ONE
I think sometimes of all the bad things that could happen to me. Does anybody else do this? All the ways I could be hurt, the exact level and amount I could suffer, and survive.
It started, I think, in elementary school, while watching West Side Story with my parents. That scene where the Jets taunt Anita. Her shirt is fuchsia and her hair is short and her mouth is loud, and I love Anita the best out of everyone, sort of in the same way Rizzo was my favorite in Grease. I have always been drawn to loud women, to brusque women, to women who are defiantly nothing more, or less, than exactly who they are.
Anita disappears under pale arms and shouting. I ask my father, “They raped her, didn’t they?” Maybe it’s the first time I’ve ever said that word aloud. I try to remember just how many of them there were, and what I would do in a scene like that, how fast could I run, how loud could I yell, and if I ran the fastest, and yelled the loudest, would it make a difference.
I think I was maybe ten years old. My father doesn’t answer.
TWO
In middle school I get in trouble for wearing denim minidresses and high black boots, shirts made of lace, jeans that show my skin from hip to ankle in an inch wide gap held together by suede string. All around terrible fashion sense, but I love going to the mall. My mother shakes her head as I walk to the car each morning, but she lets me decide what I want to wear. Later, she’ll drive to school, pissed off and long-suffering, with more appropriate jeans and an I-told-you-so. And I’ll roll my eyes right back, and do the same thing the next week, because I like the attention, even when it comes in the forms of thirteen year old boys sticking quarters down the back of my pants. For blowjobs, they say.
I don’t know what a blowjob is, and once it’s explained, I’m mostly concerned with the nomenclature. Why blow job, if you’re not actually blowing on it?
THREE
My best friend and I do cartwheels on her front lawn after school, giggling when our shirts go up, smirking at each other when we hear whistles from the cars driving by. Is there anything better than being looked at? Is there any other way to know you’re beautiful?
FOUR
Eighth grade. I’m walking with my mother and kissing noises squeeze their way wetly out from the cracked windows of the cars driving by. It’s summertime and I shout FUCK OFF. “Don’t do that,” my mother says, and I feel a thrill, of terror, of rage. It is the thrill of knowing my young body is desirable, is noticed, and the terrifying certainty, dimly recognized, of knowing I have no way to defend it.
Later on, we’re on line at McDonald’s, and a man, tall, thin, with dirty blond hair and clearly drunk, presses up against my mother as she orders our food. I freeze. I say nothing. The girl behind the counter is only a few years older than me. She freezes too. I hear my mother, tiny and brave, say through gritted teeth, “Get your hands off me.” She’ll tell me later that it took her years to be able to say that. It will take me years, too.
The man giggles.
FIVE
I dream my mother and I are in a forest, in a circle of men with no faces, who hold shovels and bare their teeth. Then I’m floating above their laughter, looking down into a pit of bones. I dream this more than once. I dream it frequently.
Whenever a man says something to me on the street now, I want to remove his face.
I’m told this is inappropriate.
SIX
I’m trying to think of ways to make it less dangerous:
walking around, existing.
There are things I could do, classes I could take.
I could make myself more dangerous.
I could learn how to hit — harder, more accurately.
I could learn to throw knives.
SEVEN
In ninth grade, a van follows me home. It moves less like a machine and more like an animal, somehow, a stalking thing, and I think: the sun is setting and I’m alone and most abductions occur 2.5 blocks from home. Was that true, or was it a statistic I made up just to scare myself into walking faster? Do decimal points make me feel less like prey?
Here is another statistic I read recently: A man is more likely to get struck by lightning than to be falsely accused of rape. (I don’t know if it’s true, but it seems likely.)
Here is a true story: A Vietnam War veteran went to a self-defense class to support his girlfriend. She was told to be vigilant, always. She was told to be aware of her surroundings, always. She was told to hold her keys between her fingers like a weapon, to be prepared at all times for an attack, to treat every stranger like a potential enemy, a potential threat. Her boyfriend — a soldier, a vet — said it reminded him of his war training. War training is how I walk home from the subway after dark.
Here is a true, sad story: Overwhelmingly, it is not strangers we have to treat as threats.
EIGHT
I keep thinking about a performance art piece Yoko Ono did in 1965, called cut/piece. She sits on stage in a dark room, the light above her harsh and hard. Her face is still. Her body is covered in black — a cardigan, buttoned, a skirt. There are scissors next to her: heavy, long-bladed, cold. One-by-one, people step up and cut away a scrap of clothing, and I thought: How brave, to sit there, hands folded, with a weapon you don’t reach for, and strangers in the room. The women cut little bits — a swath of sleeve, small and soft, hardly noticeable as it leaves Ono’s collarbone, her wrist. One cuts a line up to her shoulder, and lets the sleeve fall open. It’s so precise, it almost looks as if the cardigan was designed that way.
Men start to come up to the stage. Some of them are visibly uncomfortable. Some of them are arrogant: they saunter, they grin. All of them cut much more from Ono than any of the women did.
NINE
Two days after the van followed me home, I tell my mother. We go to the precinct. There is a bulletin board filled with the brown and black faces of girls who have vanished in our neighborhood. I stare. A police officer, a woman, walks over to us. She’s tired. The precinct is dim and quiet. Everyone just wants to go home. I tell her — a van followed me home.
