borrowed

[rm]

I'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.

Comments

[anathemadevice.livejournal.com]

My wife (and other women I've dated) have told me "You don't know what it's like when you're not with me."

I've heard plenty of similar antecdotes. I don't know what it is with some men/boys. Is it a societal thing? Is is cultural? There certainly has to be some gender reaction that has reinforced as acceptable by someone.

I wish I knew an answer. I try to do the right thing, but I don't think "setting an example" registers with some people. For as much as some people making a big deal about getting respect, they sure have a hard time giving it.

[rm.livejournal.com]

While sometimes a woman will snap at you (it's taken me a long time to learn not to), just asking "are you all right?" when that sort of thing happens, or sayung "god what an asshole," about the dude to her helps a lot. For me these experiences are alarming because they are isolating, and people do actively and passively often blame the woman for it. Someone acknwoeldging what has happened and that I'm not the crazy one, no matter how briefly, makes a huge difference.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

I've talked to many people about these sorts of things and it saddens me to know that your experience falls right in the middle of those that are common for women, I know some women who have been far less lucky that you and some who have been far more lucky, but the overall situation is vile and horrid. One of the reasons that the vast majority of my close friends are female is that the unconscious assumptions that even most reasonable and humane men have about gender and (especially) about women trouble me. If I could, I would transform everyone in the world into a genderless hermaphrodite or at minimum let everyone live for a week as the other sex. Failing that, all I can do is say that the women and I have talked to and my own experiences with being sexually abused have shown me that while gender issues of all sorts are far better here than in most of the world, that only proves how truly horrific they are elsewhere. Thank you for writing this.

[anathemadevice.livejournal.com]

You're not the crazy one.

[feyandstrange.livejournal.com]

I hate it too.

One of the most humiliating experiences I can recall is the day I had gone to a job interview, and then without changing out of my interview suit, skirt and heels, gont to my volunteer work. As I left that office, I had to wait at a bus stop with a man who was convinced I was a hooker. I've had to deal with that before, when I lived in a neighborhood with lots of streetwalkers, but there at least I can sew hy a moron might think anything in a skirt was working the street instead of just walking it. This wasn't such a neighborhood at all. I was furious and very humiliated that my "interview suit" so carefully chosen to look professional was being mistaken for an invitation to sex. And worse, I was beginning to be afraid for my safety. I went back to the volunteer office and got one of the guys to walk me back to the bus stop, another blow to my "I can handle this shit" ego. But just then, no, I couldn't handle it.

Bizarrely, I'll say that my experience having been date-raped was actually less traumatic in many ways than the senseless random verbal abuse I've gotten in public. An ex-boyfriend, who once did have some claim to be able to touch me without getting fingers broken, mistaking severe clinical depression's apathy for consent, especially since he himself was schizophrenic - that, you know, kind of makes sense. I don't like it, of course, but at least I can understand the thought process. I don't understand what makes men on the street think they've got the goddamn right to verbally harass me - oh, maybe it's because they can physically dominate me if they really want to. great.

Why do I have trouble believing in my own looks, even when someone compliments them? Maybe it's the years of "hey, lookit the ironing board girl" in school, the "heeeeey baby" shit on the streets. I don't care about the semantics; verbal abuse is not a goddamn compliment, and it isn't intended as such. It's intended to enforce their dominance and my submission.

Some men understand a little better than others - guys who "look gay" or who didn't have the right color of skin while growing up often suffer the same sorts of harassment and abuse just for their physical appearance. But no woman, no matter how privileged, seems able to escape being judged constantly on her body and harassed by strangers because she posesses one.

or doesn't. you're right, it doesn't feel "mine" if I can't protect it from harassers, rapists, doctors and governments.

[lanthinel.livejournal.com]

I think men often times choose to dominate who they can and as much as they can. Yeah, no real bombshell or wisdom there, I know. Over the last few years, I've seen more and more that tells me that most men are driven to find as much as possible that they can dominate, and for many of them that means abusing women. It's twisted, but hell, I don't think a lot of them even understand where these impulses well up from (because I don't think it's merely a matter of lust or "carnal instinct" - it's something more primal than that).

It's pretty damn depressing how little humans have fundamentally changed, on the whole, since pre-history. :P

Hand Guns

[keith418.livejournal.com]

I'm really a gun nut, but I'd love to give women pistols on the streets of NYC and watch the guys you describe consider the idea of taking a bullet right there in the street. The other revenge fantasy I have, which is more cerebral, is taking videos of them "in action" and then playing these tapes for their parents, their spouses, their siblings, and everyone else who claims to care at all about them. I'd love to make them watch the tapes again and again and see for themselves just what these guys are up to - when they aren't around. On the other hand, what if they made excuses or pretended it was "no big deal"? Could we try to shame whole groups of people like this? How big would the group have to be?

