Kintsugi
Sponsor
As a woman who has survived sexual abuse in both my childhood and teen years, I thought I would write a letter to the man who decided it was okay to make a sexual comment about my body yesterday while I was grocery shopping.
Dear Man Who Decided to Make Sexual Comments about Me,
I heard you in the store yesterday. You're lucky I was tired, that I've felt so broken down recently, that I simply have too much on my plate for public confrontation, because I have been in a bitch mood lately about privilege and hegemonic masculinity. Don't worry; I realize you don't know what that is. You may not even be able to pronounce it. That's not really your fault, because society doesn't seek to educate men on their own privilege in their formative years, when it counts, because the status quo is to protect status.
The thing is, though, you belong to and perpetuate this system you cannot name and probably do not recognize, which is sad, because you're black, and I would hope you could understand the lash of the belt that is privilege and inequality. You may get stopped by the cops because your car broke down, and you were forced to walk home. I go grocery shopping and suffer a man looking me up and down and saying, "I wish I could have some of that."
You know what that phrase is? That phrase is exactly what went through my head when I was in the seafood section and glanced at the crab and lobster. It's something I've thought when looking at filet mignon and tuna steaks. It's what I think when I see someone eating a particularly tantalizing cupcake.
I am not a f*cking cupcake. I'm a person. I have parents and siblings. But do you know what I have that makes me the maddest? I have a niece and three baby cousins--all girls. They're adorable, all between zero and three years old. They have tiaras and tutus and sandcastle molds. They have plump baby bellies and big, curious eyes. They march around through life wanting to dig their fingers in everything and put it in their mouths, consuming life eagerly and without hesitation or fear. They have a sense of wonder and love for everything they take in.
It is people like you who keep the adults in their lives awake at night. The people in this world who feel entitled to knock them down by seeing them as objects, goods, commodities, even prey. People like you take that eager curiosity and crush it with the threat of violent entitlement, the entitlement that made you think it was acceptable to comment on me like I was a fixture within the refrigerated shelves next to me.
You disgust me, but it isn't just you as an individual. That you grew up--because, let's face it, you are twenty years my senior--in a manner that made you think it was appropriate to remark on me as I minded my own business, the very mundane and ordinary business of going shopping for food, is a failing of our society. But it isn't just that, and you should know it.
Let me ask you: do you have a mother? Sister? Aunt? Grandmother? Daughter? Niece? Cousin? Do you want men to harass them in their daily lives? Do you want to think about the fact that there are men just like you in the world who would scare those women for no other reason than to satisfy their compulsion to gawk at them and comment on their bodies?
I wanted to say all of this to you in person, at the store, to publicly call you out on your reprehensible behavior in front of any onlookers. I wanted to introduce myself and ask why you thought it was okay to make comments about a total stranger passing you by.
But I'm just too tired these days. I'm beat down by the nightmares of being raped and the crushing fear of leaving my house. I have no one to revive me, because I have so isolated myself over the past couple of months that I can't even say hi to my best friends. I can't talk to my family. I can't tell anyone what it feels like to dream for hours on end about being attacked by faceless men. How I wake up to thoughts of taping a bag over my head, watching in third person as the rhythm of the plastic heaving in and out slows and ceases. I wake up and taste metal in my mouth from the dream where I stick a gun between my lips. I open my eyes to erase the impact of seeing myself bloody in a bathtub. These half-dreams are what I wake up to every morning, because it is all my mind can seem to conjure to end the violence of my nightmares.
It's okay, though, really. Because I know what the other men would think, watching me call you out in front of God and everyone. They would watch me shame you, watch your face morph from smug and entitled to mortified and exposed, and they would keep walking, eyes to the floor, and think, Damn, what a bitch.
Dear Man Who Decided to Make Sexual Comments about Me,
I heard you in the store yesterday. You're lucky I was tired, that I've felt so broken down recently, that I simply have too much on my plate for public confrontation, because I have been in a bitch mood lately about privilege and hegemonic masculinity. Don't worry; I realize you don't know what that is. You may not even be able to pronounce it. That's not really your fault, because society doesn't seek to educate men on their own privilege in their formative years, when it counts, because the status quo is to protect status.
The thing is, though, you belong to and perpetuate this system you cannot name and probably do not recognize, which is sad, because you're black, and I would hope you could understand the lash of the belt that is privilege and inequality. You may get stopped by the cops because your car broke down, and you were forced to walk home. I go grocery shopping and suffer a man looking me up and down and saying, "I wish I could have some of that."
You know what that phrase is? That phrase is exactly what went through my head when I was in the seafood section and glanced at the crab and lobster. It's something I've thought when looking at filet mignon and tuna steaks. It's what I think when I see someone eating a particularly tantalizing cupcake.
I am not a f*cking cupcake. I'm a person. I have parents and siblings. But do you know what I have that makes me the maddest? I have a niece and three baby cousins--all girls. They're adorable, all between zero and three years old. They have tiaras and tutus and sandcastle molds. They have plump baby bellies and big, curious eyes. They march around through life wanting to dig their fingers in everything and put it in their mouths, consuming life eagerly and without hesitation or fear. They have a sense of wonder and love for everything they take in.
It is people like you who keep the adults in their lives awake at night. The people in this world who feel entitled to knock them down by seeing them as objects, goods, commodities, even prey. People like you take that eager curiosity and crush it with the threat of violent entitlement, the entitlement that made you think it was acceptable to comment on me like I was a fixture within the refrigerated shelves next to me.
You disgust me, but it isn't just you as an individual. That you grew up--because, let's face it, you are twenty years my senior--in a manner that made you think it was appropriate to remark on me as I minded my own business, the very mundane and ordinary business of going shopping for food, is a failing of our society. But it isn't just that, and you should know it.
Let me ask you: do you have a mother? Sister? Aunt? Grandmother? Daughter? Niece? Cousin? Do you want men to harass them in their daily lives? Do you want to think about the fact that there are men just like you in the world who would scare those women for no other reason than to satisfy their compulsion to gawk at them and comment on their bodies?
I wanted to say all of this to you in person, at the store, to publicly call you out on your reprehensible behavior in front of any onlookers. I wanted to introduce myself and ask why you thought it was okay to make comments about a total stranger passing you by.
But I'm just too tired these days. I'm beat down by the nightmares of being raped and the crushing fear of leaving my house. I have no one to revive me, because I have so isolated myself over the past couple of months that I can't even say hi to my best friends. I can't talk to my family. I can't tell anyone what it feels like to dream for hours on end about being attacked by faceless men. How I wake up to thoughts of taping a bag over my head, watching in third person as the rhythm of the plastic heaving in and out slows and ceases. I wake up and taste metal in my mouth from the dream where I stick a gun between my lips. I open my eyes to erase the impact of seeing myself bloody in a bathtub. These half-dreams are what I wake up to every morning, because it is all my mind can seem to conjure to end the violence of my nightmares.
It's okay, though, really. Because I know what the other men would think, watching me call you out in front of God and everyone. They would watch me shame you, watch your face morph from smug and entitled to mortified and exposed, and they would keep walking, eyes to the floor, and think, Damn, what a bitch.
