fuck off.
I judge people based on their reactions to my words in whether or not their worthy to be in my circle. Most of my "friends" now are my daughters friends who I am teaching not to be afraid and to OWN their body. Take up space, don't give an inch. Be brave.
I call out the shit I see where ever I see it in any form I see it. I like being referred to as crazy old bitch.
I was three years old the first time I was raped. I was snagged away from the play ground 34 some odd years ago, and my mother didn't miss me. Three boys 16, 12, and 8 thought it would be interesting and fun to stab me in the vagina with a butcher knife and rape me bloody. My screams were heard by neighbors and they told my mother instead of calling the police. Mom found me on the front steps apartment building down from ours and rushed me unconscious to the hospital, where I spent 2 months being sewn back together. I wasn't told this until I actually started my period. Mom wasn't very forgiving in telling me, just basically blurted it out, and it really explained why she treated me as if it was my fault. How do I know it's true? Not sure, the flash backs could be one reason, but the main one is I have to have sex a certain way for it to be anywhere near enjoyable would be the kicker reason. I didn't talk again til I was 5, and I have no memories between then and when I woke up one day and saw "pepsi" in the sky the next memory. No counseling would be for me, I had to deal with night terrors for a long time. I wet the bed til I was 9, and Remember those terrors as if they were yesterday. Every. Single. ONE.
Imagine a room, filled with sharp metal pieces in different configurations. You had to negotiate this room without being touched because if you were, you were electrocuted so badly the pain would shock you and make you pee. On each metal surface a postit (which I didn't know they were postits, wierd that I knew about them before they came in to being) stuck there, and on each postit was a reason you were beaten, and electrocuted. Each one your mother did to you every day. The more she did it, the more the pain and shock hurt in your dream. You had no choice, the pain was going to come either way. You lived, or you died. On these postits were things like, It's YOUR FAULT you left the house. It's YOUR fault I am a monster, It's YOUR FAULT I am beating you, it's YOUR FAULT your broken and used. It's YOUR FAULT your daddy hates you. YOUR UGLY! You get the idea. These nightmares would continue for years. It would train you to put the pain away, and ignore it. But would come back during the day as migraines.
Durring this time, my parents decided to help someone with a place to stay until he found a place of his own. My parents had known this someone for 8 yrs atleast. He was no stranger in our home. And to me he was "uncle". He molested me for 3 months until I found away to make my parents believe me. I drew porno pictures of what he was doing to me and left them in a place they would find them. Interesting that my parents couldn't hear my screams as he put them out with sleeping pills. Eh? Mom believed me when she found the pictures and I thought she was going to kill him literally. She carried a 22. around with her, on the farm for protection from snakes. Well it was this time, she stormed up to the house that day and shot his waterbed and gave him 2 hours to leave. She called the cops and they didn't really believe her. Not until he came back the next day and Robbed them blind. But the only thing he took? The guns in the house. I never saw him again, and the police never found him.
I was 15 when I was taking a shower in my own home when he came in and joined me. I thought he just wanted to share the shower... How wrong I was.. He committed suicide to avoid jail. He was my bestfriend.
I don't take showers with the door unlocked. I don't take showers with guests in the house. I don't have a gun but I still want one. Though I doubt it would stop a would be attacker. I have to be able to shoot them. I am closed in my house, alone because of rapists. Will someone please come free me?
I don't let out personal information on the internet/phone anywhere unless I absolutely have to, I don't even give my SS# to the damn doctor's office as I dont' feel they need that information. I have been stalked, harassed, almost killed, and abused. I dare the next fucker to try it because I am not afraid to die now. It would be a release from this prison I find myself in now.
And LooselyTwisted, I'm so sorry that those terrible things happened to you. Nobody should have to go through what you were forced to go through. It's not your fault, you are not ugly, you deserve better.
All I know for sure is that when I was younger, it was so much worse. I could send out all the signals I wanted that I wasn't interested and it didn't matter. Now, like I said, I'm sort of invisible. I like that.
Heh. I just realized that it's been a year or so since some strange guy has said, out of nowhere: "Hey, why don't you SMILE?" God that used to make me so angry. Because it wasn't like I was walking down the street with a scowl on my face. I was just thinking about something, focusing, working out a problem, or not thinking at all - I just happened to not be smiling. And some clown thinks it's his business to comment on that, like I'm public property.
Yep, that I don't miss, one little bit.
So I don't have an answer for you, Helen. Just my own experience and observations. As we've gotten older it's gotten better, some combination of coming into one's own power and not being considered as desirable an object.
For me, I probably noticed it most at about 48, unless I make a 'special effort' in my appearance, or as I said somewhere upthread, unless men are coming up behind me. I'm slender and wear jeans a lot so from behind guys don't necessarily know I'm "old"
And don't you just love how being invisible suddenly is such a good thing? I think I'm very angry about that. I am not worth talking to or acknowledging, to a large portion of the society. I'm pretty sure I'm angry about that.
I always talk about the sexual abuse I suffered at the hands of a family friend when I was 11/12 if I'm talking about sexual assaults I've experienced (memory is understandably fuzzy around that time of my life), but I never really tell anyone about the abusive relationship I had when I was 14/15 with a 21 year old man who really was bordering on being a paedophile, who liked me to look childlike and who was EXTREMELY manipulative. One day, I found a collection of porn on his computer with an actress who had obviously been hired because she looked childlike, and it was all set in a bedroom that was made to look like a young girls. Do you know what the folder that the porn was in was called? IT WAS NAMED AFTER MY TWELVE YEAR OLD SISTER. I have NEVER forgotten that, and I have never gotten over the guilt of bringing that man into my home where my sister was. He did not assault or abuse her, but my god, it makes me feel fucking sick to think about him thinking of her that way.
I never really talk about being groped in P.E. at school either, or the times I've been harassed on the street and it's really shaken me up, or the guy on the bus who kept trying to stick his hand up my skirt when I was 16.
The scariest is when I'm stopped at a light and a group of men will try to engage me, to say sexual things to me. I feel so stuck. I feel so vulnerable. Then I feel angry and sad, and so helpless. They will just laugh at me. We all know that I really am powerless to fight them.
The worst is when I am pulling a trailer with my 4-year-old daughter in it. I hate that she is a witness. I hate trying to explain to her why I'm so upset. I mostly hate that she will grow to have it happen to her when she is way to young to understand it.
Sometimes instead of happy and free I come home crying. I don't want either my boyfriend or my male roommate to talk to me, because I know they won't understand.
I lately have reconsidered riding my bike, because I hate going from ecstatic to hopeless in a second. I hate that other people can have so much control over me. It really is about control, I think. The thing is, I don't have a car and can't afford one. I would have to take the bus or the max. It would cost me about $70 more a month and the transit center close to my house is sketchy at night. There's a platform with dark steps that have all these nooks for people to be. My walk home is right off a highway exit where people are sometimes inexplicably walking from. I have been propositioned for sex while waiting for the bus. There really are no good answers.
Me, too.
Augh, the things that we forget...
I just remembered how it was when I did costumes for the school plays. The teenagers changed into their costumes in the bathrooms in the costume hall. Every show, the boys picked one night while everyone was changing to get the girls to open the door, ("Valerie, your mom wants to talk to you") then drag one girl screaming out of the bathroom and into the bathroom full of semi-naked men, whereupon they turned out the lights.
