I am angry.
Truthfully, I've been angry for a very long time. Decades. But I am female, and as such, I have been instructed and trained in the fine art of suppression.
"Don't blow it out of proportion."
"Control your feelings."
"Anger is ugly."
"You're fine, it's not the end of the world."
"Other people have it much worse than you, stop making a big deal out of nothing."
"Take it as a compliment."
"You're overreacting."
I am 46 years old now, old enough to no longer give a shit what other people think of me, least of all men.
I've been suppressing and keeping quiet and ignoring and blowing off and not saying anything for well over thirty years. But I can't stand it anymore. Guys, sit down. I gotta get this off my chest, and you need to really focus and listen. Don't interrupt or justify or make excuses or gaslight me. Just this once, please, shut up, sit down and
listen.
I'm tired. I've been more tired in the past year than at any other time in my life. I'm tired of the Brock Turner's and the Elliot Rodgers' and the Bill Cosby's and the Donald Trump's. More than that, I'm tired of the eternal question which always pops up when these guys are finally exposed:
"Well, why did their accusers wait so long to speak out?" As if the accusers in question were simply sitting, biding their time, plotting their strategies and waiting for the most profitable time to act, to thrust themselves into the national spotlight and reap their rewards, attaining fame and fortune and adoration with which to feather their nests well into old age.
Guys, it doesn't work like that. Allow me to explain the Domino Effect.
Imagine that something horrible has happened to you. Something shameful and degrading. Doesn't even have to be rape. Just a situation in which you were briefly stripped of your power and forced to submit to someone who had gained control of the situation. Someone stronger than you physically, someone in a position of power over you, someone armed. Whatever.
Now, you have been raised to believe that "making a fuss" isn't proper behavior. You don't want to draw attention to yourself. You've been taught to be polite at all costs, no matter the situation. You try to extricate yourself from the sudden mess you find yourself in. You didn't think it was going to turn into a mess. You didn't willingly step into it. Suddenly, a person who seemed rational just moments ago - and 9 times out of 10, is someone you knew prior to this - is behaving in a way that is not logical. You've lost control of the situation, but you also see it as your duty to appeal to this person's basic human decency. Surely, if you reassure them, everything will be alright. People are basically good and trustworthy and nonviolent. Right?
But what you don't know is that this person is aware of the fact that you have been raised to be polite and non-resistant. They know you don't want to make a scene or draw unwanted attention to yourself. They're banking on it. They're going to use it to their advantage. So they shift blame.
"You made me angry. You dressed in a way that provoked me. You gave me mixed signals. You led me on. You brought this on yourself."
And, as beings habitually cowed and brainwashed, we question ourselves. Did we do those things? Self doubt and shame are swift to kick in, even if you know for a solid fact that you did not intend to bring this upon yourself. Maybe you did behave in a way that you shouldn't have. Maybe you said something that could have been taken wrong, in a tone of voice you maybe shouldn't have used. You start to apologize. You try to explain that you didn't mean it, whatever it was. But it's too late. They've already penetrated the chink in your armor, the ingrained belief that we must always be polite and graceful and
nice, no matter what.
Then something happens. You are belittled, or robbed, or raped, or beaten. You are groped or slapped or called a disgusting name. You have "gotten what you deserved" and your attacker walks away smug and self satisfied, knowing you won't breathe a word of what has happened. Shame keeps you from thinking about it. Fear of being seen as weak or stupid prevents you from telling, because a small part of you continues to insist that this really is your fault, you did bring it on yourself, and any attempt to talk about it - as if you were a victim and not an instigator - is eye-rollingly self pitying. After all, you're still alive. It couldn't have been
that bad. Other people have been through worse. Just drop it and move on, why do you keep wallowing in it?
Time passes, and you pretend you're okay for the sake of others. You don't want to bum them out by sniveling about it and constantly casting yourself as the tiresome victim. But then one day, you overhear another person, or the friend of a friend of that person, talking about what happened to them at the hands of the very same person. You are not the only one it has happened to. And it's like a light coming through a stained glass window in a cathedral and shining down upon you. You are not the only one. You were not at fault. You did nothing wrong. And you find your voice again.
You seek this other person out and say, maybe hesitantly "Hey, this happened to me too." And when they tell you their story, you are vindicated and relieved. A third person overhears you and approaches, and with each story you hear, the strength you thought you'd lost forever comes back a piece at a time. Your fear and your shame and disgust is replaced by something else: rage.
