Accidental Blogger

Some thoughts and stories about what is arguably the largest inequality remaining in
the world: the sexual intimidation of women. This piece wasn’t
written specifically for International Women’s Day, but the coincidence in timing is certainly appropriate.

---

7:12.

Shit.

Her body released a milligram of adrenaline, enough to force her heart to
pound uncomfortably and a chill to travel from her neck down to her little toes.

She looked up from her computer screen and stared at the police phone
number, the direct line to local dispatch. Hopefully it didn’t come to
that. The operator wouldn’t speak English.

The thought of
him knocking at the door and her trying to eek out a few words in Italian
released another few debilitating shots of whatever neurochemical was starting to
poison her ability to reason.

Him. She didn’t even know who he was. He had shown up at her door one
week past with a hard knock, the thuds demanding entrance. His voice has
soon backed up the demand in accented Italian.

“What?”

“Open the door.” Flat, not openly angry, but you could imagine
suppressed rage.

“Who are you?,” her words were now flowing a little better.

“Open the door.”

“No.” She backed away, glancing around her room, looking for her mobile.
She hasn’t been completely shaken, not yet. But his next words would
completely rattle her.

“Open the door.”

Open the door. In Arabic. Who was this guy? Did he know she would
understand, or was he just guessing from her appearance? Had he seen men
enter her apartment, and now he was out to enforce his medieval
conceptions of social order?

“Go away. I will not open the door,” in Arabic now. She spotted the phone, half-hidden under her pillow.

He had gone away that time, but he had come back. Every couple days, the
evening would roll around, and at 7:30 he would show up, apparently as
pious about time as about religion. At least that was her working
assumption, as his intentions remained unclear. Did he just assume she
was some slut who was asking for it?

What was clear was her fear.

---

During my years as a willing dorm room prisoner on a U.S. college campus,
my fellow inmates would make disparaging remarks about a monthly rally
entitled Take Back the
Night. I can’t remember the exact slurs anymore, but I certainly
remember offering no defense of the rallies, much less joining them. My
thoughts at the time were limited, direct reactions to what I remember as
angry slogans shouted outside my window. Of course you have
equal rights, I imagine myself thinking; stop blaming all men for a few
unfortunate incidents.

Unfortunate incidents is, of course, a euphemism for things that
are uncomfortable to talk about, in this case sexual harassment, stalking,
and rape. Most college age men have yet to figure out how to square their
sexuality with equality, after a lifetime of mixed messages from parents
and society, and the group of angry protesters seemed to raise some primal
fear of sexual castration amongst many of my dorm mates. Everyone wanted
to get laid, and the use of alcohol was the preferred method. Some of the
events that happened under its influence likely crossed the line,
something I’m sure my co-inhabitants understood on some level. Derision of the marching women
was a measure of self-defense against what we all, at some level,
perceived as indirect (or, in the case of some, direct) accusations. We’re not rapists, we’re just horny. Perhaps there were some who were more enlightened, but they didn’t make themselves known.

While young men and women will forever be looking for sexual experience, the way
some men went about it was (and, I assume, is) deeply uninformed. During my
college years, sexual harassment was routinely dismissed, sometimes even
held up as the way to hit on women. Pseudo-scientific theories
positing women as submissive, and declaring the necessity of cajoling them
into sex, were common, often presented as half jokes that could later be
disclaimed. Much of this behavior disgusted me at the time, but often I
would just go along with it, my position in the hierarchy of the
dorm already tentative at best.

More important in my college thinking was the modifier in front of the phrase
unfortunate incidents: “few.” I was lucky to grow up before horrors of
abstinence-only education were forced upon Americans by the Christian
moralists (who still find time to cheat on their wives), so I knew the
basics of sex before leaving elementary school. But there was a gapping
hole in the entirety of my K-12 sex-ed. I don’t remember a single
discussion about sexual harassment, much less sexual assault or rape, or
the impacts upon targets and victims.

