Are you the monster in their closet?
The duality of how different genders address the topics of consent, and sexism is scarier than you probably realize.
I grew up with the expectation to be male. I grew up being given male role models. I grew up listening to men talking without the presence of women.
I grew up brainwashed.
This is not something I was aware of. It wasn’t until I began my fall down the parent and transwoman rabbit holes of cognitive dissonance that I began to realize not only that men have zero respect for women, they are so brainwashed by how they are raised, they think they are entitled to defend having said lack of respect.
I can’t believe that bitch said no to me. She will be mine.
-A football player in my grade 8 class.
She doesn’t know it yet, but I will make her want me.
-One of the best soccer players in my school, during grade 10.
These kinds of things are commonly dismissed as just boys being boys. It’s actually frequently encouraged.
In point of fact, I was not even aware that men talking like that was wrong, or even creepy, until I got curious about why many fans of a show that I enjoy commented that a certain pirate character, who will remain nameless, made similar comments, and the ensuing relationship was abusive, and unhealthy.
That wasn’t even the worst part. I had survived an abusive relationship, myself, and I hadn’t even understood.
He treats her like he is an object that he can steal. Like she has no choice in the matter. He directly says “When you are mine, and you WILL be mine-”
It began to hit me, then. Men don’t just think women are possessions. They think they have the right to take them.
And they’re taught this on TV and film, from their friends, and frequently by family members.
From a very young age.
That wasn’t even the worst part of this journey.
I was directly responsible for encouraging it.
Repeatedly. And I wasn’t even aware of what I was doing.
From whistling at girls on the street, laughing and telling sexist jokes, joining in on dog piles of how women chose to dress, and a thousand other ways(including sexualizing celebrities bodies, a topic I’ve previously written about), I was raised, from a young age, that this is okay, normal. That this is what men are. And that I had to be one just the same.
I hadn’t even realized it. And. I encouraged the same activities in my nephew, and cousins. Among my friends, few though they were, at school.
I was a monster that thousands of women had every right to fear. I was never taught, except by my mother, that they deserved respect, and her efforts we’re thwarted by the society around me, including my father. I was raised to believe women existed exclusively to entertain a man’s desires, needs, and sense of humor, whether I directly realized it, or not.
The further I dug in to it, the worse it made me feel.
I started noticing it. Everywhere.
Restaurant waitresses, and their every day life.
Television. Any of it.
Newscasts.
Court decisions.
As I sat there, in the hospital, cradling my newborn daughter, I caught myself overhearing some of the doctors commenting about a pretty new nurse, and hugged my kid, protectively. This was when it really hit me, the hardest.
Who is going to protect her from them?
Who is going to protect her from me?
That last thought was quite uncomfortable.
The answer, though, changed my life.
I’m her father. I will protect her from me. I’m the only one who can change me.
Over the intervening years, my entire point of view on a great many things has undergone a radical shift, simply because I keep reminding myself that I don’t want to be the monster in my daughter’s closet.
From racism, sexism, ableism, the excessive irony of transphobia(that I’m 99% sure every person who started transitioning as an adult had to put their head through that blender), through a look at everything in my life that I took for granted, I continue to make myself sick about who I am, or was, to get better, by learning more about the people who live through those assaults every day.
Having a daughter, though. That was only half the fall down the rabbit hole, let me tell you. I thought I had a good handle on how terrible this was for women THEN. How scary it would be for my daughter.
Then I became my mother’s daughter, publicly.
And I was wrong.
I started noticing things even more, after publicly coming out as Kate.
Not happening to other people, though.
Experiencing them first hand taught me so much more about how much I had to learn.
It became a thing. I started noticing, particularly as I began passing better, that people would comment on how I was dressed. How I looked. My makeup, when I bothered with it. My haircut($30 on Amazon, wigs are amazing.) is a perpetual talking point(Oh, I love your hair!).
My mother started talking different, too. We have a lot more of the conversations I never knew she had with my sister, because she kept them hidden from me(and now wished she hadn’t).
I became incredibly self conscious of my shaving habits, and frequently how I dressed. Not for my own comfort. For the comfort of others. And to make them less scary.
People walking in the same direction, at night, became scary. Men leering at me on the bus became terrifying(Is it transphobia? Do I look pretty today? Did I forget to shave?). Men began sexually harassing me while I was working, and got OFFENDED when I told them it was inappropriate.
Slowly, I began to realize, this is what it’s like for every woman. This is the life I chose. Why every woman I talked to about transitioning didn’t understand why I wanted this life.
And slowly, I began to realize that it is amazing they can cope with the anxiety of simply being a woman.
Worse, that society normalizes this anxiety, and that women get assaulted, sexually assaulted, and murdered for existing, let alone calling this behavior out.
People have said that sexism is over in Canada, and the United States. That we don’t need feminism.
They are wrong.
They don’t understand, either. They’ve just normalized it.
So have I.
So, very likely, have you.
I hope, after reading this, you stop, and ask yourself just one question.
Whose closet am I the monster of?