—When, she says.
—2 days ago.
—Did you get a license plate?
She’s my mother’s height, with similar dark eyes, and longer, grayer hair. Her voice does not lift at the end of any of her questions.
—No, I say. But it was red. Maroon. A maroon van followed me home.
—What do you want me to do about it? she says. Next time, come to us sooner, and with a license plate.
I resolve to learn the phonetic alphabet, for next time.
TEN
Next time is a year later, less than a block away from home. A white SUV. I don’t get the license plate, but I hold my keys between my fingers and sprint away from where I’m headed. This is something my mother taught me: run against traffic, and don’t lead them home.
I double back once he’s gone. Home, base, safe.
I do not tell my mother. I do not tell the police.
ELEVEN
When I was seven, my older cousin used to tell me about sex. He’d keep me up at night, make me do push ups and crunches in bed so that I wouldn’t fall asleep. According to him, sex was filled with monsters like in the video game, Doom, which we used to play together, which I would only play as long as I could cheat and become invulnerable. Monsters ate breasts like they were sandwiches, he said. (You may be wondering, how? Do they smoosh them together and bite? Do they coat them in lettuce and mayonnaise? Are they served toasted, with dill pickles? Do they use whole wheat, or rye?)
It seems funny to me now. It seems not funny.
TWELVE
Tenth grade: A boy in our class keeps touching my friend in the hallway, even though she is saying no and stop. I push him against the wall and raise bruises on his shins with the pointed tips of my boots. He calls me a bitch.
Fine. I’m a bitch.
THIRTEEN
I join the fencing team. I like fighting with swords. I like the ache in my body when muscles tear. I like the feeling of strong, and the bruises that bloom up and down my arms (not target), that change colors as they heal. My math teacher asks if everything is alright at home. When boys double over because I’ve hit them in the nuts (target), I laugh.
I’m told this is inappropriate.
I think, nastily, that if they weren’t wearing athletic cups, they must have been asking for it.
I’m sure this is inappropriate too.
FOURTEEN
In eleventh grade, we learn about Kitty Genovese and the bystander effect. We read Beloved, and I cry, and cry, and dream about teeth, and bones, and burning things.
I start a club at school. I tell the dean I want to perform The Vagina Monologues, but you’re not allowed to say the word vagina in high school, except maybe in health class, maybe, and definitely not on stage. So we make posters instead about eating disorders and loving your body. I don’t realize the irony until later. You can love your body, but god forbid you name it.
FIFTEEN
College is a mess.
Freshman year: I am full of tequila and lime and away-from-home giddiness. A boy walks me back to my dorm. He kisses me like it’s a video game you can start over, like you can use another life and maybe get past the button-down level this time, and into the bra, and finally defeat the twin bosses, the boobs. Every no is just a chance to try again.
I say, no. I say, I’m sorry. He calls me a good girl.
The next morning I tell my best friend, a boy I’ve known since I was five, and have loved almost as long. I say, David kissed me last night, and it was o.k., but I stopped him and now I feel awkward. My best friend says, you were drunk, Christina, and David already told me what happened, how you started making out with him when he put you to bed.
Then David gets on the phone to give me a play-by-play.
I say, o.k.
I think, it could have been so much worse.
SIXTEEN
Sophomore year:
It can take a boy thirty seconds to come.
It can take a girl years.
SEVENTEEN
The first time — that first time — I’m twenty and drunk and it’s with a guy who writes mediocre science fiction and rides a skateboard and seems to own only one pair of pants. A girl who barely knows me at all tells me this is a bad idea, but I take him home, and I kiss him, and eventually, because our clothes our still on, he calls me a tease. I pause.
I say, o.k.
Sex hurts, but at least it’s a hurt I choose. I fuck him for a year, even though it never feels any better.
EIGHTEEN
My mother told me a story when I was twenty-one.
Her parents owned a Blimpie. A man comes in and flirts with her over his roast beef and lettuce sandwich. Just roast beef and lettuce. No mayo. No mustard. When he asks my grandmother for her pretty daughter’s name, she spits, “Tomasina,” because she has no other way to protect my mother than by giving her a name she considers ugly. This doesn’t do much, but they are running a business, and besides, my mother has had to look after herself since she was nine, riding the subway to and from school every day, not speaking a word of English.
(I could tell you about the times she was followed, about the times men have showed her their dicks in the front seat of their cars as she walked past, about the times dry, cracked fingers have found their way under her skirt on the 7 train, about how the only time they didn’t was when my grandfather accompanied her to school. He told her afterward that she must have been lying.)
My mother, sixteen and excited and rebellious, says yes when roast-beef-and-lettuce asks her out.
She tells me she was wearing green pants and an orange shirt when he attacked her, like these are the most important details.
She says — he stopped. You know. He didn’t go through with it.
She says he told her that she reminded him of his sister.
I wonder if that’s true. If he did really stop, or if my mother has a truth that she edited, for me.
I think (I dread) it could have been so much worse.
I wonder if he’s still alive, and where. I would spill his blood on my hands and lick them clean while his eyes go from staring to not staring anymore.
I wonder if has sons, and what he’s taught them.
