I’ve Had it with Shame — A Challenge for My Fellow Women
I am overjoyed that people are now able to openly share their stories about sexual harassment and assault. I am relieved that they are finally being believed. We are making progress but WE ALL need to be doing more work on ourselves because our problems with human sexuality are very deeply rooted in all of us.
Let’s start with a premise
I don’t believe that my only value as a woman is in my sexuality or my ability to procreate. I don’t believe that I am in any way minimized by anyone else’s sexual interest in me. I do not have a finite amount of value in the world that will be used up by every catcall or proposition that is leveled at me. My reputation is not the only currency at my disposal. I am more than how you perceive me, we all are.
We need to acknowledge and admit to ourselves that our sexual value to others is their estimation of our value, not our own. Gone are the days when we were little more than breeding stock to the men in our lives. We need no longer be shamed by our community to try and prevent the birth of children that are unclaimed by a father. Effective birth control and DNA testing now mean that female sexual behavior no longer needs to be tightly controlled for the good of everyone in a family and community. In the developed world, the burden of pregnancy and child-rearing is no longer solely on the woman and her family and we even have somewhat effective laws to support the sharing of responsibility by the contributors. This is not a world where what the mother said about a man’s culpability for a baby is the only thing we have to go on.
We also need no longer scare people into monogamy for the good of public health. For that matter, the spread of STIs and STDs have also been greatly curtailed by the rise of effective prophylactics, so it is also not necessary to isolate and shame the “fallen” women to prevent the spread of disease.
As a woman who is lucky enough to be alive today, I can emphatically state the following:
My eyes are not stained by the body parts you choose to show me that I didn’t ask to see. If you are compelled to show me, a stranger, your genitals I won’t bother to react. I know that my shock, fear, or revulsion only feed your compulsive habit. I won’t support your addiction and descent into escalating levels of criminal behavior in your pursuit of pleasure.
If you touch me in a way that is clearly meant to give you a jolt of pleasure, I won’t take it personally. I can separate sexual interest from romantic interest and I am aware of the fact that you would react similarly to a different woman in the same situation. You may believe that you are touching me for my benefit but make no mistake, that hopeful fiction that you have created in your own mind about my supposed attraction to you is your projection of your feelings onto me. I do not have to play along with you and I won’t because I have options. I will exercise my right to extricate myself from the situation before it escalates. I know that my mere continued presence can be erroneously misread as coyness, so I will make my message to you perfectly clear with my actions. My absence cannot be construed as a green light to for you to continue to press me for what you want from me as my lingering close by could be.
I propose that anyone who has ever been sexually victimized stand up with me and say to those that have preyed on us, your sexual dysfunction is not my problem or responsibility. I did not make you a predator. Your response to me and your lack of ability to control it is a deep flaw in your character, not mine. I refuse to be shamed into feeling that something I did, wore, or said made you behave in a destructive way towards me. (I also forgive myself for my own shame and self-blame as I know it is my mind’s own strategy for helping me take back control of the circumstance to prevent that abuse from happening to me again.) I have my own agency and I will use it to get away from you whenever possible because I recognize that I have choices that the women who came before me never even dreamed of. I will honor those women by exercising those choices and working for a better life for myself.
This is a lesson for all of us. The bullies in our lives will never stop using the behaviors that hurt us against us as long as those behaviors continue to work. As long as any man or boy can inspire fear or a reaction from a woman or girl by merely mentioning a physical or sexual topic, they will continue to use that ammunition on us unchecked. Hurtful words are so very easy to learn and even easier to use. Understand though that derogatory words aimed at us lose their power when we stop being moved by them. If you call me a whore, slut, or any of the other nasty words or curses that are meant to wound me, I will recognize that you are trying to feel better about yourself by making me feel bad. I won’t let you do that. I would have to care about what you think about me first, and I refuse to care about that if it is clear to me that you do not wish me well.
We need to stop expecting and hoping that other people will change their behaviors to make us happy or more comfortable. We have laws in place in civilized societies that are meant to be deterrents for bad behavior, but even then we know that there are people who don’t care and won’t be dissuaded from doing whatever they want. If the threat of prison or the death penalty won’t stop some people, what else do we have to threaten them with? People will not behave better simply because the majority of people around them wish them to, especially not when their bad behavior is fun or rewarding for them. Make no mistake, those that abuse others are doing so because it satisfies them or makes them feel good in some way. Don’t expect those people to ever change simply because “it’s the right thing to do”.
We cannot and should not believe that the world has ever been free from predators or abusers and it is terribly naïve to think that now we will be able to stop these kinds of behaviors in others because we are now more aware of them. We don’t control the behavior of other human beings and we don’t have the insights or the ability to stop any kind of anti-social behavior, no matter what its type. If we could, wouldn’t we be focusing on preventing war and mass murder?
I choose to live my life without the burden of shame that so many of my female ancestors were cursed with from birth. I owe it to them to make the most of the opportunities I have been given and to not be deterred by the rapidly dwindling specter of human sexuality in my pursuit of the best life that I can make for myself. I hope you’ll join me.
