Hands off Mister: Since When Did My Body Become Public Property?
Men, are you sitting comfortably? Tough. This article is not intended to put you at ease.
Women have had enough of you thinking we are ‘grateful’ for your unsolicited comments about our appearance.
We are tired of your unwanted advances and feel sick at the thought of your suggestive behaviour.
I know I’m not alone here. Many of us have been ogled, touched, objectified, leered at, assaulted or degraded by men. Some of us have even been stalked, raped or murdered by…you guessed it…men.
I grew up in a small working-class town in Northern England, a place where the events I’m about to discuss were, unfortunately, ‘part of growing up’ for many young girls and women.
In this article, I will outline my personal experiences of times a man violated my body in some way.
This is done to make women feel less alone and more empowered to speak out about their own experiences.
Before male readers begin shouting ‘not all men’ at me, let me be clear: It’s ‘Some men some of the time, some men all of the time and all men some of the time.’ Rarely is it ‘No men none of the time.’
This article is not an attack on men or women. It’s an education. It’s an education for women and young girls to trust their instincts; to know that if it feels wrong, it is wrong.
I hope women learn to listen to each other and take what they are told seriously.
It’s also an education for men, both young and old, to understand that behaviour they think is acceptable may not be.
I hope men learn from these examples so they can teach their sons and grandsons how to be better men for our daughters and granddaughters.
I realised recently, at the age of 37, that my body has been (mis)handled by men my entire adult life with some instances occurring even earlier. This is not ok.
It’s 1999, I’m 14 years old, and I’ve just been groped by a 10 year old boy.
This wasn’t the first time something like this had happened to me. In school corridors, boys would twang our bra straps, slap our bottoms and sometimes chance a feel at our boobs.
It was ‘normal’ for a boy to sneak up behind you and undo your bra clasp through your school blouse. This was the reality for girls growing up in working-class northern towns during the 90s.
However, the groping incident I’m referring to stuck with me more than any of the other offenses because:
- The boy was much younger than me and I didn’t know I should be wary of him.
- I was with my youngest sister who was five at the time.
- We were in a public park during daylight hours.
- He violated me in a way I had never experienced before; grabbing my bottom and pushing his fingers into my crotch through my jeans.
- I never told anyone about it.
I remember something happening to me a year or two before this incident and I did talk about it. The problem was I wasn’t taken seriously.
From then on, I thought I was too sensitive and needed to become more resilient to this type of behaviour.
I’m in the supermarket aged 12 and a much older man, who was out shopping with his wife, cupped my bottom and pushed me out of the way of his trolley.
I remember telling my mum about it at the time and she was initially shocked, then laughed it off. This might not have been the appropriate response, but it was a common one for the era (late 90s again).
Young girls were conditioned to see these experiences as a rite of passage.
I’d love to be able to say that as I got older, my responses to such inappropriate behaviour became more assertive. Instead, I learned to keep quiet because who wants to be a prude?
It’s 2004, I’m 18 and my driving instructor has just coerced me into kissing him on the lips.
The lesson was our final one before the Christmas break and he’d asked me for a ‘Christmas kiss’ before I left his car. I laughed it off, but he kept pointing at his cheek.
As I went to give him a quick peck so I could get away, he turned his head. Our lips met and I was less shocked, more repulsed. I left the car in an awkward silence.
I didn’t mention anything to my family because I thought, again, that I was being over-sensitive. He’d often made sexual innuendos while I was driving about my hand on the gearstick but I’d brushed it off.
Yet the sick feeling persisted as our next lesson loomed. One day, as I was standing in the kitchen, I remember saying, ‘Mum, I don’t want to do my driving lesson.’
Everything spilled out and this time she took action. My mum called the driving school and made a formal complaint.
He was later struck-off due to the school receiving other complaints.
This is where things get much darker.
I’m 21 and I’ve lost my friend in the local nightclub. A young guy I’ve just met has taken me outside and I’m too drunk to realise I’m being raped.
I wasn’t in the best frame of mind at the time because my abusive ex-boyfriend (that’s another story) had dumped me for another girl.
Therefore, I got too drunk and was vulnerable.
My memory of this night has always been hazy and I don’t recall much about the guy’s appearance, let alone his name.
It didn’t dawn on me until recently that I’d been too drunk to give consent.
This was after a conversation with my husband where I casually mentioned that maybe my drink had been spiked.
My husband turned to me and said, ‘You know, that sounds a lot like rape.’
I’d never told anyone about what happened because I thought I’d had a shameful one-night stand and wanted to put it behind me. That I’d been sexually assaulted never crossed my mind.
So now, here I am telling the world about my experiences as a woman at the hands (literally) of men.
I could give many other examples, but this article would be way too long if I discussed them all.
I’m not going to shy away or feel ashamed about my past vulnerabilities anymore. Nor am I going to perpetuate the myth that ‘It’s all part of growing up as a girl.’
It’s not.
Women, we deserve better. Men, you need to be better.
https://www.buymeacoffee.com/rlmace1986
Rachel Palmąka Mace is a literary fiction and creative non-fiction writer, artist, spoken word performer, lapsed academic, and feminist. She is the editor of the feminist-led magazine Subtle Sledgehammer and her new project ‘Around the World with 80 Women’ (AW80W) – which shares the narratives of women from Somalia to Scotland – will be published in the Autumn of 2023.