I wonder if he has daughters, and if he remembers my mother, sometimes, when he looks at them.
NINETEEN
A man told me I was sexy that other day, as I ran by him. It was bright and warm out, and I was sweating, and happy, enraptured by the strength of my legs, the burn and thump of my heart, the salt of my sweat, my skin soaking up sunlight and turning brown. He opened his mouth, and it was like running straight into a wall, or missing a step, or tripping over a raised crack in the pavement: disorienting, sick. I was suddenly exhausted. He was walking with his wife, or girlfriend, and his little daughter. I wanted to spit in his eyes.
My father asks me why I am so angry all the time.
TWENTY
When my mother told me about the man who attacked her, she grabbed my wrist and said, “Look, my hands are all clammy.”
I shook her off. I said, a reflex, “Why did you go up to a strange man’s apartment?”
I will never stop being sorry for saying that.
Tags: childhood, Christina Tesoro, feminism, politics, sexism
This beautifully written and distressingly familiar.
Thank you!
Yeah. Whoa all around. Well fucking done.
Thank you thank you thank you. I too am tired of being told it’s wrong to feel angry and violent and vengeful.
A Toasty, Loony_Lovegood, posted “Your rage is valid. Your hurt is valid too” on Regulations For Your Rage and I just…started bawling? But it’s a good thing to remember, and at the time I really needed to hear it.
Also, thank you so much for reading 🙂
seconding this
CHRISTINA. Holy hell.
not gonna lie, i’m kinda freaking out over here haha
As one teen who dressed for male attention to another, you nailed it.
SO MANY POOR FASHION CHOICES
Yup, agreeing all over here.
I just wanna give you a hug and a high five at the same time.
This is such a clear, crisp, pointed telling of stories that feel very familiar to me. Painful and satisfying recognition.
Thank you! I told Nicole that I wrote it right after reading An Untamed State, which I read right around the time of the Isla Vista shootings & everything kind of just…boiled over.
Wow. Thank you.
It resonates, it all resonates.
All women have these stories. For some of us, it goes back to our very young girlhood. How long do we have to scream before men realise that this is wrong?
Amazing. No one wants to feel angry and scared, and we all want to think we can control this. But misogyny is relentless.
CHRISTINAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
I know so many of these stories and they’re still made new here. The line about wanting to remove their faces in particular gave me chills because it’s so sideways and yet I feel like I understand it.
I’m so pleased you have Canela to bark at them all these days. Canela’s Jaeger name is SMALL MENACE.
I would do it Hanni-tales style, with a smile on my face.
ETA: ‘cept I wouldn’t eat ’em, cuz ew
Of course you would. AND THEN I WOULD WRITE YOU A SIX THOUSAND WORD ODE WITH FLOWERY IMAGES AND SCREENCAPS.
I just . . . this made it hard for me to breathe, and I’ve never experienced anything near as blatant as some of these. Amazing and humbling.
This feels like it came from inside of every woman I’ve ever been close to, as well as myself. THANK YOU
War training is how I walk home from the subway after dark.
JESUS.
… yup. That says it all.
That was the line that broke me, too. This is a phenomenal piece.
Christina! This was really wonderful, thank you for writing it.
The line that resonated the most with me was “It is the thrill of knowing my young body is desirable, is noticed, and the terrifying certainty, dimly recognized, of knowing I have no way to defend it.” I remember that thrill/fear and the first few times I felt it. Very visceral.
Yup this brought back memories. Especially the wet kissing noises when you are too young to even know what’s going on. And all the unwanted dicks shown to young girls/women in public places.
Good for you for kicking that little shit with your pointy boots. I loved that image.
I feel like nobody talks about how many dicks get shown to girls and women, but especially very young girls, in public places. So many dicks.
Once I saw/was shown a dick on the way to work on the subway and my native New Yorker friend said, “Oh, that’s too bad! The morning is the worst time to be flashed.”
Native New Yorker friends are killing it in the bitter/funny/apt observations department.
I was a young girl in the 70s. No one cared. We knew some of the neighborhood flashers by name.
That’s when my mom was growing up in NYC, too, and it *blows my mind* the shit that she had to deal with. Like, I’ve (clearly) had my fair share of street harassment, but I cannot fucking imagine going through what she went through every day. She protected me from a lot of it when I was a kid, sometimes by being really strict about where I was allowed to go, and when, but mostly just by being open and talking about it. “These are the things that happened to me. They are wrong, but they happen.” I feel like that shaped a lot of my childhood, even though I haven’t really been able to exactly put it into words until now.
Aww now I’m going to text a lot of hearts to my mom, and she’s going to be like “what is this, what are these???”
Fucking hell, those last two lines put me on the floor.
I have chills. Incredibly written!
I loved this. So steely and wrenching. There’s something very fierce and satisfying about recognizing your anger in someone else as a reader, especially when so many people tell you that you shouldn’t be angry.
In the same vein, just in case anyone happens to have missed the Daily Show’s flawless Jessica Williams on catcallers: http://nymag.com/thecut/2014/09/daily-show-takes-…
This was amazing and made me cry at work. Thank you.
I am shaking. You showed me my own life for the first time. Holy shit.
Thank you for writing this. Just, thank you.
