1.
I am six. My babysitter’s son, who is five but a whole head taller than me, likes to show me his penis. He does it when his mother isn’t looking. One time when I tell him not to, he holds me down and puts penis on my arm. I bite his shoulder, hard. He starts crying, pulls up his pants and runs upstairs to tell his mother that I bit him. I’m too embarrassed to tell anyone about the penis part, so they all just think I bit him for no reason.
I get in trouble first at the babysitter’s house, then later at home.
The next time the babysitter’s son tries to show me his penis, I don’t fight back because I don’t want to get in trouble.
One day I tell the babysitter what her son does, she tells me that he’s just a little boy, he doesn’t know any better. I can tell that she’s angry at me, and I don’t know why. Later that day, when my mother comes to pick me up, the babysitter hugs me too hard and says how jealous she is because she only has sons and she wishes she had a daughter as sweet as me.
One day when we’re playing in the backyard he tells me very seriously that he might kill me one day and I believe him.
2.
I am in the second grade and our classroom has a weird open-concept thing going on, and the fourth wall is actually the hallway to the gym. All day long, we surreptitiously watch the other grades file past on the way to and from the gym. We are supposed to ignore most of them. The only class we are not supposed to ignore is Monsieur Pierre’s grade six class.
Every time Monsieur Pierre walks by, we are supposed to chorus “Bonjour, Monsieur Sexiste.” We are instructed to do this by our impossibly beautiful teacher, Madame Lemieux. She tells us that Monsieur Pierre, a dapper man with grey hair and a moustache, is sexist because he won’t let the girls in his class play hockey. She is the first person I have ever heard use the word sexist.
The word sounds very serious when she says it. She looks around the class to make sure everyone is paying attention and her voice gets intense and sort of tight.
“Girls can play hockey. Girls can do anything that boys do,” she tells us.
We don’t really believe her. For one thing, girls don’t play hockey. Everyone in the NHL – including our hero Mario Lemieux, who we sometimes whisper might be our teacher’s brother or cousin or even husband – is a boy. But we accept that maybe sixth grade girls can play hockey in gym class, so we do what she asks.
Mostly what I remember is the smile that spreads across Monsieur Pierre’s face whenever we call him a sexist. It is not the smile of someone who is ashamed; it is the smile of someone who finds us adorable in our outrage.
3.
Later that same year a man walks into Montreal’s École Polytechnique and kills fourteen women. He kills them because he hates feminists. He kills them because they are going to be engineers, because they go to school, because they take up space. He kills them because he thinks they have stolen something that is rightfully his. He kills them because they are women.
Everything about the day is grey: the sky, the rain, the street, the concrete side of the École Polytechnique, the pictures of the fourteen girls that they print in the newspaper. My mother’s face is grey. It’s winter, and the air tastes like water drunk from a tin cup.
Madame Lemieux doesn’t tell us to call Monsieur Pierre a sexist anymore. Maybe he lets the girls play hockey now. Or maybe she is afraid.
Girls can do anything that boys do but it turns out that sometimes they get killed for it.
4.
I am fourteen and my classmate’s mother is killed by her boyfriend. He stabs her to death. In the newspaper they call it a crime of passion. When she comes back to school, she doesn’t talk about it. When she does mention her mother it’s always in the present tense – “my mom says” or “my mom thinks” – as if she is still alive. She transfers schools the next year because her father lives across town in a different school district.
Passion. As if murder is the same thing as spreading rose petals on your bed or eating dinner by candlelight or kissing through the credits of a movie.
5.
Men start to say things to me on the street, sometimes loudly enough that everyone around us can hear, but not always. Sometimes they mutter quietly, so that I’m the only one who knows. So that if I react, I’ll seem like I’m blowing things out of proportion or flat-out making them up. These whispers make me feel complicit in something, although I don’t quite know what.
I feel like I deserve it. I feel like I am asking for it. I feel dirty and ashamed.
I want to stand up for myself and tell these men off, but I am afraid. I am angry that I’m such a baby about it. I feel like if I were braver, they wouldn’t be able to get away with it. Eventually I screw up enough courage and tell a man to leave me alone; I deliberately keep my voice steady and unemotional, trying to make it sound more like a command than a request. He grabs my wrist and calls me a fucking bitch.
After that I don’t talk back anymore. Instead I just smile weakly; sometimes I duck my head and whisper thank you. I quicken my steps and hurry away until one time a man yells don’t you fucking run away and starts to follow me.
