“Sexual violence isn’t about sex; it’s about power.” This phrase has been repeated again and again and again and has recently resurfaced in conversations, public and private, throughout rape culture’s arguable year of reckoning.

This statement is at once a reassurance and a protest: the aim of sexual violence (including harassment and assault) is not the act of sex itself, but the power one asserts through the act. But the more we pass this phrase around, the more we establish a false binary wherein there is such a thing as sex untouched by power dynamics, a “pure” sex that is safe from the threat of power.

What’s insidious about this phrase is that it assumes we have stable and agreed upon definitions of fraught terms like “sex” and “power.” The phrase ushers us past the physicality of sex and violence all together in favor of an abstraction.

Power remains diffuse in this formulation, only showing its “true colors” in the faces of the bad people who abuse it and the institutions (the fast food industry, Hollywood, academia, the District Attorney’s office…) that enable it. The conventional wisdom demurs: sexual mores may change, but the quest for power is forever and there will always be bad people. That’s just the way it is.

Admittedly, the phrase can be employed in good faith—to say rape is “about power” is to make the necessary claim that institutional power facilitates and perpetuates abuse. Those with power—even and especially those who make their dime critiquing power—will close ranks to protect their hierarchical kin. But we don’t need to avoid talking about sex if we want to understand power. Instead, we can ask how power is part of sexual asymmetries and the demands of intimacy.

Sex disappears in this binary. The framework implies an unrigorous sex-positivity wherein sex is inherently good, as opposed to power, which is inherently abusive or predatory, the corrupting agent that ruins an otherwise consensual sexual experience.

The conventional wisdom demurs: sexual mores may change, but the quest for power is forever and there will always be bad people.
Click To Tweet

As Charlotte Shane points out in her evaluation of recent publications and films on rape culture, consent is only a binding agreement insofar as the power differential between participants is even-keeled.

“Properly introduce consent to a potential date rapist, and you’ll be rewarded with a sexually law-abiding citizen,” explains Shane about this logic. The consent framework and the sex/power line go hand and hand, both concealing the need to think about sex at all, let alone ask when sex is ever unburdened by power differentials.

As if straight sex is ever free from the curse of its coercive history. As if queer sex can ever be enjoyed without the knowledge that someone wants to, and perhaps could, punish you for it. Making room to think about sex, as Shane acknowledges, means “admitting that the capacity for rape is determined by man-made conditions rather than some inborn evil.”

Sex isn’t necessarily the chaotic good to power’s lawful evil at all. In fact, Emily Yoffe argues in her essay, “Understanding Harvey,” that when we assume sexual violence is only a question of power, we refuse to look at darkness in sexual desire. That is, abusers don’t do it merely because they can get away with it, but rather, because they have a particular desire that power gives them the ability to fulfill. Power is the means by which that desire can be satisfied. If abuse is not about sex, then desire drops out of the equation, and the exercise of power is the only thing to be reproved.

As if straight sex is ever free from the curse of its coercive history. As if queer sex can ever be enjoyed without the knowledge that someone wants to, and perhaps could, punish you for it.
Click To Tweet

But even in Yoffe’s more careful examination of the sex/power framework, she still works from the premise that power only ever belongs to those who abuse it, not to those who are victimized by it. Too often, this assumption is behind the sex/power framework.  

To say “it’s not about sex, it’s about power,” is to fetishize power and proffer it as the abusive kind of power that only exists when it is stolen, and therefore only ever belongs to the few.

A variation of “it’s not about sex” can be found in two articles from the early days of #metoo: Atossa Araxia Abrahamian’s essay, “The Problem Isn’t Sex, It’s Work” and Rebecca Traister’s similarly titled, if qualified, essay, “This moment isn’t (just) about sex. It’s about work.”

Sarah Leonard has also employed the phrase “The fact is that sexual harassment is more about power than sex” to argue that, under capitalism, sexual harassment is inevitable, given the imbalance of power between boss and worker.

Examining sex and power in terms of work is an excellent way of getting at what we mean when we say “power,” even though it still sounds an awful lot like “it’s not personal, it’s business,” and even if we’re still not saying “class.”

In the workplace, sexual harassment is a specific form of exploitation because what it does to the body cannot be collected for profit; there is only the abuser’s pleasure in cruelty.

Sexual violence targets the most vulnerable across lines of race, class, gender, immigration status, ability, and age, as well as workers in particular conditions of precarity, such as undocumented workers, those in the gig economy, and sex workers. It is a means of claiming ownership of the worker’s body beyond what they can produce as labor.

Our body is our first and most visceral relationship, even more immediate than anything else the boss steals (like time or wages). Sexual violence in the workplace, too, is a kind of theft. Work steals so much of our body from us: our posture, our eyesight, sometimes our fingers or limbs. But unions have yet to win tickers in the workplace that count “X days without unwanted touching” or worker’s compensation for therapy necessitated by incessant humiliation.

Sexual violence in the workplace is a violation which proves that the worker’s body is not only exploitable in every way, but also that workers do not have the right to consent to any of the conditions in which they work. To say that this reckoning is “about work” does not give us a framework to understand sex’s particular relation to power and labor. That is, it doesn’t account for the specificity of sexual violence, what makes it, as Law and Order reminds us, “especially heinous.”

Reluctance to talk about sex when we talk about sexual violence also makes it easier to leave sex workers out of the story of workplace harassment. Sex workers have a 45-75% risk of physical violence, contrary to ill-informed claims that sex workers can’t experience rape or that rape is merely “theft of services”.

Our body is our first and most visceral relationship, even more immediate than anything else the boss steals (like time or wages).
Click To Tweet

In this collective moment of reckoning, something like solidarity has been shaping up: a rally for International Whore’s Day against SESTA/FOSTA, the quickly organized week of protests against Kavanaugh, a hexing, and more to come. There is power in solidarity. But the binary nature of the sex/power framework doesn’t allow for a definition of power which encompasses the ability of the victimized to fight back and demand transformative justice.

Between people, power is the ability to make change or to stop change through work over time. It is also the ability to either obfuscate or clarify the forces that enact it. The danger of the “it’s about work” phrase is that it has the ability to distract our attention from sex and the structures with which it may be difficult to personally identify with.

If we admit that sexual violence is about sex, that sex is always entangled with power that enables and perpetuates abuse, there might also be less hand-wringing over cases that trouble our perceptions of who commits sexual violence: a Holocaust survivor who made startlingly accurate films about psychosexual horror, say, or a queer, allegedly feminist professor.

For those who have been exploited and hurt—what is their power? Is it a comfort to be told that a physical act of violation was actually about power? Will it heal bodily injury, or prevent those with PTSD from dissociating during consensual sex? Will it return our time? There are so many explanations for why people engage in bad behavior. How many of them are satisfying? Who really wants, as Yoffe proposes, to “understand” Harvey?

What if instead of—yet again—examining the psyche of damaged men (that Yoffe begins with the nineteenth-century Austrian psychologist Kraft-Ebbing suggests that this fascination was not born in “our” era of prestige television and true crime podcasts), we spoke to the vulnerable ones about their own darkness?

What if we were to consider to their relationship to power?

