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rmI've been meaning to write this post for a while, and have been stalling, both because of the amount of time and precision I expect it to take, and because I expect it to start a shitstorm of stupidity from people too wrapped up in their anger and insecurity to go in for reading comprehension.
I want to talk about what it means to be female. To grow up reading about our inalienable rights to life, liberty and the prusuit of happiness and yet know that that's just an idea filled with practical exclusions because my body has a hole that can swallow a fist.
But before I begin, I want you to know certain things about me. I don't dress provocatively. I prefer more covering to less, because I prefer costume and concept to skin. I tend to wear knee length (or longer) skirts if I wear skirts at all, and while I wear tank tops and show my midriff often enough -- I've only a B-cup. So while I am curvy and well proportioned, I don't have the type of body that commands attention on the street. I don't often wear makeup. I wear glasses. I don't make eye contact with strangers because they don't interest me. I move at a perfectly average pace. I have dark hair. And unless I'm having a particularly good day and swaggering, I'm not the sort you'd notice walking down the street at all.
Or so you would think.
I am a lucky woman in an inordinate number of ways. While my looks are unusual enough that a lot of people think I'm ugly, I also manage to be above average looking. More importantly, I've never been raped or been subjected to attempted rape.
But let me tell you about the life of a lucky woman. Being a lucky woman means that on the way home from work today that only thing that happened was that a man on a bike, stopped, got off, and started yelling at me that he wished he could see my punk-ass boyfriend so he could kill him and then slash my breasts up. Last week, being a lucky woman meant that a random man on the street went on and on to me about how he'd like to lick my pussy, and when I told him to fuck off, he spent the next half block walking ahead of me and shouting about the things he'd like to do to me, looking back constantly to see if I was looking. Being a lucky woman means that when these things happen to you, and they do happen to you, nine times out of ten people on the street look at you and wonder what you did to provoke it. I remember being thirteen, and riding to school on the train, and a man grinding into me on the subway. I was stupid, and young, and half asleep and I thought it was an accident at first. When I figured it out, and I took my seat, just a few moments later, I remember women staring at me, not to ask if I was alright, but snearing in dissaproval.
Being a lucky woman, for me, has meant men threatening to rape me (and receiving approval for so brilliant an idea from their female peers) when they didn't approve of my romantic choices. And it has meant a life lived with the noxious phrase of "but that isn't what we want for you." By being a lucky and free western woman I earn the constant negation of my choices from nearly everyone around me. Freedom means I get to tell them to fuck off, but really, that doesn't do a world of good, inside or outside.
Despite the fact that dogs, heights and eyeballs freak me out, I am one of the least fearful people you will ever meet. I've taken flying lessons, walked through innumerable cities alone in the middle of the night, abandoned a lucrative career and generally ploughed through the usual mess of dumb crappy experiences life brings. Generally people in my life acknowledge three things about me -- I've balls, I'm a catalyst and if you need an answer to a random question I'm usually the right place to start.
And yet somehow, every time I have ever talked about what it means to feel like I'm insane because so often it can seem like I'm the only one who knows my body is my own, I've been told to shut up. Been told I'm acting like a victim.
No. Wrong.
First: A victim is not weak. A victim is not shameful. These are two things that remain true even in our excuse-ridden responsibility-free culture.
Second: Expressing my outrage at a world that gives only some people property rights over their own flesh is not my being a goddamn victim. It's me saying what more people should say every day.
I don't blame men for this shit. These incidents, which happen to me, and every woman I know several times a week, are both far too particular and involve so much collusion from those that witness them, that I view the problem only as being gendered from the recipient's side.
I'm not sure what the fuck I'm trying to achieve by writing this. Maybe just that I want people to know maybe this is why the women you know seem crazy or angry or spiteful or unpredictable or just plain confusing. Maybe this is why they obsess about their weight or their clothes or their hair.
Maybe we're like this, because thinking about all that stuff is better than thinking about this thing we're reminded of every single day, which is that from the moment we noticed we had anything, we knew that it was merely on loan.
While I am sure they are out there, I've never known a man who doubted the ownership of his own flesh.
I once knew a man who told me I was the only woman he had ever dated who had never been raped. As you might guess, he treated me more poorly than any other woman he knew.
I want to talk about what it means to be female. To grow up reading about our inalienable rights to life, liberty and the prusuit of happiness and yet know that that's just an idea filled with practical exclusions because my body has a hole that can swallow a fist.
But before I begin, I want you to know certain things about me. I don't dress provocatively. I prefer more covering to less, because I prefer costume and concept to skin. I tend to wear knee length (or longer) skirts if I wear skirts at all, and while I wear tank tops and show my midriff often enough -- I've only a B-cup. So while I am curvy and well proportioned, I don't have the type of body that commands attention on the street. I don't often wear makeup. I wear glasses. I don't make eye contact with strangers because they don't interest me. I move at a perfectly average pace. I have dark hair. And unless I'm having a particularly good day and swaggering, I'm not the sort you'd notice walking down the street at all.
