GROPING AND GRABBING IN THE HEADLINES

There's suddenly an epidemic of sexual harassment and assault!  Hollywood and Washington DC, especially, seem to be headline-blaring hot beds of lust-crazed men groping and grabbing.

Or...wait...maybe there is a slowly building, hopefully not short-lived, tendency (I can't make the parallel "epidemic" argument) toward people believing women (and some men) who are accusing men of harassment and assault.  It's been a long time coming and I have to wonder what caused the tipping point right now.

Could it be the collective disgust that our current president so brazenly bragged of the same harassment and assault and was still elected president?  Did the nation grow a conscience?

I swear, I don't know.  I'm stumped as to why, at this juncture, we are hearing of decades-long behaviors among prominent men and that there is some "news" in this.  Are we supposed to be shocked?

I'm not.  A handful of well-known men do not represent an anomalous cohort.  What's truly epidemic is the prevalence of this behavior and what any woman can tell you is, it happens all the time.  Studies show 1 in 3 women is sexually harassed at work; 1 in 5 sexually assaulted in college;  1 in 10 (fewer in some studies) raped in their lifetime, most often by an intimate or known partner.  So, yeah, there's that.

I did a little life review in light of all this recent revelation.  My journey of harassment and borderline assault started in junior high, grades 7-9.

I walked a mile to and from school and many times was whistled at, lured to get in vehicles, and followed by adult men.  My best friend encountered a man exposing himself sitting in a car near her home every day for a week.  We told our parents; they said to be careful and/or take a different route.

An 8th grade math teacher was known to leer and encourage girls to bend over in front of him to pick up an 'accidentally' dropped textbook.  We made a game of avoiding him.

A boy in my 8th grade science class leaned over one day in his stupid Madras plaid shirt and said "You're not much from the chin up, but from the neck down you're gangbusters!  Nice tits!"  I gotta think he heard or read this somewhere, but still, I took it to heart and from then on believed that my body was my only asset.  I can still hear him...and from that day I believed I was not pretty.

I was groped in the city swimming pool one summer almost every time I went.  I stopped going.

In high school there was more of the drive-by luring/jeering behavior (by adult males) as I walked every day to a friend's house after school to await my parent pick-up.  I don't even count the times teen boys grabbed and flirted and made suggestive comments and invitations, because that was so commonplace as to just be "normal" for the late 60's.  I started to feel like a target and started to feel afraid at times.

One school dance date night I found myself pinned to a sofa (after many, many rebuffs on my part) being told "I love you" and "let's do it" over and over.  I pushed him and kicked at him and he finally stopped, but was mad at me.  So, I apologized.  Then went to dinner, which I didn't eat, then jumped from his car in my driveway and cried myself to sleep.  I was disgusted, afraid, and furious.  I had no idea how to handle something like that.  I never told anyone.

At an after school job I worked in a small office with one older woman and three salesmen.  I typed and took dictation (poorly).  One day the woman was not there and two of the men wanted me to take dictation and laughed at me when I couldn't keep up.  When I stood up to leave they commented on my short skirt and "great legs".   I cried all the way home, embarrassed and ashamed.  I quit the job.

After high school,  I worked in a large office, as an assistant to a product buyer, where a man from a different department routinely walked around flirting with all the young women.  One day he came to my desk to chat, and asked me to stand up and turn around so he could see if my outfit would look good on his wife.  I did it, and then he laughed and said his wife wouldn't fill it out like I did.  I was humiliated and embarrassed, knowing the whole thing had been a ruse.  I avoided his future approaches.

I worked later in a small clinic where I learned to process x-rays in a darkroom.  The boss took many opportunities to supervise my work, leaning over me from behind, his body touching mine as I tried to squirm away.  I needed that job.  I put up with it.

At the community college I attended nights, I once found myself in a stairwell with a male student, who chased me down the stairs and grabbed my butt before running on ahead of me.

I recall going to a party with my husband where one of his medical school friends asked me to dance, then groped my breasts.

