What I Was(n’t) Wearing

[teaberryblue]

I don’t remember if I was twelve or thirteen. I do know that it was sometime during Bar Mitzvah season, the spring of seventh grade or the autumn of eighth. I’m pretty sure it was after someone’s Bar or Bat Mitzvah, and I’m pretty sure that it happened at a synagogue, even though my memory tries to replace the space beyond archway where I waited

Comments

[teaberryblue]

That wasn't the point of my post, though. I get that you're not being argumentative, but you're also doing exactly what I'm talking about by being a man who is ignoring what a woman is trying to say and trying to superimpose your own wishes onto it.

[kita0610]

Because she already told you to stop trying to hijack this thread and you didn't.

[batchix]

there was a kid in junior high that used to come up behind me and grab my breasts- usually whenever he found me alone in the art room. When I told him not to touch me he called me a slut and tried to spread rumors that i was sleeping around. I did tell my parents and they called the school. When Dennis repeatedly grabbed me after being told not to come near me anymore, he got an in school suspension. Two years later, he'd moved on and started bothering other girls by that point, my older brother stuffed him in a very small locker.

[teaberryblue]

I am glad he got his comeuppance, although it doesn't sound like it did much good...but obviously he didn't think there was anything wrong with what he was doing. Which is the crux of the problem.

[batchix]

I have to say that he grew up a lot by the time we were seniors. He ended up being sent to an alternative school and really turned around. Last time i saw him he was working at a gas station to put himself through nursing school and was either married or engaged, i can't remember. he was super polite and nice, it was like talking to a different person.

[teaberryblue]

The biggest bully of my school years sent me an incredibly kind and friendly message on Facebook a couple years back. Although I do note he is not someone who ever bullied me in a sexual way.

[i_17bingo]

"Women's bodies are viewed as public spaces," my wife has been saying a lot lately, in response to the way folks find it appropriate to touch the wall of tattoos on her back or move the straps on her dress out of the way to get a better look at it, all without asking. As a man, I'll never know what this feels like.

There's so much more I want to say, but this isn't about me; this is about you and your piece, and how powerful and uncomfortable it is. Thank you for writing it.

[teaberryblue]

It happens with my hair very regularly, but I find that that seems to be more the "exoticism" of my hair than anything else-- I don't know if it would happen if I were a man, though!

I am fortunate that my tattoo is on my ankle and out of the way. When I get my next one we might start having issues, uh oh!

And thank you for reading and listening.

[lenora_rose]

I just don't get this. At all.

I touch my friends' hair all the time, and I can usually, by warning them with a word, do things like touch/move clothes to look closer at a tattoo, or offer a backrub. This is because they are my friends, they know me, I know their boundaries and have their permission. I know who doesn't like having his/her hair touched, I know whose back is so problematic a normal backrub by an untrained friend might hurt her/him, and who just doesn't like being touched too much.

Yet.

I would NEVER do that to a complete stranger. It's just something one doesn't do. They don't know anything about me. I don't know anything about them. I might ask, "Can I see your ink?", because that doesn't involve touch -- but I can't even imagine asking to touch their hair or skin out of the blue, never mind just reaching out.

Being pregnant, I'm waiting for the big belly effect to kick in.

[lenora_rose]

To clarify the first line - I accept and believe (and loathe) that people touch each other unwantedly.

I know that a sad amount of this is the privilege of the powerful on the powerless - men groping women, white idiots touching "exotic" hair. This part, the powrer dynamic that fuels it, and the culture that tries to blame the victim, I do kind of understand, even as it's the part I detest most.

What I "don't get" is the disconnect in otherwise clueful people about lesser touches also being inappropriate. Where people who would completely understand why a sexual assault such as the OP is wrong, fail to grasp that touching a stranger's hair is also not okay, that touching a woman's belly is inappropriate, that brushing aside clothes to get a closer look at skin is brushing aside consent.

[teaberryblue]

I think it happens to all of us in one way or another, and words and glances and hand-motions can be as humiliating and cowing as actual unwanted physical contact. I think it's very hard for any woman to be in a confrontational position with a man and not have those kinds of thoughts in the back of her head.

But we also do have to dismiss it as "well, that happens," some of the time, or we would never get through the day.

[dulcinbradbury]

I have a friend who has said that this stuff has never happened to her. I wonder sometimes how much of it is just "well, this happens."

[bunnybutt]

I'm not sure how to phrase this. When I was that age (I'm a good bit older than you, I think) it was de rigeur for boys to snap brastraps and/or cop a feel openly in the school hallways. I don't recall anyone ever getting in trouble for it, and the school's response - it was just boys being boys, you know? And they wouldn't do it if they didn't think you were pretty, you should be flattered! I am so relieved to read that by the time you were in 7th grade, things had changed enough that you knew it wasn't ok, were self-aware enough to say the no, even if it wasn't respected. It's progress, of a sort. Not fast enough, or enough, but progress.

[teaberryblue]

We got the bra strap snapping, too. I remember once instance in particular where a boy did it to me, so I pulled his shorts down (it was in gym class). Guess who got in trouble?

[applespicy]

My sister was placed in in-school-suspension I don't know how many times for fighting boys. You know, after they touched her inappropriately. They never got in trouble.

[teaberryblue]

I genuinely don't think this was a case where the teacher didn't think bra strap snapping was bad-- I think it was a case where the pants being pulled down was just that much more obvious and the teacher saw that, while they didn't see the snapping. But yup, pretty much. I got in trouble another time for smacking a boy with my lunchbox for similar reasons.