This is amazing! Often when I read things on the internet about misogyny (when do I NOT), I feel angry and riled up afterward. For some reason this didn’t make me angry; it calmed me down. I really enjoyed it.
I so agree! There’s something strangely serene in the effect–like having named and catalogued it we can put it aside for a moment, at least.
This is so, so incredibly beautiful. Thank you.
This piece really hit home– I’ve never considered myself physically attractive, and haven’t ever really received catcalling or unwanted male attention on a grand scale (either because of my appearance or because I grew up in the woods, who can tell). But I always wanted to be beautiful, and always thought that when I finally got catcalled or harassed on the street it would at least mean I was pretty. It’s so incredibly fucked up, but I still feel this way, to a certain extent, even though it would make me uncomfortable and angry at the same time. It angers me that I still have some sort of deep-seated need for this type of gross male validation. It makes me feel like a “bad” feminist. It makes me feel like I don’t have a right to be angry about harassment on a large scale, since I’ve never really dealt with this (at least that I’ve realized). It makes me feel like a fake woman to both have never had it and to weirdly require it to feel accepted, especially when it comes with horrifying violence and possibly death attached.
“Is there any other way to know you’re beautiful?” Is a question I ask myself daily. I hope one day I find a way.
Thanks for such an amazing piece of writing.
You HAVE right to be angry. We all do.
I hope you do, too, because those are some goddamn beautiful words you just shared & I hate that this world lets people hang their self-worth hats on the hook of gross male validation.
If I’ve learned one thing from Roxane Gay, it’s that it’s okay to be a “bad” feminist because it means you’re human. Feeling like you aren’t beautiful if you’re not catcalled is the other side of the same misogyny coin. Like GreenGrasses said, you DO have a right to be angry, because you’re right — it is incredibly fucked up. Not the way you feel, but that our fucked up male gazey world makes you feel that way.
Hugs for you, and thank you for reading. And thank you for sharing, too. I think you’re brave and amazing. 🙂
It’s because of people like all of you that I could even share this– thanks for making the Toast a safe and welcoming place to talk about these kinds of experiences, whether it’s by writing these types of pieces or being so supportive (or both). It’s my favorite place to be on the Internet.
Very well written, and very powerful. Every time I read something like this I want to find a way to protect my daughter from all of this shit, but I know I can’t completely.
You write so well about the rage. Rage is a sanity keeper in the onslaught and aftermath of abuses. Rage also carries it’s own hard price.
I think about making myself more dangerous all the time. I took Karate and self-defense. I hated both. I carry mace now and constantly wonder…
Misogyny is a terrible death dance, going round and round. Thank you for your bravery and willingness to craft writing on it.
First of all, thank you so much!
Rage carries it’s own hard price
I’ve been thinking about this a lot, lately. I don’t know if it’s just that the world in general has been shittier lately (especially this fucking summer, good god) or if I’m just paying more attention, but I feel like…it’s more nonstop than usual, lately? And it is FUCKING EXHAUSTING and draining. Writing helps, and The Toast SO HELPS (I’m seriously so grateful for Nicole and Mallory and every single one of you amazing Toasties) but…I don’t know. I’m kind of struggling with how sustainable is all this rage and anger and grief and frustration in the long term.
WHEW FUN OKAY. Anyway! Yeah, I haven’t had the best experiences with self-defense classes either 😐 I’ve taken krav maga and MMA and every class I took was way too dude-centric to be fun, and all the guys only wanted to spar with each other either because they thought girls were weaklings who couldn’t fight, whiiiich, fuck that noise.
Rage helps us survive but you’re right, it drains the life out of us. and good grief, haven’t we already paid the bitter price for these morons’ actions? No way in hell was I shelling out more grief and misery over someone else’s sins. I don’t know if it ever gets easier (so much terrible stuff in the world to put it mildly) but it can get a lot less exhausting. I’ve found therapy, some kind of spiritual practice and like minded friends help. I’m sure you have your own ways too. But I feel you on the rage and the rage drain. I’m with you on that one. You’re not alone.
oh yeah! The sparring! I took Shotokan karate and I loved memorizing the karate moves. It was like dancing. But the sparring. I’d spar with these middle-aged moms and neither of us would want to hit each other. At all. Exhausting. I wanted to keep on karate dancing instead! Which, of course, wasn’t the point if we wanted to defend and fight for ourselves.
I really wish I could give every woman that wants to try martial arts my first martial arts experience, which was to take jujitsu at the age of 13 with my sister and my best friend and my dad, at a place where the head instructor was, yes, a white dude (TM), but the second most experienced person was an absolutely fierce 5′-2″ woman. So, possibly the least dude-centric jujitsu class not actually marketed solely to women ever.
I’ve been spending a lot of time as the token woman (also TM) at my judo dojo lately, and it kills me that the dudeness is almost certainly chasing off women who might otherwise join (they’re great dudes, and I love working out with them, but most of them are big and frankly a little scary). I remember how hard it was even starting some place where I already had some experience and at least one other woman to work out with, so I can’t blame them- but I really wish more people would come play with me!
this is so so so good. it’s like…reading an echo.
precisely
i even went back to look at a poem i wrote a few years ago about street harassment and my mother’s response to me becoming a very…sharp, angry person. there’s the line “My mother asks me why I am so angry all the time.”—like a mirror of christina’s “My father asks me why I am so angry all the time.”
there are pieces of this that i recognize as my own words—and the words of so many other women—just…word for word, these common experiences. and even the words that i don’t recognize as having said myself, i recognize as having felt myself. it’s such a powerful piece.