Everyone just thought it was so funny. I don't know exactly what went on in there (I know it involved physical contact), but once the girl they dragged in curled up against the wall and started screaming "no" over and over again in such a way that even a few of the guys told me later they were uncomfortable and wanted to "get the other guys away from her"...but they didn't.
I was IN that hallway while it was going on. I didn't do anything! Because it was just this thing that the guys did and everyone was supposed to laugh.
Not long ago, I was telling Iain and a male friend of ours about how the swimming section of my high school gym class was basically a grope-a-thon for the guys when we played "Splashketball" on Fridays. I was constantly terrified of accidentally finding myself in possession of the ball, because a group of boys would descend on me, using the opportunity of trying to wrestle the ball from me to slide their hands down my bathing suit and grab my breasts. I am terribly near-sighted without my glasses, so I couldn't really see them clearly while it happened, either. It was horrible, horrible.
And I used to tell this story like a big joke for laughs, just another high school horror story. It was the only way I could deal with it, for a very long time.
(((((((((((((HUGS FOR EVERYONE))))))))))))))))
I am so in tears right now, I know beyond a doubt that I am going to have nightmares tonight, but I don't care, I wanted to share and let you know you're not alone, you're believed, I believe you, I share your pain. I am so happy I shared. I needed it. And you will feel better if for just a moment to know you're not going crazy, you're not alone. We are all together in this in our pain.
Blessed Be
Oh, yeah, but that's a whole 'nother thread.
Living now with my boyfriend in a not-very-good neighborhood in Tennessee, we own a lot of guns. He sells/trades/restores firearms as a hobby, and I've learned to be very tolerant of it. When he's around, I keep on him about putting any gun he's not actively working on at the time back into the safe and keeping it locked. But when he goes away for an evening, out with friends or whatever, I do go to the safe and pull out one of the pistols to keep beside the bed while I'm asleep - although I don't keep a round in the chamber, just a full mag in the gun. I double- and triple-check the locks on doors and windows, and hate that I have to sleep with a gun next to my bed to feel safe. The boyfriend knows, if he comes back in the wee hours of the morning, to identify himself as soon as he opens the door so that I don't come charging out of the room with a gun in my hand. Yet I don't feel that fear when he's home for the night...I don't jerk awake every time one of the cats makes a sound or rustles something in the other room, don't keep checking that the door's locked every time I wake up during the night.
I guess I measure the ways in which I am impacted by sexual harassment and intimidation by the fact that I am very very conscious of how "bad" my stubborn insistence on going out alone at night would seem if I were ever attacked, by the fact that I am incredibly aware of having to DELIBERATELY choose to act in violation of the Code of Female Behavior (tm) and catch shit for that, not only from guys but from other women who care about me. And all for just doing the same things that my male friends and family don't think twice about - you know, feeling free to go where I want to go when I want to go there, be it the grocery store at 6 AM or the cemetery for a quiet walk at 3 AM. No man I know would get the horrified "You can't do that! It's not safe!" that I routinely get for my choices.
Luckily, though, my boyfriend is very good about it; although I know he worries, he has never tried to dissuade me from doing the things I do. He may not understand what a deliberate middle-finger-in-the-face-of-society it is for me, but he doesn't try to stop me, anyway. And he's also that cool guy who doesn't make fun of female classmates who are uneasy about walking to their cars alone after his 9:00 class, and will often come home late because he walked a woman to her car before leaving himself - without so much as one snide or condescending comment on the subject.
I was molested by three different men during my childhood: at age 4, 5, and 12. It wasn't until very recently - and I'm 59 - that I stopped thinking that there was something about me personally that attracted them. The first was the neighborhood paperboy. My mom called the paper; they wanted to use me as bait again. Nice. My mom said no, thankfully. They caught him going after my cousin who lived up the street. The next was a guy who lured me into his house while I was walking to kindergarten. I walked alone. My mom had to work. He held me in a basement. I can't remember everything that happened, but I can't bear to be restrained to this day. I can't bear naked bulbs swinging over my head or those little high-set basement windows. I don't think I'll ever know what happened in detail. It was so long ago and recovered memory is untrustworthy. I work at letting it go. The last was a diet doctor my mother made me see. Every week - while my mother was standing next to me - he'd have me pull my underpants down and lean over his examining table. He'd walk across the room to get the needle (he shot me up with amphetamines along with the pills he prescribed), then slowly walk back. He'd run his hands along my hip and ass while he gave me the needle. I kept protesting that I didn't need to pull my pants down, but he insisted and my mother believed that doctors are always right. One day my mom couldn't go, so my dad took me and waited outside. This time the doctor put his hand in my vagina. I started to gasp and bolted upright; he told gruffly to get dressed and get out. He turned out to be a serial rapist, so I got off lucky.
I know that the world is not a safe place,but I try not to let it stop me from doing every day things. I drove alone from Boston to Toronto several times a month. I took a solo trip down to rural Kentucky. I went on business trips alone, eat out alone, do my photography. But I won't go too far off the beaten path. Won't take unnecessary risks at night or if there are groups of boys or men about. And still . . . I went to grad school in Cambridge, MA. I had to take the train back to visit family in CT. I was in my mid 40s, fat, dressed in jeans and jacket. The track was out, so they bussed us from the train station about 20 miles down the line. I got on the bus and sat in back. Four male passengers and the male conductor followed me in. They were joking around up front. The conductor pulled out a bag of Hershey's Kisses and passed them around to the guys. Then he called to me. "Here, honey. Have a kiss. OPen your mouth." And he threw the candy at me. Then again. Sayig "Open your mouth. Have a kiss." The other guys were laughing. And all I could think was, "How could be this stupid. They're between me and the door. How could I be this stupid?" They finally stopped and ignored me for the rest of the trip. I never reported him. I was just, you know, too tired. Too fucking tired.
There have been other things. Getting grabbed, groped, harrassed. I'm usually not shy about telling the guy to get his fucking hands off of me. Two men had me penned in with their car in my parking space. When one of them came over to my window, I told him to move his fucking car or I'd ram it to fucking pieces. Then I revved the engine and put it in reverse. He laughed, but he had his friend move the car. So many things,so many times.
Sorry, I'm shaking. I need to go take a break. I've read every comment. Nothing shocked me. Everything horrified me. At least we have each other.
Oh that's another one. Taking walks just for the sake of it. Especially in the evenings. That stopped a long time ago. When I was in high school, I'd take walks and get a lot of verbal attacks from idiots in their cars, which I quickly learned to tune out (people have often pointed out dudes who were cat-calling, staring, or making obscene gestures at me when I didn't even notice. You have to build a force-field around your mind by the time you're 14 or it will make you nuts), but then I started noticing the creepy stalkers switching directions to follow me, and the ones who'd reach out to grab at me from their bikes and cars, and the guys masturbating in their cars while asking me for directions... all those I also managed to blow off. But then the guy who actually physically attacked me and dragged me into an unlit park - I got away from him, but that was the last of the casual evening strolls. Of course, unlit parks at night also give me the serious creeps.
