Stories of Sexism and Violence

There is a blog that I posted last year and again this year when it showed up in my memories for the day. The author grew up in Montreal, Canada. Except for a few early years in Texas, I grew up in California and then Oregon. I should feel a kinship with this woman on the other side of the continent, in another country, and I do. Our experiences are eerily familiar. And this horrifies me. It is disturbing that two women so far apart can have the same feelings, been preyed upon in the same manner. It means that our experiences aren't limited to a geographical area. Or a certain type of man. Or a period in time. They are rampant. They happen every day to every one of us. And there is no end soon in sight.

As I read her words again, I started to recall my own stories. The ones that are non-fiction. Those that haunt me. These are just some of them.

I'm four or five. Young. My class is on a field trip at the police station. There is a large carpet depicting roads and street signs. There is a tricycle on the carpet meant to be a vehicle. I want to "drive" the streets so I raise my hand. The police man chooses me. He says, "My, you're a pretty little girl." I can "drive" and show the other kids how to use the traffic signs, but first I must kiss him on the cheek. I don't really want to "drive" after that.

I'm five. My parents are divorced and my dad has custody but he works so his family friend watches me during the day. Her son is my age. He wants to show me his penis. I don't really care to, but he makes it sound like I really want to. Only he wants to see what I have. I do it just so we can move on and play. It happens a few times and one day his mom catches us and beats the shit out of me.

In sixth grade there is a boy who torments me relentlessly. He snaps my bra and when I get mad, he tells our teacher that I told him to "keep his black hands off of me." I am both humiliated that my teacher, who I respect more than almost anyone, knows that I now wear a bra and that someone touched me without my permission. I am devastated that he thinks I blamed it on the color of his skin when the thought never occurred to me and I cry like my heart is broken. Because it is.

I'm 12 and a family member hugs me but his hand lands between my legs. I pull away in disgust and he acts innocent. "What? What's wrong?" This happens intermittently and semi-regularly until I am 17. He shoves his tongue in my mouth, grabs a breast. I stop him every time and leave the room, but I don't tell anyone because I'm the one that feels ashamed. I don't tell my mom until after I'm married and I think the only reason I forgive him now is because he's old and frail and can't hurt me anymore.

I'm 18. My boyfriend is arguing with me for no reason, we work together in a store at the mall. I turn to leave and he grabs me, turns me around, and shoves me against the door. It's a metal door with a bar in the middle. I try to hit him but he has my arms pinned. As recognition at what he's done spreads across his face, he tells me with fat tears how sorry he is and that I must be so worried about what will happen next time. I tell him that a next time means he'll never see me again. He never touches me like that again, but he breaks things. He breaks my windshield and then his on separate occasions. When I'm 21 and I drive from Oregon back to college in Southern California, I decide to stay with my roommate and her mom in their hotel. I'm tired and tired of being in the car so I deny his invitation to go to his place. His invitation turns into a demand and then a threat. I hear a bottle break in the sink as he threatens to kill himself and I hang up. I end the relationship a few days later.

I'm 22 and engaged. We live together. I weigh maybe 96 pounds but I've always had a little belly. He tells me I'm fat. When he gets home from work he asks if I worked out, saying, "You were home all day. What else do you have to do?" I cry and wish I could be really fat so he'd have something real to complain about.

Years later when we're getting divorced, he tells me he will find someone young, blond, and thin. I am 10 years younger than him at 26 and still weigh under 110 pounds.

I'm a single mom and I work in an insurance office.  When I first start, the owner tells a male co-worker to tell a female co-worker to to tell me to wear a bra with more padding. The office is always freezing. There is an underwriter who asks inappropriate and personal questions when I make changes to my own policies. I tell my boss and he laughs it off. When I bring up sexual harassment and tell him I will do something if he doesn't, he finally calls the underwriter's supervisor. There continue to be comments on how I dress.

I'm in my 30's and live with a boyfriend. I go home at my lunch hour and the husband of his friend is working construction in our neighborhood. He follows me to the mailbox and grins, saying I should invite him over for lunch sometime. At a party with other friends, he walks behind me and rubs his whole front against my back. The room isn't that crowded.

I'm at a dinner with about 10 other people and an executive of our company who is in town for some meeting. He goes on and on about his toddler and his wife and how much he loves her. As people start to leave, he slides around the booth and puts his hand on my thigh while he whispers his room number in my ear. I tell him I won't be needing it. Several months later I'm in a car full of co-workers and my manager on our way to a conference. I tell this story and everyone is repulsed. Several months more go by and I get pulled into the HR office because a rumor is going around about that incident. I confirm that it happened and that, because men are constantly inappropriate and I would probably never see him again, I didn't feel the need to report it. However, my manager gets called out for not reporting it when he heard the story months before. Soon after I'm put on a performance review and the HR manager tells me she thinks it's a retaliation and to keep her informed if my manager says anything out of bounds.