At the medical center I had a boss, an MD, who told me stories of his "open marriage", asked questions about my marriage and sex life (I didn't answer), tricked me into undergoing a bogus physical exam, lured me to a hotel room, and belittled me for rebuffing all his advances, then told me I should thank him for proving to myself that I loved my husband by not going along with him.  I told my supervisor and others, who were sympathetic but passively patted me on the back and shook their heads.  Nothing happened.  I quit that job.  (I've written about this in more detail in a previous blog post).

My mid-20's feminist awakening empowered me.  I was less naive and more savvy.  I learned to protect myself with street smarts and intuition.  But, still, too often I  felt like a target and I began to feel that any man was a potential rapist.  I was afraid too often, always searching for safety in my surroundings, how to get help if I needed it.  This is no way to live!

In my 30's, with motherhood and age, all of this seemed to calm down.  My life was lived mostly in groups of women and children and decent men who were respectful.  Later, my career in social work was in a female-centric workplace.

I guess I am lucky I was never truly physically injured in an assault, nor was I ever raped.  (I didn't go  away to college, but completed my undergrad degree over many years as an adult, so I don't have that experience to add to my story.)  But psychologically I was wounded just the same.  For much of my late girlhood and young womanhood, I felt like meat, like I didn't exist or have value beyond my body, that I was always in jeopardy, that my breasts were my best asset, that my sexuality was for the pleasure of men.  And that I was a prick tease, because flirting seemed to imply consent,  but I could not be promiscuous.  I still had a modicum of respect for myself, that finally feminism celebrated.   Feminism was such a relief.  And if I was angry a lot, and hated most men as a gender for awhile, that was a necessary part of healing the wound too.

So, yeah, I'm delighted all these guys are getting their comeuppance.  But it's a drop in the bucket.  Ask any waitress, Target checker, secretary behind the desk, schoolgirl, nurse, doctor, lawyer, teacher, writer, baker, executive....you get it.  Ask any woman anywhere.

We've all got stories to tell and there won't be any headlines or multimillion dollar settlements for us. And most of our harassers will never pay any price at all for the damage done.  They might even be elected President.

At least, that's the view from here...©

Photo Credit: REX.Shutterstock Harvey Weinstein.

MY STORY OF SHAME

Every time he pointed his finger at her and said, "You should be ashamed of yourself" (which was multiple times), I cringed and my heart sank like a stone.  I felt myself folding in on my myself, like a child punished for a wrong I barely understood or never even committed.  Shame.  What a powerful and destructive emotion to carry.

Last night's Presidential Debate was a spectacle unprecedented in American politics, as were the events leading up to it.  History can record (it's all on video) the onslaught of disgusting and reprehensible words of the Republican candidate for president in 2016 throughout this campaign.  I won't repeat the litany.  But last Friday, a videotape was released wherein he uses vulgar language about women and boasts about his conquests, saying "when you're a star, you can do anything."   He admitted to being a sexual predator and committing assault.  Of course, now he says he never did it, it was just "locker room banter."  His big defense is to accuse President Bill Clinton (who's own sexual escapades were litigated 20 years ago) of doing much worse, and then showed up at the debate with women who have accused Bill Clinton of assault to throw Hillary off her game.  Classy move.  Punishing Hillary for what her husband did.  Yes, women need to take responsibility and be punished for the behavior of their partners, I forgot.

All of this has brought up a long-buried incident in my own life.  I was 25, working at the medical center where Hub was in medical school.  My boss, 22 years my senior, was a renowned professor, foreign-born, urbane, and demanding (but with a smarmy smile that belied his cruelty).  I was a secretary; actually I was more like a "clerk", my immediate supervisor was the secretary.  I made coffee and typed and answered phones.    I thought myself mature and savvy; but I was no match for him and looking back I see I was naive and timid.   