One of things I liked about Boston was that no guy let other guys get way with that crap on the bus and on the streets. If someone started doing it, the people in Boston seemed to think they had every right to step in and tell the guy doing it to shut up. I saw this a few times and thought it was great.

[ali-highland.livejournal.com]

It is very hard to know what to say to a post like this, I am a guy but I guess a combination of strong mother and sister along with disliking sport and being classed as "different" while growing up means that I have always been closer to female friends than male. In fact there is only one male friend of mine that has stood the test of time.

I know that the things of which you speak occurr far too often in this world. Girls have their rights and trusts abused and their bodies violated and there is no excuse. Probably a third of my female friends hav confided in me regarding an abuse/rape incident, those are just the ones that have told me and it scares me to wonder how many more of my friends have had similar experiences and have not had a need to tell me.

All of them had one thing in common, the police had not been involved,the true level of these crimes must be so much higher than anyone imagines.

It is however not being female that denies you property rights over your own body, I had never thought of it that way before but what you descibe is the same as being bullied, when I was a teenager and would be bullied at school my life and body were no longer mine, at any moment if someone wanted to beat the crap out of me because they were bored then they would just do it, it is that rather than the words or actions of others that can make you feel worthless.

I applaud you for identifying our society as the issue rather than a gender being at fault, it seems there are more and more people with socieopthic tendencies, a supreme level of selfishness that makes self paramount and enables people to justify extremely antisocial and obnoxious behaviour.

Do you think we will ever be able to set aside our own desires and be able to function as a properly cohesive group where the good of the group outweighs our own selfishness?

I guess I am just missing the small community I grew up in more as I get older.

Re: Hand Guns

[rm.livejournal.com]

I was talking to Catelin about this when we were waiting for Amanda's plane, and she also mentioned that in the south people would just beat the guy up.

I think in New York people let this stuff go by for a range of reasons which include a bad combination of New England-mind-your-own-business, white-collar snobbery, and a competative creed that practically demands denying the existence of others.

Re: Hand Guns

[ali-highland.livejournal.com]

I like that video thought. Make them sit there in front of their mothers or similar figure and make them explain their actions. Or maybe a panel, their sisters, mothers, a couple of authority figures such as a nun and a cop. If the vote of the panel goes against them they server 6 months community service in their spare time with victims of violent crime.

[rm.livejournal.com]

IMHO, there's a signficant difference between bullying and what I experience as a woman going about her life, and I say this as someone who was bullied a lot as a kid.

Bulying, while similar both in deed and in the feelings it provokes happens within a relatively small social circle -- generally a school setting or the workplace. And while school and/or the workplace can seem like the whole goddamn world -- it isn't. There's a theoretical way out (new job, graduation, etc.) -- a new world, a bigger world, a better world.

I know that isn't always true, but I remember feeling that through my experiences in this regard.

But as a woman there's nowhere where I can have a reasonable expectation of not being a target from strangers, peers and in many cases, family. That I am a woman is even always a liability with other women. We loathe ourselves, because wouldn't you if you inspired this shit in other people all day long?

No matter how mych stronger I get, no matter how differently I dress (two of the best defenses against school bullies), nothing changes.

I know you get the pain of it, but it's the constancy. It's the idea that I knew these things at two and at twelve and will know them as surely when I am eighty. That's fucking _insane_.

To me, all of this is about issues of entitlement, and no, I don't think we'll have stop thinking that some pigs are more equal than others. We're a heirarchical society, and that's how we function best. Unfortunately, that means someone always has to lose.

[ali-highland.livejournal.com]

I am unable to comment on the experiences women have, you are right the rest of us guys never see it because the idiots would not say it to any woman we are with.

The thought of such negative things extending for your whole lifetime must be awfull.

Bullying does generally only last a short time but the effects are longer lasting than I ever knew. I still come accros the effects in my personality even now especially when I come accross natural bullies in the work place.

We are a hierarchial society in terms of importance and position, but that society is supposed to confer inaliable rights on the individual. A president/king or ceo while being more important from certain perspectives is not more valuable than others. They just have a job to do that puts them higher in a pecking order.

Human beings are one of the most beutiful creatures and their value is above all understanding, the way we treat each other is the measure of our worth.
So when people treat each toher badly they also degrade themselves.

I'll shut up now

[labellerose.livejournal.com]

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

Very perceptive. Somtimes the ugliness feels like
some creep from a collection agency trying to 're'-posess what was never 'his' in the first place. Why do random men on the street think they are entitled to collective ownership of us?

[neo-nym.livejournal.com]

While I am sure they are out there, I've never known a man who doubted the ownership of his own flesh.
Ditto.

[00goddess.livejournal.com]

Thank you. I could add more, but I would just be restating the things you have said. This is very well-said and I hope more women will say it.

