Ok, fine. Me too. Of course me, too. What woman hasn't been harassed in some way - received an unwanted picture via text, been scared into walking on the other side of the street, been cat-called, had some rude comment hurled at her from behind the screen of an open window? Why, just a few weeks ago my daughter happened upon a drunken man chasing a head-covered woman and her daughters down the street, calling them whores and sluts. In broad daylight.
One of the unexpected perks of being almost 50 is the invisibility factor - sexual harassment virtually never happens to me any more. Now it happens to my daughters - my daughters get unsolicited messages from men named Fernando.
The first time I was assaulted, I knew for certain that I had been assaulted. It got a little blurry in the years after that, but that first time I was very sure. I was about six years old, playing hide-and-seek with some neighbourhood kids, hiding under a bush with a teenage boy and his girlfriend. He put his hand out, grabbed my crotch, and laughed. His girlfriend said something scolding. She's just a kid. I don't remember what I was wearing.
Not long after that, a mop-haired boy about my age tried unsuccessfully to paw me. My memory of him is 40 years old, but I can still conjure it - him walking up to the front door of his house, sobbing. His dad standing in the doorway, no shirt, cigarette in hand, asking his son, What's wrong? The boy pointing at me, scrunched up face like I'd stolen his toy, I just want to sleep with her! The dad shaking his head, his hand tousling the boys hair, him looking at me and laughing. I know, I know, he said sympathetically. One day.
In second grade kids played a game at recess, called 'kiss tag', in which the boys would chase a girl, pin her to the ground and one (or more) would kiss her. Once, when I was pinned to the ground screaming, a laughing boy named Graham came and tossed a rock in my mouth. That's right - I'm naming names.
By this point I was realizing that there was a sort of selection process at play - not just every girl got chased squealing around the playground. Maybe it was as primitive as just being one of the ones who ran. Being chosen didn't exactly connote status, but I was definitely getting the message that all of this center of attention/assault stuff was supposed to be flattering.
In sixth grade I came home from school with a giant chalkboard eraser mark across the backside of my jeans where a loud boy named Darryl had whacked me as I was taking a drink from the water fountain. I tried to kidsplain to my angry mother that it was a good thing - that he had just been playing, that he had been laughing when he smacked me, that a lot of boys did it, that it meant I was pretty.
In seventh grade, standing in line at the pencil sharpener, a beautiful, mole-faced boy named Jim took the freshly sharpened lead of his pencil and poked it hard into my nipple. I stood wincing back tears as he laughed and walked back to his desk.
Seriously, why always with the laughing? Always, always there was laughing.
Years later the young emergency room doctor who treated me, without any amusement at all in his eyes, consoled me with the words, It happens a lot.
It does happen a lot. It's barely worth the words to mention the time my friend's stepfather tried to get into the bathroom while I was using it, or the time a man stopped his car while I was waiting at the bus stop to ask me if I wanted a ride, or the time some men yelled 'Show us your tits!' while I was walking down the street after a concert, or the time a man called in the middle of the night to ask how big my c**t was, or the time a man on the subway threatened to make me sorry because I wouldn't tell him where I lived.
I haven't said anything at all about things that I have seen and heard happen to other children and women. Like that time my friend's mom was sitting across the kitchen table from her own friend, and they were smoking cigarettes and crying and talking about how the friend's husband had gotten drunk and had raped her so violently that she had lost her baby. These things happen.
So, sure. I'll say #MeToo. For whatever it's worth, me, too.
But know that the other side of my one #MeToo - on the other side of every single #MeToo - is an #EtTu,Brute. Maybe that actually matters more. If we honestly want to change things, maybe it really matters a whole lot more that we start calling out the brutes and betrayers among us, that we take them seriously, that we believe them when they tell us who they are and the things that they have done.
If nothing else, please stop laughing.
Nobody says #MeToo because of one man, or for one life-derailing sexual assault. I'm just an average white woman living in one of the most decent, egalitarian countries on Earth - for me, #MeToo is because of dozens of years, and dozens of smirking, grinning and chuckling boys and men who have casually humiliated me, embarrassed me, frightened me, wounded me, abused me, damaged me, and have all together participated in shaping my experience of the world. I'm sure they didn't mean anything by it.
Personally, I don't have a need to be believed. I don't need anybody else to validate my story. I am at complete peace with myself, with my life, with all that has gone before. There is scarcely a person alive who has not lived something that they deeply regret.
I hope you're somewhere prayin', prayin'
I hope your soul is changin', changin'
I hope you find your peace
Falling on your knees, prayin'.
- Kesha