There is a reason why we encounter this framework in thinkpieces but rarely in testimony. In the stories I’ve heard and read and told and wrote since the early days of #metoo, we observe our own bodies as though floating above, find bruises that change color but never fade; we trace and retrace our footsteps and still don’t know how we ended up face down.

Sometimes, talking about it feels compulsive, as we detail our trauma to anyone who will listen, like the Ancient Mariner interrupting a straight wedding or the vengeful ghost of It Happened To Me. Other times, the hurt is compartmentalized, the dazzling feats we accomplish make it unclear if we push ourselves in spite of our hurt or because of it.

For those who have been exploited and hurt—what is their power?
Click To Tweet

And yet, not every incident of sexual violence has the effect of trauma. Sometimes, the offense is mundane, a waste of time, as Melissa Gira Grant has written. “Our conflict is not over sex,” she stresses, “or with men in particular or in general, but over power.” I agree that sexual violence is a theft of power, but our conflict over who possesses power does extend into the sexual.

Sexual violence is very much about sex—it is a particular way of hurting someone where they will stay hurt, since their wounds are discouraged from being publicly bandaged.

Acknowledging that it is about sex allows us to treat our wounds and to tell stories of healing, as #metoo founder Tarana Burke urges us to do. It allows us to admit that even if it wasn’t personal to them it was personal to us, and most of all, it allows us to feel like we can move forward without relying on individualistic conceptions of strength and empowerment.

The phrase obscures the uncomfortable truth that “sex” and “power” are not incommensurate terms. By ignoring this truth, we make it harder to create a world in which sex doesn’t hurt and power isn’t exploitative. Instead, power can be the means by which we refuse, or by which we work together to negotiate what we want.

With the media focused intently on stories of sexual harassment, we might be forgetting one thing. Yes, there’s a lot of sexual harassment, but some men out there do, in fact, have stories of times they didn’t sexually harass a woman. Maybe it’s time we find those men, and maybe it’s time we tell those stories.

Here, I ask brave, upstanding men to share stories of encounters with women that did not involve sexual harassment.

“I was waiting in line at the grocery store, and I noticed the girl in front of me has a nice ass. Well, I say ‘girl’ because she was extremely sexually attractive to me — she was probably in her late twenties with a successful career, eh, if I had to guess, I’d say she ran a team of software engineers, based on the fact that I took a photo and Google-imaged her and found her Linkedin. Anyway, I stared at her ass for a long time, but whaddya know — I didn’t grab it.”
— The Hero John Monroe

“Do I have a story about not sexually harassing a woman? Ha, yeah, funny you should ask. It happened today, actually. I was walking my dog, and another woman was walking her dog, and we just walked on past each other.”
— The Venerable Mark Wallace

“Oh boy, do I have a story for you. Have I ever not sexually harassed a woman? You better believe I have. The year was 1999. I was on a bus, and I saw a lady with a great chest. Probably at least a D. But I said to myself, I said, ‘Harry, you got a wife and two daughters at home, do NOT comment on her breasts.’ And I didn’t! Although you better believe I took the seat next to her even though the whole bus was empty. And you better believe I manspreaded onto her — not in a sexual way, that’s just how I sit always.”
— Sir Harry Frederick The Brave

“Let me tell you what feminism looks like, OK? I have a new female coworker on my team at work. And she is not attractive. So I have not asked her out. Not all heroes wear capes. But I do. What do you think of my cape?”
— Feminist Icon Barry Marshall Who Is Currently Wearing A Superman Cape He Probably Bought At A Children’s Toy Store

“My brother was telling me about a time he didn’t sexually harass a woman, and I said me too! Me too! Is that what the me too movement is about?”
— The Honorable Tim Johnson The Confused

“Yeah of course I have a story about not sexually harassing a woman. I saw a pretty girl on the train, and I said, ‘hey sweet cheeks what’s your number?’ And she said — oh, wait? You’re counting that? As sexual harassment? Hm, ok, let me get back to you.”
— The Noble Andrew Harrison Who Will Go Check His Notes And Then Get Back To Me To Become The Even More Noble Andrew Harrison

“Well, there was a lady at a bar. And I was trying to talk to her for about an hour. She kept saying things like ‘stop grabbing my ass’ and ‘did you put anything in my drink?’ Ha, what a tease. Anyway, I followed her home — no, no, I’m getting to it — I followed her home, I waited outside her apartment, and then I remembered. The bartender was a woman too. And I didn’t say anything to her. This is what a feminist looks like. Well, that bartender looked like a feminist. That’s why I didn’t talk to her.”
— The Esteemed Patrick Goldman

“I’ve prepared 282 stories. Oh, wait, you want stories about times I did NOT sexually harass a woman? Let me think — uh, OK, got nothing. Sorry, I misread the email.”
— Harvey Weinstein

If you read these stories and want to share your own, please find the author of this post on Twitter and tag a woman you have not sexually harassed.

“A sign in my gym’s locker room reads: ‘Please use a lock. Not responsible for lost or stolen items.’ Frustrated at searching for free lockers (because people stow their things, but don’t use a lock — thus making lockers look free when they aren’t), I move the contents of unlocked lockers to the ledge above. I am trying to square the owners’ apparent indifference to what happens to their things (by failing to use a lock) with the idea that a locker is occupied. I am frustrated by the time-consuming search for unused lockers. And these people fail to follow instructions: ‘Please use a lock.’”

—From CONNIE via Social Q’s, New York Times, 1 February 2018

Dear Connie,

It is of course tiresome enough, when searching for a place to stow one’s own bag full of priceless gems and cures for various deadly illnesses, to open gym locker after gym locker only to find the cubbies occupied by the worthless tackle of the masses. But to then be forced to do the exhausting work of removing strangers’ piddly crap and placing it elsewhere — why, that really cuts into a cardio warm-up! It really says something about the thoughtlessness of people these days that your gym-mates think nothing of delegating to you the responsibility of removing their crummy bullshit from lockers and leaving it just around wherever when in fact you have a lot of House Hunters to catch up on from the elliptical!

Items that are not placed under lock and key must be strewn about. That’s not just a basic function of physics — famously illustrated by the concept of Schroedinger’s Moldy Shower Shoe — it’s also a moral issue. Once you’ve laid eyes upon a set of house keys, a half-used stick of Right Guard, and a crumpled but blessedly unused maxi pad, you have an obligation to move them to a new place in order to teach a valuable lesson to people who erroneously believe that “their” “possessions” “belong” to them just because they bought them, were given them, or otherwise came to have them in their custody. Why, anyone might come by and simply help themselves — you’ll make sure of it!

But of course none of this answers your question — you want to know how you can stop wasting time opening all of the unlocked gym cubbies full of people’s phones and credit cards and other garbage, emptying all the unlocked gym cubbies full of this detritus and relocating all of this trash no one will ever miss from all of the unlocked gym cubbies. The solution couldn’t be simpler: Incorporate all of this unavoidable lifting and shifting into your weight training routine, thereby cutting down on the time you spend out on the floor. You could even ask one of your gym’s personal trainers to help you out! In the spirit of intellectual consistency, be sure you follow whatever instructions they give you after you have described in detail your practice of rifling through the belongings of your fellow patrons.

“My son is in high school and has been being tutored by a college math associate professor for the past six months. My son has made fantastic progress and has overcome years of failing math grades.