I'm over 40. My boyfriend gets mad when I buy a pair of shoes in a color he doesn't like. When we argue, I tell him he needs to leave but he continues on and on until I hyperventilate. He tells me that my ear piercings look trashy. That I'm book smart but have no common sense. That I'm beautiful but, but, but...

I'm 45 and have recently ended a relationship. It was a mutual breakup with no animosity. A few weeks later he texts me, he's at his company Christmas party in my neighborhood and asks if he can stop by. I assume we're adults and can be friends. He shows up having had more to drink than I thought and continues to work his way through my bottle of whiskey. I tell him he's going to have to leave because I'm tired and need to sleep. He asks, over and over and over, why he can't stay in my bed because he has so many times before. I finally go to my room and lock my door and he leaves. I haven't seen him since.

I'm in a bar, walking through a crowd, at a concert, .....
..... a man puts his hand on my thigh.
..... a man rubs up against me.
..... a man "accidentally" grazes my breast.
..... a man gets offended and angry when I decline his interest. I'm a bitch, a dyke, ugly.....

These are just the stories that stand out. There are other moments. Other experiences. Too numerous to mention, too many to remember.

This is how men and women aren't equal. This is why we so often don't report harassment, abuse, coercion, rape. It happens ever day in small, seemingly innocuous ways and in ways we can't believe someone gets away with it. If I call out this one, another one will do something else tomorrow. And we still are blamed for what we wear, what we say, the time of day, the places we go.

I'm too tired by it all right now to even contemplate a solution.

This Space Is Mine

There is a thing that men do, probably without even thinking about it, and that women experience on varying levels from annoyance to terror. They touch us. They touch us a lot. Strangers. It's putting an arm around us, or "accidentally" grazing a breast or ass cheek. It's leaning in within an inch of our faces, it's aggressive eye contact.

For the love of fuck, guys, you have got to stop this. Tell your friends to stop. After the last few weeks, I am going to refuse to be polite. I insist on being viewed as a person with feelings and boundaries. I demand respect. My response to unwanted physical touch is going to be very clear from now on.

For the last week, I've been victimized by my Depression. It showed up, unannounced, like it always does. Finally, I felt like trying to shake it off. I went to a favorite bar where my burlesque mentors were going to perform. J and I got stools at the corner closest to the stage; it wasn't overly crowded like it is on the weekends, it felt comfortable enough. There was a group of men and women next to us, but J and I tried to keep to ourselves, both of us feeling fragile from our depression at the same time.

One of the men decided to start a conversation with us. And not by saying, "Excuse me, ladies..." No. When my head was turned away from him, he put his whole arm around me, his hand landing at my waist. I am a person with space issues. I am a person who doesn't always like to feel feelings, let alone the body warmth of another person. I certainly do not appreciate being embraced so personally by a stranger. It's rude. It's creepy. It was alarming.

There is something that I do when fighting for air during a depressive episode. If I'm in public and I have to engage with someone, I act cheerful. Because if I'm not forcing overt cheerfulness, I risk falling into a crumbling heap on the floor. I also risk letting out any internal rage I direct at my Depression onto a person and that never ends well.

So, even though I was appalled at this man's assumption that he could touch me in a place and in a way that I consider intimate, even though I wished I could shape-shift myself into a giant boa so I could simultaneously squeeze the life out him while ripping his arm off, I smiled. I answered his questions. I told him where I'm from, how long I've been here, what I was drinking. I allowed him to lean over me and talk to J. I allowed him into my space. I allowed him to continue living under the illusion that women are objects, toys, that we don't deserve the freedom from being man-handled any time we walk into a bar.

I censored myself that night. A few weeks before that, J censored me. It's what we do to each other. We remind each other not to Make A Scene. Just be quiet and it will end on its own. We were at a different bar, one we had been to recently and returned for karaoke. Because it's Nashville. It's what you do. I wasn't depressed, but I was grumpy.

The second we walked in, the dude at the end of the bar asked what we were drinking and said he'd buy our drinks. He was very drunk. I thought he was on his way out the door, so I let him. But no. No, he stayed. He stayed long enough to put his hand on my lower back and lean in. When I turned to J, like, "What the fucking fuck is he doing!??!", she told me to ignore it. See how we are conditioned to this shit? A disturbingly drunk man gropes a friend and we calm the other one down so as not to create further drama.