After that I always try to keep my pace even, my breath slow. Like how they tell you that if you ever see a bear you shouldn’t run, you should just slowly back away until he can’t see you.
I think that these men, like dogs, can smell my fear.
6.
On my eighteenth birthday my cousin takes me out clubbing. While we’re dancing, a man comes up behind me and starts fiddling with the straps on my flouncy black dress. But he’s sort of dancing with me and this is my first time ever at a club and I want to play it cool, so I don’t say anything. Then he pulls the straps all the way down and everyone laughs as I scramble to cover my chest.
At a concert a man comes up behind me and slides his hand around me and starts playing with my nipple while he kisses my neck. By the time I’ve got enough wiggle room to turn around, he’s gone.
At my friend’s birthday party a gay man grabs my breasts and tells everyone that he’s allowed to do it because he’s not into girls. I laugh because everyone else laughs because what else are you supposed to do?
Men press up against me on the subway, on the bus, once even in a crowd at a protest. Their hands dangle casually, sometimes brushing up against my crotch or my ass. One time it’s so bad that I complain to the bus driver and he makes the man get off the bus but then he tells me that if I don’t like the attention maybe I shouldn’t wear such short skirts.
7.
I get a job as a patient-sitter, someone who sits with hospital patients who are in danger of pulling out their IVs or hurting themselves or even running away. The shifts are twelve hours and there is no real training, but the pay is good.
Lots of male patients masturbate in front of me. Some of them are obvious, which is actually kind of better because then I can call a nurse. Some of them are less obvious, and then the nurses don’t really care. When that happens, I just bury my head in a book and pretend I don’t know what they’re doing.
One time an elderly man asks me to fix his pillow and when I bend over him to do that he grabs my hand and puts it on his dick.
When I call my supervisor to complain she says that I shouldn’t be upset because he didn’t know what he was doing.
8.
A man walks into an Amish school, tells all the little girls to line up against the chalkboard, and starts shooting.
A man walks into a sorority house and starts shooting.
A man walks into a theatre because the movie was written by a feminist and starts shooting.
A man walks into Planned Parenthood and starts shooting.
A man walks into.
9.
I start writing about feminism on the internet, and within a few months I start getting angry comments from men. Not death threats, exactly, but still scary. Scary because of how huge and real their rage is. Scary because they swear they don’t hate women, they just think women like me need to be put in their place.
I get to a point where the comments – and even the occasional violent threat – become routine. I joke about them. I think of them as a strange badge of honour, like I’m in some kind of club. The club for women who get threats from men.
It’s not really funny.
10.
Someone makes a death threat against my son.
I don’t tell anyone right away because I feel like it is my fault – my fault for being too loud, too outspoken, too obviously a parent.
When I do finally start telling people, most of them are sympathetic. But a few women say stuff like “this is why I don’t share anything about my children online,” or “this is why I don’t post any pictures of my child.”
Even when a man makes a choice to threaten a small child it is still, somehow, a woman’s fault.
11.
I try not to be afraid.
I am still afraid.
The author, age 7
The Belle Jar 
Thank you.
Unfortunately, I think you just told every girl’s story.
I agree. I think most of us have similar stories. Some we talk about, others we hold as secret hammers that we slam against our own heads for years, telling ourselves it is our own fault.
I am crying… it is all so true … I too am working towards change. Thank you for this amazing post. I hear you… I know you… I am a woman too.
Thank you for writing this. It always disgusts me to hear the shit that women have to put up with that I, for the most part, am unaware of. I mean things like the touching in public and the quiet comments said in passing or the threats via social media. I was raised not to do these things to women (and, as logic would follow, what the hell gives anyone the right to touch another human being without their permission anyways??), and would not stand for any of my male friends doing them. Anyways, I guess I do know that these things happen but, as a male, sort of forget about their frequency and the reality of them because they don’t happen to me daily. I appreciate things like this that act as reminders for me to stand up for feminism and voice what I believe.
This raises my hackles.
But what can be done about it?
In India there’s laws that prohibit this sort of behavior, although they are scarcely enforced.
Perhaps something similar, backed up by proper enforcement?
Everyone deserves to live free of fear and harassment, protected by the law. ‘Small’ incidents like this add up, and obviously degrade quality of life.
I try to do my part by remaining as vigilant as I can, although I have not witnessed any of this firsthand.
This is amazing.
Reblogged this on Too Sexy For Contacts.