[lizmoop.livejournal.com]

I found your journal through franny_glass, after reading your quote in her entry.

Wow. That so eloquently expressed so many of my own feelings and thoughts. Thank you so very much.

[labellerose.livejournal.com]

Interesting observation re: dieting. As women claim more real-word power, the beauty ideal we are encouraged to strive for becomes steadily frailer and thinner. Oddly enough, nmore childish and hairless, too. Compare the sweat-looking, good humored (and hairy) lovers in the the old 'Joy of Sex' with the images of women in modern times. Coincidence? Perhaps not...

What would we be doing if we weren't lifting and lipo'ing, waxing and dieting? It's worth wondering about.

[ex-mijra932.livejournal.com]

Thank you. Once again, you've managed to articulate something that's been on my mind for a while. I don't know anyone who isn't preoccupied with the loss of self-posession and control over oneself entailed in being a woman. It's something I worry about, though I've been in many ways luckier than you. Being so lucky, I wonder what I'm exaggerating in my own experience and what fears and frustrations I (who am not a victim of any particular crime per se) have a right to. You're right to point out that you can't fault any one social set; you're right also to remind us we can't escape it.

I'm grateful to you for saying this so clearly and presenting it so neatly. It's not, in my mind, complete, but it's well said. You've said so much without making it sound silly--which is something I haven't managed. And it's something that needs to be said, until the sort of thought and interaction that starts it is gone.

Being a woman--becoming a woman--has always scared me.

[rothko.livejournal.com]

dangit, i messed that up the first time i tried that response. take 2:

Being so lucky, I wonder what I'm exaggerating in my own experience and what fears and frustrations I (who am not a victim of any particular crime per se) have a right to.

I also used to think that I needed to justify my pain and fear somehow, especially while I was in puberty. At this point, though, it's finally clear to me why I felt the way I did, and I am convinced that there's no need to justify one's emotions, ever -- if they're there, there's a reason for it whether or not we can put a finger on it . Even if we've never been attacked, for many of us the fear of something like that ever happening is enough to produce a huge amount terror in and of itself.

And I get so angry when I think about it too much.

Re: Hand Guns

[00goddess.livejournal.com]

I am from Texas, which is not truly "southern." However, some parts of it are, and I've lived in them. In Dallas, in Austin, and in Houston, people are the same in this regard as in New York- no one steps in, no one tries to stop anyone from doing anything. If anything, it's even worse, because if you take the bus or are a frequent pedestrian here you are thought to have something wrong with you. Last year, I was assaulted while waiting for the bus, and when I went back into the physical therapy office I had left right before it happened, I was laughed at, made fun of, and practically refused help. I had to raise my voice to get anyone to call the police, because asking politely wasn't making them do it.

[00goddess.livejournal.com]

my experience having been date-raped was actually less traumatic in many ways than the senseless random verbal abuse I've gotten in public

This is the case for me also.

[nisaa.livejournal.com]

You know, I don't read your journal every day, but I'm glad I did today. You are one hell of a writer. And I wish every woman - no - every person I know could read your post.

[hustler-baby.livejournal.com]

wow..i did a random search and i just happened 2 find this post~ im 15 n very unqualified to say what i will but YOU'RE FUCKING BRILLIANT.

Re: Hand Guns

[cindyamb.livejournal.com]

I was wondering about the city difference. I'm in Boston, and although years ago, I was accosted (verbally) on the subway (as a teen), it was during the day, during school vacation, and my girlfriends and I were just about the only other people in the car.

persephonemoon sent me in your direction. This is a powerful piece. I felt so vulnerable while reading it, despite the fact that your experience isn't mine, I have had enough to know it could be.

Back in September, some friends and I got into a somewhat heated discussion at a posting board. Some of our male friends thought the women were playing too fast and loose with the generalizations while criticizing a thirty-something man making sexual remarks about some junior college women.

In response, I wrote a little ditty about what it's like growing up girl. It's at: http://www.livejournal.com/users/cindyamb/18678.html
if you're interested.

Thanks for sharing such a personal and powerful piece.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Hey, thanks.

I took a look at your journal, and if you wouldn't mind only quoting some of this and then linking to it, I'd appreciate that.

Additionally, as someone else walking around in this world, you're totally qualified to have an opinion.

Finally, for some unsolicted and perhaps bitchy advice. It takes longer to type the way you type in your journal than it does to use proper English. And while I'm no paragon of grammatical virtue, mostly out of laziness, I do know that choosing to use the language and respect the language goes a long way in getting one's opinions heard. If the content of this post matters to you, you should think about writing in a way that matters to other people -- even if you aren't tackling issues. If you respect words, people will respect you, at least in one arena. And pretending you're ignorant, or are permanently typing from a cellphone isn't going to do that. Ever.

