LIFE LESSONS
— Submitted Anonomously
It was around middle school when I realized that the rules about who I could be around, what I could wear, where I could go, and when I could go there changed. I started to hear about which outfits were “too revealing,” where and when it was safe for me to be outside on my own, and how to protect myself. My parents would point out if shorts were too short or T-shirts were too low cut. They wouldn’t let me hang out with a group of guys unless a girlfriend was with me and they made sure they always knew where I was and what time I was coming home.
When parties came into the mix, not trusting any guys came to the forefront. The words “never let your cup out of your eyesight” or “don’t drink anything that has already been opened” came out of my dad’s mouth every time I was heading to a friend’s house. By the time he was saying this though, it felt like I had heard it all before; the lessons were on the news, and in TV shows, movies, and advertisements. The idea of “stranger danger” extended past childhood and will probably remain in the back of my mind throughout my life. When I’m on the street, and I think someone is following me, I pretend to be on the phone or go into a store and wait for them to walk away. It is really easy to think that all of these tactics are irrational until the time comes when you need them.
Although some of these lessons made sense, I still felt that for the most part, they were attacking me for being a girl. I knew that my guy friends didn’t have to worry about these things, and I felt that my parents were enforcing a double standard. I continued to think this way until I had a conversation with my mom; we were fighting about an outfit I wanted to wear to a birthday party and she said that I was “asking for the wrong kind of attention and advances.” I was avid in my argument about how what I’m wearing doesn’t matter: people make unwelcome advances regardless. Although that is true, I realized that my parents did have a point: attention shouldn’t be given to me because of an outfit, but it is. The man yelling at me on the street while I’m wearing sweatpants and my winter coat doesn’t care that he can’t see my body, but he still lets me know that he wants to. However, the stares and comments go farther when more of me is showing. This is not an issue of “a few bad men” enforcing the culture that is so dangerous for women and girls; this is an issue perpetuated by many people—including women. These rules and tactics are sadly necessary because instead of teaching boys and men to change their behavior, we teach women and girls to react and adapt. I wish that I could wear whatever I want and feel safe, and I should be able to, but unfortunately, no matter what I’m wearing, I’m not safe.
“That is when I realized how much I had internalized all of these messages that I have been hearing since before I can even remember. I had done to myself exactly what I was trying to teach people not to do to others. We don’t notice how deeply we carry messages about what it means to be a girl, and what happens when you are a girl until we find ourselves defending the ideas that keep that role engraved in our culture. ”
I learned this quickly. It feels like I have been hearing the statistics my whole life. The scariest part of those statistics, and the part that always lingers in the back of my mind, is: it will most likely be someone you already know. Someone close to you. I have lived knowing the inevitability that I would, most likely, be taken advantage of at some point in my life. I knew that these things don’t stop at stares and comments. I know that they go beyond jokes in the hallway at school. I knew the worst stories. I think that’s part of why, when something did happen, I learned to invalidate myself. I told myself, and other people, that what happened to me was awful, but not nearly as awful as it could have been. I kept laughing (out of discomfort) at the same jokes in the hallways and continued to pick my battles when it came to “calling people out” for saying something harmful. I did not want the serious issue to be taken less seriously because my friends saw me as a “crazy feminist” who was overreacting.
That is when I realized how much I had internalized all of these messages that I have been hearing since before I can even remember. I had done to myself exactly what I was trying to teach people not to do to others. We don’t notice how deeply we carry messages about what it means to be a girl, and what happens when you are a girl until we find ourselves defending the ideas that keep that role engraved in our culture.
When I would think back to what happened, I told myself that I knew what I was getting into. That I led him on. Times like that one are rarely black and white; this was not exactly black and white, but it wasn’t grey either. There were the complicated points: our friendship before this and the “vibe” of that night, but there were definite points: I said no and I said stop. What happened could have escalated. It could have been worse. From conversations that took place later, I know that he knew something wasn’t right. I know that he ignored it, and I know that the thing that deterred him was my ability to be assertive and make sure that I would get out of that situation (something that I was capable of, and something that many people cannot do), but it was too late to have escaped the experience of losing autonomy over my body. To call what happened “lucky” feels misguided, but lucky is the only word I can find.
We all have learned to invalidate women and girls the same way I did to myself. It happens in jokes, comments, and actions that may not seem like a big deal, but actually are doing much more damage. Not seeing that there is a problem is just as harmful as knowing the issue is there and turning a blind eye to it. In the work that I do to combat violence against women I had never faced the possibility that I was someone that was part of the problem. I learned what was “bad” and therefore I thought I had figured out how to avoid it. In my own experience, I have realized that the voice inside of my head is sometimes just as harmful as the voices I hear in the hallways at school, on the news, or in movies. I would never say to someone that an experience that has impacted them negatively was “not that big of a deal,” yet I said that to myself more times than I can count.
In many ways, I oversimplified the problems at hand so that fixing them felt more in reach. I ignored the ways in which I, and many other girls, fight against themselves without even realizing it. Noting that I have to become even more aware of the places where these invalidations exist and that I want to work even harder to avoid brushing them aside, does not diminish the work that still needs to be done by people who are the direct perpetrators of violence. It does, however, make an already complicated issue even more complicated. The role that is put into place for women and girls, and the expectations and inevitabilities that follow, do not begin and end as problems solely created and continued by men. They appear in more places than I can count, and they will stay there unless we acknowledge them, stop being afraid of saying the wrong thing, and are willing to have an open conversation about what actions can be taken to make a change. It is not easy to change beliefs and roles that are so embedded in our society, but it is not acceptable to oversimplify an issue so it can be “fixed” on the surface, and then swept under the rug.