No More Misogyny Math, It’s Time to Throw Some Punches
I did a lot of misogyny math today, forgetting that it’s not my responsibility to not be sexually harassed.
Women friends, you know what I’m talking about. As I thought through my day, I knew it was going to be hot, a lot of my commuting would be on foot, and a lot of my on-foot would be on a busy street. So I rather unconsciously measured my desire to maximize comfort against my desire to minimize potential harassment, and because I decided to wear a tank top, I chose to wear a longer pair of shorts. (In this same scenario, if I had worn my shorter shorts, I would not have worn a tank top, but a t-shirt. Can anyone relate to these internal negotiations to minimize potential harm?)
Once I got going, I again, rather unconsciously put on my sunglasses — even though it wasn’t sunny — to have even less of myself exposed and thus, hopefully, to minimize the possibility of being harassed. I got to an intersection crosswalk and a man from his truck whistled at me as he passed by, which startled me and I froze. Cue my automatic-internalized-self-blame-for-misogyny, and my first thought was, “damnit! but I’m wearing the long shorts!”
Throughout the day, I kept thinking about how much unconscious, autopilot, self-blame scheming I had done to keep myself safe, relatively comfortable, and unbothered — which ultimately didn’t work. Thinking it’s my responsibility as a woman to not get harassed (rather than men’s responsibility to not harass) is so socially hardwired into me, I usually don’t even think twice about it. But today I thought about it. And today I felt pissed about it. I just wanted to get from point A to point B without a lot of sweating.
Later that evening, I walked back down the same busy street in the same outfit, walking tall in my newfound self-awareness. A man in a car yelled “HEY, NICE LEGS!” and this time my automatic response was anger at the disruption and I yelled back, “FUCK YOU!” to my own pleasant surprise.
It reminded me of a similarly self-empowered time when I stood on the metro platform in Washington, DC and noticed a woman being sexually harassed by a man she didn’t know. Because we women belong to each other, I locked eyes with her and motioned for her to come stand by me, and she did. When the man followed her and carried on, a fierceness came over me and I bellowed, “WE ARE DONE HERE!” loud enough that it drew attention and turned heads, and he shamefully walked away, apologizing.
In her book, “The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls,” Mona Eltahawy tells the story of a time when a man she didn’t know groped her in a nightclub and her response was to turn back around and punch him in the face. I can imagine his shock as he laid there on the ground, unknowingly developing a new association in his brain that his behavior might be met with an uncomfortable and rather humiliating resistance in the future.
Eltahawy says, “A daily war is carried out against women, and yet it is not called ‘barbaric’ or ‘savage.’ We are supposed to learn to live with it, accommodate it, never fight it… Not only are women socialized into submission, but we are told, essentially, not to be violent even as a form of self-defense but to wait until men can stop being violent toward us… I am done begging for compassion. It is time to make patriarchy fear us.”
Like Eltahawy says, this is not to say that it is women’s responsibility to stop our own objectification. I see it as both the refusal to internalize and shapeshift myself around men’s harmful behavior, and the self-empowerment to expose harmful behavior and put the responsibility back where it belongs.
I don’t want to keep doing misogyny math. I don’t want to patiently wait for the day when men collectively decide to stop being violent towards women. I don’t want to freeze up and blame myself when men choose to objectify me, like I did earlier today. I want to surprisingly disrupt the pattern and insist on my right to exist in the world, free from harassment, like I did later in the day.
I’m going to wear a tank top and my short shorts and you better believe you’ll be met with some uncomfortable resistance if you disrupt my day with your objectifying violence.