I also want to say, for all the people who've shared more detailed stories, my history of sexual abuse is a lot more extensive than what I feel like divulging here. And I'm probably not the only one who's telling a sanitized version of events, because that's what I can handle. Like for instance, I haven't gone into the guy at the tide-simulation waterpark who got on top of me and crammed his fingers into my vagina when I was 15. You know, for a laugh he could share with his buddies. And I didn't report him to anyone because I already knew by then that no one would care and would only add to the humiliation by blaming me for it or accusing me of lying. And that's one of the easier ones to talk about. So to anyone who's shocked by what they're reading in this thread: It's actually much worse than it looks.
I also want to give a shout out to the posters who aren't usually believed when they try to tell their stories. How about when you're accused of being conceited and secretly loving the attention? Nice, eh?
Yep.
Wow.
It was worst for me between about 39 and 44 - I just turned 45 this year and suddenly it seems to be down to a dull roar. 'Course I'm not anywhere near as nice as I used to be, more often growl at them than smile. And some perimenopausal stuff seems to be happening too, which seems to affect the whole dynamic - I basically seem to *care* less what they think, and be more irritable in general. Maybe once the estrogen dies down, we get to experience a little of what men feel like all the time??? (Hope that's not too embarrassingly ignorant - don't really quite know how the estrogen/testosterone balance shifts, have frankly avoided reading about it because I'm not ready to go there! Just a wild thought.)
But between 39 and 44 it seemed as if I got hit on by any three-legger between the ages of 18 and 60 - maybe it's just because of all those myths about women 'of a certain age'? Dunno. Anyway, it was annoying - could hardly leave the house, even in baggy, ratty sweats just to mow my own frickin' lawn. That's when I started getting really nasty, and swinging the imaginary baseball bat, and wishing that I had the nerve to own a shotgun ... (I love the Annie Oakley *image*, but guns terrify me.)
I haven't reached menopause yet, but I think the ceasing to be "nice" has much more to do with getting fed up with being expected to be "nice" in the face of so much crap than it has to do with hormones.
Im really cynical. I think as we start to age, but before we become completely unfuckable and invisible, it's an affront to them that we're aging so the nastiness increases.
@Broce: Do you think there was ever a time, or a culture, where women haven't had to live in constant fear of violence from men?
I live in the burbs of Philadelphia, so I try to take precautions. My neighborhood is all right, but all kinds of nasty things go on of course - most of them just don't make the news. When I first moved here I was unconcerned with walking after dark or going places by myself, but my boyfriend is terrified for my safety, and out of respect for his nerves I no longer walk anywhere by myself after dark. I do walk with my dogs all over town, in the woods, and in the early morning (after the sun is up). One of my dog is 80 lbs, and while he's usually a gentle, retiring sort, I find him a great comfort - he has an instinct for bad intentions, and when he has a reaction to a man, I know to get away from that man fast. I will always have at least one large, tough-looking dog for the rest of my life. I feel so much safer at home with him there, too. Of course I am always careful with doors and locks, and my building is pretty secure, but anyone would be afraid to come in my apartment when he's barking.
I've never trusted men as a group or spent time in their company. It's sad that I've written off half the population I suppose, but Ive seen and heard enough foul behavior and horror stories.. I'm happier insulating myself from them. I don't spend time socially with men (don't go to bars or parties, don't have and never have had any straight male friends, and have only dated two men, one of whom has been my boyfriend for the last three years), unless they're my female friend's SOs.
Sometimes I get street harassment, but it's almost always men yelling 'eat something' or 'anorexic'. I do feel like I've been less objectified in general because I am very thin and flat-chested, but having the body I do makes me extremely nervous. I'm strong for my size and I can run fast, but the terrifying truth is that almost anyone - even an average-sized 12-year-old - could overcome me physically.
Sorry for the double post, but had to respond to this one too -
Had this one viscerally reinforced not too long ago - I live in an area with a large population of Somali refugees. The local post office is inside their sort of 'zone', and I went there one night because that particular PO is open til midnight.
I was the only woman in line at, say, maybe 10 at night? I got to the front of the queue and felt the pressure of eyes on the back of my neck, and turned to see the whole row of them staring at me (ten or so mostly Somali men.) It was freaky because I wasn't so much scared as puzzled - they really didn't seem scary so much as staring at me as if I were some kind of alien.
The explanation didn't really dawn on me til I was back in my car driving out, and passing through the residential part of their 'zone' - I was struck by the small groups of Somali men gathered alongside the road, apparently talking and smoking quietly, just socializing like I've heard described in some Mediterranean and South American countries. (It was a warm summer night).
What finally caught my attention was that there wasn't a single Somali woman to be seen anywhere. Which, while it fits what little I 'know' of their culture, still shocked me, and made me realize that they were probably staring, if nothing else, because of the oddity of seeing a single woman alone out late at night.
But honestly, I wasn't frightened at all, just felt like I'd passed briefly through an entirely alien universe. Like (and they) were each animals in the other's zoo, to be examined and studied. Weird.
If so, its been tens of thousands of years since then.
Jeebus, that's depressing, huh?
((((Lynsey)))) ((((Lynsey's sister))))
I am 47, and what I think it is, is: a lotta three-leggers (Ha!) are operating on an "ask a hundred women to fuck and one will say yes" model. I think they are thinking: "I'd do her; and she is marginally fuckworthy; she will probably say yes!!!!" and when you turn them down, when they are thinking they lucked out to spot a likely "yes", they get nasty. Cause, you know, they were THIS CLOSE to GETTIN' SOME.
Which reminds me: Is anyone else baffled by the terminology dewds use, of "giving it up" or "getting some"? They make it sound like we have a lot of some commodity (like beans) and if we are nice we will let them have some. ITS NOT LIKE THAT AT ALL!!! Giving a male a chance to impregnate you is A HUGE DEAL. HUGE !!!! It is NOTHING like sharing beans.
They seem to think it is like handing over some spare change, when in fact it is like SIGNING OVER YOUR ENTIRE LIFE SAVINGS.
Your (all of your) bravery astounds me.
I've been lucky (and a kickass analysis of that word by you, PD, but I still feel it) and have never been raped or molested, yet I still live with the fear that comes with being a woman. I'm six feet tall, 165 pounds, and do a great "fuck-off-or-be-hurt" glare. And still.
I keep my keychain looped around a couple fingers (I read somewhere that keys make a better swinging weapon than stabbing weapon because you're less likely to hurt your hands). I am always aware of where I am, where the nearest major street or open building is, and who is around. If I am walking at night, and more than one man is walking behind me, I immediately take the shortest route to a well-lit, populated area (I live in a big university town, so it isn't hard) and then take a different way home. If a man harasses me, I try to get as many identifying details as I can, just in case I have to talk to a cop about him later. I've never reported harassment, though, because there's no way the police are going to do anything. And because, like Sweet Machine, I'm aware of ways in which my white privilege collides with somebody else's male privilege ( I just moved out of Chicago, where being black is evidently still a shooting offense).
I used to get harassed almost constantly-- the streets of so many big cities are male spaces-- and knew I had to take my location and the time of day into account while responding. I am acutely aware of men who are bigger than me, and being harassed or confronted by them terrifies me. (Those of you who are small, I don't know how you handle it.) Most other men, unless they are in groups, don't scare me, but harassment makes me so angry. I agree with everybody who said they'd be a nicer person if it weren't for the fear of assault or harassment. I snubbed what was probably just a friendly older man yesterday in a park. All he said was hello, but nobody else was around, and I'd just had enough and didn't want to deal with anything more.
