#metoo
#MeToo
I’m, in no way trying to make anyone who has shared this feel bad, because in all, this is a good thing. I’m just angry that this is what we have to do to be heard. I’m angry at the numbers.
I’m not participating because literally every single one of us have experienced sexual harassment or assault at some point in our lives.
From young age we have been taught that our bodies don’t belong to us and that our trauma is either validated or dismissed, depending on wether or not we were drunk, or wearing a short dress, and therefore asking for it. This is a normal part of being a woman. It’s sickening but no matter how many times it’s denied, we live in a toxic rape culture that continues to objectify women and dismiss survivors. I’ve often told my partner and my male friends that the end of this begins with them. We can’t do it. We’ve been trying forever. The solution to the problem starts with men calling their friends out when they say sexist, oppressive, and derogatory words to women.
I experienced street harassment for the first time around 11 or 12, before I’d started to develop breasts. My first memory was my best friend and I playing at the elementary school in our hometown. Two grown men drove by in a car whistling at us. They drove by a few more times before we ran back to my friends house, terrified as the men drove through the alleys, following us the entire way.
The harassment continued the deeper I grew into puberty. I have been groped more times than I could ever begin to try to count. It was a normal part of all of our lives as teen and preteen girls.
My body didn’t belong to me when my ass got smacked daily at school. It didn’t belong to me when I was called into the principal’s office for wearing ‘inappropriate’ clothing that might make boys feel ‘uncomfortable’. It didn’t belong to me when two boys tried to hold me down and put their hands down my pants as a ‘joke’. I began to see the sexual harassment as validation. Boys touched me without my permission, therefore I must be pretty and desirable, two things most teenage girls want to be…I realize now how utterly fucked that sentence is. I learned to like the attention my body brought me. I showed my body off because I wanted to be in control. Unfortunately, I know I’m not the only person who felt this way, especially growing up in a small, conservative town with the catchphrase ‘boys will be boys'.
This toxic mentality really shaped the unapologetic feminist I am today. Gaining the ownership I have of my body has taken years. Years of self hatred, years of insecurities. Years of feeling as though I did not own my body or my sexuality as a woman.
As an adult I was the victim of workplace sexual harassment. It wasn’t anything I couldn’t handle, but it really made work shitty. I let my boss and coworkers know because I was concerned about another woman on the team. I could handle the harassment, but I was worried about her. The same person who called me ‘babe’ on the sales floor numerous times exploded that I absolutely HAD to report this. Once again I felt as though my body and experience didn’t belong to me because I did not WANT to report. The men on my team took it upon themselves to tell my story. The man in question ended up getting fired, but not before the entire store knew and it was not kept anonymous. The man’s mother worked with us and I can still see her face, tears in her eyes, while she asked me if he had touched me. It was fucking terrible. I can’t help but feel like their reasoning behind forcing me to report, was that they didn’t like him and wanted any reason to fire him. It wasn’t necessarily about me, it was about them.
I don’t owe anyone my stories. I own my stories and my experiences. It won’t change because the change has to begin with men. It has to start with always believing victims. It has to start with the police arresting and prosecuting rapists. It has to start with eliminating ‘what were you wearing’ from our vocabulary. It has to start with listening to women always.
Our bodies sell clothing. Our bodies sell makeup. They sell cars and perfume and cigarettes and magazines. We exist in a society that is so deeply absorbed in female sexual objectification that most of us have tuned it out, or don’t notice it, or pretend not to notice it.
We live in a rape culture.
Until our fathers, brothers, and friends start to really challenge this, a rapidly growing, painfully large hashtag isn’t going to fix the problem.