It’s Women’s History Month. Here’s My History

Traumalogue

Almost half a lifetime ago, my ex-boyfriend punched me in the face and told me it was my fault. He had a black belt in Tae Kwon Do, and taught some classes. I’d always wanted to learn martial arts, so I asked him to show me a few moves. And he punched me in the face.

Look. If you’re good enough to earn a black belt, you have enough control to pull your punches — advanced students in my kung fu class are required to punch and kick within an inch of a target without actually making contact. If you’re good enough to teach, you know how to go over the basics with a new student before making them spar.

But he just punched me in the face. He looked scared for a moment. I thought he might apologize and say it was an accident, but instead he told me it was my fault because I should have blocked it. “Anyone who wants to learn how to fight has to know how to block. If you get hit, it’s because of your own poor technique,” he said. It wasn’t untrue, but it wasn’t honest either, considering he didn’t show me how to block first. And was a total dick about it. I never knew whether he really expected me to be able to block that punch, or if he really just kinda wanted to punch me. Accidentally on purpose.

Years later, a man three times my size accidentally kicked me in the head while we were sparring in class. It didn’t really hurt, but he apologized anyway because that is what decent people do, and then we laughed about it.

The Finger

As a teenager I was sitting in my dad’s car downtown, waiting while he got something from his office. A skeezy looking dude crossed the street, walking straight toward the car, staring right at me the entire time. Leering, locking narrowed eyes, smirking as he sauntered by, taking his time. I locked the doors and flipped him off. He looked amused and nodded, still staring, as if to say, “That’s right, girl. That’s exactly what I have in mind.”

Does locking the doors save me? There are lots of ways to smash up metal and glass. Would anyone within shouting distance care? This was before cell phones. He kept walking, but not all of them do.

A neighbor

My mom wanted me to relay a message to the middle-aged man across the street. Every time I opened my mouth, he interrupted me before I could get the first sentence out. I had to keep starting over.

After 4 or 5 repetitions, he said, “Jeez, you women! You talk and talk without saying anything at all!”

“Well, if you’d stop interrupting me…”

“Okay, okay, what do you want to say?”

I delivered my message.

He said, “Is that all? Why’d that have to take so long?”

I was fuming. I’m sure he meant it as a joke, but it’s hard for me to laugh when I’m the butt of it, and it’s part of a larger pattern of men not giving a good goddamn shit about the words coming out of my mouth.

My Fucking Lap

When I was 20, I went to a party at the home of a former classmate. I knew most of the people there from high school, but there was one guy I’d never seen before: tall, loud, boorish and aggressive. He was someone I instinctively avoided.

I was sitting in a lawn chair on the back porch when he decided to get territorial and plop down on my lap. That was his chair. “Get off my lap, I don’t even know you,” I said. He wouldn’t move. He was too big for me to push away. I pretended to ignore him for a minute or two, to not give him the reaction he wanted, but he pretended to be comfortable where he was.

I told him I would pour my beer on his head if he didn’t get up. I didn’t really want to. It would be a waste of beer, but I thought the threat would make him realize how much he was trying my patience. He ignored me. I made the same threat again. “I’m not joking. I’ll do it.” He mocked me.

I hesitated another moment, poured my beer on his head. I had to show him.

He jumped up right away, called me a fucking bitch, and poured someone else’s beer all over me.

I never got his name, but later I learned he was there because he was dating my former classmate. They met at a hospital where they both worked. She hated him, knew he was an asshole, but he blackmailed her into going out with him.

The Knob

When I was four, I was staying with the next-door neighbors while my mom was in the hospital. They had a son who was maybe 10 or 12. He told me to follow him upstairs. I remember seeing the shiny glass doorknob turn. It was dark in the room, and the door closed behind us.

He opened his pants and told me to suck his little prick. I was four and didn’t know any better, so I did. I didn’t know what the point was. After a minute, he said, “Did you get anything?” I said, “No.” Confused, not knowing what it was I was supposed to get.

Then his mom called him to come downstairs. He pulled his pants up in a rush and turned the glass doorknob again. I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone.

I started to tell my parents when they came home, and they reacted badly, made me feel like I was the one who’d done something wrong. I felt ashamed without knowing why and backpedaled. It seemed safer to pretend it didn’t really happen. I told them what they wanted to hear and never fully trusted them again.

