#MeToo, Part II
“What’s wrong with me?” Jules asked, the morning after she had gone on a date with a man, during which he violated her boundaries during sex.
I hugged her, uncertain of what to say. The times I had gone through a similar experience, my friends couldn’t tell me something to reassure me, to make me wholly believe it was not my fault.
“It’s not your fault,” I offered.
“Right, but I don’t know if I can believe that,” Jules replied. “Because this has happened so many times, there must be something wrong with me.”
Obviously, there is nothing wrong with Jules. She is one of the most generous, strong-willed and intelligent people. I know this. Why couldn’t she know that? There is nothing wrong with her.
But as I comfort her, and try to tell her this, I know this won’t help.
At twelve years old, I was willing to do anything for a boy’s attention. At the time, I hadn’t discovered anything else that could properly fulfill me or make me feel worthy. There was nothing else within this tiny, insular island of adolescence.
So when boys didn’t like me, I wondered, what was wrong with me?
George was my sixth grade boyfriend and the first boy I had kissed. I knew he didn’t really “like me like that” so when he wanted to do more than just kiss, I pushed myself to do it, things that I don’t want to repeat. How could a twelve-year-old girl really do those things to their body before it’s even fully grown, before she has full control over it? I hadn’t done it. I had just let my boyfriend tell me what to do, do whatever he wanted.
I had wanted it also, right? I did but not the same thing he had wanted. What he had wanted was this shell of mine that would give him instant gratification. For all he cared, my body could have been hollowed out without me inside. That was his end goal. For me, the physical things we had done was just a means to an end. He of course did not have feelings for me and moved on. But the thought still lingered. Had I not let you have this body of mine and you still didn’t want me? Is there something wrong with me?
I felt deeply undesirable as a teenager. I wasn’t pretty. I had acne, a chubby face, and didn’t know how to properly put on makeup, resembling more of a baby raccoon than an attractive girl with good eyeliner. It was nice that George wanted me despite all of this, right?
When I am prettier, more boys will like me and will respect me — a mantra that played in the back of my mind growing up. I’ll only deserve that when I am pretty. At least that’s what the books and movies I had consumed growing up informed me.
Even the beautiful, manic pixie girls who sought to self-destruct always had nice guys coming in to save them. They’d say things like, “do whatever you want with me,” inviting sex teasingly. As a young, straight cisgender female, I knew that was attractive to men. Hell, I was attracted to these women when they said it. Of course, these nice guys would politely decline because they “respected” these women too much.
It’s because they are pretty, I’d think as I watched these fictional stories play out. These women have decent men coming to save them from their self-destruction and loneliness and will not try to control their bodies. Therefore, when I am pretty, I will also have a decent man come to save me and not try to control my body.
During my teenage years, this would not be the case since I was not pretty. I recall the boys in my grade would often list the hottest girls and decide which of their body parts were the best. Who had the best hips, eyes, lips, breasts, legs, and so on and so on. They’d scour the growing bodies in front of them, probing them as if they owned them. I wanted to be on the list even if I subconsciously knew how deeply troubling what they were doing was.
Maybe it’ll be better when we grow up. Maybe these boys when they are men will be better.
Of course, this wouldn’t be the case. Even the adult, male relatives in my life, who I love and who are some of the most generous, thoughtful people, still do this in their own way. This is what terrifies me — that even the best people I know and love will openly dissect women’s looks and bodies in order to assess their value.
She has nice legs. Nice face but too overweight. She used to be good-looking but got too much botox. I had listened to a close, male relative of mine appraise women’s bodies like this when I was growing up. He’d comment on the bodies of women on TV, women we knew, women who walked down the street past us, either complimentary or critical. As if he had the right to make a verbal opinion like it was his own.
Once when we were watching a movie with one of our favorite actresses who was often regarded as one of the most beautiful women in the world, he turned to me and said, “God she’s still so pretty for her age. But she’s still single. I heard it’s because she’s vain.”
Right, being single as an older woman is bad. Even if she is pretty, it’s her fault. There was something wrong with her.
Many years later when I was in my early twenties, a well-meaning aunt said to me, “Wow, you’re so pretty, Kat. Do you have a boyfriend?”
I didn’t at the time.