It's so pervasive. Reading this thread, I realize I have *everything* going for me-- size, straightness (so at least I'm not going to get attacked for my orientation or gender presentation) no past abuse in my life, a loud mouth, feminism. I even live in a relatively safe location, and I'm *still* afraid. I still modify my behavior to avoid situations where I might be hurt. Shouldn't it be the rapists and assaulters and harassers who modify their behavior?
Twenty two years ago, I was raped at knifepoint while working late in my downtown law office - by the ex-husband of a client whom I'd been representing in a child access case. I won't go into details because I don't wish to make myself or anyone else re-live it. It was a shattering experience that brought memories of my abusive childhood back to the surface, even though I'd been in therapy for years by then. The whole thing also enraged by less than understanding husband. Because it took my mind off of him. Less than a year later, we separated - not a bad thing. Except that the stress of all these things took their toll. I returned to work but found that I just couldn't continue - lawyers who can't work late and are afraid to be in their office alone with a man find it difficult to make a living. My now ex-husband sued for custody of our two very young boys. I fought for two years, spent all the money I had, completed a Master's Degree in Law, started a teaching job and eventually ended the custody suit by allowing my precious boys to go live with their father before he destroyed us all. The subsequent years were a nightmare of grief and post traumatic stress.
When I finally began to get my life back, I took a course at a downtown campus that required me to be at the subway station nearest my house at 11 p.m. to get my car from the parking lot. Often, I sat on a bench inside the station trying to gain the courage for my late night walk. When I finally set out, I had my keys threaded through the fingers of my left hand and my brief case in my right, ready to swing. I panicked when I heard footsteps behind me and had a terrible time not breaking into a run when I finally saw my car. I almost felt like leaving my door unlocked so that it wouldn't take me too long to get into the car. And, even though it was locked, I still had to check the back seat for an intruder. I locked myself in the car and still do. I run from my garage to the door of my house and still wish I could leave it unlocked to get myself in faster. Even though I don't think about the rape so much anymore, I hate being in any enclosed space on my own with a man - that means elevators, offices, subway cars or my kitchen with a repairman. I look for exits automatically and plot ways of escape. I'm uncomfortable when men reach for anything in their pockets - the idea of a weapon comes automatically to my mind. I used to walk in conservation areas on nice days by myself but I can't bring myself to do that anymore. I don't want to walk down a street at any time of the day or night that doesn't have very many other people walking on it. I don't take short-cuts, day or night.
My kids came back to live with me when they could use their feet. My life was a profound struggle for a long time. But it isn't anymore. I'm quite happy with my life. But I would never be in my bedroom at night without an operational telephone and I sleep with a baseball bat beside my bed. I can be counted on to pick my nieces up at night, any time of night, to drive them home, from wherever the hell they are. I am not in a relationship and, as good as my life gets, I can't imagine trusting a man that deeply. I don't consider myself a victim and I don't feel sorry for myself, nor do I want any pity. I'm not terribly unusual. I'm a woman. A white, middle-class woman who lives in a "safe" part of town. Lucky me. Really.
Never having been any bigger than I am, I guess Im just used to it. Im a small woman.
I will say for years after my assault I dated short guys. I wasnt consciously aware of it until I was in my early 20s and fell in love with a guy who was 6'4" (The man who assaulted me was well over 6 feet).
My then boyfriend noticed I had a tendency to flinch if he moved quickly around me, and when he pointed it out, I was able to work it out.
And Hysperia, I'm so sorry for what happened to you, and I'm sorry that you have been deprived of the inherent human right to feel safe.
Interesting take - I'm not sure if this is what you mean, but my sense is that they're bugged that we're taking up valuable real estate - that we *dare* to exist in public when we're no longer as decorative as we once were. Like that worn out - what - potted plant, maybe? that's gotten a little leggy and has some brown leaves. Off to the trash heap with you!
I've heard this called, "casting a wide net," meaning that they're not particularly selective. Oh, joy, like I needed to know *that*...
They make it sound like we have a lot of some commodity (like beans) and if we are nice we will let them have some. ITS NOT LIKE THAT AT ALL!!! Giving a male a chance to impregnate you is A HUGE DEAL. HUGE !!!! It is NOTHING like sharing beans.
Don't know if you meant to be funny, but this cracked me up :-) Sadly, it's not that we *have* some commodity - it's that we *are* some commodity. Even worse :-(.
"It is NOTHING like sharing beans!" Makes me feel a Monty Python moment coming on, but I shall resist.
Yeah, I don't think we can ever get into their minds. Or that we'd *want* to, frankly - full of a lot of squiggly, oogy bits that - bleck. Don't want to go there.
THANKS!
Bees, I hear you there. That is not quite where my mind goes, but neither do I think the logical responses. I actually end up sort of weirdly wishing that something had happened to me. I imagine it could be for these illogical reasons: 1) I imagine that it might save someone else the pain. 2) I feel like I can't truly be a part of the fight to stop this until I've had an experience - i.e. trying to convince someone how terrible it all is and when they ask me if I've ever been assaulted or raped and I say no, that it somehow invalidates my point. 3) If I could say I'd been assaulted or raped, then it would bring home the problem on a personal level to people I know - because I'm not afraid to speak out.
I know these are all terrible thoughts. I do NOT ever want my luck to run out. But I'm terrified that it will. Someday the patriarchy will catch up with me and punish me for the crime of having been born with a vagina.
This. I know that when I say I have never been assaulted or raped, that I've been lucky, it is only by the narrowest margin of definition. I suspect that the times my exboyfriend cajoled me into sex could count as rape. Of course, I didn't have the healthiest behavior towards him, either, but that's not pertinent to this thread. I just write off my weird sexual experiences with him as no one's fault, because I gave in.
And even now, reading this, as a feminist, knowing what I know, I still can't bring myself to count those experiences as assault.
I just wish he wasn't deployed. :(
Don't really go places except those with high population density after dark. We make a lot of friends, and very few enemies, whilst a good idea in general, it has obvious advantages when it comes to rape. Ultimately, though: We never trust anyone.
Never unarmed. No guns here, of course, but a cane makes a decent stand in for a sword, mace, chains can strangle people.
It's moved beyond specific rape prevention, I suppose, and into a response system for everything ever. An incredible paranoia.
So safe, in fact, that if I've had one beer, which barely buzzes me, he's reluctant to have sex with me. Just because he knows my background. And how sweet is that? :)
ETA: And I didn't mean to leave out the many Shakers here who, themselves, were/are in the military. I know all of you have made a difference.
And it's not just the internet I guess, but also experience and hearing about so many women being assaulted that I look at most men now and wonder what secret, horrible things they've done, maybe without even realizing it. It makes me think I will likely never be able to trust a straight man enough to marry one, which is fine with me, but being this cynical can be very tiring; guarding myself so much is exhausting (another reason I am a bit solitary because it makes it easier...so does dressing schlubby or being kind of nerdy in some ways).