This is excellent and brutal. Thank you.
This made me feel physically ill. But, in an OK way? Does that make sense? Like I don’t want to know these moments, and the fact that I do makes me feel feverish and upset, but it’s good that it’s out there. UGH THANKS FOR WRITING THIS THAT’S ALL.
AH OH NO! I don’t want you to feel physically ill! I’m going to make misandry brownies tonight and I will eat one in your honor!
You are a beautiful person, Christina Tesoro. I loved this work, and as an old person, was especially touched by how much you love, respect, and understand your mom.
oh no i’m crying
<3 thank you so much
So good. So goooooood. You wrote what I was thinking. Thank you.
FUUUUUCK this is like reading my diaries from middle school and high school right down to being afraid of a stranger following you, telling the cops with your mom, and being told there’s nothing anyone could do about it. And I think the most upsetting part is that this means the things I remember are more commonplace than anyone realizes.
UGH.
Thanks for writing this.
Fine. I’m a bitch.
Hell. Fucking. Yes. This all felt so familiar. I loved the way you wrote about how it all made you angry. We are not supposed to be angry, but we are, and we should be. Thank you for this.
Oh jeez, this is heartbreakingly great.
This is wonderful. Thank you.
I just started a new job at a library, and was told on my induction that there was a regular user who “has a thing about young women”. I wondered whether this was the sort of thing that manifested itself in groping or in abuse; it turned out to be the latter. (Apparently he will find fault with everything young female members of staff do in his vicinity, like breathing loudly. Everyone else is okay.) I have been told to keep away from him. I wish the onus was on him to keep away from me if he can’t be trusted not to be a dick.
A phenomenon so common it has a name: the missing stair. http://pervocracy.blogspot.ca/2012/06/missing-sta…
It can take a boy thirty seconds to come.
It can take a girl years.
PREACH
Needs to be cross-stitched onto a pillow STAT
This is amazingly written. You are awesome.
Finally registered just to comment on this. This is amazing. 19 is why I stopped jogging (certainly not the only one that resonated).
A friend who knows my history with men just sent me a surprise package. It was a pointy little keychain charm specifically meant for self-defense. I opened the package in front of my parents, not yet knowing what it was, and read the little tag that explained how to hold and use it properly. “Is this some feminist thing?” my dad said disgustedly.
Oh, I’M sorry that you think female fear is unreasonable! You must know more about this than me, since you’re a middle-aged straight white man! I should have listened when you told 19-year-old me that catcalling is “a compliment.” I should have been flattered when I was 15 and a car full of teenage boys slowed down and yelled “SHOW ME YOUR TITS!” I should have chilled out when I was 18 and a guy at a dance grabbed me from behind, ground his boner onto my backside and tried to turn my face so he could kiss me. I should have been happy when I was 21 and naked and alone with a guy who bullied me until I touched his dick. I should never have reported that coach for assault, of course, I was just overreacting! No reason to be afraid! No reason to get angry!
Thank you for writing about this rage. I have it too.
It must feel awful not to have your dad’s support in feeling safe. I almost wonder if you could ask your mom to talk to your dad about it and explain that it can be a basic safety issue? So that you don’t have to tell any of these stories, but he can still learn/change? Though it is hard to imagine how an awake adult could not know. I hope the look of hurt in your face may have sobered him/keyed him in to what you might actually have been feeling. :/
My dad knows about most of this stuff…it’s just not as obvious to him that these were gendered attacks perpetrated by men. He sees generalized dickery perpetrated by people. I’ve tried explaining, but he can’t understand it as anything but “DishKit Hates All Men.” Whatever. I’m moving out soon anyway.
CHILLS.
The sad thing is, every single one of us could write one of these. And they’d all be different, but also the same.
So true!
I’ve never actually seen West Side Story, although I have listened to the music. The Wikipedia page says they “simulate rape” with Anita. What on earth does that mean?
I think it just means that the choreography is supposed to suggest that that’s what happens? I looked through some YouTube videos after I wrote this, because it’s been years since I’ve seen West Side Story, and that stage direction is interpreted with varying degrees of literalness. Some of the performances (some high school performances, even) were actually…kind of hard to watch.
I worked on an Equity production where it was definitely treated as a rape. The actor who played Anita had to process that shit every night. It was really hard on her, and it was also hard on the actors who played the rapists. In our production, the drugstore guy just disapproved of what they did, didn’t interrupt it. It was hard to watch every night from the wings. I tried not to.
She’s sort of pulled down among them. I actually thought until relatively recently that they attempted to rape her, and the Kindly Drugstore Man interrupted and saved her. I was kind of heartbroken when I realized that most people read it as just a stylized choreography of a non-interrupted rape…and I was an adult.
Aldonza’s gang rape in Man of La Mancha has been burned into my brain from I don’t even know how young, though. Probably about ten or twelve. Musical theater! Great family fun!