I agree, I too had similar experiences throughout my life and watched other women do the same. The most furiating part is how many women allow it to happen to the girls and allow the boys just to “be boys”. What does that mean? Men are treated as if they are just animals doing what comes natural to them and women are treated like they are the only one that is responsible but has no authority to stop it. Mothers, please don’t allow your boy to victimize little girls and don’t allow your daughter to be victimized. If we are responsible then let’s do something.
Reblogged this on Listening to the Voices in My Head and commented:
I sadly grok this in fullness.
I sadly understand this post only too well.
Keep writing and talking because you speak for many ☺
Beautifully written.
Humans need to be more respectful. It’s so sad 😦
I am overwhelmed at how powerful and beautifully written this is.
Reblogged this on Beauty on the Edge.
this is amazing, and i feel this every day… thank you for writing this. bc i am tired of being afraid. i think that is what being a feminist means to me… not being afraid of walking alone to my car, not being afraid of what a man will do or say just bc he can… thank you.
Thanks for publishing this. I’m going through a weird revictimization period trying to convince Facebook not to publish my gov’t identity online since they’ve threatened to revoke my account for not using my real last name. I’ve already explained to them that I set up the account so that I can stay connected to my friends and family safely. They want me to provide them pictures government ID. Instead, I had to send them screenshots of the reactions from my family members after discovering why I had to give up my Facebook account. One image is a screenshot of a family member disclosing her knowledge of the same person committing horrendous acts of violence against women (but at a much more drastic and triggering scale) the same person from whom I had to hide my identity from.
To complicate matters, my brother got into a run in with some local contract killer when his roommates intervened to break up a fight. I had to send them newspaper articles with an explanation as to how revealing my identity would endanger my safety because the guy was connected to an organized crime syndicate and had family members who had already made threats to our lives after the guy was arrested for killing my brother’s roommate and two counts of attempted murder of my brother and his surviving roommate. I even included documentation regarding his publicly documented history of domestic violence which preceded the event. I even petitioned Sheryl Sandberg, the face of women in tech and business to consider safety exemptions to their policy — I’m certain to no avail so that I could keep the account.
I had an employer bully me to the point of seizures because I asked him not to yell at me (period), and esp. because he was projecting anger for an offense I never committed to keep me from sending people to his office who had registered complaints about his policies, and because I didn’t cover for him when he overtly bullied one of our students. Then I had that person’s supervisor and that person’s supervisor participate in the cover up by making my working conditions so horrific, that any reasonable person would have freaked out so that they could try and discredit me as someone hysterical. I remained calm and wrote everything down. I even kept audio recordings, policy documents they fraudulently altered, proctored exams I never should have access to in which I was instructed to input test answers (not scores) in order to force me to quit. I even kept a record of a mediation when these infractions were brought up before the hiring manager who offered to mediate the conflict in which we discussed my boss’s supervisor intimidating a student by pulling her in a locked office (in full view of surveillance cameras) that wasn’t his because she reported that he tried to persuade her to change a document that implicated him as the person who triggered my seizure that was written by another student.
The dean of faculty expressed that he was too busy and unwilling to view the surveillance footage (which they destroyed violating the clery act) unless I was willing to put myself at risk for termination, but that he didn’t see what the big deal was because he did the same kinds of things to his own secretary. There was another woman in the room present, who reminded him that what he was doing was inappropriate, but did not report the behavior or intervene when she received full documentation of his misconduct (which goes much deeper than what I just disclosed). But it ended in more victimization by the school and by the federal agency I reported the incidents to — who actually had the gall to leave a message on my voicemail asking what I wanted in terms of resolution because the college wanted to avoid being involved in an investigation.
What I learned from all of this is that we let people bully us into silence. By not telling people what is happening to us, but accepting the shame we take on as a part of our own narrative. People only excuse this kind of behavior because they feel powerless to do anything about it. And there are always people out there who are going to try to endanger women who make progress, who will try to put us in our place, and we let them.
We should be creating safe spaces for women, and communicating where these resources are so that women who are exposed to violence and intimidation have real options. We should be putting together curriculum that demonstrates what it means to promote diversity, safety and inclusion and only invest in the organizations and institutions who demonstrate leadership. People with violent proclivities are always going to look to intimidate those who are isolated. We need to find better ways to give those women a refuge and a voice. To grow effective allies among our young boys, who often hear of this behavior from other men, but don’t know what they need to do to support the women affected.