Or so you would think.
I am a lucky woman in an inordinate number of ways. While my looks are unusual enough that a lot of people think I'm ugly, I also manage to be above average looking. More importantly, I've never been raped or been subjected to attempted rape.
But let me tell you about the life of a lucky woman. Being a lucky woman means that on the way home from work today that only thing that happened was that a man on a bike, stopped, got off, and started yelling at me that he wished he could see my punk-ass boyfriend so he could kill him and then slash my breasts up. Last week, being a lucky woman meant that a random man on the street went on and on to me about how he'd like to lick my pussy, and when I told him to fuck off, he spent the next half block walking ahead of me and shouting about the things he'd like to do to me, looking back constantly to see if I was looking. Being a lucky woman means that when these things happen to you, and they do happen to you, nine times out of ten people on the street look at you and wonder what you did to provoke it. I remember being thirteen, and riding to school on the train, and a man grinding into me on the subway. I was stupid, and young, and half asleep and I thought it was an accident at first. When I figured it out, and I took my seat, just a few moments later, I remember women staring at me, not to ask if I was alright, but snearing in dissaproval.
Being a lucky woman, for me, has meant men threatening to rape me (and receiving approval for so brilliant an idea from their female peers) when they didn't approve of my romantic choices. And it has meant a life lived with the noxious phrase of "but that isn't what we want for you." By being a lucky and free western woman I earn the constant negation of my choices from nearly everyone around me. Freedom means I get to tell them to fuck off, but really, that doesn't do a world of good, inside or outside.
Despite the fact that dogs, heights and eyeballs freak me out, I am one of the least fearful people you will ever meet. I've taken flying lessons, walked through innumerable cities alone in the middle of the night, abandoned a lucrative career and generally ploughed through the usual mess of dumb crappy experiences life brings. Generally people in my life acknowledge three things about me -- I've balls, I'm a catalyst and if you need an answer to a random question I'm usually the right place to start.
And yet somehow, every time I have ever talked about what it means to feel like I'm insane because so often it can seem like I'm the only one who knows my body is my own, I've been told to shut up. Been told I'm acting like a victim.
No. Wrong.
First: A victim is not weak. A victim is not shameful. These are two things that remain true even in our excuse-ridden responsibility-free culture.
Second: Expressing my outrage at a world that gives only some people property rights over their own flesh is not my being a goddamn victim. It's me saying what more people should say every day.
I don't blame men for this shit. These incidents, which happen to me, and every woman I know several times a week, are both far too particular and involve so much collusion from those that witness them, that I view the problem only as being gendered from the recipient's side.
I'm not sure what the fuck I'm trying to achieve by writing this. Maybe just that I want people to know maybe this is why the women you know seem crazy or angry or spiteful or unpredictable or just plain confusing. Maybe this is why they obsess about their weight or their clothes or their hair.
Maybe we're like this, because thinking about all that stuff is better than thinking about this thing we're reminded of every single day, which is that from the moment we noticed we had anything, we knew that it was merely on loan.
While I am sure they are out there, I've never known a man who doubted the ownership of his own flesh.
I once knew a man who told me I was the only woman he had ever dated who had never been raped. As you might guess, he treated me more poorly than any other woman he knew.
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no subject
Date: 2004-06-29 01:55 pm (UTC)When I talk to my male friends, to my male co-workers, they call me paranoid. They don't do that sort of thing, and nothing has happened to them. They haven't felt an ounce of fear in a deserted parking lot. They haven't pulled themselves together to look big, and deliberately made their step purposeful and their eyes watchful so that they wouldn't present a target walking alone on a city street at night. They don't worry that some guy is going to put his dick in one of their orafices without their permission.
But I do.
And I'm not alone. I know a lot of women who pay attention. From a young age we sort of feel like the world has explained that men are safer because they are men. The worst that will happen to them is a mugging or being killed. But women. Wow. You could be raped. Ruined for life so no man would touch you. So you would hate yourself. That's worse than dying. So you have to watch out. Protect yourself, be safe. Because men see you as weaker. As a target.
I remember when I got my first lesson. I was 4. My Dad was holding me and he said that sometimes bad people try to take little girls, because they think little girls aren't strong. But he said little girls are strong. And my dad showed me what I could do to a grown man with my little fingers and my head. It was, in retrospect, kinda gruesome. But at the time it seemed completely normal--another way my daddy was protecting me. I'm kind of grateful for it. He always told me that people would think I was a victim, and in some ways treat me like one. But he also told me that I wasn't one. And that I could protect myself.
See, not exactly your rant. But close. I get angry that other people don't see it; that women, for the most part, are forced to live lives more paranoid than men, and are trivialized for protecting themselves and frequently blamed or ostracized when they are unable to. I feel that pain. The only solution I've found is to tell people who will listen, and share my self-defense mechanisms (mental and physical) with other women.