But remember, consensual gay relationships will damage our children’s minds, and must never be shown!
“…stylized choreography of a non-interrupted rape”
Oh, wow. I always just assumed she got away from them. That bums me out. (For what it’s worth, when we did West Side Story in high school, I formed a huge crush on the boy who played the Kindly Drugstore Man. I wonder if I subconsciously viewed him as some kind of savior figure?)
What made you come to that realization?
I was watching this film with my ten-year-old sister not long ago. I thought it was a sad but sweet musical until I remembered this scene, and when it came on I sat through the whole thing thinking “Does she understand this scene at all? Does watching it make her feel sad and confused? Should I explain what they’re doing? Should I be the one to explain to her what rape is?” I didn’t say anything, and I still don’t know if that was the right decision. Like someone else said in these comments, probably every woman could write a similar piece to this (though I couldn’t phrase it as precisely and beautifully as Christina has). The worst thing is my sister could probably write a piece like that by the time she’s my age.
ACK THAT SCENE. I went to see it a few months ago and spent the first half thinking “oh, this is charming! I would happily bring children to see it!” and then SUDDENLY: GANGRAPE.
In the film, they push her down and stand in a circle around her and hold the youngest gang member over her, but then the drugstore owner comes in and stops them and I start crying and don’t stop until the end of the movie. I haven’t seen the stage version recently enough to remember how it’s typically done there.
(I mean, I was in it, and I played a Jet, but I was 11 so we didn’t really simulate sexual assault in our production.)
I’m going to have to come back and read this piece many, many times. I can already tell.
This is just…wow. And I am glad I waited til I was home from work to read it, because I am very full of emotions right now.
I am both very glad and very horrified that we can all relate so deeply to this. I think sometimes about how much I would like to have a daughter someday, but then I remember all the awful crap she would inevitably face because of her gender, and then I am not so sure anymore. She and I will just have to take to the sea, I suppose.
“My father asks me why I am so angry all the time.” All the men wonder why we’re so angry all the time…
This is incredible. The mingling of rage and power and the expectation that they are both unacceptable things for women. Thank you.
I am thumbs-upping basically every comment because they are all things I am thinking/ feeling about this piece, and well, wow.
When I was walking home from school in Grade 8 a man passing me on the sidewalk said “I’ll give you $5 to come with me, kid”. I said no thank you (“thank you”, seriously) and kept going. I told my parents and teacher because That’s What You’re Supposed To Do and they said, and did, nothing. Because that would have been an effort and I wasn’t worth it.
Argh oh god this is awful. I’m sorry. The ‘thank you’ in this is like the full epitome of misogyny. I also hate that part of culture that says ‘tell a responsible adult if this happens to you’ and never accounts for the truckloads of ‘responsible’ adults that are told things like this and do absolutely fuck all. Also, haha, ‘tell an adult you trust’ when you live in a world where sexual abusers are defended with undying loyalty by other adults.
Toasties, just this past weekend I was walking down the sidewalk and two men started harassing me from about 20 feet behind me. I ignored them and so they went to the trouble of running to catch up so that they could harass me from directly behind me. This continued until I ducked into a store. They laughed and kept walking. I have been upset for days. It’s not a compliment. It’s not a joke.
Why can’t a woman walk down the street and have her own train of thought without being expected to tolerate or even be flattered by total strangers making these kinds of comments? At best, it’s disruptive. I don’t GIVE A SHIT what you think, asshole, I was thinking my own thoughts over here. At worst, it feels degrading and threatening.
The only thing that made me feel better since then was knowing that I could post it on the next open thread. But I will leave it here instead.
If I could comment on my own post, to put it into other words: street harassers always maintain plausible deniability. The man’s defense is that it’s just WORDS. But what he’s really saying to the target is: “Remember, I could rape you. I’m not doing that right now, but I could.” So yes, thanks for that reminder while I was just trying to run some errands.
To the men who do that, I would say, I guess you’re not the lowest specimen of humanity out there. But you are so, so far from the best. You have physical and social power over women. Don’t abuse it and then pretend that you haven’t.
I’m so sorry about your experience and I share your anger. Last weekend I woke up to an email informing me that my grandfather had three months left to live. I stumbled out of bed, shaken and upset, and walked over to CVS to buy some cleaning supplies to prepare for the houseguests who were going to arrive in a few hours. On my way there, as I was trying to mentally confront the news I had just been given, some fucking pig decided to yell obscene things about my body at me. I could have erupted into flames from the anger I felt at being denied the ability to focus on my own thoughts in that moment instead of whatever the fuck that piece of shit thought I should be thinking about instead (which, as you pointed out, was probably the power he had to rape me). I’m still angry about it now, but reading this article made me at least feel like I’m not alone in my anger.
Were the cleaning supplies in spray bottles? I am full of terrible ideas about what you could have done with them if so… like spraying a misbehaving cat with water…
Oh no D:
I am sending you internet hugs.
When Boston was bombed last year, I was in New York for a funeral when I found out, and I had to walk 20-ish blocks to meet up with my dad and sister and find out if my brother and his girlfriend, who worked on Boylston, were okay. I got catcalled four times on that walk, and I swear if I could have burned every one of those men up with my eyes I would have. I wondered if my obvious distress made me more appealing.