He often had me come into his office to "take dictation", but he spent a lot of time critiquing me, trying to help me be more sophisticated.  He offered suggestions on clothing, make up, hair, and one time he told me not to move my face so much because it would create wrinkles.  He asked personal questions about my marriage and offered helpful hints for a "good relationship".  I listened uncomfortably, tried to laugh it off (without moving my face) and was relieved when I was excused to go back to my desk.  (Think "Mad Men" -- those were the days when this type of thing was commonplace and not "reportable".)  

One day he asked if I would be a participant in a study he was doing on a new type of stethoscope.  I said I would.  He stood up and locked his door, so we wouldn't be interrupted and he could concentrate, he said.  He then proceeded to lean in and listen to my heart, so close to my face I could smell and feel his breath on me.  Then he said he needed to test it on the femoral artery.  This is located in the groin area.  Why I didn't run from that room then and there is a mystery to me.  I felt trapped.  I felt intimidated and I felt like I would NOT behave like a scared rabbit.  I was trying to be strong.  He asked me to lower my slacks just a bit so he could access the area.  I did.  He asked me to slouch down in my chair.  I did.  He placed the stethoscope just so and listened, taking notes on a yellow legal pad.  Then he said he had what he wanted and told me I could go.

I was shaken.  I was sick to my stomach.  I did tell my supervisor and she was sympathetic, but helpless to do anything.  We agreed I didn't have to go to his office alone anymore and she would run interference for me.  (Some time later, she told me the study was legit and he got other subjects to participate, but no part of the process involved the femoral artery.)

Not long afterward he insisted on taking me out to lunch at a fancy restaurant in downtown Chicago to thank me for a project I'd completed for him.  I don't know why I agreed to go; maybe to not let him intimidate me; maybe to try to overcome the shame I felt in his presence.  I had toughened up with him and likely felt I could "handle" him at this point.  So I went.  Lunch was fine, although he criticized the outfit I chose to wear that day.  Afterward he said he had taken a room at a hotel for the weekend to get some work done away from his family and he needed to pick up some paperwork there to take back to the office.  I was trapped.  Once in the room, he lay down on the bed and encouraged me to sit near him.  I refused.  He told me he loved me, over and over.   I told him he was crazy and I wanted to leave.  He reached out to touch me, and I rebuked him.  I told him I would scream if he tried to touch me again.  He became angry, told me I was acting like a child.  He grabbed his briefcase and headed for the door.  I followed.  In the taxi ride back to the office I ignored him, wouldn't answer his questions, or respond to his benign comments.  He acted as if nothing had happened.  Finally, in anger, he told me I should thank him, because now I knew the depth of my commitment to my marriage, having been "tested".  

I told my supervisor and another doctor in the department who I liked and trusted, a good man.  But he did nothing.  Within a month I left to go to work in another department for a kind, respectful, and caring doctor who I still admire to this day.  

Shame.  Writing about this (I've actually only told a handful of people about these incidents since they happened around 1975) makes me so sad for that naive young woman, so sad for there being no place to go with my story at the time.  Was I a willing participant?  I guess so...if an older man in a position of power taking advantage of an obviously naive young woman defines "willing".  I relate to Monica Lewinsky in this regard, so yeah, Bill was definitely an asshole in that respect.  I've heard she's felt ashamed too of her naivety.  Shame makes you want to hide.  Shame makes you hate yourself for who you are, not what you've done, or what was done to you.  It's soul destroying.

So, when a 59 year old man (his age when the video was made in 2005) says the things he said about women he's tried to seduce and/or grope without their consent, that is a man who objectifies, feels entitled, and is absolutely unrepentant and uncaring.  He is a shame-making machine.  He is dangerous.  And he is running for president of the United States.  If there is shame to be felt, I wish it would start with him.  But it won't.  In fact, he shamelessly trotted out women (who he was using for his own means) to humiliate Hillary and then pointed the "shame on you" finger at her.

Too many women have stories like mine to tell.  Every woman has been objectified in some way at some time.  All women must rise up and keep fighting this fucking shit.  Vote as if your life depended on it.

At least, that's the view from here...©