He tempted me with a very enticing offer. Going back to his place to drink a beer. I declined. "What? Why? I am re-fucking-diculously good-looking and I have a cute penis." I agreed that that was a VERY tempting and gracious offer, but no. "But why?? I have a couch!! Don't you want to go to my place? Why not?" No answer I gave him was satisfactory. None. Because, as a man, who was just allowed to touch me, who paid for my drink, he could not fathom that I, as an object he had just partially paid for, would refuse him. That doesn't happen in his world.

After a while, when he got quiet, I thought he might just pass out on the bar. He shuffled away, to my great relief. Short-lived relief. Because I actually heard him ask J if she wanted to go to his place to "make love." I looked right at him and said, "Are you kidding me right now? You're hitting on my friend after I just turned you down?" To keep from hurting my feelings, I can only assume, he said I could come too. We could go to his work. There's a couch there.

J tried a different tactic. "I like girls." That was okay though, because it seems his penis is so cute it would turn her to the side with the Y chromosome. Surely. His cute penis is potent enough to change the mind of someone who, presumably, had been incorrectly sexually oriented for decades.

Now, during all of this extremely attractive and romantic behavior, Drunk Dude's friend stood behind us, between us. He leaned up against our  hips, our thighs. When we called this contact to his attention, he backed up for a second and then came back even closer. We tried to distract him by encouraging him to do a karaoke song. We assured him that he would be great at it.

God, it was exhausting.

Before you suggest that we, we women, we of the fairer, weaker sex, assert ourselves like a man would, know that we have tried. We have tried so many strategies. We shrink so as not to be noticed. We are polite. We claim to have a "boyfriend." One who will "be right back." We try to ignore. We invite ourselves to blend into a group of women we don't know for protection. We know that anything more direct or assertive than this will only create anger, produce aggression, be met with hostility by the offender.

Drunk Dude is the perfect example. When he finally accepted that there was nothing he could say or do to convince one of us to go home with him, he yelled to this friend, "Fuck them, they're fucking bull dykes!!" and slammed out the door. We were rid of him, but the cost was an angry outburst and the small, insistent fear that he would be outside waiting when we left.

So, gentlemen. I'm about to piss a lot of you off. I'm not going to apologize either. I'll be a bitch or a cunt or a whore, or whatever you need me to be to fit into your limited world view, your standard, your norm. But I will not be unwillingly groped. I will not be embraced without permission. If you don't know my name, you don't know me well enough to put your hands on me. My first "no" is my final answer. I don't owe you an explanation or a reason. You're just being friendly? That's fine, I'm just standing up for myself. I am refusing to perpetuate the idea that Neanderthal behavior is desirable. I don't secretly want what you're offering in your drunken stupor. I don't buy into your cocky attitude. I don't have to believe you're a good guy or see you as you see yourself. I have my own idea, my own opinions, and my own agenda that 99.9% of the time has nothing to do with you.

This body? It's mine. It's 100% mine and you have no god-given right to it. I'm taking up my space and you're only allowed in when I invite you.

World's Worst Boss

I once had the World's Worst Boss. I'm not even kidding. It's not hyperbole. I mean, maybe Imelda Marcos was worse, but at least she had a shoe collection I could respect. This guy? No way in hell. He still has a business in town, so if you ask me personally, I will tell you not to go there, but I think he's a big enough asshole to want to sue me because of something I say in my piddly little blog so I won't say his name here.

I started working for He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named when my daughter was very young. I had been trying to make use of my college degree, but it wasn't panning out and the job I was trying to get away from required that I work overnight. I spent a lot of time crying because I couldn't put my daughter to bed. I finally decided that I needed a job with daylight hours, Monday-through-Friday. Whatever that job turned out to be.

The interview process with HWSNBN should have tipped me off, but, as a single mom, I was pretty desperate. It started with a math test, which isn't completely out of the ordinary. However, the interview with the private investigator is. And this was before I even talked to HWSNBN. The PI asked me a ton of bizarre questions. Did I ever own a business in California? Did I ever go by this name? That name? He concluded by saying they were both pretty sure I would omit something and they were right. Um, excuse me? You come up with all of this "information" about me that has zero to do with me and think I'm leaving something out? Huh. Well, then.

When I started, there was a man and woman also working there. They often closed the door to his office to have long talks which made me feel completely left out. The explanation at the time was that some things had happened lately that they were embarrassed by. Several months later they told me the truth - they hated HWSNBN and didn't want to scare me off. Thanks for the warning, guys.

