Answers to the Questions Men Have Asked Me

A couple months ago I was walking at night to meet my cousin who was flying in to visit, when a man leapt from his car, leaving it in the street, door ajar, and blocked my path. He said, “you’re beautiful, you’re beautiful, can I have your number?” He spread his arms out wide like a rancher trying to corral an unbroken horse, inching closer with a fire in his eyes. All that was missing was a rope. I was alone and my blood ran cold. I didn’t know what to do, so for the first time in one of these situations I actually told the truth:

“You’re scaring me. No, of course you cannot have my number.” He was absolutely baffled. “Why are you scared?! Why can’t I have your number??! I just told you you’re BEAUTIFUL!” Because my body does not exist for male pleasure.

A random man yelled out at my friend and me as we passed on the street in broad daylight, “Daaaaamn, y’all fine as hell! Where you going?" We were in the middle of a conversation and we ignored him. “FINE THEN, Y’ALL UGLY AS FUCK!” Good, my body does not exist for male pleasure.

I was in an underground speakeasy, and it was winter. I was wearing a loose, cropped sweater over a strappy shirt. Seeing my straps around my neck (after a series of obtuse and boorish comments), a guy at the bar asked me, “why are you wearing that sweater when there’s obviously something way sexier underneath?”

Because if I had been wearing only the strappy shirt and you had decided to assault me that would have been the first piece of evidence that my being assaulted was probably my fault. Because I choose to wear sexy clothes when I choose to wear sexy clothes and no one could pay me to wear sexy clothes for you.

Mostly though, it’s because my body does not exist for male pleasure.

In my early 20’s I was home for the summer, and someone I thought was my friend followed me after a party. We’ll call him Don. One of my best guy friends, Vick, drove me from the party to my best girl friend, Kelly’s, apartment. He noticed a truck driving erratically behind us for a few miles, and commented on how the person must be drunk or in a very foul mood. We pulled into the complex’s parking lot, and to our surprise, so did the truck, navigating like a maniac to lunge into a spot.

Vick said, “Okay that guy is acting really weird, maybe you shouldn’t get out…”

The driver got out of his car, and to our shock, it was Don.

I said incredulously, “Oh my god, that’s Don! Did you know he lived here?”

“No…do you want me to walk you to Kelly’s door?”

“No, it’s just Don,” I said, “I have no idea what he’s doing but I’m sure I’ll be fine.”

I started toward Kelly’s building as Vick drove off, and suddenly I heard footsteps behind me. I turned around to see Don barreling toward me. I gasped, “Don, what are you doing?!”

Without a word he put his mouth on mine, roughly pushed me up against a wall and shoved his hands into my shorts and underwear, groping my bare buttocks. I squirmed against him until I could push him off and ran up the stairs. As i scuttled away he yelled, "why are you being weird?" I reached Kelly’s apartment panting. This wasn’t courtship between acquaintances. There was no flirting or discussion. He saw something that he wanted, he manufactured a situation to get me alone, and then he tried to take it.

He and I never said a word about it after; we both acted like nothing happened. That wasn’t the craziest or scariest thing a man had done to me by a long shot, so at the time it was barely a blip on the radar. Now I know that at that point in my life I had come to normalize and accept this kind of behavior. It was a defense mechanism in the face of a constant barrage of insults to my autonomy.

So this one’s for the men I know and trust this time: my body does not exist for male pleasure.

A few months ago I was in a Mexican bar where there was Latin dancing. A man asked me to dance so I said, “sure,” and reveled in the thrill of being twirled. After a song I returned to my friends, and then we all decided to go home. They left while I paid my tab, and as I was leaving, I noticed my dance partner following me out. On the street he stopped me to try and get my number. I said, “No, sorry, I don’t give my number to strangers,” and kept walking. He followed, yelling after me: “What about Facebook? Where are you going? Can I come?” I sped up in the direction of my house and decided to cross the street, still with him in pursuit. As I hit the crosswalk I merged paths with a stranger. I matched his pace and quietly said to him, “Can you pretend to be my friend for a few minutes? This guy is following me.” We walked for a block before running into a bunch of his friends, where I said “thank you” and veered off to walk home alone. The first man had disappeared as soon as I made contact with another male.

