From the age of 12 we were told that if boys pulled our hair or poked us with pencils it meant that they liked us..
But we didn’t like it that much.
We were 13 years old when we would walk down the street and had men look from our feet to our face and we’d listen as they completely replaced our identity from human to object as they said cringeworthy things to us..
We wanted to run, we were frozen in place.. But continued walking fast paced turning on whatever sidewalk was closest just to get away even if didn’t lead us in the way that we were originally going.
Because Momma always said, ‘If you see a strange man following you you go to the other side of the street and remember if they grab you, scream’.
And this is something we had to learn at the age of 13 because we are just young fiends. We were spanked by the boys at our school, but it was cool because it just meant we had nice bodies.. And they rated our bodies on a scale of one to 10, and if you were a ten, you would learn to spend your days hearing whistles, purring, and “damn girl!” Because if you were a damn girl that meant you weren’t a damn girl at all you were just a toy labelled ‘do whatever you want to me’ even though I don’t agree. And we had to watch what we wore because if too much shoulder was showing we had to change our clothing because it distracted the boys from their learning. So the only thing that we were learning were tips and tricks to tie up our shirt so that it didn’t hang too low because that would show the guys that we want it, because wearing shorts and tank tops meant that we were flaunting it.
So when we were 16, we screamed because the men that followed us on the sidewalks finally caught up to us.
We quietly said 'Please don’t touch us there we know we are asking for it by wearing these heels, but we just feel so uncomfortable, so stop.’ But that meant go, we said no but that meant yes, so they grabbed us and unzipped our dress. They threw us down where our dignity sank lower than the ground. They hovered us and we pleaded for them to stop. They got on top and you don’t need to know the rest because we are some of the 68% of victims that will never tell a soul so we’ll just grab our dresses and go home, take a few showers and try to get some sleep. In the morning, we will pick out the outfit that is most discreet because we want to make sure that no other man from the street thinks we look sweet enough to want a taste. We want to make sure we are as covered as posible so that our identities are not replaced with walking candy and we will sit at the back of the class where nobody will ask how our weekend was.. because if they ask we might just burst into tears. And we will live in fear. We will run home so that we will never see the same men again that wait for us to be alone.
We went from little boys poking us to men provoking us.
We went from little boys pulling our ponytails to watching the trail of tears fall down our pillow every night because we knew once we fell asleep, we would see the men in our dreams, no sorry, nightmares that caught up to us on the sidewalk that night and left us bare. We went from playing our toys to being toys ourselves..
So boys will be boys, and us women will never tell…
theartofmadeline
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tangentwithtanner
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