I've debated writing this over and over again. Does my experience count? Do my words matter? Is my story important? And then I thought about how I would feel if someone I loved experienced what I have and it stopped being a debate, and the process of putting my heart and thoughts into words began.
I still remember the first time I felt like an object. I was in middle school and I had "developed" a little faster than most of the other girls in my grade. A group of boys was going around and popping the bra straps of girls in the hallways between classes. Before I fully understood what was happening, it was my turn. Having someone pop my bra would have been uncomfortable enough, but this boy somehow unhooked my bra. I crossed my arms and went to the bathroom, face red and eyes blurred to fix my clothes. Then I went to class.
I always gave my mom the "bad boy report" after school, tattling on the boys in my class for being rude or weird, but I didn't include that incident in the report. I didn't tell anyone, somehow internalizing it as being my fault for developing quickly.
While that was the first time I felt like a thing instead of a person, it was by no means the last. Somehow, being an unattached woman in college and now means that I am in some way seen as deficient. While walking into the store by myself I have been told "Baby I'll take care of you if you take care of me" with a gesture I'm sure you can imagine attached. I just put my head down and walked a little faster, red faced yet again. I've had boys in college classes have a conversation about me, in front of me, about how since I didn't put in "effort" to look nice for class at 8:00 am, I must put in "effort" in the bedroom. Yet again, I didn't say anything and tried to shrink down and be invisible. Once on a plane I felt someone staring at me and turned from the window to see the man in the seat next to me staring blatantly at my chest. I stared back eyebrows raised until he looked at my face. He then smiled, shrugged, and went right back to staring. There was little I could do except shift away from him, cross my arms and go back into my bubble, enduring it for the next hour and a half we had together. I've had strangers pull me in for hugs, or put their hands in my back pockets, suggest how they could make things more interesting for me, suggest how I should dress or what parts of my body I should emphasize. Ive been groped in crowds, not even knowing who it was and more than once, had to push someone off my person who seemed to believe I "wanted it". It seems as if many men feel like they get to comment on my life and choices as I am not already "claimed" by one.
But I am still one of the lucky ones. I am one of the only women I know without a sexual assault story. While I have been harassed, embarrassed, and uncomfortable, I haven't been raped. And this makes me in the vast minority of women I know. There is something about being used or looked at as an object that makes you feel covered in shame. I know I have had the thoughts "Well I am walking alone" or "Well I am wearing make up today" as if that somehow means that the comments, gestures and stares can be excused or justified. The guilt from these situations is almost always immediately internalized because there must be some reason why someone acted that way. There had to have been reason for someone to think that I would accept their actions towards me.
But it isn't a compliment. It isn't flattering and it isn't invited. Yes means yes, and no means no, but both are answers to a question that isn't being asked. There is a liberty that is being taken because I am a woman. Because I am woman, some men feel like they can say and act in certain ways without first getting my consent. What is truly frightening is that these men exist everywhere and until I sat down and really thought about it, I didn't think I had a story to tell. I have wonderful men in my life who did everything I can possibly think of while I was growing up to help me have a good sense of self. I know I am created for a purpose by a God who loves me and wants my good. I know right from wrong and that my voice matters and that I am entitled to personal boundaries, and this still happens to me. So yes, unfortunately, me too. But hopefully, because we are staring a dialogue now, in the future, we can say not them.