*the time I count as the bad one or the real one (and even then I feel "lucky" because it wasn't brutal), not the other ones that might technically be rape but I don't want to think or talk about because it would be too hard to defend to someone who isn't a feminist, etc. and even the real one I had a very hard time coming to terms with because it wasn't brutal
(Edit: And I just want to clarify that they weren't acting normally or really even friendly to me. They were trying to convince me to get in the car and were being scary and pushy, if a little bit "jokey" amongst themselves. They were acting kind of nervous, though, and looking at me in an eery way. And they drove up from behind, fast, as if to purposely scare me. And I was courteous to them but probably not friendly. I think I acted and looked terrified that they were going to abduct me but I just remember pointing up the street to where my friend's house was and being very clear with my body language, expression and tone that I was uncomfortable and did not want to deal with them. And it wasn't even really a situation that automatically registered the same amount of danger to me that other things had, times where I'd been chased or followed home or harassed, but something about that really scared me in a way other situations hadn't. Anyway, I just didn't want to make it sound like a car of nice boys were offering me a ride home and I now tell the story as if I escaped certain death or something, especially when so many here have survived such unimaginable horrors.)
And I guess men don't have to think about that stuff, huh? Wow, that's just...such a different reality it kind of blows my mind.
It's a funny thing, as a woman, I have had the experience of being scared by random people who were walking behind me who I felt were threatening for whatever reason and I have also had the experience more than once of being mistaken for a threatening person by a woman walking ahead of me. I've never tried whistling string quartets; I usually just slow down or cross the street. I try to notice what it is about the woman that tells me she scared so that I don't do it when I am scared.
She's back. She's been helping her husband recuperate from a serious accident.
That essay's called Just Walk on By and it's by Brent Staples. Available here. It's an essay I have a lot of trouble with, because he describes these white women who are afraid of him when he's just walking near them and I know I can't understand what it's like to be nonwhite, but...this thread.
Not for anything I've personally done, but for the fact that I'm part of the half of humanity which commits all of these crimes, great and small, against the other half. I wish there was more I could do to stop them.
I know, teaspoons...but sometimes I wish I had a fucking backhoe.
www.thisisnotaninvitationtorapeme.co.uk
It aims to challenge myths about rape and place responsibility firmly with the perpatrator.
Is it strange that, as a guy, I'm so *happy* to see that statement? - JJohnson
I'm happy to see that too. For a lot of reasons.
I do the usual: keys in my hand, no headphones at night, walking in well lit areas, having my cellphone in hand or talking to someone on it while I'm walking. I'll take a bus route that is longer if the stops are in more populated areas. I won't go to bars or public washrooms alone. I won't accept drinks from anyone that is not one of my best girlfriends. I've turned down a job because the shifts would have had me walking alone late at night. I make my dad come into the bank atm with me at night. I have my best friends beefy girlfriend who passes for a guy walk me down from their apartment when I visit late, even if I have a ride waiting for me downstairs. I cross the street in quiet areas if someone is behind me, or coming towards me.
All of this, and crap still happens to me and my friends on a seemingly daily basis. I've been followed, and harassed, told to get into cars and grabbed. It's sick.
On the other hand, I know at least six men who haven been assaulted in the streets. My conclusion is: in what affects me, my country / my area / my culture, the-rapist-behind-the-corner is a patriarchal myth to keep us at home, or scared, or both. Yes, there is some degree of street violence, but it's like comparing traffic victims with terrorist victims. Both need support and the right measures to change the situation so that it never happens again. But terrorism victims are taken more seriously, appear more in the media, matter more to the government, etc. even if more people die in traffic accidents.
The only measure I take is to carry my car keys in my hand. I hate to look for my car keys by my car because beggars in my town concentrate in places with many parked cars and I don't want one of them to get violent.
I wonder if there was ever a time when female humans were bigger, like the Venus of Willendorf. And it WAS more even.
Then the social pressure started to be tiny, and we ended up here.
Okay, okay, like I said I am sleepy and free associating!
We SHOULD have paralyzing venom though.
I often dream about being much stronger than I am. And I daydream about being able to sort of make myself become much larger and more intimidating, and that when I get angry my hair lights on fire. I wish it were true. I wish my other daydreams of being able to put my brain/experiences/thoughts into the heads of other people were true. I could make change so much faster.
The prevalence of the stranger rapist is a myth, but the existence of the stranger rapist, irrespective of where you live in the world, is not. (In America, women are about three times more likely to be raped by someone they know than a stranger, and nine times more likely to be raped in their homes, the home of someone they know, or anywhere else than being raped on the street.) But I don't think anyone here is unaware of that reality. The problem is, as has been stated upthread, rapists don't advertise themselves -- and everyone here is aware of that, too.
So the fact that we are more likely to be raped by someone we know in a familiar place than someone we don't know on the street doesn't change the fact that we still have to be vigilant in public -- especially because that "some degree of street violence" can still be extremely traumatizing. Being groped, flashed, or otherwise sexually harassed in public is not nothing, despite the fact that we're expected to treat it like it is. And especially for women who have already been sexually assaulted, it can be a terrifying experience. I don't think there's any reason at all to suggest that women shouldn't do everything they can to protect themselves from that, especially survivors, or suggest they're responding to "a myth."
I've noticed a couple times that changing my stance and posture and gait just SLIGHTLY when I feel rankled by someone who may be following me has an effect. One guy whom I was concerned would be an ass crossed over to the other side of the road. I was kind of amazed.
I've never been actually followed; I had a couple of very silly unaware high school guys slow down and toodle along with their mom's van a few feet behind me when I was walking home form the train station (I live in an area that is the concept of boring suburbia manifest - shite still happens, but ... I don't know why I'm explaining that I live in a subdivision of middle-classity nature, like I'm trying to prove I didn't 'take a foolish risk!' by walking somewhere dangerous, which I do NOT have to do here gaaaahhh), and I was going, 'oh for the love of nine oranges' and 'what the dongs' and 'if something shitty happens, i will do this and this and this and ask dad the parole officer how best to deal with my having done this' - it was this right off adrenaline twinge.
I turned around and gave he guys The Hairy Eyeball, heard one of them go 'ah whoops it's not James, I told you, dumbass' (apparently, short hair plus army surplus coat plus warm jogging pants made me look a lot like their vertically-challenged fellow dude form the back) and then they sped up and drove off. I don't think they GOT that they freaked me out? It just doesn't cross their minds.
I think that every woman is free to protect herself as she chooses. But in many societies including mine, that decision is not taken by the woman, but by her relatives. Spain is a very liberal country in many respects, but here, no one would be surprised if an adult woman living with her parents has a curfew. My seventeen-year-old sister-in-law is not allowed out alone, day or night, under any circunstances, and she lives in a residential area in the middle of town. Her 30-year-old sister leaves the house alone if (and only if) she can't take the younger sister with her. They're not exceptions.
having never been trained in any kind of self-defense, i can still be a formidable opponent with my nails and teeth. if you're not strong enough to punch with the keys, i'm pretty sure they could do some damage if you used them as claws on someone's face.
the most frustrating thing i see on tv and in movies is women trying to fight fair when they're not trained for. go for the fucking nuts and the eyes and don't stop moving. you may not be able to overpower, but you can sure make it hard and painful to pin you down.
i totally understand. i live in dallas, pretty close to downtown, but not IN downtown. my area is still so much more populated at night, than the rest of the town an suburbs are. i was amazed, the first time i went to DC and NYC how much safer my friends and i felt there than we did walking from a bar to the car around home. busy streets are always a good thing.
