Post-Election, What Women Have Always Known

In 10th grade, I was one of a handful of girls in my high school’s video production class. During our documentary unit, I pitched an idea about the conflict brewing between a local muralist and an art critic. Per class rules, when my idea was one of the handful picked for production, I became the director. My team consisted of three older boys. I was immediately nervous. My teacher, a gay man, took me aside.

“This might get difficult,” he said, his eyes on the boys — my team — who had gathered on the far wall, growing louder and more boisterous as they discussed the project. He tried to puff me up as best he could, complimenting my filmmaking instincts, my curiosity, my sense of story. Although he genuinely believed in me, we both knew why he’d chosen that moment to expound on my talents.

I prepared myself to be talked over. I steeled myself for my decisions to be taken as suggestions. I tried to come to terms with my project being taken from me, bit by bit, and distorted until it wasn’t mine anymore.

At first, I was pleasantly surprised. Sure, I had to shout a few times to get my voice heard. Sure, I kept having to repeat myself — no, we’re not just going to scrap the ‘bitchy’ (female) art critic’s scenes to focus on the ‘chill’ (male) muralist. Sure, I was relegated to holding a bounce or a boom instead of being behind the camera. Sure, I heard them grumble about me, float alternative ideas, talk shit.

Nothing about it was surprising. Besides, I thought I was doing okay. I’d pulled out every trick in the Woman Book that we all carry: phrasing every statement as a question, laughing along with them. I prefaced everything with a ‘sorry, but…”. These little sleights of hand seemed to work — begrudgingly, they began to listen.

Toward the end, I sat with the boys in the editing room. I’d given up the position of actually making the edits, thinking it would buy me some cred when I needed it, but I was determined to protect the piece I’d spent my evenings and weekends on.

So, when the biggest contrarian of the three refused to make a cut I wanted, I was done. I’d played the game. I’d smiled, I’d relented, I’d stepped aside, knowing they would’ve never done the same, knowing it was the only way. So, I insisted. Quietly at first, and then, when he stood up and began to lecture me, less quietly. I stood too, meeting his eyeline.

He told me that he’d had enough of listening to me. He told me to be quiet. He told me I was going to let him do what he wanted.

I refused. He slapped me across the face.

As my mouth fell open, as my classmates’ eyes widened, he began to laugh. I’m tempted to say it was nervous laughter, but I don’t really believe that. I think he genuinely thought it was funny. I think he was happy that he’d stunned me into silence. I think he felt invincible.

And why shouldn’t he? This happened in a diverse high school in a nice neighborhood in ultra-progressive Seattle. This boy had a girlfriend, he had female friends. He was on the nerdy side. He wasn’t a hulking, frat-tastic cartoon. The scariest ones usually aren’t, that’s why they’re scary.

People love to talk about the differences between the sexes. There’s a thought that’s been eating at me for a long time, chipping away at my defenses.

I’ve come to believe that one of the most gaping differences between us is that women know the banality of evil. We learn it early, we re-learn it often.

Women know that the worst things happen in broad daylight. We know that the scariest people can be the ones that are supposed to protect you. We learn that the rules we were taught don’t necessarily apply to everyone. We learn to mistrust. We learn to look over our shoulder. We learn that the bad guys usually win.

I was shocked by the results of the election, and then I asked myself why, when I’d already learned this lesson many times over.

The first time I was groped in public, I was nine years old. My dad was leading a group of international students on a tour of a popular tourist spot, and I’d gotten separated from him. As I stood on my toes trying to see through the crowd, I felt hands on me. I spun on my heel and, looking up, saw a man about my dad’s age laughing down at me.

At 11, I was walking home when a van’s doors were thrown open. A man got out, his eyes fixed on me. “We lost our puppy,” he stepped toward me. “Will you help us find it?” My mom had done stranger-danger drills with me, this was a line I knew well. I ran the rest of the way home, his laughter trailing after me.

At 12, a teacher would ‘playfully’ slap me on the ass when I turned in assignments. In my yearbook, he espoused on how lucky he was to meet a ‘beautiful woman’ like me. He signed it with X’s and O’s.

At 13, a boy began passing me notes and following me as I walked home. I tried to let him down as gently as possible. After months of this, on the last day of school, he asked me to kiss him. My friends watched, laughing, as I gave in. When I returned to my group, the boys and girls alike agreed that I had to do it, because who knows what he would’ve done had I refused?

At 14, while walking downtown, a group of men in their early 20s caught me and pushed me back and forth between them, pawing at me and laughing as I cried, calling after me when I escaped.

At 15, I cut my hair. My biology teacher began complimenting me, comparing me to sexpot celebrities he liked. He started asking me to stay after class. I’d get nervous, and he’d chuckle, assuring me I wasn’t in trouble. He just liked talking to me, he said, with a wink. He offered me snacks. He offered to write me late notes for next period. I began to dread his class.

The pattern continued, day by day, year by year. There were a few deep cuts and thousands of pinpricks.

In October of my freshman year of college, I was roofied and raped at one of the top universities in the world. I’d never been to a frat party before. I wore a sundress. I was achingly naive. I’d just celebrated my 19th birthday, 3,000 miles away from home. Like every other freshman, I’d sailed into college seeking adventure, independence, control. I began to spiral downward.

A few months later, I met a boy. My friends hated him from day one: we’d met at a party that he tried to physically drag me out of. I can’t explain why I didn’t see that as a warning sign, except to say that I’d grown numb to people feeling entitled to my body. In the months that followed, we fell into an intense, toxic, all-consuming relationship.

When we fought, which was often, he’d tell me how lucky I was to have someone that wanted me for more than just looks. He’d tell me that, had I looked differently, no one would listen to me. When I tried to leave, he blocked the door. Then, he began holding me down. Once, his roommate peeked out and saw me on the floor of their apartment, my boyfriend’s knees digging into my chest as he screamed at me to stop moving. I closed my eyes and silently begged his roommate to say something. He shut his door.

Toward the end, one particularly bad night found me curled against the wall of an elevator in his building. He left handprints on my skin, blooming red and angry as he yelled at me for being scared. Some time later, I stood on his busy corner, shaking in the Boston wind. I sobbed as I started to cross the street. My hair stuck to the snot pouring out of my nose. I heard shouting, and a car full of men pulled up in front of me.

“Hey beautiful!”

It was so absurd, the timing so horrible, I almost laughed. “You look lonely, come with us!” I didn’t have time to say anything, they saw my face and laughed as the driver pulled away. My path clear, I walked home in the dark.

Lately, I find myself in conversation with my future daughter.

‘Conversation’ might be the wrong word — I find myself at a loss for words, with a person who doesn’t exist yet. My parents told me that if I respected people, they would afford me the same. They told me to speak up. They taught me that I didn’t always have to be nice, as long as I was kind. The things I want to tell her feel like lies — your value is intrinsic, it can’t be diminished by angry men. You are more than your looks. Your body is unequivocally yours. How can I tell her that, when most days I feel like I’m living without skin? How can I tell her she is safe, when I know better?

For my entire life, men have turned my body, my autonomy and my deepest sense of self into jokes by men. Violating my safety has been a spectator sport. I’m not surprised that the bad guy won because like all women, I’m intimately acquainted with the normalizing of evil. I’m going to tell my daughter not to be afraid of the dark, at least darkness is honest about itself. I don’t know what to tell her about the light.