The problem is that this professor was just fired for sexual harassment at his college. It was a big enough deal to make the local paper and everyone has backed away from him. He has been ejected from his other leadership positions in town and is now seen as a pariah. (The level of harassment was Louis C.K.-level, not Weinstein.)

I want to continue the tutoring as long as possible. I am concerned about the message my son gets in this, but at the same time, this tutoring is the only thing that has ever worked for my son in math. He has taken a child who may have not graduated high school and put him on track for college. What should I do?”

— Via Dear Prudence, Slate, 19 December 2017

Dear What Should I Do?

At any moment your son could be asked to perform elaborate feats of trigonometry, but what are the chances he’s going to interact with another human on planet earth and need to draw on the values and lessons imparted to him by his family in order to decide how (or whether!) to proceed in any given social situation? Pretty low, probably!

As long as the otherwise brilliant man your son hangs out with on a regular basis has only whipped his dick out and masturbated in front of women who expressly did not consent to participation in such an act, as opposed to forcibly sexually assaulting them, you’re fine. Adolescents are notoriously immune to sociocultural influences and your kid, like all teenage boys, is not of a developmentally significant age at which it would be a bad idea to teach him that being moderately competent at something means he can do whatever he wants to whoever he wants to do it to, whenever he wants to do it. You can always decline to give your family’s money to some other sexual harasser, some other time, when it is more convenient for you.

Who can say that just because your family continues to expressly support a sexual harasser for doing math good, your son will get the impression that an individual man’s intellectual or artistic contributions are more important than the safety, wellbeing, and potential of any number of women? He might just learn some good long division tricks from the man who makes women look at his dick when they don’t want to! It’s definitely worth the gamble.

Your son has his whole life to learn that sexually harassing women has consequences. Maybe your soon will learn this lesson at that good, good college he’ll get into thanks to that man who shows his dick to women when they don’t want to see it! Maybe he’ll learn it when he gets a job, or maybe when he becomes somebody’s boss, or maybe when he becomes powerful enough to hire people, or maybe when he becomes powerful enough to fire people, or maybe when he retires, or maybe when he’s literally on his deathbed?

Regardless, there is just so much time left in life for your son to learn about consent and respect and human decency, and so little time for him to memorize the quadratic equation. There are not many math professors as good as this one and so few women in the field, anyway, so it’s not like you’re going to find one easily — I wonder why? It’s probably biology or something.

“I got married three weeks ago. It was my second and my husband’s first marriage. The venue was about 110 miles away from the area where we and most of our friends and family live, so many guests stayed in the hotel affiliated with the venue. We went all out! Several guests have said it was the best wedding they’d ever attended. Five hours of open bar, outstanding food, and gorgeous setting! We went through all our cards and gifts and noticed there was one missing — a woman I’ve considered a very close friend for twenty years. She came to the wedding alone and, believe you me, took full advantage of the open bar. I was perplexed and surprised because it seemed out of character for her not to give a gift. I texted her and (white lie) told her that hubby and I were concerned that we may have been missing some cards then casually asked, ‘Did you put a card in the box?’ To which she simply replied, ‘No.’ I understand she doesn’t have a lot of money to spend, I get that, but NOTHING? Not a card with a lovely sentiment or even a modest gift?

Do you have any words of wisdom? I realize I need to ‘let it go,’ but I’ve been ruminating!”

—From VEXED IN UPSTATE NEW YORK via Ask A Practical Wedding, A Practical Wedding, 18 January 2018

Dear Vexed,

Of course you’ve been ruminating! People who get married deserve to be materially rewarded for falling in love and telling a bunch of people about it all at once, and you are no exception. Everyone who attended your destination wedding owes you a gift that meets or exceeds their precisely consumed share of the open bar, and this so-called “very close friend” is absolutely obligated to reimburse you for the 1/389th of the wedding you performed for her. (And you definitely had one of the best weddings, for sure! Definitely only people who have the best weddings are told that their weddings are the best! This is absolutely 100% not a thing that people just blurt out because what the fuck else do you to say to someone who stenciled their kindergarten school picture in artisanal vegan crayon on 389 light blue mason jars.)

This is the story of the story I can’t write.

The “#MeToo moment” has cut a righteous swathe through the elite, bringing down once unassailable men in entertainment, news, and the world of politics. The legions of us it united became 2017’s Person of the Year, fitting for so desolate a year that we women who yelled out “Enough!” in unison should be esteemed for it. I have #MeToo stories I’ve not gone public with in any detail. But they’re not what this piece is about.

Rather, this story is about what lurks in the penumbra of #MeToo, what is occluded by the press coverage and the jokes (so very many late night jokes) about the sexual dimension of male power. Power, as a whole, remains in the shadows.

A few women have tried to bring this more complex analysis forward. Journalist Melissa Gira Grant, for instance, wrote for The New York Review of Books about how sexual harassment is a projection of power, rather than something purely sexual. “Sex has overshadowed harassment,” she writes. But this moment points to larger, more systemic issues of men in power silencing and marginalizing those they dominate — whether or not they use sex to do so.

Power, as a whole, remains in the shadows.
Click To Tweet

“[W]omen are not supposed to let on that we know how power works,” Grant writes, “Consciously or not, we know how rote male dominance is, and that it often feels like nothing. It is the weather, and it is a form of discipline.”

This was a subtle but powerful point that was also made by Rebecca Carroll, a journalist who produced Charlie Rose for years. She wrote for Esquire about her experience of Rose’s racism. Describing a “toxic and degrading” environment, she recalled how Rose tokenized her for being black, and belittled her for forwarding innovative ideas on how to discuss race on Rose’s program. “If I pushed back on anything race-related, I was silenced or punished,” she wrote, adding that after she suggested a panel discussing the history of the slave trade to frame a piece on the movie Amistad, he became “so irate that he cancelled the whole segment and didn’t assign me anything else for days.”

“It was an environment that all but erased me, while simultaneously exploiting me as a black woman,” Carroll wrote. “I felt like an exotic anomaly he could move around the chessboard at his whim — and I was supposed be grateful for it.” None of Rose’s behavior toward her was sexual, notably. It was a parallel form of toxicity that degraded her, specifically, for being a black woman. But would Carroll be considered part of this “moment,” then? Even when her story feels so central to what #MeToo is really about? It exposes a form of male power and entitlement that imbricates deeply with a white supremacist power structure. We should not be surprised that Rose’s intense misogyny was twinned with racism, after all. Lest we forget, Harvey Weinstein tried to publicly discredit only two of his accusers: Lupita Nyong’o and Salma Hayek.

Yet Carroll’s story points the way to a larger understanding of white and male power. This isn’t about sex. As Grant, writes: “Our conflict is not over sex, or with men in particular or in general, but over power.” The even more challenging point she makes is that this reckoning should not just be about whether we “feel” violated, or pained, which reduces everything to a personal experience and slots neatly into the trope of tearful white woman as victim who must be rescued (and thus the only person whose harms must be, narrowly, redressed). Rather, it is about the fact of our power being reduced, our time being frittered away, our energy being spent on “dealing with” our abusers, our careers dissolving through it all against our will.

And thus we come to the story I can’t tell.