Yeah. I mentioned above that I have experimented with changing my gait when passing groups of men in the street. I used to live in Brooklyn, and it was common for groups of young men to hang out on stoops and harass women verbally--as a show of status to one another, I guess. I noticed that I would sort of veer away from them on the sidewalk, look away, etc. as I approached such a group. So, I tried doing the opposite: walking ever so slightly closer to their side of the sidewalk, and wearing shades, then turning my head halfway toward them. This *really* helped. I think they were thrown off, not knowing whether I was looking at them or not, seeing that I was not going to avoid them. The last thing a showoff wants is to be put down in front of his crowd, so maybe they figured I was too much of a risk, as I might answer back.
This was during the daytime; I don't know that I would be willing to walk closer to a threatening group in the dark, when grabbing or pulling weapons might be more likely (might be--I really don't know).
i'm an only child from a single parent household, so i developed a sense of fear early on, that's been honed as i grew up realizing i was bait, just for existing. my friends and gf always find it amusing/amazing how quickly i can pick out the potential weapons from anywhere. i just instinctively know what can be used to hurt someone else and what's the best way to do so.
reading these stories is making me sad, but also making me feel less paranoid.
on an up-note, my friends and i went to see NKOTB last night. i didn't think of it at the time, but this thread has made me realize how amazing it was to see THOUSANDS of women, dressed from shlumpy to sexy and everything in between, walking around downtown dallas and not having a single catcall or threatening remark. groups of 2s, 3s, 10s and 20s, just wandering around as if it were their right to do so and just be comfortable having fun. it was kind of awesome in retrospect.
But that's not what we're talking about in this thread. The question was directed at individual people and what they do for themselves in response to potential threats.
oh, even before i started dating women, i was SOOOOOOO much more comfortable at the gay bars/clubs. i could go there and just dance or hangout. i got hit on occasionally, but a "no, thanks" was enough. sometimes, the woman still wanted to talk and just get to know me. what a concept!!
I'd like my husband to read this thread. I explained to him once that many of the women he knew had been raped, and almost all of them had been sexually assaulted. He grew very quiet.
http://www.crazyauntpurl.com/archives/2008/10/t...
{{{{nancy}}}}
it does help some. my gf has a great story about a 12 year-old blackbelt (i don't know what discipline) she knew who put a grown man in ICU when he tried to attack her after a softball game. if that's not hope for this matter, i don't know what is.
I have learned that my behaviour makes little difference to this: Fuck off vibe or being polite, dressed in a skirt or jeans, loudly saying no or trying to ignore it, threats to hit them back, it doesn't reduce it or dissuade it. In fact, nothing I do changes their behaviour because, by the fact of me being a woman, men believe my body is public property.
I do many of the things that women have written about in this thread, and am part of a free program for survivors of violence at a boxing club, in a bid to increase my strength and confidence (though I've also lost a ton of weight recently, which seems to have resulted in more harassment). I always have a weapon accessible; I have learned how to use my fists as a weapon, and also keep a baseball bat beside my bed; I pay close attention to my surroundings when I walk home at night, ask the bus driver to let me off right at the intersection near my home (which some of them do automatically when it is late, and some don't want to because it is not that far from the stop to the intersection). Though I carry a cell phone at all times, I have realized that the only person I can rely on to protect me is me, and this actually makes me feel more safe. I have a lot of nightmares, and I still wake up in the middle of the night, scared, whenever I hear a noise. And my heart beats very fast when I am in a situation alone with a man, friend or stranger, so I try not to be (the only time this is not an issue and I feel safe is when the man is gay).
I used to be afraid ALL the time, but now I'm increasingly angery, and I'm getting increasingly aggressive in my responses to men who violate my space. And why the fuck should I stop going out because of them? I've tried that, it led to me staying home and being depressed, which made me a great target for my then-husband's violence. So, now, I get angry. I give harrassers the finger and tell them to fuck off. I threaten men who touch me that I will punch them in the face if they touch me again (and am working up the gumption to actually do it). I go out at night, regularly. I dance the way I want to, wearing what I am comfortable in. I drink excessively sometimes. I behave in ways that others believe is putting myself at risk (though there is no risk unless a rapist is present). Because sometimes I think it is bullshit that I have to change so much, in an effort to protect myself. That effort hasn't worked so far, so I get tired of it and just do what I want. Why should I be under cerfew because I'm a woman?
So my negotiation of this minefield is filled with contradictions. I cannot win, so at least I'm making my own rules for this bullshit game. I NEVER blame women for what has happened to them - the blame lies solely with the rapist, and I argue hard whenever anyone says that women need to limit our movements out of fear. Ultimately, I've been raped and hit by lovers, friends and complete strangers enough times to know that it is NEVER going to happen to me again, I just do not have the energy to deal with it one more time. If it does happen again and I am conscious, it will end with someone being killed, him or me, and I sure as shit do not want it to be me. That is the point that I am at, that is my intent (though who knows how it will actually play out when it inevitably happens again).
Reading this thread has been upsetting, disheartening, infuriating, but encouraging in some ways; very few of my friends get the level of harassment that I do, and it helps to know I am not the only one. Portlydyke's comments on being lucky particularly hit a cord - I keep saying that I was lucky the last time I was raped because I think that all the bruises (and pictures of bruises that they took in the hospital) made the police believe me, because my words alone were not sufficient, but the bruises were evidence. Sad. And the litany... no one in my life knows how many times I've been assaulted, no one. They would most certainly blame me for the series of continuing harassment I endure. Wowzaa, I am super long winded on this! Thanks for providing a space to share.
Also (sorry if I'm posting too much) the "spicy Latina!" advertising is not only really gross and annoying, it also worries me a lot because I think about women who are illegal immigrants and what an already vulnerable position they are in without advertisers giving men permission. Even if they're making decent money at just one job it's likely they still can't afford a car because they send so much money back home, it's much harder to navigate the world (well I'm thinking about just the USA here) if you don't speak the language, bosses can blackmail them because they know they're illegal, they can't go to the police...it's just an awful, scary position to be in.
That driving while female article is interesting, but also infuriating. Why are all the victims "girls" and "female" but the police officers are just "officers". Excuse me, but if you have "female" drivers, you have MALE police officers. Or I have to assume that there is something about wearing a police uniform that suddenly makes you start assaulting people willy nilly regardless of your sex. Damn it.
I own a 35 lb dog who is black and fluffy and seems to be intimidating to people. On any given walk, I am more likely to be hurt by him tripping me with the leash again, but I feel safer with him along. In fact, I won't walk the block to the mail boxes without him. Dogs can give you the ability to be a group in public, without having to have another person around all the time. But they are not foolproof.
I owned a super friendly dog in college, who maybe saved me from an assault. I was leaving campus early one morning (dog was smuggled into dorm room over night) and realized we were being followed to the car. I promptly pretended to "calm" the dog. "Easy, dog, easy, I'm sure he's friendly and isn't going to do anything stupid like come to close and need a trip to the emergency room and stitches."