That being said, I was very heartened to see your post gaining traction on Facebook from both women and men. Gloria Steinem, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Arianna Huffington, got to where they were by mobilizing and creating networks of safety for women. We shouldn’t have to accept that our past is the only narrative. When we internalize those narratives, we silence the voices of other women. We need women like you to direct your efforts toward creating safe spaces for women rather than kicking over the hornet’s nest trying to stand up against men.
Shaming people, even when they’ve done wrong, doesn’t make them receptive to change. But if we build and grow ecosystems — networks — of people who actively support the prevention of violence and invest in creating safe spaces as alternatives, we’re never going to stop men from walking into places like planned parenthood, but we will grow a community less likely to accept this kind of behavior as normative, people who will be educated in the issues enough to know how to make appropriate responses (those who often fit in the surprised categories), and be able to more effectively mobilize a community response toward collective action.
The most alarming part of this post is that it is nearly identical to my own story; in fact, I can relate broadly to every one of the anecdotes presented and then some. And it’s not that we’re uncannily similar, it’s that countless other lives of women/girls follow the same narrative. And it is not about playing a victim; it’s about finally giving voice to the silence of such persistent victimization, that which undercuts, even poisons, any salient advancements of female empowerment.
When I was in high school, there was a boy who would grab my breasts all.thw tome, in front of everyone, even teachers. And the behavior was ignored. No one helped me. And when I threatened to hurt him, to make home stop, I got it trouble. I was sexually assaulted on an almost daily basis by this piece of shit and I was somehow made to believe it was my fault. Thank you for writing this.
Beautifully written. Painful, but beautiful. Thank you, and please, never stop writing.
Thank you for this.
Yes. This said everything.
You mention feeling afraid, but in my opinion simply by being honest and open about these things that happened to you — none of which, of course, you deserved — I think you’re showing a lot of courage. I hope you know that all men aren’t shits like the ones you’ve described. Stay strong.
Thank you for writing this. It is very relatable. Imagine if every woman went in social media and posted if they have a similar story from their childhood or changed their profile picture to let it be known that they have experienced these kinds of things. I believe it would sadly be most women but what an eye opener it might be for men…
Thank you for this.Thank you for posting the picture of your boy. ❤
Reblogged this on Cityscape Diaries and commented:
Amazing. Beautifully written
Yes
I’m sorry, I am also the mother of a young boy and the best we can hope for is that we will teach them better than the generations that have come before. I cannot say your experiences are foreign to me but I hope they will be unimaginable to my son, I truly hope we can do better
This article needs to be shared over and over. I am a man, and I agree with you on this. I was raised by strong women and believe that equality should be equality. There aren’t clauses that come attached with it. Whatever reason me use to claim themselves as superior to women, it is bullshit. The whole evolution and “need to take women” and the “men have always been like this, and look at how much progress the world has made” is a lie that should be shown for what it is. People are people, and having a vagina or a penis isn’t ones choice. I am very happy that women like you exist 🙂
Reblogged this on feministfilter.
Thank you.
Thank you for sharing this
Reblogged this on thepsycheofdree and commented:
Powerful, heartbreaking…but very much the truth.
Thank you!
Thank you for being so brave. Thank you for sharing this. Thank you for helping to educate men so that we understand better, and for educating women so that they know that they are not alone. I am sorry that this is the world we live in. I try each an every day to make it better. Thank you for doing a great part to make our world better. I wish you and your family peace and safety, always.
Great, great, great article. In this kind of conversation I am always left looking at how I traffic these ways of being in myself ( victim, complicit) and in men. It’s incredibly confronting and necessary. I believe change begins with us, the individual.
Thanks for this as it is so relatable and valuable.
Thanks for your standing up and counting.
I am sorry for the violence you have endured. No one should have to live in fear.
Thank you, thank you for writting this.
And anyone who blames you for being afraid is officially not a human being.
Thank you a million times for writing this.
❤ ❤ ❤
Amazing work. So brave. And true.
Reblogged this on Pirates of the Burley Griffin and commented:
Seen via https://sandrachung.wordpress.com/ there is far too much truth in this for it to be ignored.
Go read the original. Now.
When I wasn’t being beaten by my brother at home, he would tie me up, throw me in the closet and leave me there until I escaped, or my mother came home.
One night he punched me in the face while I was sleeping.
He called me a fag, homo, ugly, little puke, you name it he called it. He held me down and spit on me, farted on me, rubbed his naked ass on my head.
This continued until I was 17, I worked out until I was fairly strong and I told him if he ever touched me again I would kill him.
The only thing worse was school, where I was regularly attacked.
Four girls ripped my pants off of me. I have no idea who they were. Just some students.