“Really? Why not?” she asked, worried.
“Oh, I don’t know,” I laughed, shrugging it off as if it was an unfortunate but funny occurrence that happened to me.
Oh, I don’t know. There’s something wrong with me. Can you tell me what’s wrong with me?
***
When I was sixteen years old, nudes of female classmates were periodically circulated around our school without their consent. A girl would be pressured into giving oral sex to a male host of a party they threw as a thank you.
Most of the time, these incidents were regarded as funny anecdotes. We were just kids, right?
I had hooked up with several of my close male friends. Sure, call me a slut. Maybe I was slutty. And for that, my friends jokingly coined the term, “The Kat Club,” — a club for all the males who had kissed me, made out with me, done something physical with me.
I laughed about it initially with these male friends. You own a part of me I guess. You’re in the club. Sure, do whatever you want with me. I’m not worthy of owning my body, it’s not even that nice. Have it.
A year or so later, when I had come to terms that this joke was based on objectifying me, Rob, a male friend of mine denied my claim. Granted, Rob was in the Kat Club.
“No,” he responded. “It’s our way of appreciating a good night we had spent with a beautiful girl.”
He had intended for what he said to be something between a joke and a friendly, loving statement. So I accepted it and anyways, was I much better? Hadn’t we joked about the Rob Club, consisting of the women who he had hooked up with including myself? Hadn’t I also been complicit in objectifying him? He could take pride in having all these young women say they were part of this group who spent a night with him. Couldn’t I just laugh and even take pride also? It was all funny, right?
This is all funny. Please join the club of boys who think I’m pretty. Make me more worthy.
Maybe when I am older and in college and the men I date also grow up, this will not happen as often. They will learn that this is unacceptable. But for now, this is what I have — boys conquesting this shell of mine and I will just let them.
This was all forgotten by the time I was a college freshman in New York City. During Thanksgiving, since it was too expensive to fly home across the country, a few hometown friends and I reunited in the city, spending the holiday together. Jack, a male acquaintance with who I had thought I had an aggressively platonic relationship, stayed at my dorm.
On Thanksgiving night, Jack slept next to me. He wrapped his arm over me. I thought nothing of it, gently squeezing his hand as I fell asleep. Suddenly, he sat up, still inebriated I assumed. I thought he was getting up to go to the bathroom when he asked me if wanted to have sex with him. I pretended to be asleep. He shook me, hoping to wake me up. When he finally went back to sleep, I just lay in bed, terrified to move, to reveal that I was in fact awake. The next morning, I pretended it didn’t happen.
When I relayed this incident to my floormate, Sarah, the following week, she replied, “At least you know you’re wanted by men.” I laughed it off. Yes, at least that. At least I’m fuckable. At least I’m worthy of a guy wanting me.
When I repeated the story again to Sam, a close friend of mine from high school who also knew Jack, I laughed it off awkwardly. It was funny. Another guy could have joined the Kat Club. This is hilarious.
When I looked up at his face after telling the story, he was horrified. “Oh my god, Kat. That’s bad. That’s very… rape-y.”
No, it’s funny. Ha-ha. Do whatever you want with me. Join the club.
***
By the time I was a sophomore in college, more people began to compliment me on my looks. Though, I didn’t really believe it when people told me I was pretty. If it were true, then so many men still wouldn’t have continued to treat me as lesser, as unworthy of decency and respect.
This was also when I clearly came to terms with the reality that incidents like these happen to almost every woman regardless of how they look or act. Regardless of how much they do not want it or try to protect themselves from such things. Too many friends were enduring violations to their bodies as we grew older. Perhaps it was because we were starting to date and actively have sex, making us more susceptible to people thinking they had every right to every inch of us.
Even the morning after they were abused, when they should have been allowed to recover, women would have to have their bodies poked and prodded again for medical tests. I’d hear stories of a friend or college classmate going to clinics, only to have to reiterate the trauma, if they could remember. It was the only way to assess their damaged bodies.
What would you categorize what happened? A nurse would ask them. Rape? Sexual misconduct? Harassment? Let’s measure how badly your body was taken from you.
Does this assessment really matter? Even if we had not been outright raped, women have endured at least one moment in their life when their bodies were no longer theirs, these shells that housed us were violated, diminished, scrutinized, and ripped apart by someone else who thought they had the right to take it from us.