Meanwhile, my dog is cheerfully trying to pull me over so the guy can pet her. Anybody who could read dog body language could have called the bluff, but he turned around and walked away. (If he had wanted to do something harmless, like pet the dog, wouldn't he have explained it, or called out before he started following? Well, maybe not if he was high (also possible)). Normally, I would have been leaving early for work by myself. To this day I wonder if he realized he had scared the crap out of me and was embarrassed and left (the dog was well known in the dorm for her suitcase smuggling act on the weekends, and he may have just wanted to meet her), or if he was really trying to get close enough to grab me. Regardless, the fact is, this is one of my most vivid memories from undergrad.
I want to thank you people for being here.I'm more willing to take action against the nuances than I was earlier. And I'm less angry, now that I feel like I can do something.
I'm less likely to go out if it's already dark.
There are places I don't travel to by myself.
I don't go swimming in the pool at my apartment complex.
I probably won't even ever use the exercise room at the complex either.
I won't go out walking or jogging after work because I get off after dark.
and so on.....
I spent most of my teen years hiding from one particular voyeur; by the time I got to college, double checking the blinds, under the bed, etc. before getting dressed had become so ingrained that I did it without even noticing that I was doing it.
Sophomore year I was taking a self-defense class and the instructor was talking about the simple things we could do to make us less likely targets. One of them was making sure our blinds were closed when we got dressed. At a women's college that was mostly surrounded by woods, small lakes, and athletic fields.
Really, it was a logical suggestion, despite that lack of Y chromosomes on campus. But I had stopped checking the blinds before getting dressed the same day I finally noticed that I had been doing so without even realizing it. That I had been hiding for months from a person that was thousands of miles away and hadn't done anything in years.
The simple, logical task of checking my blinds had grown into something not simple at all a long time before that class. I didn't want to go back to feeling that way, and I wasn't sure how to follow her advice and avoid that feeling at the same time. Feeling a little crazy and more than I little angry, I started deliberately not closing the blinds when I got dressed (in my 6th floor dorm room that someone would need binoculars to look into) just because closing them suddenly felt like admitting defeat.
Which made me start questioning all the other "logical" precautions she suggested. And then decide that I was going to do my best to make sure that fear didn't dictate what I did. That I would look at not just what I was avoiding, but what I was giving up or what burdens I would be taking on as well.
There are all kinds of things I do that people think I'm crazy for doing. I travel alone. Often camping. I do walk outside at night at times. I live alone. and so on....
But saying that I will be brave doesn't always work (see the first list). And sometimes, as Gavin de Becker points out, fear can be very useful; I know that a lot of my "bravery" comes from being "luckier" than many other people here on this thread.
Other than that, I just want to say thank you to everyone that has shared their stories - both horrifying and kick ass and everything in between. No matter what, it helps to know that I'm not alone and that none of us are crazy.
Thanks also, for even starting this thread, and for everyone who's shared. (((((everyone)))))
The show I saw started on Ashley's first day of freshmen year at private school with Will and Carlton. Will spent the whole episode harassing women in the hallway, making comments about their bodies and frequently running after them when he was overcome with lust. All the women acted uncomfortable or responded rudely, yet Will's antics were played for laughs. He always had a group of impressed guys with him, too, trying to learn his technique. Nonetheless, Will and Carlton staged an intervention when Ashley started stuffing her bra and knotting her shirt to get attention from guys. It was working on Will's peanut gallery, so they had to stop her from being disrespected like they disrespect other women.
I can think of numerous examples from pop culture of harassment being treated as funny or a compliment, but Will is the only main character I can think of who did so regularly. He got put in his place a lot but he was also shown as a cool guy that other guys on the show wanted to be. Guys in my fifth grade class actually saw him as a role model. They would parrot the lines and make smug assessments of our developing bodies. It actually colors my perception of Will Smith to this day.
Like Nia, I live in Spain, in my case in the North (something about your story tells me you don't, Nia). Urban life is very different from the States; my town is small and compact. I try not to live afraid. If I'm tired after a long day's work, I go to a bar and have a glass of wine on my own. I walk alone at night, and I mean Spanish late hours, two or three in the morning and nobody but me in the street. Lately I'm trying to distinguish "objective" dangerous situations from "subjective" ones; for example, if I can avoid going to a subterranean parking lot late at night, I will do so. I have fought so much with objectively unreasonable fear during my life that I don't want to stop now and sometimes am downright imprudent, I guess.
But of course I can understand perfectly well why somebody would do her best to protect herself or would be very afraid. This thread has also brought to me many memories of having been assaulted, punched, fondled, invaded, ogled, in real danger of rape. I started reading with the idea of "oh, I've been so lucky" (and now PD's point applies very well) and then, as some of you mention, memories would come up. I also realize how insidious and poisonous these fears are, whether you decide to rebel against them or whether you decide to listen to them. They are always a factor.
My heart goes out to you people who have told stories from the annoying, enraging ones to the frankly appalling and heart-wrenching.
I'd also like to point out that getting rid of the guilt and shame after an incident has been a huge relief and that I do my teaspoonful best to spread that way of thinking. (Though I still have a long way to go as a "recovering nice" person.) Therefore, I'm not only moved by you, I'm very thankful to you all, and to some of you it must have been very painful to tell, even in this blog. Every bit helps to deprogram ourselves or to remind us of the basics, even after years of trying to use violet-colored glasses.
Oh, and a big thank you to our host.
But mostly, I never really think about the danger factor, and I am routinely out alone at night in Chicago after 10, and often after midnight. The only time I ever did feel trepidation was after I broke up with a live-in boyfriend in San Francisco. After years of coming home at night with a man, there was a period of adjustment where I found myself feeling less safe without him, even though nothing had changed in the empirical sense -- our working-to-middle-class neighborhood was no less safe than it had ever been, and I was no less physically capable of defending myself. But I had somehow fallen prey to the crutch of thinking "my guy is my first line of defense." I don't think that way anymore.
Alas, no. NZ femi-blog The Hand Mirror has far too many posts on rape. Not that we shouldn't be talking about rape! But it shouldn't happen in the first place.
We (ie. The Hand Mirror bloggers) put together a submission on a government discussion paper recently. The discussion paper was about improvements to the law on rape and sexual assault. In the front of the discussion document was these stats.
- 19% of NZ women and 5% of NZ men will experience sexual violence at some time.
- An estimated 90% of sexual offences go unreported.
- The conviction rate for all sexual offences in 2004 - 2006 was 46%, compared to 55% for all violent crimes, and 70% for total crime.
Having said that, I will echo what other people who live or have lived in Wellington, NZ, have said up-thread. It does feel very safe. I've lived in NZ for most of my life, and I have experienced just 2 incidents. Once, when I was a school girl, a boy tried to get me to go with him to "see his brother." Later, as a woman in my mid-twenties, a group of boys driving past my husband and me called out, "Hey! Nice woman!" to my husband. The idiots happened to park just around the corner, so we went and told them how offensive and stupid they were.
