What do you see in this photo? A smiling woman? I don't. I see a woman "going along to get along" even though it makes her sick. I see a man looking at the camera as if to say “See? I can take whatever I want, and they can’t stop me.”
I used to draw. Mostly people. I learned early on that the slightest mistake — a pencil stroke here or there in the wrong place - will change an entire expression, and even the identity of a person. It gave me a little more insight into expressions, and body language — what people are saying without words.
This woman is not smiling. She’s pretending to smile, but her whole face and all of her body language is screaming “GET HIM OFF ME.” I have a feeling most women will recognize this expression as well, since most of us have worn it at one time or another.
So why is she putting up with it? Why is she letting him get away with this?
I believe most of us — men or women — will get it. Because he has power over her. Because he’s “The Boss.” This photo screams at me, and says “This is what you have dealt with your entire life. What almost all women have dealt with. This is our culture, in one photo.”
Nearly every woman I know has been through something like this, and usually — far worse.
Often.
So the question becomes: Why don’t we fight them? Why don’t we quit the job where we’re being harassed by a coworker or boss? Why don’t we take those who assault us to court?
My answer is: Which ones? All of them? How do you choose?
Why we sometimes don’t fight back: Which one of these men is that extremely dangerous guy who will pull a gun and shoot you? Which one will try to strangle you? Which one will stalk you for years? Even just the guy who yells something crude at you on the street can be dangerous. You. Never. Know. That’s the problem.
Why don’t we take them to court: Which day in court will destroy your life, because nobody believes you? If you went to court every time, then you’d have a “reputation” as a complainer, even if every single thing that happened to you happened in broad daylight in front of witnesses.
YOU would be ruined. They would not.
If every woman took men to court every time they were harassed, grabbed, groped, raped, molested, or what-have-you — the court system would be bogged down to the point of immobility. So would the nation. That’s how prevalent this kind of behavior IS.
Yes, it has to stop, but it is the MEN who need to stop it. Who need to realize that women are human beings, not toys to be played with, or property to take out their aggression on.
Men need to teach their young boys that women and girls deserve respect, as equals.
Donald Trump disgusts me, and I’m far from alone in that. But most of us, as women, are not that shocked by his behavior, because we have seen it before, many many times. And truth be told, there are men out there defending him because they know their behavior has been just as bad, and yet they see nothing wrong with it. “It’s just locker room talk.”
His diehard supporters do not want him to drop out of the race, because apparently he still represents them.
What Donald Trump represents is our rape culture — THIS is what women have been saying forever when we talk about that. The idea that men can grab us, grope us, and more, because we’re “just women.”
No, we’re not terribly shocked to hear it coming from Donald Trump — but we ARE shocked that this man wants to be president AND MIGHT ACTUALLY GET ELECTED. THAT is what is shocking to us. It is a repudiation of our entire lives, of our whole existence, that a man this vile, and this open about how entitled he feels to do whatever he pleases to any woman…. might hold the highest office in the land. That is what’s shocking. Yes, some are pushing back against what he said, but not enough are.
Our nation is, sadly, filled with those who behave like Trump. Who see women as property.
I have been grabbed from behind in broad daylight — a man grabbed my breasts with one arm/hand and my crotch with the other and slammed himself up into my body from behind with a loud grunting noise.
I froze. In shock. This could NOT be happening. It was only a few seconds before I unfroze and whipped around, but by then he was gone. Apparently, after following me for several blocks, he had grabbed me at a place where he knew he could go to ground quickly. I never saw his face, but I slept with a baseball bat for weeks.
By the way, if you freeze in shock instead of fighting back or running, know this: That is a natural reaction. Everyone reacts differently.
FREEZING DOES NOT MEAN YOU ACCEPT WHAT IS HAPPENING. It means you can’t believe anyone could do something so vile, and your mind is trying to catch up to reality. YOU ARE NOT TO BLAME. I saw someone mention this yesterday, and they felt guilty. THEY were attacked, but they felt the guilt. That is how we, as women, have been trained — to accept the guilt for a man’s behavior. We don’t have to do that anymore. Ever again.
Years ago I was flashed (and so was my daughter) by a man on a foot ferry. Idiot. The captain called the police from the boat, and they were waiting on the other side. He didn’t show up for the hearing, and the case just vanished into thin air. No idea if he’s still doing it, or if he’s “graduated” to rape. Apparently the court system didn’t think it important enough to pursue.
I’ve been “date” raped twice. (It’s really just rape.) Once by a man I was seeing, and the first time by a man who worked at an office I had to do business with. Why didn’t I turn him in? Because it would have been my word against his. Because everyone there liked him. Because I had to go back there many times after, and I know my life would have been torn apart — again. And again.
He would have gotten sympathy, and I would have been reviled. Not to mention the fact that by that time…. I had been through so many things in my life that the idea of “going along to get along” was now part of my soul. As a woman, it gets beaten into you from a very young age…. for me, it was my father who hammered that into my being. I don’t remember most of the things he did to me, but the reminder (in my thirties) that we DID have a workshop on our childhood property brought me up out of a dead sleep that night, screaming my throat raw at the nightmares that my brain produced, trying to keep the memories suppressed.