As a result of these traumas, women gain weight, lose weight, stop eating, binge-eat, experience severe nausea, become insomniacs, as if we will never gain control of their bodies again. As though the wrongdoers can still have this power to control these women’s bodies long after the violation occurred.
Jules told me she likes to shower right after her body has been so wronged. I either resort to the cliche of binge eating chocolate or not leaving my bed the next morning. Throughout a slew of hazy nights when I was studying abroad in Spain, men would grab me, smash their lips onto mine, hook onto any body part of mine. Is it because I’m American that they believe they can do whatever they want with me, I’d think as I tried to go to bed.
The mornings after, I’d lie in my bed, mindlessly watching movies, not getting up to eat. My roommate thought I was just severely hungover. Really, I was just trying to erase my personality, leave only this shell that men seemed to value more than me.
It happens so often, we have a routine now.
I get tired of being angry or heartbroken because it happens so often. Like the girl who cried wolf. Except it’s nearly all girls who cry wolf when there really is one and no one cares. They’re too tired to care.
***
In 2017 when #MeToo movement arose, I scrolled through the expanse of Tweets and Facebook posts that confessed, “Me Too.” I paused at one of my best friend’s posts and read a comment by a woman I didn’t know. In the comment, the woman said, “I’m so sorry, I didn’t know.” I was livid. Of course, something had happened to my friend. It happened to nearly every woman, as though that wasn’t already known.
She doesn’t need your apologies. She needs your anger. She needs you to do something about it.
As the cases of women who had been abused by high-profile, powerful men continued to stream out into public, one of my college housemates remarked to me, “God, it just doesn’t stop, does it?”
I almost screamed.
Of course, it’s not stopping. It’s never-ending. It’s happening now. It’s happening to me. Something has always been wrong.
***
“Why do we feel so grateful for straight males to meet the lowest standard of decency?” Jules asked me as we worked through what this man had done to her the night before.
“Because it’s so rare.”
“Why do I need to be excited when I finally come across a boy who treats me well and doesn’t cross my boundaries?” she yelled, though not at me. “Is that really our standard? To like any boy who is decent enough? I hate it because we just want to cling them to more even when we know it won’t work.”
I thought back to one of the only times a male I dated reassured me that there was in fact nothing wrong with me, that whatever someone had done to my body, was not my fault.
It was my senior year in college. I had gone home with a boy after I went to a frat party. I had wanted to at first. He seemed nice but then somewhere between the blurs of kissing and shedding our clothes, it all became forceful, greedy as he pawed at me, jamming different parts of him into me. My body throbbed.
I didn’t like it but what could I say? Maybe if I pretended I did, that would make it better. This has happened so often, it didn’t really matter. It was a one-night stand. Who cares. It’s college. Do what you want with me. This body is yours for the next hour. Or so you forced it to be.
After I left, aching and smelling like sweat and PBR, I stumbled home at 2 AM. I lived in a big house with other college students, even developing feelings for one of my housemates, Grant. But we were just friends and he wouldn’t want me. There was something wrong with me. Couldn’t he tell?
When I realized I didn’t have a key, I contemplated what to do next. Grant’s bedroom light was on. He was awake. Should I knock? But then he’d see me like this.
I had the fleeting consideration of going back to the guy I had slept with.
“You’re not staying over?” He asked before I stumbled out of his room.
Sure, just smother me until I’m unconscious. Then you can really do whatever you want to this body. I could have said.
I couldn’t do it.
When I knocked on Grant’s window, he didn’t answer. I gave up and tried knocking on the front door, hoping another housemate was awake. Grant opened it. He grinned at me, most likely finding it funny that I, the type-A, had come home drunk and locked out.
“Thought it was you,” He said to me.
I apologized for waking him and brushed past him.
He tried to say something to me. I didn’t reply. I wanted water. I was thirsty. I was disgusting. I couldn’t have him smell this other boy on me.
I sat quietly in our living room. He joined me, looking concerned.
“What’s wrong?”
I didn’t say anything.
“Did something happen at the party? Did someone…grope you?”