I wouldn't enjoy having to key someone to save my own ass, I'd probably feel like shit after in spite of everything, but I don't doubt that i would do it. Chronic health conditions have given me this 'I will survive, fuck everything else and everyone else's crap' because I have to work that much harder daily to do my thing - so who the hell is some worthless jackhole to try and deprive me of my right to BE? No one, no one, no one. I don't hurt anyone. I recycle. I love cats, and I feel like shit when I so mcuh as insult someone because hyper-empathy is GREAT. I don't think I'm a horrid person (though fearing that I am is another thing). I'm angry that I was an easy target before. I'm angry that people still tell me I made myself an easy target. it's like, 'perch and swivel, idiots; I am zub0n, victim no more.' Or something.
But I'm sometimes terrified of that instinct. I'm terrified of being seen as violent or sociopathic or inhuman or dangerous because after the moment of initial fear comes this Vulcanlike, 'well, in such a case as this, the ideal course of action is to jab at them with your techpen or your expensive mechanical pencil, which are sharp at the end.' It kind of makes me heartsick. When did i become like this? Why was it necessary? Have I gone too far, and can i come back? Is Nietzsche's Abyss going to ask me if I have a staring problem? I don't know.
((((((((EVERYONE.)))))) I don't know what else to say. I'm sorry if I've freaked anyone out with my brain TMI. By nature, I'm not violent at all, but my brain is a scary place.
And I STILL can't share my stories because I'm SO so terrified someone with basic IT skills can probably easily track me down, hack into the Disqus server and trace down my IP address.
To be extraordinarily trite, you are all - we are all - heros, every.fucking.day. of our lives.
I can't participate in the fundraisers for my local NPR station. The man who raped me (long ago in college) regularly answers the phones during the drives (often enough that I hear his name announced at least once during every pledge drive). I'm so freaked out by the idea that he might see my name and be able to get his hands on my personal info that I can't even convince myself to join online.
I used to walk home without concern after dark (there's a lot of foot traffic in my neighborhood), but after being followed by this asshole for two block while he very eloquently described how he'd like to rape me, I realized that noone will intervene - because a woman should just know better than to walk alone. Thanks neighbors and police!
It's been almost 15 years since getting away from my abusive ex and I still don't trust straight men, particularly straight men I know. I feel safer around strange men than I do around my neighbors and coworkers. I'm wariest around men I know because I just never know when one of 'em might turn on me.
not worth the risk, just...not worth it.
But later that year, in the warmth of summer, I worked a shift that let me out on a Sunday at midday. On Sundays the busses have a much more limited schedule. I wasn't sure what time the bus would come, and it was a lovely day, so I walked. I walked the bus route, figuring that whenever the bus came I could catch it, and if I got to the downtown bus depot without ever meeting the inbound bus, I'd just go straight onto the bus to my home on the edge of town.
So there I was walking the bus route, which was not a direct route - it snaked around a bit. And I became aware that a man was following me. He followed me eight or ten blocks, on my roundabout walk to the city center. It was broad daylight and there were people around, so I tried not to twitch too much, but it got scarier and scarier as I walked this roundabout path. Downtown, at the bus depot, I sat down near the desk where the attendant was, and the guy sat on the other side of the room. When the number 12 bus arrived, I quickly got on. He followed. I sat at the front near the driver, and he sat at the back. The driver was a woman and there was one other woman on the bus, obviously a friend of the driver; they sat at the front and chatted, which was reassuring. Creepy guy sat alone at the back, and I peeked at him every now and then. Whenever he caught my eye, he would raise his eyebrows and wave. The bus driver and her friend continued to chatter.
Out at the far end of the bus route, we passed my house. I didn't dare get off this bus, out here at the edge of town where no one was around. What if the creepy guy followed me? So I sat there. He would have to get off the bus first. He stayed on the bus, almost all the way back downtown, and finally got off about six blocks before we got to the bus station.
Downtown, I wanted to stay on the bus until it went around to my house again. But the bus driver claimed she never saw the guy, that I was the crazy one, and that the rules required me to exit the bus, and pay another fare if I wanted to go around again. Like I was making up some story just to get her to let me ride around and play tourist in my own hometown. And I didn't have any more money.
I could walk home, but I'd have to walk past the area where the creepy guy got off the bus, and about three miles farther on mostly-empty streets. I'd done that walk alone a hundred times before, even at night, but I just couldn't face it that day. I made a tearful collect call to my boyfriend and he drove down and got me. I felt so utterly lame, like it was all my fault. It still makes me mad.
Oh, and I saw the creepy guy on the bus any number of times after that, but he never seemed to be paying me any attention. Was it just me? Am I crazy? Gah. I hate this.
Also you will *feel* calmer, for you know that in the event of trouble you will respond. This makes life so much pleasanter.
Also I am suprised that everyone refers to carrying their "keys." "Keys?" Where's your pepperspray? I'd have it on my keychain if I were a woman (not a bad idea for men either). Additionally, women I've met who concealed carry (and they also practice shoot regularly), say they find it a very empowering feeling. They enjoy it. Of course that's only if you live where CC is legal.
I feel deeply for the writers of the messages I've read. But I urge you to actively embrace taking up self defense as a part of your life. Knowing that you can defend yourself changes everything. Not knowing how to defend yourself just ruins life, because you walk around *helpless.* And it shows. And it also degrades one's morale and self-esteem.
Also, you'll find the martial arts is really fun!
I just posted on my blog about a recent incident that left me feeling really uncomfortable and creeped out, even though it was likely something done with the best of intentions.
Basically, I live in an apartment and I keep to myself. I've introduced myself to exactly one person but I pretty much only say hi in passing, and I'll nod and smile if someone looks friendly. I don't chat, I don't borrow sugar, I don't know who belongs to which car in the parking lot for the most part.
So it was very strange when I went out to the lot this morning to find that, for the second time, my car looked like the frost had been scraped maybe half an hour earlier. No other cars near mine looked like that.
Who would do this? Who would single me out? I have no idea, and it's left me a little disturbed.
And I'm angry. I'm angry that as a woman I can't trust a kind, anonymous action. I'm angry that I'm made to feel this way even more than a situation might warrant because I am constantly made to feel like I am responsible for watching for every possible danger. I'm angry that people are so oblivious to this that someone can scrape ice off my car and expect that I'll see it as a nice thing. I'm also a little angry that someone would TOUCH MY CAR without my permission.
Tricia – your 1st sentence was reasonable. Your 2nd one not.
I don’t have a woman’s experience, but I feel very mad reading these messages, that so many women live with much more fear than I had any idea. And I’m so sorry that there is all this misery. So about my being ignorant, yes, I agree. And I wish you all well.
She was annoyed by your assumptions and your "advice." You came into a space where people need to feel safe about revealing things that have very real emotional consequences, and presumed to give us all the "solution" which is rude as fuck.
Its not about YOU. get over it.
Heavens forbid, I should be all unreasonable about anon man's absolute condescending asshattery or, you know, the real life violence that he pretends to know something about. I wouldn't want to drive him away from feminism or anything. *gag*
And WHAT A FUCKING RELIEF getting older -- a LOT less harrassment (though it still does exist -- perhaps once a week instead of 5x/day). The only thing I found that worked for me in the past was to not only *ignore* the harasser, but to pick your nose in an extremely obvious and gross manner. The ONLY thing that ever worked.
Courage to all of us...