trigger warning: sexual harassment, assault
If you ask any woman about her first sexual encounter, there is an extremely high chance that her experience is negative, and it happened when she was uncomfortably young. I am no different. https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/02/21/587671849/a-new-survey-finds-eighty-percent-of-women-have-experienced-sexual-harassment
I spent last week having to process a traumatic event from twenty-three years ago, one that was partly shaped by having negligent parents, but one that also shaped my future experiences with men in general.
Disclaimer: if you feel called out, then it’s probably because you are toxic and you perpetrate abuse against women or protect those that do.
My first story, I’ve briefly shared in another blog post but I’m going to share it again. I was between ten and twelve years. My mom had taken me to the mall. She let me hang out by myself in the Natural Wonders store (Natural Wonders then became the Discovery Store and now it just isn’t a thing that exists anymore) while she went to one of the major department stores. So I was in the back of Natural Wonders playing this weird instrument and an adult man came up behind me and told me that I was playing beautifully and to keep playing. He then stood next to me, too close to me (I am kneeling in front of this instrument on the shelf) and he put his penis on my hand. I pulled away and I didn’t know what to do. I was neglected by my parents and I was taught that adults were trustworthy and I had never been faced with a situation like this. I think he coaxed me to play again and I (stupidly) did and of course, he touched me with his penis again and I made up an excuse and I left the store as quickly as my legs would carry me without arousing suspicion. I ended up running to the mall bathroom and hiding in there for a few minutes, washing the invisible dirt off of my hands, panicking because I had no idea how to reach my mom (the horrors of a pre-cell phone world). I left the safety of the bathroom to look for my mom and I ran into this asshole again and he asked me why I left so quickly. I was mortified. I made up an excuse and I ran away and I finally found my mother. I dragged her out of the mall until she stopped at the entrance and would not go any further until I told her why I needed us to both leave. And to her credit, she was pissed. Her inner mama bear came out and she wanted to march back in, find Security and find the asshole. But I forced her to leave instead. I felt so much shame and embarrassment that this had happened to me. I felt gross. I felt disgusting. It was violating. And when I told my father, he didn’t acknowledge my experience. I was only met with indifference and silence. My father didn’t have the capacity to care that his youngest daughter was molested at the mall. He failed me. Not only that but even at that age, I understood that to protect myself from further humiliation or harm, I had to ‘soothe’ this perpetrator and make up excuses to not hurt his ego. Women (and men too) go to great lengths to pretend to be nice in dangerous situations because we do not know if a man will show us violence.
Last week, a middle school classmate of mine died. His name was Roger. While he has a whole group of people who are mourning him and saying “he was the nicest guy,” my memory of him is quite different. When I was in 7th grade, I was in a woodshop/metalshop class and I shared a table with four people, one being Roger. I thought Roger was funny and we became friends, bonding over Nine Inch Nails. We would call each other and he would prank call random numbers or other classmates with me on the line and we’d laugh. One day he asked me out and I said “no.” I don’t really remember how it all escalated but I think I got pretty good at avoiding him. But he began to prank call my house. Over time it escalated to where it sounded like he was masturbating on the other line. It was horrifying and disturbing. I was home alone all the time. I didn’t feel like I had anyone to confide in and I was scared. I am not sure about the order of events that followed, but I did the only thing a neglected child without a support system could think to do. I wrote him a mean and immature letter, telling him to leave me alone and for dramatic effect, to hang himself with his telephone cord. See, back in those days, phones had cords and were attached to the wall at all times in order to work. Yeah, I’m old. I know it was immature and inappropriate and I would never tell someone to kill themselves now but I was desperate and no one taught me how to handle this kind of situation. One morning I was heading towards my first class. I saw him in the crowd walking towards me and I tried to avoid him but he came at me like a torpedo and pinned me against the wall with his stomach. It was horrible and embarrassing and I fought like hell to get away from him. It may have been the same day or at least the same week but later on I was called to the principal’s office. Once I got there I began to understand what was happening. Roger turned in the letter I wrote in an attempt to get me into trouble. Or his mother did. I honestly don’t know and I don’t care. I had to sit in front of Assistant Principal Mark Stricklin and explain, in horrible detail, why I wrote the letter. I was so embarrassed and I felt so much shame. Roger did get in trouble, but for some reason the school neglected to call my parents. Seriously, they had no idea this happened. For some reason one of the administrators (I don’t remember which adult in the office) told me that Roger’s mom wanted to speak to me and I had to talk to her on the payphone out in front of the school instead of the safety of the office. She apologized profusely for her son’s behavior and for some awful reason I was made to soothe and comfort her when it was ME who was assaulted. This is the trauma I’ve been processing this past week and understanding just how badly all of the adults had failed me in this moment. My parents failed me by neglect, and the school failed me by forcing me to deal with sexual harassment and assault by myself with absolutely no adults to advocate for me. And of course, because I was only thirteen and felt so much shame and embarrassment and would rather fly under the radar, living quietly and without disturbing anyone, I didn’t tell many people about my experience, even though there were tons of witnesses. You know how it is at thirteen. I was terrified of any and all unwanted attention from anyone and everyone. And talking to my family at this point was impossible with my sister moved out of the house, my dad already proving himself as untrustworthy (deadbeat alcoholic), and my mother working two jobs and barely being home. This had been my first experience (certainly not my last) with a male person showing me anger and violence at rejection. I didn’t owe him anything. Women don’t owe men anything for showing kindness. We often do it out of fear. Men are not entitled to women’s bodies or energy. PERIOD. Luckily he left me alone after this and we never spoke to each other again, even though we would go on and attend the same high school too.
What I am also finally coming to terms with is how I’ve let people take up my energy and space when they did not deserve to have it in the first place. I had a friend from about this same time period and for whatever reason, Roger was part of his friend group. I always felt conflict around that, whether I spoke about it or not. I’m not sure if I had told him about this experience. I was never good at conflict or expressing my needs. It’s something I am learning how to do. But I have since realized that this person has never been “safe.” He is racist, he is sexist. When he texted me to let me know Roger died and gave me some plea about how life is short and I am family and he didn’t want to lose touch over politics, I told him that Roger sexually harassed me in middle school and I couldn’t give him the type of energy he was looking for. He never responded. It would have been okay to say “this is new information and I need time to process,” but instead, he gave me silence. This tells me that he will protect the memory of this dead racist/sexist person instead of acknowledging my experience at all. I cannot separate the trauma that happened to me and the fact that this “friend” was a friend of the perpetrator. He cannot have it both ways. He has proven for the last time that he is not worthy of me. I have been doing all of this emotional work over trauma while the perpetrator’s protectors do none of it. They sit in their privilege and comfort without having to raise a finger to be better. I am done letting toxic people minimize my feelings and experiences. I have put up boundaries. However he and others deal with that is not my problem.
A racist misogynist died last week. He was apparently nice to other white men and they will protect him and his memory. I don’t offer condolences, he has plenty.
Dawning 