Argh this is awful and I’m sorry you went through this. It’s never a compliment or a joke to be reminded of your powerlessness. I hate having to have some kind of a response to it. I once was walking down a quiet road with my friend and 3 guys who couldn’t have been far out of their teens yelled that we were sexy. My friend said, “Shush,” in a kind of half indulgent way because they were so young and one of them yelled, “I hope you two get raped.” I was so shocked although it’s really not shocking.
Fuck. This was amazing and awful and this bit broke my cold little heart:
‘I shook her off. I said, a reflex, “Why did you go up to a strange man’s apartment?”
I will never stop being sorry for saying that.’
I have nothing to add. This is astonishing and wonderful and terrible.
This made me tear up, thank you for writing it.
This really resonated with me and is such a good way to put it: ” He kisses me like it’s a video game you can start over, like you can use another life and maybe get past the button-down level this time, and into the bra, and finally defeat the twin bosses, the boobs. Every no is just a chance to try again.” (And of course once he wears you down, you’re “easy” for letting him…)
This is what The Toast is FOR. Thank you, Christina!
I love and hate this piece at the same time. Love it because HELLO, it’s amazing, and I hate it because it reminds me of my own vulnerability.
I have so. much. rage. “I could make myself more dangerous” resonated more than I’d like to admit. I was attacked twice, and both times I broke (his) bones and got away. And it scares me a little, that I did that not out of skill or training, but in fits of blinding-white rage. I can still remember feeling (inarticulately, because RAGE) that if I was going to get hurt, I would deliver even MORE hurt. (And I want to be very clear that I’m not saying anyone else who got attacked and/or raped *should” have done anything different. Not at ALL.) It actually scares me a little, that I have that in me somewhere, and it’s fucking exhausting to carry that much anger around all the time, just under the surface.
My uncle asked me recently why I wouldn’t buy a gun for self-protection, and I said I was pretty sure I’d kill someone who shouldn’t be killed, and then I’d end up in prison. I think he thought I was kidding . . . but not so much.
if I was going to get hurt, I would deliver even MORE hurt.
I cannot tell you how many times I have said this, to myself, aloud; to my [slightly worried] father. Word. For. Word.
it’s fucking exhausting to carry that much anger around all the time, just under the surface
Anger & fear, at all times, just under the surface. I can’t think of a more draining combination. I’ve never been physically attacked (I was groped once, on the corner of 34th St, in the middle of a crowd, and I started SCREAMING obscenities and pointing at “THAT MOTHERFUCKER IN THE RED BUBBLE JACKET”) but I’m so, so worried that I wont have that instinct. GOOD ON YOU for defending yourself. I get that it scares you a little, though, too. I have definitely asked myself like “Is it normal to be this angry, this much of the time? Is it healthy?”
I’m actually taking a self-defense class (with some NYC Toasties!) at the end of the month, and I cancelled my gym membership to put that money toward some type of martial arts class instead, because it is beyond time for me to learn how to defend myself. And if I ever have a girl kid, she’s gettin’ signed up for martial arts as soon as she can walk.
“I have definitely asked myself like “Is it normal to be this angry, this much of the time? Is it healthy?”
Yes. Exactly this, so much. (And if it’s normal, what the fuck does that say about our society? About the fact that I think about, if I had daughters, would teaching them RAGE offer more pros than cons? Or would it just fuck them up for relationships and peace of mind?”
In high school, I got a black belt in Tae Kwon Doe just to channel some of my rage. My family’s very passionate, with intense tempers, with me being the only exception, so I’ve always had a problem expressing my rage at all, and when I did, it would be erratic and feel ineffective to much louder people. I’ve had to learn to channel my rage, to a cold anger.
It’s awful how the patriarchy seeps into our personalities and lives and forms us. But channelling anger that way has also made me a happier person, a gentler, kinder person. I wonder if and how other people could learn how to control one’s rage by recognizing patterns, having proper outlets, and curbing one’s reactions. Like the actual Hulk.
Damn, Christina. I keep coming back to re-read and try to comment but nothing coherent comes together in my mind. It’s not so much recognizing the scenarios as recognizing the feelings they stir up. I especially see one of my teen nieces in 3 & 4 – she’s a fearless performer who loves attention…and I feel like it’s inevitable that one day she’ll get victim-blamed for drawing unwanted attention. I hope I can help her learn that no particular response is “inappropriate” when it comes to defending herself, her space, her body. I wish I had been more confident in defending myself when I was younger.
This whole piece was perfect and amazing and made me tear up but the two that really got me were six and seven. The idea that the world is unsafe and that there’s nothing that can make you safer, that you yourself have to become more dangerous as a response is just such a killer. I forget why now, I think it was some sort of writing assignment in high school, but I had a teacher ask us to describe walking to a car in detail. The guys only had a few steps- find keys, walk to car, open door; the girls talked about the lighting and whether anyone was nearby and holding your keys in your hand just so and how if there was anything that made you uncomfortable you should wait or get an escort because terrible things WILL happen, the goal is just to make sure they don’t happen to you. I tried to explain it to a male friend of mine once, how important it is to maintain “Constant Vigilance!” and he just looked at me and said, “wait, so you’re thinking about that stuff all the time?” He had never decided not to go to a certain store after dark because the lighting was poor or there were too many bushes. It blew his mind that this was just a part of life for me and the girls I knew.