Whisper networks have been in the news lately, but they don’t just exist for discussing sexual predators. Marginalized folk of all genders have networks where we discuss other kinds of malefactors — not all of them men, but most of them white, certainly. They are people who prey on us; we’re resources to them — “informants,” “sources,” even when we’re actually supposed to be colleagues. We may be “inspiration,” or “muses,” colorful little characters in a story with a punchy headline. But we are never ourselves.

Once we outlive our usefulness we become so much trash to be dumped, and we are perpetually reminded that, whatever qualifications we hold, whatever we’ve done in our fields, whatever our titles, we are not their equals.

It’s the white cis woman who tells me that she loves my work but that she’s just so disappointed in my anger over her prejudicial statements on trans people; and she makes sure all of her (much larger) base of followers is aware of that. It’s the white cis man whose personal brand controls a newsroom with such force that it could turn an entire city against a trans activist who complained about unfair coverage. It’s the white trans man in a prominent community perch who gatekeeps the careers of so many aspiring trans women while degrading their talents in private, glorying in his power over them. In each of those cases, we had to smile, bow politely, and commit our time and energy to smoothing things over. We withdrew a little bit more of ourselves from public life, devoted more of what was left to mollifying them.

On Spacey, Weinstein, Milo, And The Weaponization Of Identity
theestablishment.co

I think also of the man who essays from a prominent media platform about the supposed threat posed by trans women like me. Liberal concern trolling, if you like. I have the temerity to publicly criticise him on social media, while speaking to another woman.

Before long, I find a furious email from him in my inbox angrily accusing me of spreading lies, belittling my professional qualifications and claims to expertise. Shut up and go away, he said. And yet months before, he had taken to social media to loudly denounce me, and spuriously accused me of professional malpractice to all of his followers, not a few of whom were in my line of work. I couldn’t send him an angry email of course.

That required power I simply do not possess.

Each of these cases is marked in a graveyard of text files that may never see the light of publication. Each case is marked by a singular lack of singularity — there are other people who’ve been harassed by the powerful folks in question, after all. But they don’t want to, or can’t, come forward. There’s never enough critical mass of testimony to go to press; without their story, there is no story.

Thus I’m so often alone with the man in the inbox.

He emailed more than once— because of course he did. It’s his privilege to vent to me in a manner unbecoming of his profession, to try and isolate me in a dark corner of my inbox. Who knows, he may recognize himself in this story and email me yet again.

My role in his life is that of a strange helpmate; a sounding board for his anxieties about his targets talking back.

There are other people who’ve been bullied by the powerful folks in question. But they don’t want to, or can’t, come forward.
Click To Tweet

I was not hurt by these emails, I wasn’t even sad. The first time I tried a little emotional labor — who among us, as women, hasn’t felt the need to soothe a man who is yelling at us? That’s what you do, right? The second time, I merely rolled my eyes and didn’t respond. This is a man who sought to make claim on my psyche, deliberately preyed on my insecurities, and tried to poison my profession against me. Because I’m a trans woman with an “agenda.” That had to be put down; I could not be regarded as an expert or an equal, only a shallow fraud who needed to be silenced.

Another man, with another email, sent after a talk I gave at a major professional conference. He started off by asking me not to make his words public before he launched into a belittling tirade about how awful I was for not including slides in my presentation and how he’d “never seen so many people walk out of a talk” before. I was at the podium, I saw the crowd, and the statistical feedback, I heard the exact opposite about that talk from so many people, and thus I knew all the ways he was wrong. But he still wanted to make a claim on my consciousness, eroding my expertise to feel more secure in his own.

This, then, is about all the bitter little ways our power — as women of color, as queer people — is diminished. It hangs together with quotidian online harassment from people who seek to reduce you to a witless ethnic stereotype; my favorite was an angry gamer calling me “Home Depot Anita Sarkeesian,” get it? Because I’m Latina? Hi-larious. But when slightly more highbrow variations on that theme come from your white male “peers,” it takes on a different shape because they really have the power to degrade your professional standing.

When A Woman Deletes A Man’s Comment Online
theestablishment.co

It’s worse when they think they’re on your side. A cis man wants to be regarded as an ally of trans people; I explain why his ideas are actually transphobic, he responds by trying to erase me and telling the world I have no credentials to question him. In private, he condemns me; he casts me as the aggressor, says I am unprofessional, that I have no claim to any expertise on, say, online harassment or trans rights. He’s the real victim. As it so often is with the men whose heads you must sympathetically pat while they scream at you. Keep yourself safe by playing your preordained role in the drama he’s scripted, fret your hour on his stage, move on.

I’m not hurt — much less “violated” in any sense. But time and energy that could’ve gone into other things is now lost to the four winds. And I have to be concerned about what all those emailing men, the ones who don’t want me to reveal their splenetic rantings, could do to my reputation in the public sphere they so comfortably own.

And I must emphasize here: None of this behavior was sexual. None of the anonymized stories I’ve told here are about sexual harassment. But these people abuse their power in the same way; certain white people and men try to control the narrative in public, while cribbing you in private, making sure you can’t say what happened there. The consequences will be yours to reap, after all. You’ll be unprofessional if you come forward. You’ll get sued.

Keep yourself safe by playing your preordained role in the drama he’s scripted, fret your hour on his stage, move on.
Click To Tweet

#MeToo has already become a vast and sprawling conversation about complex, important issues regarding sex crimes. But there is connective tissue between sexual harassment and platonic forms of abuse, for each is rooted in a privilege no one should have. This is a venerable feminist insight that should not be forgotten.

“If it wasn’t about sex, why didn’t he just hit her?” asked Catharine A. MacKinnon, when trying to sort out whether rape was motivated more by sex or generic power. Like so many of her points, this aphorism is so simple as to seem inarguable, but it won’t reckon with the people who do hit us, or who try to destroy us without laying a finger on us.

Sociologically, it is more sensible to see sexual terror as existing on a continuum with abuses of every other kind of power, every other kind of social interaction. The point of abuse, and why it’s so insidious, is that it takes the material of ordinary life and turns it into a weapon: touch, sex, communication, privacy. These things are not inherently evil; their uses can be. Sometimes that use is neither violent nor violating, it just causes you to wither.

Grant’s essay reminded me of this. In a media economy that prizes women’s suffering as an Ur currency, it helps to be reminded that exercises of power don’t need to “hurt” to be harmful. Just because you can’t “sell” your story doesn’t mean it’s not important or informative.

The point of abuse, and why it’s so insidious, is that it takes the material of ordinary life and turns it into a weapon.
Click To Tweet

It’s vital to recognize that feelings are real and worth respecting, but we must be wary of the ways in which our stories are commodified as trauma porn for safe consumption. The larger fight? It’s not about feelings, but actual diminishment of real power: power over my time, my life, my work.

Back in the whisper networks a familiar dialogue proceeds. “Watch out for him,” “He creeped me out too,” “He does this to everyone,” “I got receipts,” “He came after me when I said x.” It’s all we can do to keep ourselves safe, and to retain the modicum of power that comes with knowing you aren’t alone. Same as it ever was.

Through it all, certain people will try to deny your power, or your ability to connect their fell deeds to a fell system.

