All The Ladies If You Feel Me, Help Me Sing It Out
I was in the passenger’s seat driving over the George Washington Bridge in the right hand lane when I saw a guy on a bicycle reach his hand out and slap the butt of a woman on the walkway. Instant rage flew over me as I frantically went to open the window, cursing “F#@%ING A$$HOLE” as we caught up to them. However, the windows were locked and my dad, who was driving, started panicking because he had no idea what was going on or why I was trying so desperately to make this jerk hear my incessant screaming.
As we drove by the biker, it made my skin crawl that he was laughing and that his friend behind him was fist pumping in the air like he’d just won a race. I didn’t catch the expression on the woman’s face, but I can’t imagine it was a laugh like theirs. Maybe she had a hard week and really needed that walk. Maybe she was just in a great mood and wanted to enjoy the sunshine on her back, but she sure wasn’t going to anymore unless she had meditated right before. Hopefully she meditated after.
I told my dad what happened, and he calmly advised me to not to interfere, that people like that feed off the negative reactions from others because they know what they’re doing is wrong, but it makes them feel bigger to have the disapproval of others. I knew he was right, and for a minute I felt bad for reacting so impulsively. I don’t think anyone realizes how hard the high road is to take, that in a moment you feel your womanhood has been touched by the dirty hands of an intruder, you are supposed to keep that anger in. My dad fully understands this, but has always been the high road kind of guy, as well as my moral compass, so I do listen and try to act as he would in most situations.
To do that is not to let this minion of a devil get away with it but to lessen the adrenaline he gets from doing something wrong. If he doesn’t feel like he did anything wrong, will he keep doing it? Who knows, maybe. Would he have done it if his friend wasn’t there to clap along? Probably not. He would have just thought to himself, “Damn, that’s a round caboose,” in cruder terms and kept on his way. Like a Jenga tower, if there’s no one pulling out the blocks from underneath him, he will still stand. But if we don’t react, don’t give him anything to bubble his ego, he’s no more than a thief who broke in and left empty handed.
This incident happened earlier this summer, but recent events and articles I’ve read about the harassment that women have to go through every single day, as difficult yet true of a concept as that is to grasp, have made me revisit times in my life that I felt violated directly and indirectly.
Womanhood is feeling things that other women have gone through as if it were to your own body. That’s how connected we are to each other. The way men feel when they share a moment of vulnerability with each other, and I love it every time I see it happen, we feel that all the time. Even when we’re disconnected, we are swimming through the waves together, parallel to shore as if we were trying to escape a rip tide.
I think it’s beautiful that these stories are coming forward, and at the same time it makes me sick that it still happens so often. There’s a reason they call it Mother Nature, Mother Earth — the pain mothers have to go through in order to bring the very people who have abused us into this world. Pain is in our blood, and we learn very early that we have to live with it, so we do. However, it doesn’t mean that’s the way it should be. We put ourselves through enough pain and pressure as it is so we can rise above the limitations men have set on us since forever.
There are people who think we should just accept it, laugh it off and bury it deep down inside us, which we have. I have. I’ve laughed with misogyny because it felt uncomfortable not to. I’ve done things with a boy I didn’t really like because I didn’t want to deal with the reaction of a man’s deflated ego that comes with rejection from a woman. But some guy slaps a woman’s butt on the GW Bridge, and that’s when my line is crossed?
That’s because sometimes we feel things that happen to other women even more than we feel things that happen to ourselves. We imagine the internal, emotional pain we would endure if we were assaulted in any way. And then when we are, it’s almost a self-medicating numbing that we blur the pain away with.
They say we make a big deal out of jokes. They throw pebbles at us, until the pebbles get bigger and turn into stones, which turn into rocks, and then become boulders. Until we’re crushed into the very ground we’ve mothered. Now I know nothing of what it actually feels like to be sexually assaulted. I can’t even imagine it because it makes me fall apart. And I do think I would completely fall apart, lose my senses, and the depression that would follow seems unbearable. But women do bear it, they do suffer it, replay the scene in their heads or if they can’t remember, make it up, which seems equally as painful. To wonder why a man would have subjected them to the kind of torture that lasts a lot longer than the few minutes of pleasure it lasted him.