[delchi.livejournal.com]

"Setting an example" by acting better than the others may not register with some people, but it makes it a hell of a lot easier to look in the mirror.

Bravo to those of us who try to make a difference.

[kalyx.livejournal.com]

What a wonderful and thought provoking post. And on a topic I have been confronted with recently. I recently moved from a small college town to Seattle and now use public transit every day. While I have been very lucky as I am rarely confronted and have been in very few truly frightening situations with the opposite sex, I feel tense daily now when making my way to the bus stop. Tense because I hear comments made about me, particularly my ass as I walk down the street. This happens nearly every day. I know it is a little thing that probably shouldn't be a big deal, but I always puts me on guard and I hate the fact that as a woman I have never been able to walk down the street without having attention drawn to me. Like you, I tend not to dress provocatively, usually jeans or slacks and tees and make a point to appear in a hurry and stern. I hate how these cat calls feel so threatening, but also detest the cultural awareness that this is nothing to complain about or worse, that they should be taken as a compliment. I have yet to be shouted at or truly threatened, but sometimes the unwanted sexual comments are enough to make me feel insecure, unsafe in my own skin and like hiding... and often it feels a bit too much like Jr High out there. I guess that really was training for the real world in a way.

And this is an area of women's lives that should be made more public and talked about a lot more.

[schpahky.livejournal.com]

Hi. Given the weekend I've just had it feels really good to come back and read this post, as it sums up a lot of things that people don't fucking talk about often enough. I know that is a lot of your goal, and I just want to say, it's working.

A foreign woman this weekend complained about "you New England personalities!" who simply watch and observe and let things happen, and I am feeling a lot of responsibility for that right now. The experience I had Thursday, with M. helping me get a prescription, sums up precisely what does not happen often enough, for more reasons than I can elaborate upon here. Being lucky means too often being discredited or alienated or commodified, or judged, and I hate that.

[random-girl.livejournal.com]

I didn't read the other comments, so forgive me if I'm repeating them. I feel similarly, but not the same way. Not as if I don't own my own flesh. More like I live in a different world, a much less safe world, than men live in. For example, when I leave the house I automatically pay attention to what is going on around me. Are there people? Do I know them? Do they know me? Are there potential witnesses? If there's no one, could those bushes conceal someone? It's almost unconcious, not just paranoia, it's just a way I've been taught to think. That people, given a chance, will tkae what is mine away from me.

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.

[lllvis.livejournal.com]

holy cow...another yowza post..!

Of course I've no frame of reference, being male, but reading this...just makes my naivety boil up to the surface. From the instances you describe, I just cannot fathom that kind of behavior. It would never occur to me to behave like that, it would never occur to me that anyone would.

Anyway, thanks for the very thoughtful insight. I plan to share it with others if that's ok...

I'd like to believe that southerners might uphold a more chivalrous outlook, but as 'Hand Guns' posted, many of our larger metropolis' here in Texas have gone the way of the generic big city where too many people won't/don't care. I know plenty who would, and would like to count myself in that group, but there's not a lot of us. Not that has a lot of bearing on the point of your post, but it's an honest reaction on my part.

[cdpoint.livejournal.com]

I found this a sobering post. I don't doubt a thing you wrote. We still have such a long way to go to.

[magentathompson.livejournal.com]

Just tonight, I made a run to the local Albertson's. On my way in, I pass the Krispy Kreme delivery pervert, who is unloading his truck. I'm hanging out in the bakery aisle, trying to debate between sugar cookies or a couple of donuts, when the Krispy Kreme delivery man comes over and offers to pay for whatever I'm buying. I say no. He asks me for my number. I tell him I'm not interested. He asks for mine. I walk away at this point.

Cut to 15 minutes later. (It's nearly 2 am by this time.) Now, who do I see, waiting at my car? You got it, Mr. Krispy Kreme. Standing IN FRONT OF MY DOOR, not letting me into my OWN FUCKING CAR. I'd never been so pissed off in all my LIFE. I tell him to go away, he asks me why am I rejecting a perfectly good brotha (who's oldre than my father, at LEAST), blahblahblah. To make a long story short...he reached for me. Now, I'm a martial arts student, and belive me when I say it takes little or nothing to put someone on the ground. Not even a hit. Just a simple grab, trap and twist of his wrist with my fingers on the proper pressure points and he's on the ground screaming for his life. But I shouldn't have even had to do that.

[sdn.livejournal.com]

what a good post.

for some reason, i rarely if ever get hassled. if a guy says something, it's usually "nice hair" or "nice eyes," and i say "thank you." the one time someone said a version of "let's fuck, baby," i did a spit-take and burst into hysterical laughter. i think he was dismayed.

[ladyofthelog.livejournal.com]

Ah, belated comments, yay.

In the light of recent events, reading this post makes me feel better.

Thank you for writing it. :)