They demand privacy because they know that “privacy” individualizes your story, makes it “he said she said” drama, and keeps it away from the bright lights of a larger analysis that would suggest these men aren’t the towering gods they think they are, but so many interchangeable parts in a larger machine.

We Shouldn’t Focus On How Men Feel About Female Victimization
theestablishment.co

The strangely viral New Yorker short story, “Cat Person,” serves as a case in point — not just for how it sharply divided opinion along gender lines, but for the fact that so very many people, even those who approved, thought the story was an “article.” So commodified are our personal stories that something labeled FICTION in bright red ink was still presumed to be a “confessional” essay. Non-fic chick lit. It’s just so gratingly difficult to conceive of women’s experience of sexism, however subtle, as an analysis (or as art) rather than a personal story.

The confessional form itself, like its Catholic forebear, is a suffocating space where you submit to anonymous male judgement. There is no real redemption, and you are not allowed to survey, or assess, or judge for yourself.

Thus, on the one hand, you can read this essay as tragic, for it confines abusers’ identities to whisper networks. And, indeed, their anonymity is an exercise of power. On the other hand this form has been liberating: This isn’t a lurid drama of pain and tears which must, invariably, center the abusers as co-stars. This is about territory I’m more comfortable in: analyzing social structure, as a woman qualified to do so, regardless of what my emailing “friends” preferred me to believe.

There’s a reason that Rep. Maxine Waters’ invocation of parliamentary procedure, “I’m reclaiming my time,” spoken during a committee meeting where she was being interrupted and talked over by a white man, has gained immortality as an anti-racist/feminist slogan. The resources sapped from us by white patriarchy are that fundamental, and daring to reclaim them assertively remains a painfully radical act.

One day, perhaps, I’ll learn to reclaim mine.

By Julie DiCaro

Women are the keepers of the misdeeds.

It’s the women, not the men, who catalog and remember which men to avoid, which men to run from, which men never, ever to be alone with. If you want to know if a Hollywood actor, pro athlete, or politician has a history of sexual assault, domestic violence, stalking, or harassment, ask a woman. We are the archivists of the wrongs.

Since the sexual harassment and assault allegations against Harvey Weinstein have opened the floodgates for women in multitudes of industries to tell their stories, we’ve seen a wide range of reactions from men: shock, surprise, anger, remorse, and vows to do better. We’ve seen “apologies” from Harvey Weinstein himself (sexual harassment, sexual assault), actor Ben Affleck (groping), President George H. W. Bush (groping and terrible old man jokes), comedian Louis C.K. (forcing women to watch him masturbate), politician Al Franken (groping, kissing), and many many more who have been called out for their actions. We’ve seen a series of “apologies” from men complicit in the culture that allowed their friends and colleagues to continue to hunt and harass women, from Jon Stewart (who laughed off allegations against friend Louis CK last year), to podcaster Marc Maron, to actor Colin Firth, to sportswriter Drew Magary.

It’s the women, not the men, who catalog and remember which men to avoid, which men to run from, which men never, ever to be alone with.

I’m far from the first person to bemoan internet activism. You know, the kind of “activism” where you tweet out “thoughts and prayers,” share a relevant hashtag, or express your outrage about the topic du jour, then go back to whatever you were doing and forget about “the cause” entirely.

But look, women don’t need your insipid apologies, faux shock, and awe at things you’ve known about for years, or explanations that you understand so much better now because you have a daughter. If you, man who has been a creep in the past or has stood by and laughed while his friends were creeps, really want to help change the world, here’s what we need from you:

Recognize the toll this last month has taken on the women in your life.

Every woman you know has been sexually harassed in some way. Every single one. Yes, your mom. Yes, your wife. Yes, your great-aunt Edna. ESPECIALLY your great-aunt Edna. For the most part, women learn how to deftly avoid men who lean into them too forcefully on public transport, the guy who not only catcalls us on the street, but follows us for two blocks, trying to provoke a reaction, the boss who we’ve been warned to never, ever be alone with. It’s part of how we learn to navigate the world. There’s a reason we don’t go to public bathrooms alone, and it’s not because we want to gossip.

But recognize that for many women, there are far worse incidents of sexual misconduct in our lives. The guy who held us down and forcefully groped us on the back of the school bus while his friends cheered. The boss who stood in front of the locked door while he jerked off in front of us. The rapist whom we couldn’t fight off, no matter how hard we tried. Many of us have never spoken about these events to anyone. We’ve simply determined to put them away and not to look at them again. That’s how women survive the world of men.

But for the last month, with woman after woman coming forward with tales of sexual harassment and sexual assault that are far too close to our own, those memories have been banging against the locked door of our collective memories, begging to be let out, demanding to be heard, refusing to be ignored. But we are not celebrities, nor are our tormentors. There is no protection for us in the public eye. There is no benefit to us coming forward. We still fear not being believed. We still fear being destroyed by the truth.

For us, these are dark days. Kindness goes a long way.

Call out your damn friends and help us hold them accountable.

Want to know why feminists and non-binary folks are “always angry?” It’s because we’re sick and tired of having to be the ones to point out when men are being assholes all the time. This shouldn’t fall to one gender. Mocking and shaming sexist jerks should be a pan-gender pastime, like binging Netflix.

In the words of the immortal Albus Dumbledore, “It takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to our enemies, but just as much to stand up to our friends.” Look, we know calling out other guys is hard for you. Far easier to just not get involved, look the other way, pretend you don’t see your “friend” harassing women on twitter, catcalling them from cars, sharing nude photos of ex-girlfriends. Got a friend who is cornering a woman so she can’t physically get away from him at a bar? Watching a friend refusing to take “no” for an answer at a club? Witness a buddy anonymously groping women in public spaces? It’s easier to take another swig of beer and look the other way.

So You’ve Sexually Harassed Or Abused Someone: What Now?

Of course, you’re free to take the easy way out, but don’t call yourself a “feminist” or an “ally” if you do. Know that every time you let your friends’ misogynistic behavior slide, you’re betraying every single woman in your life. Your silence and cowardice makes you part of the problem. Own it.

Be on our side.

Women will never understand the compartmentalization so many guys do when it comes to misogyny. A man can not simultaneously claim to respect women and, at the same time, carry on casual relationships with men who treat women like trash. Why was Mel Gibson, caught on tape famously berating and emotionally abusing his then-girlfriend, doing a cutesy little skit on supposed-ally Stephen Colbert’s Late Show? What was ESPN thinking in partnering with the openly misogynistic Barstool Sports? Podcaster Joe Rogan infamously called my radio partner, Maggie Hendricks, “all kinds of cunty,” then “apologized” by calling her a “bitch,” yet I see otherwise “good” guys wearing his t-shirts all the time. Chris Brown still gets booked on interviews and awards shows. Do we really need to get into R. Kelly? Donald Trump?

Women will never understand the compartmentalization so many guys do when it comes to misogyny.

The message misogynists have gotten from other men is one where they can be publicly hostile to women and still succeed in the professional world. And yes, there are certainly women who are willing to look the other way when it comes to the terrible behavior of men. But it’s men, by and large, who run every industry in the world. If men decided that there would be consequences for sexual assault and harassment, if men decided that public misogyny meant professional repercussions, if men made it clear that other men who harass and assault women would lose the support of their industry, it would end tomorrow.