It took therapy to finally bring a halt to those horrific nightmares.
There was so much more. I was sexually harassed at work. Had a man pull a gun on my sister and I from a car window. Why? No freaking idea. So many incidents I’ve forgotten some of them, I’m sure — at least for the moment.
I was in sitting in bed reading one night, and thought I heard a raccoon fumbling around in the darkness outside my window. When I looked out through the blinds, what I saw was the lower half of a naked man, masturbating. I jumped back, and slapped the window. He didn’t even slow down…. so I called the police. He left then, and the police (of course) found nothing — and they were halfhearted about the whole thing to begin with. I told the management of our apartment complex about it, and they obviously did not believe me (or care). Not until he peeped another woman in the complex — someone I didn’t know. Management, to their credit, apologized for not believing me, but it just goes to show how women are treated when they bring up this sort of thing — as if we’re just “silly, hysterical women.”
Met Ted Bundy when I was fifteen, and was lucky enough that I didn’t get in the car with him.
My first husband was abusive.
I KNOW what men are capable of. Most women do.
So, tell me — which incidents do you take to the police? Which ones do you fight? How many times can you fight back before nobody listens to you anymore — or before a man kills you?
THIS is why women “go along to get along” because if we fought back every time a man said or did something to us, that’s all we would be doing our entire lives. If we survived.
Sometimes we want to have a life outside of dealing with creeps. And sometimes you cannot escape the creeps, because if you leave home, and your job, and the next job, and the job after that, and leave your husband, and boyfriend….. you end up homeless, broke and alone.
Or if you punch a guy who says something dirty to you — or even respond with a nasty word when he’s being rude — you might just end up dead.
That, my friends, is why it is called “rape culture.” Because men know they can keep doing those things. Because they know that the sheer volume of it is what protects them — that and our system of putting men’s lives first. If you don’t think that’s true, look at the athletes who commit rape, and see how society treats the “potential loss of their promising careers” vs. how they treat the woman who has been damaged — oops, I mean, the slut who tried to destroy that poor young man’s life with her accusations!
It wears you down. Yeah, you fight the big ones… sometimes… and other times you just keep pushing forward and try to forget, so that you can try to squeeze a little joy into your world, instead of focusing on all that has been and IS BEING done to you.
So yeah, when someone like Donald Trump “grabs her by the pussy” because he knows she’ll “let him do whatever he wants” it isn’t because she’s enthralled with him, or okay with it in any way.
It’s because she knows the world she lives in. She knows that as a rich man, he can pretty much have his way, and if she fights, SHE WILL BE RUINED. Not him. Even now, it should be shocking that so many are defending his words… but it isn’t.
Not for those of us who are female, and have had to spend our entire lives dealing with assholes like him.
Until this is fixed, women will be forced to “go along to get along” or be sliced, diced and ground into the dust.
We Know.
For all the women out there: Know this. YOU ARE NOT TO BLAME FOR THE THINGS THAT HAVE BEEN DONE TO YOU. You have no reason to feel shame — the only one who should feel shame is the man who attacked you.
And if you chose not to fight back, or go to court, or quit your job, or whatever — I get it. I think most of us do… because sometimes there are so many battles that it wears you down, and tears you apart. Sometimes you have to choose to forget in order to move forward. No, I am NOT saying “lie down and take it.” I’m saying choose your battles, fight when you can, push back when you can — but when you cannot, know that we understand. Know that sometimes the pain is just too much, and it can consume you.
AGAIN: YOU ARE NOT TO BLAME.
And if anyone tries to make you feel like a bad person because you didn’t fight back at some time in your life, ask them (or yourself) this:
WHY AREN’T YOU GOING AFTER THE MAN WHO DID THIS INSTEAD OF ATTACKING ME??
We need a sea change. We need good men to stand up to those who commit these acts. We need good men to step up, and shut down that “locker room talk” whenever possible. To stop their friends when they hear them demeaning women, or discussing their “conquests.” That is the only way we will ever see a positive change. For once, the onus should not be on the victims of this kind of behavior to fix it.
This is one of the many reasons I’ll be voting for Hillary Clinton, quite enthusiastically.
Because if Donald Trump wins, rape culture wins. And it might be your “pussy” next. Or your mother’s. Or your daughter’s.
He is the embodiment of rape culture, and he’s running for president.
We are the only ones who can stop him, so please — do NOT stay home on election day!!
UPDATE: I should have included this link in the diary, not in comments, but it took me a while to find the "edit” button — yes, it's been that long since I wrote a diary.
I wanted to link to the excellent diary by juslikagrzly that inspired me to write my original comment that became this diary:
“It has happened to me, it has happened to you.”
Please check it out - it's well worth the time!! Thanks!
