TKTC

I have lived my entire life with this threat of sexual violence hanging over my head: I’ve experienced it too. They’re hitting me where I live.

Women can’t threaten men with sexual violence and make men feel small and want to crawl out of their own skin; it’s taken a lifetime of violent socialisation just like this (men leering out of cars since I was 12, peers reaching between my legs in junior high, uncles getting too close, sports coaches grabbing my hips, being groped on transit, being sexually assaulted) to provoke this visceral reaction in me. Men haven’t experienced this constant background radiation of violation that contextualises moment like this.

I get well-intended messages from men: “I’m sorry you had to experience that.” “Those kids are jerks.” I do appreciate people reaching out. The thing is: in the context of my life experiences, this wasn’t even a particularly traumatic incident, so much as an illustrative one. It’s one of thousands of these moments.

I made me sad and a little contemplative, sure, but I’ll get by; feminism really helps with that, because it gives me this (almost) unshakable belief that I am human.

But I don’t want to hear: “those [particular] kids are jerks.”

I want to hear: “I’m not going to tolerate misogyny in my own life, and among my social circle. This stops now; it stops with me.”

There is no threat I can make to a man that will make him hate the fact he was born in the body he was born in. The second I start thinking I’m a person, someone reminds me that to them, I’m just a hole. I’m a bitch. I actually can’t make them see I’m a person. That has to come from other men.

As I get older, I get more and more angry when men I know are hostile to feminism. Because it means they aren’t really listening, or even caring, when I describe the reality of my life. Feminism is my refuge, and the sole source of my belief that I’m not deserving of the way I’m treated. It is the only movement that has dared to put forth the radical belief that women are people.

It was my turn to make dinner for the girls tonight. KP ran to my house and just rinsed off when she got here, proceeding to smell all the different herbs I’d clipped for our pasta. Gina, Bec and Joner arrived and everybody immediately launches into stories between bites and goes just like that for hours.

By the time they’re buttoning up to go, I decide I don’t want to wait and open the superbly taped up box from my parents by myself (I routinely bring boxes over to Molly’s to unwrap, even if I know what it is. No idea why).

I will have to take a picture in the morning of what was in the box. My mom kept saying on the phone “it’s just something little.” It may be one of the best presents I’ve gotten. I can be a tough girl to surprise. I love to be on the planning end, a product of my father’s always “having something up his sleeve.” But I’m nosy and a busybody on top of it and I just love to know exactly what’s going on.

In the box was a beautiful ceramic platter I’d seen over the holidays in one of those thrift/antique stores that feels like walking into a treasure chest- Sarasota Trading Company. It wasn’t a super pricey thing but it was just after the holidays and you know how that goes. I fell for an old wooden bar 5 minutes later and just left it at that.

But she went back for it. Carted it all the way from Florida to Massachusetts when they made their migration. Packed it up in bubble wrap and got it to Chicago before I go out of town again tomorrow. That makes it the absolute best kind of present.

Hello Women’s History Month.