“All the time?” seems to be the thing that fascinates guys the most, when they realize it.
Similarly to your story, a friend of mine had a brother who was a cop, and we were talking about this one night. He was quiet for a while, listening, and finally said something like, “That’s Risk Assessment. They teach us that in training, how to assess risks in potentially dangerous situations. Wait – you do that all the time???”
She said something like, “I love you, but yes, you fuckhead, how else can we stay safe?” *headdesk*
When I started my clearance job, they had a security presentation where they explained that you may be a target because of the work you do, and that you should take a moment to assess the situation around you when you leave a building, etc etc. they called it being at “yellow” instead of “green.”
They were essentially advising the men to live like women do all the time.
this was so intense… so real. that could have been me (maybe that was me).
i wonder if i have your permission to translate it to portuguese, just to post it on facebook. maybe it’ll make a difference…
Hi Betina! This is totally cool with me, and I checked with Nicole & she said it’s cool w/ Toastie publishing policy too. Ahhh thanks so much!
(Is it silly that I’d love to read it once it’s translated? I don’t read Portuguese, but I can read Spanish, and I’m kind of thrilled that you want to translate it!)
Oh, my. The rage and the debilitating feeling of ineffectiveness!
I’ve just spent the last five minutes gazing into space, having an imaginary shouting match with the man who called you sexy while you were running. It got ugly.
I want to knock their heads off! I want to kick their cars and throw stones at their windows.
I walked home from the bus once and a man slowed his car to a crawl as I crossed the (empty, quiet) suburban road and leered out his open window. I spent the next several years preparing spit in my mouth at that road, just in case he ever did it again. I have never wanted anything as badly as to hurt the men who do this.
Thank you so much for this.
Wonderfully written. Thanks for writing this.
Everything about this – the war training hit home so much. Vets are vets because they got to come home from the war, women don’t have that luxury.
(and not just women but everyone who exists as vulnerable in a misogynist racist transphobic world)
I want to rip their faces off all the time too.
Guys I don’t have family but put this entire thing on my headstone please thank
Amazing.
Thank you for writing this. I’m 17 now, and thankfully I haven’t had to go through all the things you went through as a teenager. But now I feel sick thinking about all the things that have happened when I was younger that I don’t remember, or all the things that DID happen that I didn’t recognize at the time. Really, thank you so much for writing this.
Caitlin! I’m normally a huge asshole but I’m going to set that aside and say that if you’re on this site making this kind of sharp comment, things are gonna work out for you. Keep being awesome!
(Toasties, did you see this! She’s 17 and talking about her experiences! EVERYONE NEEDS TO COME OVER HERE AND SUPPORT HER.)
In high school, I got a black belt in Tae Kwon Doe just to channel some of my rage. My family's very passionate, with intense tempers, with me being the only exception, so I've always had a problem expressing my rage at all, and when I did, it would be erratic and feel ineffective to much louder people. I've had to learn to channel my rage, to a cold anger.
It's awful how the patriarchy seeps into our personalities and lives and forms us. But channelling anger that way has also made me a happier person, a gentler, kinder person. I wonder if and how other people could learn how to control one's rage by recognizing patterns, having proper outlets, and curbing one's reactions. Like the actual Hulk.
I agree.
This was truly phenomenal. I want to print it up and post it all over every institution in my city.
“It could have been so much worse.”
Yes. Thank you. I say this all the time, and I hate it. Things have happened to me, but the WORST thing has not. So I always think, “it could have been so much worse,” like I don’t have the right to be upset about the things that have happened.
This was so beautifully written and all-too-relatable. It actually inspired me to write my own piece to reflect on the little moments of misogyny and sexism I’ve experienced growing up: http://femmagazine.com/memoirs-of-misogyny/
It was super therapeutic to write– thank you for this piece!
This made me want to weep.
Thank you for writing it. Thank you. And I’m sorry. I’m sorry.
This made me want to weep.
Thank you for writing it. Thank you. And I'm sorry. I'm sorry.
This is wonderfully archetypal. Particular to your experience, and representative of all women’s experience. I would love to teach it as an essay, and then assign this form for the women in the class to write.
“I’m told this is inappropriate.”
I am so grateful that someone else has been told this, and that someone else has had my thoughts, and that someone else has also said FUCK APPROPRIATE. THIS IS THE TRUTH.
Wow, I wish every man could read this and see what I mean about so many women. I have not drawn any conclusions but after women’s rights were in place, the only issue that I think needed to be in place with 2nd wave feminism and so on where mental health issues, particularly in women. I wish men could grasp and understand how so many women’s issues are actually hinged on “women’s issues”.
Thanks you so much for this. Beautiful and sad and infuriating at the same time.
Thanks for this chronicle. Nothing I have ever read or experienced has given me such a clear view of what a woman faces in their lives in terms of male entitlement. Some form of entitlement, both my own latent ideas or that of others, has affected every relationship I have ever had, from the start. I feel the air sucked out of me.