He seemed horrified at the idea that some stranger groped me. I almost laughed. What happened to me nearly every weekend, at nearly every club, bar, and party I went to, would not make me this distraught. That was nothing. I was nothing.
I told him something vague. I had gone home with a boy. I didn’t really want to have sex. I just felt like I needed to let him do whatever he wanted with me, to get it over with. This was hardly bad compared to what most other women have had to endure. I wasn’t raped. I was fine. It just kept happening to me.
I can’t recall if I said this all out loud but once I was done, Grant looked directly at me and asked, “Why are you acting like it’s your fault?”
I was twenty-two and this was perhaps the only time in my life that a man I had feelings for had explicitly said that to me.
Grant comforted me the rest of the night. I expected him to kiss me. Instead, I made the first move, surprising him. Was this not what he wanted in exchange for just being decent to me?
When Grant and I started dating after that, I quietly believed that the men I would be with afterward would also just meet this common standard of decency.
This was it. I was an adult. I had a nice-looking face, at least nice enough to be worthy of a decent guy liking me. I had reached the ideal I had grown up believing in.
It’s hilarious I believed that. How naive. Why would you believe something as absurd as that? What. Is. Wrong. With. You.
***
“What’s wrong with me? Do I just naturally have something like a “fuck me look” or a “do as you please” personality?” I think each time a stranger grabbed me, a man begged for sex or pushed himself into me and I didn’t say no just so I could get it over with.
“It’s your eyes. Something about them,” Peter, a guy I had briefly dated, explained to me why he was “so” attracted to me. I hadn’t asked. He meant it as a compliment.
I recalled that another man I dated before him had said the same thing. Something about my eyes.
Okay, it’s the eyes. Maybe I’ll just gouge my eyes out. That would make me less desirable. That would be not asking for it.
One night, when Peter and I were in my room and I told him I didn’t want to have sex, he became angry. I apologized. He left my house, infuriated that we were together and I could still want to control my body as my own.
What’s wrong with me? I should have just done it like I typically have done before.
Do whatever you want with me. I could have said.
“Just because you’re friendly doesn’t make it right for guys to think it’s an invitation for sex,” Jules told me after I had gone on a date during which the man attempted to slide his hands between my legs and beneath my shirt while we were at a bar.
Do whatever you want with me, wherever I guess. That must have been what I had implied. Right?
When I went on another date with another man a few weeks later, I was hopeful. He was nice, in fact, I thought he was inexperienced. He had even asked if he could kiss me. How sweet. How respectful. That’s why I was shocked when we were in his car and he proceeded to push me down, climb on top of me, and pull my hands down his pants. When he asked if I wanted to have sex in his car (at least he asked, right?) and I said no, he calmly drove me home.
After I told my housemate about this date, I asked him, “Is there something wrong with me? Do I just scream sex? Because this has happened so often now.”
“Maybe it’s the hair?” He smiled lightly, unsure of what to say. “I just want to grab it. It’s so voluminous.”
My housemate has a boyfriend, so his comment didn’t make me uncomfortable. I laughed when he said this. Well, if only I had known. Maybe I just need to shave off my head. Definitely less fuckable then. Definitely not asking for it.
***
Like we’re picking up scraps, accepting them as gold, I think each time I date or hook up with a guy who was mildly decent to me.
The more men my female friends and I encounter, the rarer it seems to meet men who could respect us and what we did with our bodies. Who respected us when we wanted to have sex or not. Who could fully well know, it’s not our fault.
But what I am more frustrated with is not my naivety, my optimism that I would only encounter good guys if I did everything right. I am more frustrated that I had only fully realized later in my life that all the violations my body had endured and the times my value was evaluated by my looks, were not my fault. There was nothing wrong with me.
By now, I had deeply learned the mentality that I am sure idles beneath most straight men, even some decent ones; this body is what we use to assess your value, how pretty your face is, how nice your body is, how fuckable you are. This shell that houses YOU. That’s what matters. Not YOU. Even when this shell meets our standards, our fantasies, we will take it as ours, do with it as we please because it’s ours and remind you that you are still unworthy of our respect and love.
That’s what was wrong with me. I had let that sick creed dominate my mind. But it was only when Grant — a straight male told me so, that it wasn’t my fault, that I began to clearly see how wrong this reality was.