I googled my abuser’s name, but he doesn’t have any online presence. No social media profiles. Only a few random links came up. There was one photo. He looks like a dickhead.

I don’t tell these stories very often.

Some of them I’ve never said out loud. Because people think things like that happen to sluts, slackers, professional victims. There must be something wrong with you. You’re looking for attention. You’re trash. If you get punched in the face, it’s your own damn fault.

Cars

I punched a car once because the driver wasn’t paying attention and almost hit me. I didn’t care if it was a dick move, I just didn’t want to get hit. I wish I could always be so tough and decisive.

My dad made sure I knew how to maintain a car. I’ve known how to check the oil since I was about 12, because it is a simple task any 12 year old can understand. When I was 21, I was on a road trip with a friend. We stopped for gas and decided to check the oil, since it was an older vehicle and we’d put a lot of miles on it. My friend knew how to check the oil too, because she was also older than 12 and also not a moron.

As soon as we opened the hood, a middle aged man started hovering nearby, chuckling, shaking his head, and leering at us. He asked if we needed help. We informed him that we were not morons.

The oil was a little low, so we bought some to top off the tank. That man stood several feet away the entire time, smirking and leering at us, waiting for us to do something wrong and ask him to save us. We didn’t like the way he was looking at us. We couldn’t wait to get away. We weren’t morons.

Can only man eyes tell when the tank is low? Do you use your penis as a dipstick?

A few years later, an old man tried to tell me how to use a gas station squeegee to clean the windshield, for the love of fuck.

I went to the bank.

I asked a banker about some investment options. He called me “doll.”

Bend the Knee, M’lady

My mom was kneeling down to get something off a shelf in a garden store. An old man walked by and said, “That’s how I like my women…on their knees!”

She told me old men think they’re being cute when they say things like that, and all you can really do is smile and act nice, grin and bear it.

Same day, same store: the male cashier said to me, “What’s wrong honey, why don’t you smile?” I was cranky and depressed, and just glared at him. He opened his mouth again, “Probably had a fight with her boyfriend.” Fuck you bro, for thinking I haven’t got a thought in my pretty little head.

Why are you so bitchy?

Are you on your period again?

Maybe. What the fuck’s your problem? Sit on your balls again?

Jeez, tell me what you really think.

Boy, you haven’t begun to hear what I really think.

If a man has a negative opinion about something…

…it’s because he has a brain and can think for himself.

If I have a negative opinion, or even a neutral opinion that I voice bluntly and unapologetically? Hint: It’s not because my hormones made me bleed into my pants for a few days.

My old coworkers

Male coworker to frustrated female coworker: “Aw, is it that time of the month again?”

Female coworker, standing and looking over cubicle wall, flabbergasted: “How did you know that?”

Male coworker, patting himself on the back: “Oh, I just have a sixth sense for it. I’m very in tune with female moods.” He turned to me. “I can tell when you’re on your period too.”

Me: “No. You can’t.”

My cycle was so irregular back then, not even I knew when it was going to come around, so that made it especially bizarre to think of the guy who shared my cubicle fixating on it.

Periods are magical

Why do men act like they’re some kind of weird voodoo witchcraft? If my period had voodoo power, I’d use it to give myself a beard and a dick.

I’m riding my bike down the street.

“Hey baby, wanna take me for a ride?”

I’m getting off an exercise bike at the gym.

“Hey girl, you need to get back on that bike. My eyes need a workout too, you know what I’m sayin’?”

I’m in a train station in Munich.

I’m eating fast food at a tiny table. A man sits down in the opposite chair, uninvited, and stares at me while he crams a burger into his face. His eyes are dark. He looks intense and aggressive. I rush to finish eating and run to the train platform.

While I’m waiting for my train, I see that man again, on the same platform as me, watching with frightening intensity. I move away, trying to lose him in the crowd, but he follows me everywhere.

I’m scared. I think he might follow me onto the train, sit with me, touch me. What if can’t even lose him in the next city?

I go to the station guards and try to explain to them in broken German. I draw a cartoon to make them understand. I point the man out to them. When he sees the guards with me, he runs away. But then the guards go back to their office and I don’t know if the creep will come back. He knows which train I’m taking.

I spend the next two days looking over my shoulder.

I’m on a train.

