March

I am not a snowflake.

I didn’t march on Saturday because I believe I’m special or deserve special rights. As a matter of fact, and I think I can speak for a lot of women when I say this, I marched because I know I’m not unique. I’m not special. My experience of discrimination as a woman is common. That’s why I’m concerned.

Maybe you think this is an exaggeration. Maybe you haven’t experienced discrimination or violence. Maybe you think you don’t know anyone who has experienced discrimination or violence (as an aside, if you know more than two women and you think this, you’re likely wrong). Maybe you find it hard to believe it’s really that prevalent if you haven’t seen the numbers.

So, to start, here are some numbers, just a few, from the World Health Organization’s 2013 report on gender violence, which we read for class this week and which refueled the fury fire that is my brain these days:

·      “[O]verall, 35% of women worldwide have experienced either physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence or non-partner sexual violence. While there are many other forms of violence that women may be exposed to, this already represents a large proportion of the world’s women….

·      Worldwide, almost one third (30%) of all women who have been in a relationship have experienced physical and/or sexual violence by their intimate partner. In some regions, 38% of women have experienced intimate partner violence….

·      [G]lobally, as many as 38% of all murders of women are committed by intimate partners.”

To personalize this, just in case you’re one of the people who thinks they don’t know a woman who has experienced discrimination because of her gender, I’ll tell you a little bit about my experiences with gender discrimination and violence, moving from things that some might say are no big deal to things I hope people recognize are absolutely messed up, wrong, and scary. This is not a comprehensive list but one that came to me quickly and made my palms sweat while I typed. The point of this is that I am not exceptional. Today I sat in a room where every single woman responded yes to the questions, "Have you been catcalled?" and "Do you think about your safety daily?" when our professor asked. 

Just as a brief aside, I know that some people who know me who read this will think to themselves, no man would be interested in/attracted to her. I know that because I have been told that. Honestly, part of the reason I have come to appreciate my masculine aesthetic is that it makes me less attractive to many men. It also makes me incredibly nervous, because some men don’t like that I am not living my life for them. I’ll leave aside instances of discrimination based on my sexual orientation for the moment but maybe keep in mind how much the list would grow. Imagine how it would grow for a woman of color,  for a trans woman, for a woman experiencing homelessness. 

I have been:

·      Yelled at from cars (everything from a honk and indistinguishable words to vulgarities). This experience has created a tendency to flinch, frown, or turn away when someone speaks to me from a car on the road in order to avoid conflict or danger. Unfortunately, this means that even when it’s just a friend, my heart is racing until I recognize them.

·      Catcalled, in several languages and on several continents. Under the best of circumstances, I keep walking and try to ignore it, feeling only a little annoyed. Under the worst circumstances, which I consider to be when I am alone on a street or in a rural area at night, I try to walk as fast as I can and hold a key between my fingers just in case. Generally, when walking alone at night, I try to call someone. I am often tempted to drop a pin or to run. Some of this might be fear leftover from a violent robbery in which my gender also played a role, but more on that later.

·      Put in advanced classes where the men in the room had to meet a lower standard to get a seat than I did. I know this because they were given the majority of the spaces in the class and many of my very brilliant friends who were women didn’t make the cut, though they would have if they were men. (I went to an all-girls school across from an all-boys school, and students would often cross the street to take classes not available at one or the other.) The theory was, apparently, that we were lucky to have access to the advanced classes at all.

·      Told that maybe the reason there aren’t more women in positions of power or in leadership roles is because they aren’t very good at it and are overly emotional. To combat accusations of being overly emotional or not strong enough to be a leader, I try to make my arguments as sterile as possible, linking to statistics (see above) and articles and avoiding as often as possible the personal narratives that for some reason make me less rather than more qualified to discuss an issue that has had a huge impact on my life.

·      Corrected, when I said that I had been harassed by men. After all, I was only talking about unwanted touching. If there wasn’t penetration, it didn’t really count.

·      Made aware, over the past several months, that many of the men in my life whom I love very much and who I think love me not only think it is normal and acceptable to say things like “grab them by the pussy” but have stood by and listened to other men say those things, voted for a man who said those things, and worst of all, have said the same things themselves. This has made me so incredibly sad and anxious that I’m awake writing this at 2am instead of sleeping. I don’t really know how to look those men in the eye anymore. What have they said about my friends? My family members? Me?

Moving to the more violent end of the spectrum, I have been:

·      Followed by two men I didn’t know who kept asking if I wanted a ride from them as I waited to hail a cab. When I declined, they followed the cab that took me home.

·      Grabbed: on the subway, on the street, at a club, at a restaurant, at a formal, with friends, alone, at night, in the afternoon, on a train. From my hair to my thighs, I have been touched without permission by total strangers and sometimes by friends, one of whom then had the nerve to ask me not to tell his wife.

·      Robbed, violently, by five men. I watched, face stinging where I’d been hit, and prayed to God that something would happen before the men whose hands had begun to wander on my date’s back could rape her, working to figure out how I could pull away from the two men who had me held against a fence. I had never been so happy to see headlights and still often can’t get my heart to settle when I have to walk home on deserted streets.

I have never wanted or needed an abortion. I have, however, had to help loved ones figure out how to navigate archaic rules about Plan B and abortion in my home state and elsewhere.

I have not been raped or sexually assaulted. Unfortunately, I’d need the fingers and toes of several people to be able to count the number of women in my life who have been. And those are only the women I know about.

I marched because women were vilified in so many ways in the last election cycle. I marched because of the words he said but also because of the policy proposals that either abandon pretense and rest on devaluing women (see, e.g., eliminating VAWA grants) or that pretend to be about protecting women but ultimately lead to more violence and more deaths (see, e.g., the reinstated abortion gag). I haven’t even touched on economic policy, education, immigration, criminal justice reform, or so many of the other topics but they all motivated me to march as well.  Hopefully our presence sent a signal that we are here to stay and we are exhausted and we are angry and we are committed to calling, marching, yelling, and running for office. Yes, the office you currently hold.

I am not a snowflake. The women in my life who marched are not snowflakes. I bet we all wish that we were, that we were special and unique and that our experiences of violence and discrimination made us different instead of making us part of a much larger group.  If we are all snowflakes, as so many of you insist, then get ready, because we’re a fucking snowstorm and we’re coming for you.