It is startling--no, shocking; no, horrifying--to read in plain English what women have always privately known: that nearly every one of us has been subjected to sexual harassment, and that most of us have seen it as so normal that we haven't said a word to anyone about it . . . often not even to ourselves. This is sickening. It has likewise been a shock to read the reactions of good and earnest men who have never truly comprehended the breadth and depth of the issue; who have not understood that nearly every woman they know has been fending off or giving in since she was a little girl.
I have been touched, leered at, propositioned, and joked about. I have been threatened and grabbed and thrown into doors. I have found myself in frightening and bizarre situations with both strangers and loved ones. I learned early, very early, to be wary, to compartmentalize, to keep quiet.
I have listened to other men ridicule my husband for not keeping me in line . . . by which I mean, when we went to buy invitations for our wedding, and I said that I'd be keeping my own name, the clerk stared at Tom and said, "You're going to let her do that?" I ventured to comment, at a car dealership, about a truck that Tom was considering, and the salesman sneered, "I guess we can tell who wears the pants in the family." In other words: what kind of man allows a woman to have any power--even the power to ask a question or choose her name?
The thing is: my experiences are not unique. They are normal. In some ways I am lucky. I've never had to sit on anyone's lap to get a promotion. I've never been raped at a party and dumped behind a trash can. But you'll notice that I'm still not giving you many details about what did happen. And that's because harassment is so intimately woven into the complications of my history that saying anything is liable to create an enormous tear. What's the point of that? That's a question that all women ask themselves, all the time. And so most of us stay quiet.
There's shame in admitting that one has been a victim. There's the simple hideous distress of having to relive these moments of the past. But at the same time I've had a perpetual need to concentrate on the ways in which I have not been beaten down. I read. I write. I try to see the ambiguities. That preoccupation has led me away from an urge to blame. This may not be a good thing in the sense of revealing the depth of the problem. But it has been a way to take charge.
2 comments:
In reading even the brief details of the experiences of so many women, I realized just how "normal" so many incidents have seemed to me. They were/are things that we as women put up with, shake at the what might have been, and then sublimate, strive to rise above, or perhaps collapse. I too have had my share of these, though fortunately none of the truly horrific moments. One car salesman told me to come back with my husband or my father. I was then well into my 40's! I admit to a certain pleasure in getting up adruptly and leaving. Blaming so often smears everyone with indelible ink, even those who don't deserve it. I may be a Pollyanna, but I know I can't be there for anyone else who has dealt with the truly horrific if I am wallowing when I can rise and I know I need to be there for the ones who can't.
Thank for this post, Dawn.
#MeToo - if its objective is realized, and I think it has been - is that first step every young and adult woman can take to reclaim her voice, and so much more.
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