And still, when my female friends and I reassure each other after another sexual transgression has happened that it’s not their fault, we let it fall flat in our minds. We hear it’s not our fault. Yes, we know that we shouldn’t think this way but it must be our fault because it happens so often. Yes, we know we shouldn’t believe, but we do because it happens All. The Time.
Somewhere in our lives, we learned that our bodies were not ours to control. They were for others, mainly men, to judge and scrutinize and value. That our worth was based on the male perspective. We let them, or more accurately, society had. And so, the only way to relieve ourselves of this toxic mentality is to have it be relinquished by men, by men explicitly saying to us, “it’s not your fault. There’s nothing wrong with you.” Even after men take responsibility for the abuses historically done to our bodies, they are still the main key to women letting go of this toxic reality. Even then, they still possess that power.
***
I hate to generalize, and I fight this urge to believe that so many men could be so ignorant or careless as to how women should be treated and how sex should be done respectfully. But it feels further away, this idea of a man respecting your body as your own even when you are together. I hate to generalize, so I think, “there is something wrong with me, otherwise, why would so many men openly violate and take advantage of this shell of mine?”
I do not want to become a cynic. So, each time I meet a new man or go on a date, I pray into the oblivion for them not to disappoint me, to please not feed into this growing generalization that most straight cisgender men are blindly moral and seek only sex.
Prove me wrong, I beg of you.
I did not and still do not want to believe that it is more common for straight males to objectify women and so callously anatomize, violate, take our bodies as if they possess them. I want to understand what more women can also do. I am telling myself to be clearer and firmer on what I want and less tolerant of these transgressions. But what happens now when women are doing all of this and yet, men continue to try to take ownership over our bodies?
As these violations continue to regularly happen to my friends and me, and more cases of powerful men preying on women pour out into the public, I wonder how much has changed within the unseen corners of women’s sex and love life. #MeToo has brought forth these issues into the public conversation but how much has changed within the private, unspoken interactions between males and females? I don’t know. If it changed, then Jules wouldn’t be undergoing trauma therapy right now. Then, I wouldn’t be writing this. I wouldn’t continue to hear these stories every week.
And I am so tired of hearing these stories, of writing them. Like the girl who cried wolf, is what you may be thinking.
More importantly than being tired of crying about the wolf, I am exhausted from living in this reality. We had the feminist wave. We carried out a large social movement. We shared our horror stories in full detail. We screamed about patriarchy and our objectified bodies.
Despite all this work, I know people will read this and think there is something wrong with me. That I did ask for all of this. That I was slutty. That what happened to me and most women is not that bad because it happens every day. That because I dated and slept around with the hopes of finding a decent guy who could love me, I deserve this. That because I look a certain way, that by inhabiting a female body, this will happen. I let this happen. I know you may be thinking this as you read this because I am guilty of thinking this myself.
The week following the violation, Jules texted me, thanking me for “holding space” for her, that she was okay and that she loved me.
I cried but not only because I was so grateful that she was better but because she felt she was “taking up space,” as though she was a burden for bearing trauma.
The reality that countless survivors feel like a strain onto others or guilty for suffering through trauma — something out of their control, that they desperately try to move past — is heartbreaking to say the least.
It’s not your fault, don’t be sorry, there’s nothing wrong with you. I want to scream out to the sea of survivors.
They probably won’t believe me, because I know many of us do not.
Please prove me wrong, I beg of you.
***
I value my privacy, but here I am, writing out in detail some of the worst defilements that happened to my body. Maybe I wanted this all here, in permanent ink, to remind people that these are not even the most horrific things women have suffered through but still hold such power to shatter us. I want the people who have been complicit to realize their crimes in letting these offenses continue to happen.
Or maybe, I want the men who have done this to me, to my friends, to my family, to all the women I love, to read in fine print the horrors they’ve done. Would they change their behavior to the next girl they encounter? I don’t know. If they read these transgressions like they were done on to their wives, sisters, mothers, daughters, would they change their behavior?
If you’re reading this, just know that your wives, sisters, and mothers probably have gone through the similar pains I’ve described or worse. Would you work to change this reality if it meant your future daughter did not have to endure what we have endured?
Am I cynical to think maybe not?
Please prove me wrong.