A different train, still in Europe. I’m in a compartment by myself, and I have to go to the bathroom. I put a cord around my backpack and padlock it to the luggage rack. I have padlocks on most of the zippers too. The only one that’s not secured is a side pocket with my camera, but I think it’ll be okay for a few minutes. Why get paranoid?

I walk down toward the bathroom at the end of the car. In one compartment I pass, there’s an older man eyeballing me and I just know he’s gonna be trouble. I know I look like easy pickings. I keep looking over my shoulder. I half expect to see him on the other side of the lavatory door when I finish peeing, but he’s not there.

I watch for him as I make my way back to my compartment, and when I get there I find I don’t have it to myself anymore. There he is, acting as if he’s been there all along. He’s holding a big carpet bag, and I immediately recognize the strap from my camera hanging out the side of it.

“That’s my camera,” I say.

“No it’s not, it’s my camera,” he says. Good, so we’re speaking English, and admitting it is indeed a camera strap.

I punch the side pocket on my backpack where I keep it, and it deflates under my fist. “Oh yeah?” I say. “I had it in here and it’s empty. That’s my fucking camera, give it back.”

He argues halfheartedly for a moment longer, then hangs his head and hands it over. And then he just sits there. Why doesn’t he leave? I’m pissed off and want to intimidate him. I smoke a cigarette, and when I finish, I lift my foot out of my sandal and snuff it out on my heel.

Then he leaves.

I’m on a different train.

There aren’t any seats left, so I sit on the floor alone in the baggage car. A tall, handsome Italian guy enters the car and sits on the floor across from me. I chat with him a little, partly to feel him out, see if he’s going to be cool. Partly because I’m a huge nerd and want to try speaking Italian.

After a few minutes, he starts looking at me like I’m some kind of experiment, starts running his finger up and down my leg. I feel exposed and angry. Polite conversation is not an invitation. I growl, “BASTA!” He seems surprised and backs off.

He thought he could do whatever he wanted. Everyone wants to meet a tall, handsome Italian while traveling, right? Not like that.

A different Italian man…

…stopped me on the street in Rome and told me to smile.

Fuck you, bro. My bitch face is my first line of defense.

I’m playing a game of strategy in my head.

When I’m walking down the street, or going anywhere by myself, I’m thinking:

Who am I sharing this street with?

What crimes have been committed nearby?

How fast can I reach my phone?

Who is most likely to answer their phone if I need help?

How fast can I run?

How many feet is it from the car to the door?

Whose windowless van is that?

I like to think I can look out for myself, but I don’t really know if I can.

I hate asking for help, because it’s so easy for people to perceive me as weak and incompetent. I hate admitting I’m scared.

I have an IQ in the “Highly Gifted” range, and this is what I’m wasting brainpower on.

I’d be capable of so much more if I could be fully present in my own life. This is wasting my time, costing me money, and damaging my health.

Speaking of vans.

Once I was driving home from a movie late at night. I was stopped at a long, excruciating red light, when two young men stopped next to me in a van and started grinning waving at me. I was in no mood, so I rested my elbow on the edge of my window and put my hand up to hide my face.

They didn’t take the hint. They opened the window and waved harder. I ignored them.

Still not taking the hint, the driver pulled the van closer to my car, while his friend leaned out and waved still harder.

I finally gave them an awkward wave just to make them stop. They looked thrilled. Didn’t notice that I was not.

No, I don’t want no scrub.

You should be flattered by the attention.

It’s a compliment. You’ll miss it when you’re old and ugly and used up.

You’re kind of ugly already. Stop being so ugly!

Once when I was a teenager, my mom called me into the hallway. She had a little speech rehearsed. It made me cringe. “I was just looking at these pictures of you and your sister side by side. You know, you have the same jaw line, the same facial structure. You could be pretty like her if you put some effort into your appearance.”

So much body shaming, and I’m a size 6. It comes not just from guys, but from the media, from girls at school, female coworkers…cue internalized misogyny.

Wear more makeup. But not too much, whore. Go to a tanning bed. You can’t tan, only burn? I don’t believe you. Put on some tan-in-a-can. Don’t make me look at those legs like neon lights, they’re blinding me. Maybe you CAN get a tan if you try. Have you tried laying out?

Your face isn’t good enough. Your body has flaws. You must dress with your flaws in mind.

Your thighs are chunky. Exercise more.

You’re too thin. Don’t you ever eat?

You must be doing something wrong.

Nice outfit, it hides you in all the right places.