Teach your sons to do better.

Be around when they interact with girls. Make it clear how you expect them to treat women throughout their lives. Expose them to women in positions of power so they learn not to be threatened, so that powerful women are normal to them. Talk to them about what women go through in male-dominated industries. Monitor their social media use and ensure that they aren’t engaging in online harassment. Don’t body shame in front of them. Don’t let them body shame in front of you. Treat every woman in their life with respect, even if it’s someone you don’t like. Praise successful women for their hard work and perseverance, even if it’s someone you don’t like. Criticize sexism when you see it. Teach them about internalized misogyny. Speak positively about feminism. Criticize men who don’t treat women well. Call yourself a feminist. Show your support for women every single day in some way.

Teach them to do better for all our sakes.

Are you a man who has been outed as a sexual harasser or abuser? Are you a man who is reading about all these rich and powerful men being brought down by their past transgressions and hoping and praying that the gross shit you did that violated the humanity or autonomy of another human being won’t be brought to light? Are you a man who is right now swearing that you’ve changed, that you are not the foolish man you once were and you are appalled by your past actions, but also you remember them differently, but also you’d like us all to be able to move forward?

Are you a man who has sexually harassed, abused, or assaulted someone and you do not want to be that person anymore? Are you a man who wants to genuinely move past the wrong you’ve done?

There is a path forward, past denial and scandal and shame. There is a path to genuinely being the better person that you want to be. I’m writing this sincerely. I’m writing this because sexual abuse and assault is so very common in our society that chances are, someone I know and love and respect is reading this and knowing that they are guilty. I’m writing this because if we don’t find a way forward, this will keep happening. Even if you never harass or abuse or assault another human being again: If you don’t try to make this right, this will keep happening and you will have helped to enable it.

When You Can’t Throw All Men Into The Ocean, What CAN You Do?

Are you ready to get started? Here are some first steps you can take.

1. Stop calling your victim(s) a liar.

Don’t slander them, don’t ignore them, don’t try to intimidate them. Don’t try to get your buddies to vouch for how you would absolutely never do anything like this. When you hurt someone, and then tell them to their face that you didn’t hurt them, you are hurting them all over again. Do not make your victim carry this alone.

2. Don’t wait to be accused.

If the person you harmed has not come forward publicly yet, do not just wait in terror for them to do so. Do not force them to take the risk to their reputations, careers, and peace of mind that victims take when they come forward with abuses against them. If you can first come forward to the person you abused in a way that would not add further harm to them, do so. And then be honest with others. If you harassed someone at work, go to your boss and to HR. Come clean with your community. Come clean with your sons.

An important note: Unless you have the permission of the person you harmed, you absolutely must protect their identity and any personal details of what happened that might cause further harm to them to hear or to have their community hear. Anything you do must place the wellbeing of the person you harmed as a top priority. A simple statement of, “I did this, and it was a violation of this person. It was not okay and I’m very sorry” is a good start.

3. Pause before immediately saying what a better person you are now.

Oh, you just got called out for sexual harassment or abuse but you’re a better person now? How much better? Better because you aren’t harassing or abusing people anymore? Better because when you think about what you did you feel bad? How much better of a person were you before someone had to be brave enough to publicly discuss the pain you put them through? How much better of a person were you when they were carrying the pain of what you did every day but you got to pretend like it didn’t happen? You might be on the way to better, but you haven’t earned the right to make any public declarations of reform yet. Keep reading.

4. Understand exactly what you did.

If you know you did something wrong but part of you is still thinking, “this wasn’t really that big of a deal,” then you need to take some time and do some research. Research how sexual harassment impacts victims. Research rape culture and the lasting effects of sexual abuse and assault. Listen to survivors. Listen to them and respect their ability to interpret what happened to them and the impact that it has had on them. Believe them.

---

You might be on the way to better, but you haven’t earned the right to make any public declarations of reform yet.
Click To Tweet

---

5. Face the consequences.

Do you deserve to lose some friends? Yes. Do you deserve to lose some respect? Yes. Do you deserve to lose your job? Yes. Do you deserve to go to jail? If you assaulted someone — yeah. If your teenager was stealing from work and got fired for it, if you were a halfway decent dad you’d likely tell them to be glad for the opportunity to learn from their mistakes and to realize that actions have consequences. Well, what you did was worse, way worse — even from a business perspective. Even if it was “just” sexual harassment. You stole the productivity of the person you harassed, who from then on had to try to do their job and deal with your gross ass at the same time. You likely made anybody else who was aware of what you did feel unsafe, which contributed to low morale and higher turnover. You made your employer look bad. You spent your work hours playing grab-ass instead of doing your job. On top of just being very shitty and abusive you wasted company time and resources and you deserve to be fired for that.

If you ever want young men to believe in personal accountability you will take these consequences respectfully, gratefully even. Yes, it does indeed suck if you will now find it harder to feed your family but understand that YOU DID THAT. You, not your accuser, not your employer, not an “angry mob” on the internet. You did that. You did that to yourself and your family and your community. Apologize to them for what your actions have brought and know every day that you are not the victim.

If you don’t face any of these consequences, consider yourself a lucky beneficiary of a society that doesn’t give two fucks about sexual abuse and assault victims, and know that you did absolutely nothing to deserve such luck.

On Spacey, Weinstein, Milo, And The Weaponization Of Identity

6. Use your power for good.

Hey, remember how you felt so powerful and entitled that you were pretty sure you could sexually harass someone and nothing would happen to you? Remember how you were pretty sure that you were so well liked and respected that nobody would believe sexual assault accusations against you? The power that you had in order to be able to do this gross shit? It’s power you can use to actually stop this gross shit.

Hey, you hold the careers of other people in your hands and that makes it really easy for you to tell a woman that you’d ruin her if she spoke out about your sexual harassment? It’s literally just as easy to tell the dudes you work with that you’d ruin THEM if they sexually harassed women.

Man, people really like you and look up to you so you have the perfect shield for your past sexual abuses? You also have the perfect platform to start talking about your struggles with toxic masculinity and encouraging other men to do the same.

---

The power that you had in order to be able to do this gross shit? It’s power you can use to actually stop this gross shit.
Click To Tweet

---

Are you the dude who all the other dudes try to impress with their sexist jokes? You can be the dude who says, “hey man, that’s not cool.”

And if you for one minute used your power (and even if you’re an unemployed dude looking around his studio apartment saying “what power,” trust me, you have some over at least one person in your life) to harass, abuse, or assault someone and you are not now using that power to fight the harassment, abuse, or assault of others — you are not a man changed. You are a man with a debt that you must pay.

7. Do not expect forgiveness.

Yes, you may be doing this to be a better person, but it does not mean that others have to see you as a better person. The things we do cannot be undone. We must find other ways to get as close to making things right as we can, but if you’ve harmed someone, you have no right to expect to be seen by them or anyone else impacted by you actions as anyone other than the person who harmed someone. You have to live with what you did as long as they do.