My body does not have a Finders-Keepers policy. Touching it does not give you claim to it. My body is not “up for grabs” if it is not in the possession of another man. In college I was almost abducted and/or assaulted twice. The first was in broad daylight as I was walking around the town taking photos for photo class. My survival instincts turned my stomach to ice as I passed a parking lot on the other side of the road. A man was sitting there in an old beat up truck, watching me. He hadn’t made a single move, but I knew instantly I needed to get as far away from him as possible. As soon as I thought I was out of his sight I took a side alley rather than continuing down the deserted street I was on. But he figured that out quick. He drove his truck into my alley and screeched to a halt diagonally in front of me, cutting off my exit. He opened his door and said, “Get in.” I was frozen. I was a deer looking down the barrel of a shotgun and I had no words.

Fight or flight?

I finally fumbled for my phone. “Are you gonna get in?” He hadn’t physically tried to get me into the car, so I didn’t think it warranted an emergency. I called my roommate and pretended I was talking to the cops. He grunted angrily and sped off. My body does not exist for whatever the FUCK that guy thought he was going to do to me. The second time, I was leaving my apartment to study in the library. It was night. I crossed the street between my apartment and the rack that held my bike, and noticed two male figures emerging from the shadows to my right. That familiar prick of mortal fear told me to up my pace, and suddenly they were running. I leapt onto my bike just as fingers lunged at my clothes and I sped away faster than I knew I was capable of. I didn’t look back.

At a far enough distance, choking on my shock and the exertion, I called the police: “Two men just tried to grab me as I was getting on my bike.” “Did they actually touch you?” The male officer asked from the other end of the line. “I don’t think so—I don’t know, I sped off. They were chasing me but I got to my bike first.” “So neither of them did anything to you?” “No....because I got away...” “So why are you calling the police?” Because my body does not exist to be victimized.

Because women make up over half of the world’s population, and as a single woman it shouldn’t be weird, sad, stupid, or unsafe for me to navigate this world on my own. Because these are only a few of the countless stories I could tell you of being afraid for my dignity, my autonomy, and my life, in a public space.

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“What's your name? What's your name?! I almost had sex with you!!” a man I had had no prior conversation with drunkenly slurred at me as he fell heavily to the ground, laughing; as if the concept of my permission or consent either didn’t exist or was simply never a factor in his decision-making process.

And that’s the crux of it, isn’t it? The Patriarchy operates under the assumption that female bodies belong to whichever male claims them, not to themselves. How can property own property? Absurd! Quick, someone shove your flag into this one before someone else takes it!

So, why don’t victims of sexual assault come forward sooner or at all? Because as much as our attackers don’t want to believe they victimized us, we don’t want to believe we’ve been victimized tenfold. It’s a hard thing for the mind to process that it wasn’t in control of its body for that period of time; that another, alien, mind was working our precious body like a lifeless puppet. Survivors don't come forward because it’s so ingrained in us that other people are entitled to our bodies, and we’re so used to that being the reality of our daily lives, that it’s a sliding scale even to us. Because sometimes it’s hard to see what was done to us as monstrous, until we see it being done to someone else. And THAT’S when we actually know we have to stop it.

Because in all honesty, if our bodies don't exist for male pleasure, we're not sure that they exist at all.

Almost none of the above anecdotes constitute sexual assault. My point is that it’s hard to figure out at what point you were “merely” harassed or groped, at what point you were “solely” made to feel unsafe or flee for your life, at what point you were forced into sexual acts in which you didn’t actually want to participate, at what point what happened to you couldn’t reasonably be blamed on you, and at what point you need to swallow your fear and shame to keep what happened to you from happening to others. The constant onslaught of reminders in the public space that our bodies don’t belong to us has set the bar of what's bearable so, so low. So if you think the current climate of #metoo is ludicrous and unfounded and over-the-top, you are wrong. This is merely the tipping of the scales in the favor of justice.

The fact is, the public space still does not belong to women, because the female bodies we use to navigate public spaces still do not belong to women. If people believe they can do whatever they want to us when there are witnesses, what do they consider themselves entitled to when they think no one else is watching? We are reminded daily that our bodies do not belong to us, in public, in law and legislation, in our neighborhoods, and in the news. Yes, all women. Yes, all the time. And [so far] I am one of the very, very, very “lucky” ones.

Let that sink in.

I stand with all the victims and survivors. I am so sorry that happened to you. I'm proud of you. I believe you. We will fight this together.