Very compelling. It’s beautiful how you start this piece in those horrifying, frozen moments and gradually melt us into the warmth of unified liberation.
Thank you for putting words to, and helping make sense of, my experience... and food for thought for even more.
(I am, I think, so accustomed to various forms of predation that when cis male colleagues treat me like a person, I feel like I'm being treated differently and I don't understand the rules of engagement. I AM being treated differently, but it's not different to other people, it's different than what I'm accustomed to. Holy cow. This is huge and is going to take some digesting. Thank you.)
"I’ve been stewing on my draft for months, wondering if sharing what happened is warranted."
Yes, yes, and also yes.
Partway through reading this article, I intended to post a comment with what I suspect is the explanation for the two Black teenage girls chasing you down the street with stereotypical male-type abuse of women. Later I realized that you do understand it in much the same way I do, although you used different words to explain it. I'll post my explanation anyway, in case reading someone else saying much the same thing in a different way is (I hope) useful or validating.
I believe the two girls (I call them girls because they were apparently not adult women) had experienced this same sort of harassment themselves from men. They felt angry and resentful and hurt about it (understandably) and wanted to take some sort of revenge. They perceived you as a white man who was nonetheless a safe person for them to retaliate upon. Plus, of course, they had safety in numbers and quite likely were showing off for each other -- just as many men harass women in groups* for the same reasons.
*The men being in groups, not the women. When I've been sexually harassed, it was consistently when I was alone -- and though that's just one data point, I've also never heard a woman talk about being sexually harassed when she was with another woman. I wonder if that does happen.
As a trans man who is often hypersexualized by cis women, this resonates with me. An online acquaintance just asked me why I can’t orgasm sober. It felt invasive and predatory for this unknown woman to ask me about my genitalia, and get familiar with me as soon as I talked about vaginas. I still feel uncomfortable that as an unknown person she felt entitled to know about my sex life assuming she could “relate” to my trans body while gendering it female.
It's interesting. All he really said was that he felt uncomfortable, and you immediately jump to shouting that it was actually his own fault. You can't possibly know that, so why would you say that?
Mentioning the existence of genitals is not an invitation to be sexually harassed, creep.
Very compelling. It’s beautiful how you start this piece in those horrifying, frozen moments and gradually melt us into the warmth of unified liberation.
Oh.
OHHHHHHHH.
Thank you for putting words to, and helping make sense of, my experience... and food for thought for even more.
(I am, I think, so accustomed to various forms of predation that when cis male colleagues treat me like a person, I feel like I'm being treated differently and I don't understand the rules of engagement. I AM being treated differently, but it's not different to other people, it's different than what I'm accustomed to. Holy cow. This is huge and is going to take some digesting. Thank you.)
I'm a white ciswoman.
"I’ve been stewing on my draft for months, wondering if sharing what happened is warranted."
Yes, yes, and also yes.
Partway through reading this article, I intended to post a comment with what I suspect is the explanation for the two Black teenage girls chasing you down the street with stereotypical male-type abuse of women. Later I realized that you do understand it in much the same way I do, although you used different words to explain it. I'll post my explanation anyway, in case reading someone else saying much the same thing in a different way is (I hope) useful or validating.
I believe the two girls (I call them girls because they were apparently not adult women) had experienced this same sort of harassment themselves from men. They felt angry and resentful and hurt about it (understandably) and wanted to take some sort of revenge. They perceived you as a white man who was nonetheless a safe person for them to retaliate upon. Plus, of course, they had safety in numbers and quite likely were showing off for each other -- just as many men harass women in groups* for the same reasons.
*The men being in groups, not the women. When I've been sexually harassed, it was consistently when I was alone -- and though that's just one data point, I've also never heard a woman talk about being sexually harassed when she was with another woman. I wonder if that does happen.
As a trans man who is often hypersexualized by cis women, this resonates with me. An online acquaintance just asked me why I can’t orgasm sober. It felt invasive and predatory for this unknown woman to ask me about my genitalia, and get familiar with me as soon as I talked about vaginas. I still feel uncomfortable that as an unknown person she felt entitled to know about my sex life assuming she could “relate” to my trans body while gendering it female.
It's interesting. All he really said was that he felt uncomfortable, and you immediately jump to shouting that it was actually his own fault. You can't possibly know that, so why would you say that?
Mentioning the existence of genitals is not an invitation to be sexually harassed, creep.