Nice haircut, it makes you look…better.

Where’d you get those…interesting earrings?

Where’d you get that bitchy face? I just wanna punch it.

Privacy please

Sometimes when my dad was mad and wanted to lecture me, he’d just yell through the bathroom door while I was using the toilet or showering or whatever. Because he knew I was a captive audience in there.

I made a list of things he did that made me feel insulted, and put that at the top. He kept doing it anyway.

Squatting

I was the catcher for my softball team in junior high. During one game, some boys from my class were standing at the fence behind home plate watching us girls play. They were talking about the size of all our butts the whole time, and there I was having to squat in front of them. Humiliating.

Later, I was in a soccer game and intercepted the ball by letting it bounce hard off my stomach. I always had really great abs. Those same boys were watching from the sidelines, and every one of them cried out in shock and doubled up in imagined pain while I went on playing. Somehow I felt a little vindicated. Not much, but it was enough.

My ex

He liked to needle me, make me squirm. One day, out of nowhere, he told me I smelled bad when I was on my period. “Just vaguely gross. Just something I’ve noticed,” he said. I was worried. That could affect my job. No one else ever said anything, and I showered every day, how could it be that bad? How could I have missed this?

I pressed him for more information. “What do you mean? Is this every time? Was it just once? Is it a lot or a little?”

“Weeell, it’s just a little,” he said.

“That’s something I need to know about. How little? Is it only when you’re really close to me?”

“Welll,” he looked uncomfortable. “It’s just sometimes when I use the bathroom after you when you’re on your period, I notice it smells vaguely gross in there.”

“So is it just the bathroom, or do I personally stink? I need to know.”

The more I pressed for information, the more uncomfortable he looked. “Just in the bathroom, once in a while.”

“Where in the bathroom? Is it very noticeable?”

He walked it back again. “Well, it’s really just around the garbage can.”

“Do you notice it as soon as you walk in, or do you have to get close?”

“Only when I’m right next to the garbage can. Just vaguely gross.”

“Is it strong enough to notice when you’re standing at the sink?”

Then the truth came out. “Well no…it’s just, one time my head kinda happened to be right next to the garbage can and I just kinda noticed it smelled a little bad.”

So you sniffed a used pad on purpose and decided to fuck with my head over it? FUCK. YOU. FUCKING. GARBAGE. SNIFFING. ASSHOLE.

I know how I will die.

All the hate and fear and anger and pain will condense into a hideous gray-black cancer that kills me from the inside out. It will spread out from my chest. I’ll be a model patient and they’ll all say what a fighter I am. They’ll wear my pain as a badge of honor, saying how it inspires them. Then when I’m all used up, they’ll throw away my husk and say I just wasn’t strong enough to beat it after all. They never really knew what it was.

He didn’t want to buy me a present.

My college boyfriend didn’t want to spend any money or effort on my birthday. I’m not materialistic, and if he’d just said he couldn’t afford anything, I would have been okay with that. But instead he tried to weasel his way out of it.

He said he’d chip in with my mom on a gift, but never put up the money he said he would. I reminded him a couple times, but he blew me off. He was hoping I’d just forget. A few weeks later we were splitting a dinner bill that happened to be exactly double the amount he was supposed to have contributed. I pointed out how convenient that was, and since he still owed me that, he could just pay my half.

I’ve never seen anyone turn so red.

I told a male friend that story and he said, “I don’t understand why you women put up with shit like that.”

Here’s why: we get so used to it, sometimes we forget we deserve better.

At least he didn’t punch me in the face. I should just be glad he didn’t punch me in the face, right? It’s all about those small blessings.

Stop nagging me!

He always left his dirty socks and underwear strewn across the LIVING ROOM floor, and got mad when I asked him to pick them up. They were tightie whities too — the least appealing type of underwear to see lying around anywhere. I had to beg and fight to get him to at least confine them to the bedroom floor. And he thought I was the one being a pain in the ass. He told his friends I was an annoying neat freak.

AIM

I was chatting with people online when I was 17, and casually mentioned that I wasn’t a morning person and had trouble getting out of bed. A 20-something man told me I should try masturbating more.

Probably my fault — I shouldn’t have mentioned that I sleep in a bed.

I was always secretly thrilled when people online mistook me for a dude. It meant they were evaluating my words instead of guessing my bra size.