No safety at home, no safety at school. No safety on the way to or from either.
The teachers did absolutely nothing to stop the constant torment.
Between grade 7 and grade 11 I was in 35 fights. I never started a single one and most of them were me against at least two guys, usually more. That was how it was at every school I ever went to.
In grade 8 I failed 7 out of 10 courses. In grade 9 I failed 6. In grade 10, 11 and 12 most of them just passed me, even though I basically stopped going. I showed up once a week, got assignments, wrote tests and then left. Sometimes I did the work, usually not. I hated school with every fiber of my being. The only people I hated worse than the teachers and principal was the students. Luckily they cared even less than I did if I attended or not. Good old Victoria High School. The next year after I left they started cracking down on attendance and cleaned up the place. Started enforcing rules, getting rid of kids who started fights.
Perhaps if my parents had cared enough they might done something, but they didn’t pay attention to anything that was going on. When I came home covered with bruises, bloody, with ripped clothing I would get berated for ruining my clothes. When I said it wasn’t my idea to get into a fight, that I was jumped by other students, they had nothing to say. I had no idea what if any options I had.
When I was older, an adult, and school was long behind me I saw on the news some kids had gone to school and killed a lot of people. I remember understanding the kind of hatred that would drive a person to do that. No, I never would, because I realized that I was turning into the people I most hated, that I wanted to beat someone to death and it didn’t matter who. I made a choice to not be like them. That was when I stopped attending school.
I wandered the streets of Victoria, I walked pretty much every street there is. I knew the place very well. It was safer than school or home.
My stepfather, my second stepfather (first stepfather was an alcoholic who liked to beat the crap out of my brother, that’s where he got it from) said I was stupid, I didn’t know anything. He said margarine is the same as butter. I said I can tell the difference.
He did a taste testing. When I got it right five out of five times, he called me a lying little shit and threw the plate in face. It cut my cheek on a tooth (went right through cause I only had two on that side) but also broke my glasses. I stopped being able to see well for two years, I couldn’t afford new glasses.
I got a job at 15.
At night after work I was followed home by a man who propositioned me. He offered me 20 dollars to give him a blow job. When I declined he offered to suck my cock. A guy I worked with shoved his hand down my pants and shoved his finger up my ass. I couldn’t avoid him, he was my immediate supervisor. My boss did nothing. I told the supervisor that next time I’d cut his throat. It never happened again. I very much meant it.
One of the waitresses was very nice to me. Once and a while she would stomp on my foot as hard as she could with high heel shoes. I mostly avoided her as much as possible. She was crazy.
I couldn’t quit because I had to pay room and board. Besides, I didn’t think much of myself. I believed pretty much everything my brother had called me.
One day I was walking home from work at 2 am when two guys jumped me. I woke up with a broken jaw, broken finger and a missing wallet and bruises all over my chest and back from being kicked. At least I was still alive.
To say I was sullen, angry, distrustful and unhappy would be the understatements of the century. I couldn’t stay in a room with too many people or that was too crowded. I still have problems with them. And I still don’t like people getting too close to me.
I went to concert once, I couldn’t stay, I couldn’t stand having so many people that close to me. I didn’t trust any of them. I knew one of them would light my hair on fire, stab me, hit me while not looking. So I left and never went to another.
That is the short pg version.
Absolutely powerful and filled with truth. It isn’t really about feminism or maleism what it really comes down to is respect and dignity. Why can’t men and women alike take RESPONSIBILITY for their actions instead of blaming a short skirt, or becasue of any other excuse anyone chooses to use!!! What would happen if we just learned respect and that all male and female alike should have that in the same fashion. So many lies are taught at such a young age that it’s true silence is often the cure, but really while it may be an outside cure it is far from and internal cure becasue those of us who can identify with any part of this sharing know it really doesn’t cure what happens on the inside!!! Speak up!!! Change can’t occur if we remain silent and “just take it”! We feminine our males and masculine our females becasue we just don’t see that it only creates a more broken society when we should actually be encouraging the voice to be heard, the talents to be used, and that everyone should be respected and valued!!!
yeah. sorry doesn’t quite cover it
This is a beautiful and powerful piece of writing. Thank you for sharing it.
Wow! The world needs more courageous, strong and honest women who don’t back down to the patriarchal (out-dated) status quo. I honor your voice. Thank you!
I just saw this in my Facebook feed, and it’s my first encounter with your blog or your writings. (Better late than never, I guess.) As the father of a twelve-and-a-half-year-old daughter, THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU for this.