This does not mean that you have to beg for forgiveness for all eternity. It means that you will have to find a way to move forward while also carrying that burden with you. It will remind you of why your work now to fight the culture that makes sexual abuse so prevalent is so important. It will remind you to not be complacent, to not abuse your power, to resist the lure of toxic masculinity. It will fuel your fire to reach out to other men you care about so that they, too, will not harm others and have to carry around the harm they caused forever.

When Forgiveness Isn’t A Virtue

And to some people — to a lot of people — you will likely be seen as a better person, because you will be a better person. But you will never have a right to expect or demand that.

We have a serious sexual abuse and assault problem in this society, and as a perpetrator of some of that abuse, you have an increased obligation to help fight. You are not alone. There are millions of men around the country looking at their past behavior and wondering what they can and should do about it. You can help them follow the right path by taking the first steps yourself. This is not easy. This open accountability for the wrongs you’ve done is very painful to go through. But it’s nothing compared to the pain you’ve caused your victim(s) or the harm your silence does to society by continuing to uphold a culture that makes this abuse so easy.

You can never erase this, but you can repair some of the damage done, and the damage your inaction is currently doing. You can be a part of the solution. And you have to be. You owe it to your victims. You owe it to us all.

What does harmlessness mean? I believe it means more about answering a question I haven’t explicitly asked.

Unsplash

By July Westhale

When I was in the third grade, I got stabbed in the forehead with a pencil.

I was recently recounting this story to a group of coworkers while we were on a work trip to Vegas, since the last time I’d been in Vegas in any real and exciting way was when I was 7. The details of that trip are blurry — though I remember we stayed at that castle place, I thought Merlin was a sham, and I electrocuted myself on an outlet by trying to show off my resilience to a disinterested cousin — but the clearest memory was this: Vegas, in 1993, still had coins for the slot machines. They were thick, and hefty. They had slightly ridged edges. They probably felt, to adults, much more like money and promise than the slide cards of today (though the slide cards of today require less cognitive activity, and therefore, make the process of gambling effortless).

But for me, the slot machine coins were currency of another kind: status.

Remember 1993? Fresh Prince, Walkmans, the Barbie Liberation Organization, Steely Dan, the “What is Love” Jim Carrey remix (also, Jim Carrey), Groundhog Day, and, of course, pogs.

Pogs were hot shit at my elementary school, and maybe yours, too, if you are a peer of mine or just a hella cool retro-loving elementary-school kid. And slot machine coins? These were the most perfect goddamn slammers.

The Troubling Trendiness Of Poverty Appropriation

So when I returned from Vegas, I was a puffed-up peacock with my pog collection, which had risen in stock dramatically from its pre-coin glory. And my first day back, I’d carefully set it in the basket under my desk next to my lunchbox — only to discover it was gone by the time recess rolled around.

It was this asshole, Sam. He sat behind me, and regularly wrote “July sucks pickles” in pencil on his desk in the thick graphite of repetition. When I confronted him about the pogs thievery, he immediately picked up his pencil (the same pencil of pickle infamy) and stabbed me in the forehead with it.

I don’t much remember the aftermath. What I do remember is that it was the first time I’d learned to be afraid of the unpredictability of boys who’d had their power challenged. I still have a small scar on my forehead, a little space where forehead used to be. It’s nearly imperceptible, but still there.

On the more recent Vegas trip, the one I went on for work, I’d been eating alone at a place on the Strip I’d always wanted to try. Three men at the bar were cruising me, a fact I’d noticed the moment they’d walked in. I had chosen to ignore them. However, as I was finishing my meal, one of them approached me.

It was the first time I’d learned to be afraid of the unpredictability of boys who’d had their power challenged.

“Hey there,” he said. I straightened my back and positioned my body into a diplomatic brick wall. “My buddies and I noticed you’re dining alone, such a pretty girl.” He motioned toward his friends who were smiling from the bar. They raised their martinis. “We are just so bored, and it’s my birthday” — I rolled my eyes internally — “and, well, we are harmless. Let us buy you dessert.”

I didn’t. A few days later, while back home in Oakland, I got a message from an old coworker, a man who’d hired me to work as a ghostwriter for a publishing company, then had been subsequently laid off from his job. I still work there; he doesn’t. It’s awkward. He sent me a message saying that he was moving back East — he and his wife were splitting up, and he was really a mess. Could I meet up for a drink before he left town?

I was ready to immediately respond with a soothing “yes” — after all, I’ve been there, and man, does a drink with an understanding friend help — when his next message came through:

“BTW, I’m planning on flirting with you shamelessly. But don’t worry, I’m harmless.”

Support Diverse Journalism — Become A Member Of The Establishment

A few days later, my partner and I were on our way to see Maya Rudolph and her Prince cover band, Princess. Starving and hungover from a party we’d been to the night before, we stopped at a mediocre pizza place in the Mission district of San Francisco for a slice. The lights were too bright, and the smell of grease made me feel caged-in and ill, so I sat down at a spacious booth while my partner ordered. Almost immediately, a man came into the pizzeria and sat down next to me in the booth, forcing me to move quickly around the rest of the horseshoe to scramble out of it.

I was thinking, “Why do men always think it’s cool to sit so goddamn close to me,” when he simultaneously hissed out a “I just need pussy. I swear to god if bitches keep treating me like this I’m going to fucking kill someone.”

It was audible throughout the whole shop. My partner, whom I’d found a way to hide behind at this point, heard it. The line cook heard it. And the man ringing up our order heard it. The man looking for pussy slunk out the door, glaring at me the whole time. As soon as he was gone, the cashier laughed.

“You have to know how to handle these crazy motherfuckers. Don’t act so scared. He was harmless.”

Why do men always think it’s cool to sit so goddamn close to me?

I live in a part of Oakland where I have been sexually harassed every single one of the 761 days I’ve lived there. I know this isn’t the case with many people, as was pointed out to me in a piece The Establishment recently published about the de-sexualization of disabled bodies. But men always have things to say to me, about my hips, my smile, what I should and shouldn’t be doing. And very often, they counter with “I’m harmless” as they move closer into my space, as if that is the magic word that lowers the drawbridge across the moat.

My partner, a communications professor (on the humanitarian/conflict resolution side, not media), plays devil’s advocate. “I think it’s in part that men are on edge about always being perceived as predatory.”

Rebecca Solnit’s book, Men Explain Things to Me, holds the theory that such interactions assume that women don’t know any better than what they are told by men — and I liberally take her theories here to say that men believe that their authority means more than a woman’s feelings of safety. Saying “harmless” makes it true — and so it was decreed. Or something.

The Shocking Connection Between Street Harassment And Street Lighting

But in The Gift of Fear by Gavin de Becker, there’s a theory that predators are continuously stating truths in the form of non-truths — “I’m harmless” falling under that category. It’s a little bit like how you can learn a lot about red flags on a first date by really listening to the ways people talk about their past relationships (not to parallel these experiences, because different systems of social hierarchy and oppression are obviously at play).

So what does harmlessness mean? I believe it means more about answering a question I haven’t explicitly asked, except through body language, through primal fear, through the ways the world has taught me to be afraid of spontaneous violence against my person. I am never asking, I am never, ever asking for it.