During those months and in the almost-four years afterward, I came to  understand their hatred. I developed my own. I very quickly learned to be afraid of him. I soon started stress-eating, gaining 15 pounds during the time I worked there. I started drinking copious amounts of alcohol after work. I cried in the shower every day before work and had chronic stomachaches just thinking about what I would have to deal with that day.

When I told/tell people how awful he was (is?), they wouldn't believe me. And you might not either. So here is just a short list of what I lived with during The Dark Years:

1. He once told a male co-worker to tell our female co-worker to tell me that I needed to wear a padded bra because I was a distraction during meetings. Since he didn't tell me directly, he didn't consider it harassment.

2. If we weren't in meetings by 8:00, we got locked outside. That never happened to me.

3. He kept a record of our phone calls and named them things like "mystery caller" and kept notes about how long those phone calls were. For me, this was usually my best friend who I would call in tears saying how much I wanted to quit.

4. He yelled. A lot. He screamed until his face was blood-red and the veins in his head popped out. He once asked me what planet I was from and I really believe, had I not been on the other side of the desk from him, he would have hit me. He flung his arm at me several times.

5. He made us wear pantyhose. Not the worst thing in the world, but close. It really is just a symptom of how much of a control freak he was.

6. He kept a separate computer system from what the franchise offered/required and we were basically threatened with our lives if we let anyone know.

7. He did a lot of sneaky things that were wrong, but slippery enough to get by with them. And yet he talked a lot about integrity and honesty.

8. He fired a girl because she was fat.

9. He sent a memo to all of us calling a corporate person a bitch. It might have been the auditor. Wonder why. Huh.

10. He regularly harassed me about my clothing. I do not dress promiscuously, especially in an office setting. However, if there was a certain (abstract) amount of cleavage he wasn't comfortable with, he lectured and threatened to send me home, all the while making me feel cheap and worthless. A younger, cuter girl in the office could wear the same exact thing as me, or show more, and yet not a word was said to her.

11. He made it nearly impossible for us to quit. We were required to sign a non-compete statement in the tri-county area. He paid for us to get licensed but if we left before a certain period of time, we were required to pay him back. I finally decided the non-compete was a load of crap and started interviewing elsewhere. His reputation preceded him. People were afraid of him. I couldn't get a job in that field.

12. Did I mention the yelling? On a daily basis? None of us did anything that ever called for that. Did we make mistakes? Sure. But we were professionals and should have been treated as such. He was a tyrant. I literally didn't know from one day to the next if he was going to come into my office, slam the door, and commence screaming, or if by some miracle I would avoid it. And yes, customers could hear him.

I worked with someone who had worked for another franchise owner for something like eight years. She practically ran his business, knew what she was doing, and had proven herself as responsible and capable. HWSNBN treated her like she was a moron. Needless to say, his employee turnover rate was high. Customers commented on it.

Customers also commented on how much they disliked him. Several refused to deal with him or talk to him and would only talk to one of us. Several left because they didn't want to do business with him. And then he blamed us.

He is not an attractive man. A couple of times he had a billboard near the highway with his picture on it. His face, jumbo-sized. People called to complain. Some were nice, saying that it was merely "jarring" and could we please take it down? Others had a more violent reaction to it, saying that he looked like a child molester and they shouldn't be subjected to such ugliness on their daily drives. I wanted to tell them that I had to look at that face all day every day and it wasn't any better up-close.

Nobody that I worked with left under happy circumstances. They left because they couldn't take it anymore. Including me. I came home one evening, the night before Christmas Eve, knowing that I would be on vacation for the next week. And yet I couldn't stop crying. I couldn't shake the anxiety. I couldn't enjoy the holiday with my daughter. I no longer recognized myself. I sat down at my computer and emailed him, asking him to consider my vacation my week's notice that I was leaving. He accepted immediately.

I had no job to go to. I had never left a job without first securing another one. I had bills. I had a daughter to take care of. Rent. And yet I felt the greatest sense of relief. Just knowing I would never be yelled at by him again made it all worth it.

Oh, you know, I just realized that pimps are probably worse bosses than he is. But since it's illegal, you can expect that. You shouldn't expect that from another adult in a professional setting.

And P.S. Mr. HWSNBN: You're not the best deal in town. You may think you are, and you may lower your employee's self-esteem enough to think they don't deserve better, but you're wrong. I got a job making double what you paid me. They're nice to me. I've never been yelled at. I'm not pitted against fellow employees or asked to spy on them. I can wear whatever I want (within reason, but I'm a reasonable person), come and go as I please, and I take Christmas break off every year. Did I mention I get paid double?