---

Moonlight lit the night, its nearly-full face reflecting off the water
in the creek. It was still cold, the winter not having completely lost
its grip, but both the walkers could imagine that spring was just around
the corner. Or maybe that was just the glass of wine from the party being
a little overly suggestive. They giggled, their voices quickly
evaporating into the trees above their heads.

A lone figure trailed the women as they laughed their way toward home.
Its gait was normal; the stride showed someone comfortable and confident.
One of the women glanced back, checking for the person whose footfalls
were clearly audible. Nothing disturbing. Just a someone walking home. It
was a common path in the middle of town, and the hour was still relatively
early.

A minute passed; the attack came suddenly, completely unexpected. He, for it was
clearly a he, jumped on the back of the taller of the two women, his
momentum knocking her to the ground. The second women jumped to the side.
A scream emanated from her gut and was then stifled by a clenched
throat, ending up in a terrified gurgle. A hand plied the hair of the knocked-down women. Her breath was coming back, and she prepared herself for a fight.

---

As a night owl, I often find myself walking home from work at rather late
hours. Midnight or later is not uncommon. Living in the rather placid
Svizzera italiana, the streets outside of the core of town are
largely abandoned at such a “late” hour. I find the silence and emptiness
quite welcoming. Fresh air, a gentle breeze, the moon glancing over of the
mountain peaks, it’s all a fabulous break from sitting in front of a
computer for far too many hours a day.

A couple of years back, it started to dawn on me a that this sense of
tranquility was not shared by many of my fellow denizens of the night.
Upon noticing me, women would pull out cell phones and have, what
I’m quite sure, where ghost conversations with ghost acquaintances. Or they would just appear
jittery, hands in their purse, possibly around a spray bottle of mace.

I’m not entirely sure what to do about these situations. Trying to
clarify my threat level, I’ll cross the street onto the opposite sidewalk, or
take another street home. This second strategy can backfire, as I turn
the corner only to find the same walker once again. These are clearly
ridiculous situations: I know I’m not a threat, yet I can’t communicate
that fact. Opening my mouth, stuttering broken Italian, and saying
anything close to “don’t worry about me,” would, no doubt, not be particularly clarifying.

I could complain about how these experiences occasionally shatter the
enjoyment of a nice walk home, but it’s clear that it is not my world that
is the unpleasant one. Many of my female friends are often less
than happy at the prospect of walking around by themselves after dark.
Some explicitly deviate from what they desire to do, preferring to
stay at home rather than walk across town, or heading home early. Statistically, I live in a
very safe community, but it’s apparently not safe enough to grant equality
to many of its citizens.

Instead of feeling safe, a pervasive fear, the kind that sits in the back of your mind, slowly and
silently assassinating your will, affects some of my female friends. It’s
not something they think about consciously every day. Rather, it pops up
at inconvenient times, while planning outings or travel. By
putting a damper on such activities, it limits their ability to do
things men take for granted: walking home late, going out to socialize
solo, traveling by oneself. It’s a sign that true equality is still a
long ways off.

---

The train was rolling through snow covered hills, the seemingly distant
hum of engine creating a slightly drowsy atmosphere. Occupants in the
coach car were mostly starting out their windows, the car empty enough
that each person had their own little kingdom, two couplets of chairs
facing each other. A couple pairs of travels carried on in near silent
conversation. No one was in a hurry to reach their destination, as that
would only bring Monday several hours closer, and the start of another
work week.

With a click and a gentle slide, the rear car door slid open. The man
that walked through sported a sparsely filled in goatee on the sharp stub of
a chin. A dark leather jacket hung over his shoulders, rustling as he
stepped forward. Clearly inebriated, he was out of place, but no one
could bring themselves to be too bothered.

The man shuffled forward to the first row of seats and proceeded to
half-sit, half-fall into the chair next to the aisle. His legs
splayed out, and his head tilted slightly to the left, toward the window
and the occupant of the seat diagonally across the row. She roundly
ignored him and continued to look out the window, the landscape rolling
by, backwards from her perspective.

