All These Little Things Add Up.
This morning on the train, a man asked if I wanted to sit
down next to him. Assuming the best, I smiled and said “no thanks, I’m getting
off at the next stop.” He then turned around, put his face about four inches
from that of the woman sitting behind him, and asked her the same thing.
Clearly uncomfortable, she said no and then got up and moved to the other side
of the train. A few minutes later, the man stood up. I moved aside to let him pass me, but he moved
with me, and pushed against me despite the fact that the train was not crowded
and there was absolutely no need to touch me at all to get through the aisle.
This incident in itself is not a big deal. Things happen,
right? People are rude sometimes. Whatever.
But when things like this happen every single day, it starts
to add up. Seemingly little things like this are things that women experience
on a daily basis. Yesterday I was waiting for my coffee in the café across the
street from my office building when a male employee asked me to move and wait
somewhere else. Only his way of “asking” was to put his hand on my waist and
push me forward, then to say “can you
go wait over there?”
It’s only 9:30 in the morning. There are still be plenty of
opportunities today for men to make me feel like my body is public property, to
make it clear that my feelings of personal space don’t matter. They will touch
me without my consent in a way that makes me feel very uncomfortable. They will
not pretend to try a verbal request first, nor will they apologize.
Pretty much every day, something like this happens. Some
days there might be nothing but other days might have multiple occurrences. And
whether or not something happens, the threat is constantly present. Over time,
it adds up.
Day after day, the message that your consent doesn’t matter,
that you are constantly available to be touched, has an effect. I hate it when
male acquaintances or even friends touch me in a way that is nonconsensual –
things as seemingly harmless as tapping my nose or putting their hand on my
shoulder make me feel uncomfortable. Sometimes even hugs don’t feel good,
though at least I somewhat consent (which is also problematic) to it if I have
to move forward and reciprocate the hug. Perhaps if I wasn’t consistently barraged
by unwanted touching from strange men, I would feel less unsafe when male
friends touched me in a friendly way.
The request is this: do not touch women who do not consent
to being touched. Especially do not touch strangers. Do not assume that women are
alright with being touched, regardless of how friendly you think you are being.
Know that even smalls acts pile onto a larger pattern that happens day after
day, and by the time women are young adults it has already added up to a lot of
negative feelings and anxiety. Having people touch you, all the time, without your consent, really sucks.
I am a hugger by nature, but I have a few male friends that apparently hug no one but me. When we're in social groups and there's a move to hug me but no one else, it bothers me. One time, an older male friend grabbed my hips while we were hugging and complimented them, and that was pretty much the last time I hugged him. Because, gross. What I find particularly nauseating is when I specifically hold my hand out for a shake and male friends are like, "nah you need a hug", and I'm like, really (as they're already hugging me and I'm trying to laugh it off)? Please tell me more about what I need, jerk.
ReplyDeleteGreat point, Cecilia...I often feel a weird pressure to hug men who I just met when saying goodbye and even though we would both really prefer a handshake, there's still some nebulous social weirdness about a woman offering her hand rather than her whole body. And the whole "you NEED a hug" thing is so obnoxious. These guys need to understand they aren't allowed access to all women's bodies, all the time, regardless of permission.
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