This is why we "wait so long" to come forward with our stories. Because we're afraid. Because we've been made to believe it was something we did wrong and indirectly brought upon ourselves. We're not waiting to cash in. We're not waiting at all. We've been sitting here, drowning in guilt and shame, maybe drinking too much, maybe suffering from crippling low-self esteem, believing that were were the only ones and, as such, must somehow be at fault. And when we suddenly realize we're not, and never were, we are quick to stand beside the brave ones who finally stood up and spoke out, reaching for them like life preservers, speaking when we couldn't and didn't even know we had that option. It's called "solidarity."
And you know what remark from Donald Trump disturbs me even more than the whole "grab 'em by the pussy" thing? His dismissal of his female accusers as being too ugly to grope in the first place. His assertion that they would "not be his first choice." He's not denying his misconduct! He's dismissing their credibility by calling them ugly.
Let me tell you fuckers a story.
When I was still a reasonably young girl, I came home from work one night, walked up my stairs to the front door of my apartment, tired and looking forward to sleep. My neighbor's door, directly across from mine, was open. He was a white guy, unemployed, almost always drunk, covered in scabs, reeking of smoke. He saw me come up the stairs and began speaking in a normal tone of voice: "Hey. Hey c'mere. Hey. C'mon over. Got some beer. Hey, you wanna say hi?"
To be honest, I didn't really even hear him, didn't even realize he was talking to me. I thought he was on the phone, or talking to someone else in the house with him. Until I heard his next statement: "Fine, you don't wanna say Hi, fuck you, you're ugly anyway." I heard the "fuck" and the "ugly" and turned around to find him staring right at me. He was sitting on the couch in his underwear, drunk, picking at his toes. And yet
I was the ugly one.
I was used to this shit by now, but still I stared at him open mouthed, unable to believe how fucking rude he was being, how apish and disgusting. Finally, I turned around and slammed my door as hard as I could. And double locked it. A while later, he walked by my window and yelled "BITCH!"
I yelled back: "COWARD!"
And my immediate thought was: "Perhaps I shouldn't have yelled back. Maybe I've made it worse. I should have just ignored it."
And that's when I realized how fundamentally fucked up the whole world was. Because that was my first reaction - to second guess myself, to feel guilty about defending myself, to fear the repercussions of my actions when I knew damn right well that that toe-picking ambient fungus next door wasn't at all sorry for what he'd said, did not see the irony in calling me ugly and had shifted responsibility entirely over to me, justifying his actions with:
"You didn't say Hi, therefore you are a bitch and deserve to be told so."
I could sit here and excuse the behavior of men by saying:
"Well, they're not women, they don't know what it's like, they've never experienced abuse the way we do." But I know that's not true, and it's just another excuse. Because men
do know what it's like, whether they want to admit to it or not. Guys, I know you've been humiliated by your boss, your coach, your dad, your brothers and uncles. I know that at the very least, you've had your ass kicked by some guy you thought you could handle - is it something you tell your friends about? Do you ever talk about that emasculating, embarrassing moment to anyone? Or do you pretend it never happened to save face? No, of course not. Why would you want to admit to something that shames you to this day?
From this day forward, you have no more excuses guys. And this is
not up for debate. Talking to women like this is
wrong. Talking
about women like this is
wrong. It is
not cool, it is
not something that "all boys" do, it is
not something that should be expected and/or dismissed as something that "all boys" do, it is
not a rite of passage, it is
not acceptable, and
we have never liked it. Take responsibility, learn the meaning of class, act like a man instead of an ape. Are Eee Ess Pea Eee See Tea, find out what it means to me and every other woman on the face of the Earth.
And
stop fucking asking us what took so long to speak up. Because the answer is
"YOU." You and everyone else who helped you to build up this level of tolerance over the centuries with your ridiculous rules for us, your double standard bullshit games, your endless excuses.
Your behavior is
not our fault. We're done, do you fucking hear me? You can only taunt and bully and poke and pester and rape and kill us so much for so long, and you have the nerve to look surprised when we finally snap and turn on you and scream: "FUCK YOU!" and claw your eyes out and slam our feet into your groin? Really? Because if this reaction in any way shocks you, you are definitely part of the fucking problem.
Believe me, guys - we've already doubted our own stories and our own motivations, our version of events and even our own culpability. We've questioned the worth of "bringing this up after so long" whether it's been three days or thirty years. But some wounds won't heal unless you rip them back open again. And some shit won't change unless you speak the fuck up.
I am fucking angry, and I don't care if you don't like it.