I think my partner is talking about how current discourse around the predatory nature of men is presented in the media as an absolute — and for good reason, of course, because of rape culture and the systemic oppression of fetishized bodies. But I do believe that there is clearly more nuance. There are men who possess self-awareness enough to know that they’ve been told their whole lives that they are predators, and they perhaps have no idea how to navigate that (or don’t have the skill set to navigate that), except to preface every come-on with the statement that they are the exact opposite.

There’s a theory that predators are continuously stating truths in the form of non-truths.

What is missing, in these interactions, is this: When we talk about rape culture, or the sexualization of women/feminine bodies, we are talking about a problem that is systemic, not anecdotal. Recently, I was in a bar with a group of men who bristled visibly when I brought up street harassment, and how there was no such thing as a society that was inherently safe for women. As accustomed as I am to always being the “feminist killjoy” at the table/party/event, I’m constantly learning how to broach these subjects with grace and empathy, to try to take into consideration that the majority of those with privilege (including myself, in the arenas where I hold privilege) aren’t entirely aware that they possess it, nor how to be a proper ally.

The men I was in conversation with at the bar continued to bring the conversation back around to the fact (which I didn’t doubt even a little) that they, themselves, were good men. Harmless. This is another kind of harmless, of course, because these men were not using the word to preface a sexual advance towards me, only to try to show that their anecdotal experience meant that we were living in an era beyond sexism and rape culture. That women were, essentially, safe with them.

Because we could not seem to get the conversation back on track to a global perspective on systemic issues, I pounced on the opportunity to frame it in a way they could understand. One of the men had once shaved his head — an uncommon thing for him at the time and place when he’d done it. He talked about the ways in which people moved differently around him, how he had to think carefully about routes he walked home, places he frequented, people he talked to. Not only because he could be perceived as a threat, but also that he could be threatened for being different.

Love Poems To My Catcallers

“This isn’t exactly the same,” I said, “But try to channel your lived experience into empathizing with the concept that women face these kinds of decisions every single day.”

This seemed to work. Their task, we discussed, was to use their empathetic understanding to become better allies, and to open themselves up to being educated about fighting predatory behavior — which included participating in a kind of knowing that may be uncomfortable for them.

Looking For A Comments Section? We Don’t Have One.

]]> https://theestablishment.co/nobody-catcalls-the-woman-in-the-wheelchair-82a6e4517f79/ Wed, 27 Jan 2016 01:49:08 +0000 https://theestablishment.co/?p=1717 Read more]]> In our ableist society, a disabled body is necessarily a desexualized one.

Within feminist spaces, it’s assumed that #YesAllWomen experience street harassment. The ways in which that harassment manifests — the age it starts, its intensity or form, the consequences of speaking out — may vary depending on one’s intersecting identities. But all women, we’re told, know the fear, embarrassment, and/or anger that comes with unwanted sexual attention.

It’s understandable why this presumption exists. When we’re all working from some shared kernel of truth, it’s easier to discuss the nuances, the differences, and the complexities surrounding that kernel. It’s easier to build dynamic intra-community conversations off the sturdy foundation of communal experience.

This is a useful assumption — but it’s a harmful one, too.

I’m a 26-year-old woman who has never been street harassed. I’ve never been catcalled on my way to school, honked at in a parking lot, leered at on a train, groped in a Starbucks line, or otherwise sexually harassed in public. I’m not afraid when I leave the house that I’ll have to fend off aggressive, demanding men. I don’t mentally chart various routes home, looking for the one where I’m least likely to be accosted.

I don’t know the fear, embarrassment, and/or anger that comes with unwanted sexual attention. A not insignificant part of me wishes I did, though.

I’m not just exceptionally lucky, or exaggerating, or somehow oblivious. I’m a wheelchair user: a visibly, physically disabled woman. And my wheelchair acts as a strange sort of forcefield. People register “disabled” before they register “woman” and the former always overrides the latter, because in our ableist society, a disabled body is necessarily a desexualized one. We are grotesque or tragic, freaks or angels, to be either feared or pitied depending on how the abled gaze lands that day. No matter what, though, we are not desirable.

People register 'disabled' before they register 'woman' and the former always overrides the latter.
Click To Tweet

Even into my early twenties, the fact that I was never street harassed seemed like one more piece of evidence to shore up the belief that I was sexually objectionable. Some treacherous and insistent part of me believed that I could obviously never attract any decent men, so enticing the most debased ones was the best I could hope for. If I couldn’t even do that, then maybe my body really was wholly worthless.

I envied my friends as they talked about how much it hurt to be reduced to nothing but a sex object. I hated that it hurt them, and I mostly understood why it did. I even knew that street harassment frequently escalated; that women who rejected the attention were sometimes physically hurt or even killed.

But as much as I hated my jealousy, I longed for one stray whistle to be aimed in my direction. Just once, I wanted a man to leer at me across a room, obviously imagining all the things he could do to my body. I fantasized about men following me across campus, calling, Hey, sexy! Why don’t you come over here for a minute, baby?

Why is my experience so invisible to the feminist community?

When I retreated to online feminist spaces — supposedly safe spaces — looking for community, what I found was endless discussions of the ubiquity of street harassment. Here was a universal consequence of sexism, misogyny, and rape culture. Here was something all women could understand and rally against. Here was our uniting experience.

I found feminism and I thought, Maybe I don’t count here either.

I don’t expect every conversation of street harassment to come with a disclaimer, and I certainly don’t expect to see myself reflected in every essay or article or tweet on the subject. But this admittedly useful assumption that “Women Experience Sexualized Street Harassment” is necessarily exclusionary. That’s not the intent, but as feminists ought to know, intent doesn’t erase harm.

No one means to imply that if a woman doesn’t fall into the majority who face street harassment, then they don’t count, but the implication is there nonetheless. Despite the best of intentions, the way feminists tend to discuss street harassment as a given reinforces ableist ideas of womanhood, because it’s only a given if your body is seen by the patriarchy as a sexual object. Mine isn’t.

The way feminists tend to discuss street harassment as a given reinforces ableist ideas of womanhood.
Click To Tweet

Moreover, this assumption ignores a different form of harassment faced by those who are disabled. Harassment, after all, isn’t actually about sex, but about power — and my harassers hurt me through the power ofdesexualization. They use the same voice with me that they’d use with a 3-year-old. They pat my head like they would a dog. They stare at my chair while shushing their childrens’ innocent questions. It’s ableist rather than sexist street harassment (from all genders) that I experience.

This desexualization makes me vulnerable to abuse as well. While disabled women aren’t often seen as sexual objects, we’re more likely to be raped and sexually abused than our abled counterparts. When you internalize both the sexist idea that women are valuable because of their sexual potential (for men) and the ableist idea that you have no sexual potential yourself, you can become easy prey.

I don’t fantasize about being harassed anymore, but I did feel an undeniable thrill, just last year, when a guy messaged me on OKCupid with “suck my dick, sexy.” I didn’t respond, but I kept it in my inbox for a while. Its presence was almost comforting. Of course, that comfort was laced with unbearable guilt and self-hatred, but I clung to it nonetheless.

I don’t know if I’ll ever stop wanting that elusive patriarchal stamp of approval — or the feminist one for that matter. Maybe one day the way I relate to and interact with my body will mean more to me than how the rest of the world does. For now, though, it’ll be enough to speak and be heard.

Acknowledge me. That’s all I ask.