It’s 2016

Today girls as young as 12, maybe even younger, are having to fend off requests for nude selfies. Classmates ask for them. Strangers ask for them. They beg and manipulate girls into sending them, then use them to publicly humiliate them.

My daughter is 11 as I write this, and she’s talking about the Easter Bunny. She still believes in that.

Innocence won’t protect her. Kids as young as 4 get abused. Some even younger than that.

When I was 12

I remember the girls in my class campaigning. Whenever tables needed to be set up for a science fair or assembly or any other event, the principal would get on the intercom and ask a junior high teacher to send some boys to the office to help.

We girls wanted to move tables too. It was exciting to be asked to leave the classroom for a special mission. We knew we could do it, but it took longer than it should have to convince the teachers to give us a chance. They seemed confused that we wanted to try. They said boys were just better at it. And they were all women!

When they finally did let us, the principal always made a big point of saying “or girls” in the announcement. “Please send 5 boys OR GIRLS…” as if it was soooo amusing that we wanted equal treatment!

None of us liked the tone, and we complained about that too. We wanted it to be normal to ask for girls. But they were pretty annoyed with us by then, so we just had to wait for them to get over the novelty on their own.

When I had panic attacks as a child

My parents would tell me, “Cut the dramatics! You’re so hypersensitive! Not everyone is out to get you!”

Except when they are.

Setting the bar low.

I mean, men in bars.

Don’t approach me from behind and rub your crotch on my ass and tell me it’s just dancing.

Don’t crow at me as I walk by. “Ooh, a LADY! HEY LADY.”

Don’t fucking stand in my path and say “Heeeeey, last chance to get to know me.”

Does that EVER work, really?

I was at a bar with my husband, and while he was in the bathroom, an awkward young man tried to strike up a conversation with me. I was polite but disinterested. When I didn’t give him the reaction he wanted, he got angry and defensive. “What, can’t a man talk to an attractive young woman in a bar?”

He actually used those words. I had to show him my wedding ring to make him go away. The fact that I wasn’t interested should have been enough. He went and pestered another uninterested woman. I waved to her, in case she wanted an excuse to ditch him. Later she told me she was kind of enjoying the awkwardness, it was entertaining. I get that. Sometimes you can only laugh.

My husband went to a bar…

…and saw his female friend being harassed. He stood up for her and got a bottle smashed in his face. He had a black eye for weeks. Lucky his glasses protected him from the shards.

People who don’t understand boundaries are dangerous.

Speaking of bars…

I was co-editing and publishing an anthology. One man submitted a comic that featured a male character telling his friend that women in bars are just standing around waiting to be fucked. Rejected, or course.

But I wonder about it sometimes. Did he notice that half the curatorial team was made up of women? Did he send that story knowing that? Did he think we would be amused, even agree with that bizarre bit of rape culture? Did he think what he wrote was true?

Is that what men think when I go to a bar with my friends?

Of course it is. That’s why it’s still so hard to bring rapists to justice.

The male gaze.

Men are just more visually stimulated than women? I AM A VISUAL ARTIST. Oh please, tell more more about these mysteries of visual stimulation, you condescending pricks.

Lili Loofbourow wrote this truth bomb: “Women are sexual scavengers: we cobble arousal out of things not intended to stimulate us because we’re not considered worth stimulating.” http://www.salon.com/2014/06/16/game_of_thrones_fails_the_female_gaze_why_does_prestige_tv_refuse_to_cater_erotically_to_women/

And it’s true. I can count on two fingers the times I felt a movie or TV show was making a deliberate effort to titillate me. Because be honest, boys: when a male action hero rips his shirt off and pulls his simpering love interest into a kiss, that’s for YOU. It’s about making YOU feel strong and desirable, not about what I want. You’re not fooling anyone except yourselves when you say romantic subplots are there to get female butts in theater seats.

I read some columns written by therapists about waning desire. The advice they had seemed 50 years out of date. They said to do it anyway to please your partner, even if you don’t want to; you’ll like it once you get into it. Sometimes you just don’t know what you want until you get nudged into it. Licensed therapists!

You don’t know what you want. You don’t have a thought in your pretty little head. If you have any desires, they are secondary. Minimize it. Get over it. But for god’s sake, let’s not talk about all the ways men actively make sex horrible for women. They can’t be held accountable. It’s all on you.

A dude at a party.