One thing is for sure. The women who have either come out on the other side stronger, not given up on themselves, or have made it their life’s purpose to be there for other women and girls who have gone through something similar are the true heroes. We must know that we will always have love and support from other women, from the men in our lives who would never hurt us that way, and from the strength inside ourselves that can’t be diminished by anyone who makes us feel not worthy, not beautiful or precious. We must know that we will laugh again. We will love again. We will reign because we are warriors. We are women.
I’ve never been so proud to be one. This year, we have our first woman presidential candidate. People will say she’ll get elected because she’s a woman, just as they said Obama would win because he’s black. Because every other President in history wasn’t elected because they were a white male, right? Because their ideals and policies matched what the majority of the country believed was best, not for them as an individual, but for their neighbors, people they didn’t know, and the opportunities that would be given to children that wouldn’t have been given to them otherwise. Right? This is not us playing the victim. It is justice, to have a woman telling a bunch of men what to do, but because they are the right things to do.
To the men in our lives who love us with our flaws and scars, who know that to be close to us is to show us your own vulnerability, and trust that the reason we might hold back from you is because we’ve been truly hurt, but you are still our protectors. When you are there, we feel safe. It’s when you aren’t there that we have to fight for ourselves. And that’s good for us, but forgive us if it carries into our mistrust towards you. We’ve had to protect ourselves for so long, before all of us were even born, and we think that you’re even more masculine for letting us do our thing and not taking it as a “threat to your manhood” because it’s not. We’re proud of you for rising above the “men” who think we should look, act, mute, and live otherwise. We need you, and you need us.
It makes me sick to think that this man, so unlike you in every way, could win this election. Chances are it won’t happen, but the fact that it’s this close is very scary. Drumpf is a monster — and if people call this an exaggeration, but not him saying, “No one has more respect for women than me” after saying, “Grab them by the p***y, you can do anything,” all after saying, “If we have nuclear weapons, why aren’t we using them?” I’ll go back to calling him a monster now — and there are women who are voting for him, which blows my mind. Under what conditions or obligations, I don’t know, but I can guess, and I don’t blame them. To those women:
You are on the wrong side of history. All you have to do is look at it. Literally, look at history. What our country was like 60 years ago when black and white people were separated by schools, bathrooms, everything. Or 100 years ago when women couldn’t even vote. Women who are Drumpf supporters started saying they would give up their right to vote if it meant Drumpf would be elected. Do you know how demeaning that is for us? I wonder who’s side Drumpf supporters would be on during the Civil War 150 years ago. You know, that time where half the country wanted to keep their slaves. Just kidding, I don’t have to wonder. The official KKK newspaper endorsed Drumpf five days ago.
They can protest all they want about how much they don’t like Hillary, with or without reason, that there’s something about her that they “don’t trust.” But if you don’t want your daughters and sisters growing up in a country where the status quo is to keep sexist innuendo alive and well because the President, the one who more than anything else is the face of the country and helps shape it’s image, has said, is saying, and will continue to say these horrible, objectifying, inhumane remarks about women and minorities in front of and behind the curtain, it means your sons, brothers, and husbands will, too.
You might be too afraid to speak out against them now, and again, I don’t blame you. If I were surrounded by bigots and other selfish women who are putting themselves and their own gain before the courage of other women as a whole, I would be afraid to speak up, too. I have been afraid to speak up when a friend or family member disses Hillary. I’d be perceived as “too emotional,” “too much,” or they would shoot their opinion back to me, and I wouldn’t be able to come back with anything substantial in witty time, and it would look like they won. That they’re right.
Luckily, voting is private, and if you can’t raise your voice, at least raise your pen. No one has to know. You can still continue to live under their domain, under their opinions, under their roof. Don’t sacrifice your character for the safety of your relationships. We might love to gossip, but when we’ve got a secret with ourselves, we keep it. Maybe you’d feel too guilty going behind your husband’s or family’s back, but let me tell you, you will feel much more guilt if you either don’t vote or vote for Drumpf, and he wins.
Because Drumpf is that guy on the bicycle, assuming permission to handle us with less care than he would a presidency.
It will be a much harder fight for all of us if that happens. #ImWithHer
