Pull Your Mask Down Baby. I Want to See Your Smile.
Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash
TRIGGER WARNING ⚠️: THIS POST DISCUSSES SEXUAL HARRASSMNET AND VIOLENCE. READERS DISCRETION IS ADVISED.
I was a sophomore in college sitting on the couches by the Mainstreet market in the Tangeman University Center (TUC). The B-boy dance group was using the big study space to pop and lock as they do. I was sitting peacefully on the couch waiting for a friend to text me so that we could go to a concert together in CCM. A man came up to me and sat down. “You’re so pretty, what’s your name?” He said this while running his hands up my thigh.
Every alarm in my body went off and I told him thanks, grabbed my book bag, and walked off. I headed towards the College-Conservatory of Music (CCM) and checked behind me only to see that he was following me. I called a friend that stayed at the dorms nearby, but it went straight to voicemail. I walked down the stairs to the main entrance of CCM where people resided. I didn’t necessarily feel safer, but among people surely he wouldn’t try anything right?
Later that evening the friend I called texted apologizing for missing my call. I reiterated the situation to him. “You need to be careful.” I know, but I thought I was. I was wearing long jeans and a sweater. How much more careful could I be?
This story popped into my head when discussing the never declining issue of being sexually harassed on the street. A friend mentioned how she was trying to make new friends in a city she moved to and had agreed to share a blunt with a neighbor of hers. She reiterated how she felt stupid after he pulled his penis out and said she had “d*ck sucking lips”. She genuinely thought she was making a friend, but once again she was yet another victim of being sexually harassed by a man.
According to RAINN, 1 out of 6 American women have been the victim of an attempted assault or rape. Of course, these are just the situations that are reported. I did not report mine. I know friends who did not report theirs. The idea of attempted assault is also fuzzy. It could be being touched without offering your consent. It could be being forced to see someone’s genitals against your will. It could be someone trying to kiss you despite you saying no.
You cannot claim you are a feminist or that you protect women if you are silent in the face of women and femmes being harassed in front of your eyes.
There have been a few instances where a friend of a friend would hit on me and I flirted back but felt uncomfortable going further than that. In response to that rejection, that friend of a friend called me a tease and a hoe to all of his line bros. It was like I wasn’t allowed to take back the yes or that I wasn’t allowed to say no once a kiss started. Once a hand got too far up my shirt or one too many buttons came undone I wasn’t allowed to make it stop. There was no real control over what happened to my body because they said so.
I have listened to too many stories of friends having to get out of situations in which they never should have been uncomfortable in the first place. We deserve to exist and to choose each step we want to take. That is the meaning of consent. You get to choose what happens to your body along the way.
Men could do better. Whether or not they have assaulted someone, they may have been privy to it. Your silence is just as bad. You cannot claim you are a feminist or that you protect women if you are silent in the face of women and femmes being harassed in front of your eyes.
“Pull your mask down baby. I want to see your smile!” I was minding my own business at a gas station in Western Hills, OH when a man shouted at me. He repeated himself even though everyone outside heard him. I gave him the good ‘ol one-finger salute in response. And he gave me a series of fuck you bitches.
That wasn’t enough for him though. He proceeded to get out of his car and follow me into the store. Standing behind me in the line he loudly expressed how I thought I was too good to talk to him and that I must be deaf because I couldn’t answer. He breathed in my ear, “you ain’t got much to say now huh?”
I was fuming. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to lash out or cry or both. The most unsurprising thing is that during this interaction none of the men in the store or outside pumping gas said a thing. I noticed one person in front of me had a feminist button on his backpack. I guess his feminism only went so far.
It has happened to all of us — that instance where someone crossed the line, and we did not know how to respond. Maybe we froze up, perhaps we felt like we had no choice in the matter. Maybe we said yes when we really meant no. Consent is a huge issue when it comes to sexual harassment. Too often, people cross boundaries without consent, which can be extremely dehumanizing.
Sexual harassment is not just about sex for them. It is about power. Rapists feel like they have a right to our bodies and to our time. People who cat-call and harass women and femmes are no different. They use their words and actions to demean us. How many more conversations will I have about the never declining issue of being sexually harassed while femme?
This article appeared on Medium on August 5, 2022.
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