This dude at a party once said to me, “Isn’t it my right as a man to have sex?”

I minimize it, compress it into a ball, but male entitlement is a cancer.

YOU NEED TO CUT THAT SHIT OUT.

An older man I used to work for…

…told me “only a thin veneer of civilization keeps men from acting like animals.” Aren’t you men offended by that? Or do you like having it as an excuse? If it’s on women to uphold civilization, why aren’t there more of us in charge?

Once I told him I was working on a short comic, and his first question was, “Is it about parenting?” Yeah, I’m obsessed with babies. I don’t have a thought…

On yet another occasion, I thought I had food stuck in my teeth, so I pulled a mirror compact out of my purse to check. He said, “Jeez, what’s with you women and your cosmetics?” I’m pretty sure he could see that I wasn’t applying makeup to my teeth.

He commented once that he thought I was terminally shy. No bro, it’s just that it’s taking a good deal of mental effort for me to hide how uncomfortable you’re making me.

But I go along to get along.

Another older man I used to work for

Gave me a tongue lashing because I tried to avoid a harasser. For my own safety.

When I was 20, I was a subcontractor working with an artist who was restoring a decorative domed atrium in a building under renovation. Our group consisted of a few other art students I knew from school, plus the lead artist, his friend, and his brother. We had to work alongside a construction crew.

The artist-boss left me alone in the building one day when he took part of our crew out to get some supplies. I was supposed to work on a lower portion of the dome while they were out. I thought it’d be okay because it was a Saturday and there weren’t any construction workers around.

But soon after they left, a crusty, middle-aged construction worker came into the atrium. I was mixing paint, and he was a few feet away cutting some boards with a circular saw. He must have made a mistake, because he said, “Ah, fuck!” Then, a moment later, “Sorry, I shouldn’t have swore in front of you.”

“Heh, that’s okay, I don’t mind,” I said.

Quiet for a minute, then he chuckled and said, “You know, almost got sexually harassed just then.”

“What?”

He was enjoying this, leering. “When you said you didn’t mind? You almost got sexually harassed.”

This was in a six story atrium in an unused building filled with machinery, scaffolding, freight elevators, obscure hidden corners, and all manner of sharp pointy things. No one else was there. Hardly anyone would be there until Monday. I was Luke Skywalker dangling above the shaft in Cloud City, and Darth Vader had a circular saw and a tool belt.

Why would a person say that? Here’s the underlying message: You’re in my space. You’re safe here as long as I allow you to be. I could do anything to you, if I wanted. You’re lucky I’m such a nice guy, or maybe I’m not. Threats. Intimidation.

He chuckled to himself and went on with his work. As soon as he went into another part of the building, I grabbed some brushes and climbed into the topmost part of the dome, where I knew no one would be able to see me from below. I touched up some of the fine, detailed work we’d been neglecting the last couple weeks. I did it quietly. I know how to move without making a sound. It’s become a weird habit of mine.

When my boss came back and demanded to know why I wasn’t working down below, I explained the situation and the reasonable precautions I took.

He was irate. “That’s not what I told you to do! I told you you’d have to have a thick skin to work here! That guy was just messing with you. He wouldn’t have really done anything!”

Well, maybe he wouldn’t have done anything to YOU, 50 years old and 250 pounds. But I was 5'1” and 105 pounds. He could have done anything, and no one would have known.

I have thick skin, but I’m not an idiot.

He apologized later, but only because my male friends stuck up for me and made him imagine his own 20-year-old daughter in that situation. I hated that he didn’t get there on his own.

An older man I’m acquainted with.

I was at an event with my family. My husband and I were looking at some books when I saw this older man walk by. I knew him from some arts organizations I worked with. I tried to wave and say hello, but he didn’t make eye contact.

My husband went off to look at something else. After a couple minutes, I could feel someone standing behind me, close. I turned, and that older man was right there at my elbow, looming over me, inches away, just staring down at me.

Was he waiting for my husband to leave all along?

I made awkward small talk for a minute, and then excused myself. Later on, I caught him staring at me again through a window. Just…staring…

An older man I’d never met.

I was exhibiting at a convention. I bring my daughter to shows with me. She writes and draws too, and I think she can learn a lot of business skills tabling with me. I left her in charge for 5 minutes while I went to the bathroom.