Minutes passed, the man’s entry forgotten by all but those close enough to
smell him. His hand had reached out, firmly brushing the leg of the woman, and then grabbing her purse.

“What don’t you like about me?” He croaked the attempt to create pretext, his voice unable to maintain a constant pitch or volume. “Do you like it if I mess with your things?”

The verbal abuse continued as he riffled through her purse. This wasn’t thievery, but casual harassment. She made an attempt to reclaim the bag, only to have her arm roughly grabbed and then shoved away.

Across the car’s center isle, another man had been watching the situation
develop. “Hey,” the word barely escaping his lips the first time, and
then much more strongly.

“Hey! She may not like what you’re doing.”

It was likely an understatement, and the man voice was still
tentative and unsure. The intervening man’s traveling partner stared at
him, looking more confused than concerned There was a hint of anger,
as if he were saying “why are you dragging us into this?”

“Dude, she may not like that.”

This statement quickly lead to a back and forth
consisting of the drunkard’s broken, accented English, and the
intervening man’s attempt to seem both non-confrontational and assertive simultaneously. The woman remained silent the entire time, trying to shrink
away from the reality of the situation.

No one else in the carriage saw fit to intervene.

---

Take Back the Night has a program called Shatter the Silence. As
the website puts it:

“Survivors of sexual assault, rape, domestic violence, and sexual abuse are
invited to Shatter the Silence by posting your stories. […] Your strength and courage will help other
survivors know that they are not alone, and that we will not tolerate
these crimes or let them go silently into the night. Together, our stories
will help our world work toward eliminating sexual violence.”

I’d like to add another goal to the list: shattering the ignorance that
many men have about the prevalence of harassment and sexual assault.

Numbers vary depending upon assumptions and technique, but somewhere
between 20 and 40 percent of women are sexually assaulted physically during
their lifetimes. Under reporting is rife. In studies that don’t attempt
to bias for this, the numbers are remarkably consistent across countries:
20-25% of women report having been sexually assaulted physically at some
point in their life^†. That’s
somewhere between a quarter and fifth of women.

Many of my male friends scoff at such numbers. They seem unbelievable,
implying that, with high likelihood, some of the women we know, our
mothers, sisters, friends, have been assaulted. This is both deeply
disturbing and, at first, implausible, and is therefore dismissed. The women we know seem so normal, we
think to ourselves, the numbers can’t be true. But this is an illusion, created by the silence of
the victims, out of fear of further humiliation and the pain of opening up
old wounds, and an ignorance of their resilience.

Let me make a quick analogy.
Ever since coming of age politically, I have been solidly anti-war. But it
wasn’t until I meant and became good friends with people from the countries
the U.S. actively bombs, has bombed, or talks about bombing, that I
truly became radicalized. Once you know the people that the bombs kill,
the urgency of stopping war becomes much more immediate.

Personalization often has this effect. Gay-rights activists have
long recognized the power of coming out, not just for the person, but
also for their family and peers. It manifests the hypothetical, and
forces (often unpleasant) confrontation. Sometimes people shrink back
from such confrontation, but more often than not, everyone, eventually,
reaches a more realistic accommodation with reality.

The stories in this article are all from friends, recounted to me over
a couple of rounds of beer in a single evening. The endings have been
excluded on purpose, although I am happy to say everything turned out
okay in each case, if the word “okay” can even be used for such events.
Along with other stories I have heard from female friends in recent years,
they have made sexual harassment and assault an immediate reality for me.
I have also witnessed the healing that recounting such stories can provide.

As difficult as it is, I want to encourage women (and men) to tell their
stories of assault and harassment, particularly to men. Such story
telling should be integrated into sexual education programs at an relatively early age, and
repeated until at least the end of high school. The fears that women
face need to be understood, on a deep and empathetic level, by the other
sex. It is only then that we will start to see the number of “unfortunate incidents” drop from a quarter to fifth, and then, hopefully, someday, almost zero.

† See STOPVAW’s amazing list of research papers and their summary at
http://www.stopvaw.org. The
U.N.’s special report on violence against women is also an excellent source of information.