When I came back, I saw an older man, maybe 55 or 60 years old, standing at my table and pointing a camera at my daughter. She had her head down and was making it VERY clear that she did not want to be photographed.

JUST WHAT THE HELL IS UP WITH MEN GETTING WEIRD AND PREDATORY WHILE I’M IN THE BATHROOM?

I asked if he was taking photos for the convention organizers, or perhaps for a publication. He said no, he was just an artist. My, sir. Just what are you planning on doing with these photos that you took without consent? Maybe your intentions were good, maybe they were bad. I don’t know. The only thing clear to me then was that consent was not given, and my daughter obviously, unmistakably did NOT like having your camera in her face.

I should have made him delete them. I am a failure and a coward.

Someone who was once close to me.

He said something inappropriate to my daughter. He’d been kind of a jerk for several days prior to that. I’d been trying to minimize, not make a big deal, go along to get along. But that comment he made to my daughter, I couldn’t let that slide. I thought about it a while and called him on it via email.

I was harsh but honest. I’d hoped that, since he knew me well and we’d always gotten along, I could be candid and speak my mind without the ridiculous hemming and hawing women are usually compelled to use. I’d hoped that he’d see my point and apologize, and we could move on. I’d given him too much credit.

He called me crazy on Facebook and trashed me behind my back for years. My daughter was 5 or 6 when the incident happened. She was 10 when I finally got an apology.

A Collaborator

I was working on a project with a few collaborators. One of them set up an interview at an event, and asked me to go along and help promote the project we were working on. I thought our other colleagues would also be there, but it ended up being just us.

He greeted me by sneaking up behind me, putting his hands on my hips and saying, “Hey, sexy! Are you my date tonight?” I tensed up and felt my stomach lurch, but I didn’t want to make a scene. I found out he’d already done the interview part without me, so he basically just conned me into being his arm candy.

He spent the whole night flirting with me while simultaneously telling me how much he respected me. Conning me is a funny way to show respect. I felt like an anthropologist. What was his deal? How far would he take this? I egged him on a little, while strategically mentioning my husband and asking him about his fiancee. He didn’t try to touch me again, but lavished me with endless over-the-top compliments. It got awkward enough that the bartender picked up on it and asked me if I was okay.

Our project went on hiatus and I pretty much cut off contact with him after that, but for a while he liked a few too many of my facebook posts and gave me a few too many endorsements on LinkedIn. I didn’t know whether to laugh or puke. He tried to invite me to his wedding later that year. I feel sorry for his wife.

I would like to punch him in the face. I decided next time someone grabbed me from behind they’d at least get an elbow in the ribs.

Accidentally on purpose trying to cop a feel?

I can see right through you.

Grab me from behind?

Fuck off.

The next time a man gave me a sneak-from-behind greeting, I was still afraid of making a scene. I should have elbowed him in the ribs like I wanted, but instead I played it off like it wasn’t a big deal. Where did I leave my all guts? I bled them away.

He was a big hugger. It was at a networking event, and I could see him making his way through the crowd giving everyone else hugs, but everyone else got consensual hugs. I hadn’t seen him in 4 or 5 years, and we weren’t close to begin with, so I don’t know what made him think he could sneak up and wrap his arms around me and squeeze hard enough to lift my heels off the floor. I don’t know what made him think it’d be cool to pin my arms. MY BODY IS NOT A TOY, and I don’t appreciate being manhandled in front of colleagues.

I had panic attacks for days afterward, lost 5 pounds in one week. My adrenaline is flowing, my heart rate and blood pressure are jacked up so much that my doctor prescribed sedatives. I’m in survival mode, and I realize I always have been. I live viscerally, by my guts, my wits, my fists.

I can’t focus on my work. He messed up my health and cost me money.

But it was just a hug. Go hug yourself.

Women are so crazy

Am I? Sorry for inconveniencing you!

This is how tough you have to be…

…to exist in a female body. You have to see and hear and feel this shit and still somehow find it in yourself to participate in society.

You have to participate with full knowledge that being professional won’t protect you. Being smart won’t protect you. Being aware, being pretty, being ugly, being strong, being rich, being a bitch won’t protect you from what they’ll say and do.

I still participate because I can’t stand to be alone with my own thoughts. I’m hard as fuck. I’m brittle. I’m tired.

Stop telling me this is my fault. Stop punching me down. I’m not here for you to use until I’m used up. Male entitlement. You need to cut that shit out.