I HADN’T HEARD FROM MARY for a while. I was wondering where she went. She has a tendency to drift away and do her own thing when she feels the need to be alone, and so I didn’t press. She’s a close friend, though, and last I heard she had pressed charges against a stalker so I was a little worried.
WARNING: This post may trigger trauma related to violent abuse or rape. I write it to purge myself today and to talk about a real event, and also to address the the inherent misogyny of USA culture.
I HADN’T HEARD FROM MARY for a while. I was wondering where she went. She has a tendency to drift away and do her own thing when she feels the need to be alone, and so I didn’t press. She’s a close friend, though, and last I heard she had pressed charges against a stalker so I was a little worried. She finally got in touch today, and she’s okay for the most part, so I’ll get that out right up front.
The stalker first announced his presence by leaving notes on her car. She would find them stuck in the window. It scared her. I told her they were clearly left by someone with a deranged mind. Travis Bickle sort of deranged, but not in a funny way. And Travis Bickle was only funny because you know it’s not a real person, because you are reading it like a script, because you see what the writer is doing. Deranged in that way where a person can take you to a porn movie on the first date and think its totally normal…what people do. But again, that is sort of comic in the very dark movie Taxi Driver. In real life—in Mary’s life—it was juxtapositions like that, from this stalker. The creep would leave a flower in her windshield with a note that said I want to fuck your brains out.
I recognized the cognitive strangeness (as if that would be hard to do). And it worried me. A lot. She wasn’t sure if maybe it was someone at work who “liked her.” But I said…no. This is someone who is not right in the head. I suggested a number of things. I told her to alert her neighbors, I told her to hire a Private Investigator to set up video surveillance. She did, and it cost her nearly $1000. Nothing.
When that didn’t work and the man appeared one day in her yard acting strange and approached her as if to grab her, she shoved her bike at him and ran. [Update: His words as he came at her were "I don't want to hurt you, I just want to touch you."]
I told her to press charges.
The cops, the law, the courts…well. You know the story. Even though you and me would know this man was a real danger, the law—in its typical woman-despising manner—told her he had done not much illegal. Suggested she could file an Order of “Protection.” Made the stalker write a letter apologizing.
A letter.
Made him write a letter apologizing for leaving note after note after note on her car and keeping her awake at nights with fear. A letter, to atone for the flower and the words I want to fuck your brains out. A letter to say sorry for suddenly showing up in her yard and moving on her fast enough that she threw her bike at him to get away. A letter to say “sorry” for introducing a current of terror so powerful that her sleep, her peace of mind, her life was interrupted for weeks on end.
I know what violence and abuse is like. I know what trauma is like. I know what terror is like. I know what cyclical thinking and intrusive thoughts and hypervigilance are. I know what it is like to have rage and terror nestled down deep in your muscles and I know what it is like when they erupt at will, cramping your back so hard you go into physical spasm. I know all this and worse. And yet, I still don’t know what it is like to live as a woman; to live in a culture that loathes you, that wants to kill you dead, that wants to fuck your brains out on the way down.
My mother told me about a narrow escape from rape when I was younger. She told it matter of factly. She told it…almost laughing. Or at least in a way that really communicated none of the horror that must have been woven into such an experience. If I were wiser at that age, I would have known the horror lay just in the fact that to a woman, such a story could be but another fact of life.
My first love, the woman I had a child with as a teenager was brutalized days before meeting me. That was my first up-close introduction to this type of horror. She had been in a car ride with a friend. And he suggested trading places. He would drive. So she agreed, pulled over on a stretch of road that runs between two small towns and a lot of woods, and they got out and when they were crossing behind the car, thats when he grabbed her and dragged her into the woods by her hair and her clothes.
I won’t go into the violence needlessly. But I heard all of it. We sat up nights and she talked to me about all of it. She cried to me and raged to me and as her jaw had been broken, it was wired shut and she could only eat pureed foods. She talked funny, of course. That was the only voice I knew from her and was actually shocked that she didn’t have the “accent” I thought she did. Later, as her jaw muscles healed, her normal tone and speaking manner returned. She carried a scissor in her back pocket throughout all the days you would call our “courtship.” That scissor was in case she vomited. She would need to cut the rubber bands holding her teeth clamped fast together, so she didn’t choke to death on her own puke.
All that summer she confided in me and I helped her heal, I suppose. That’s what she told me at least. And she felt comfortable doing that—and she also told me this—because I was not her normal choice of guy. She was a loud, tough, beautiful, big shouldered, big breasted, big handed Polish girl and I was small and wordy and simply not the big, labor-working lunk she usually went for. I didn’t feel threatening to her, basically. I was three years younger than her. I was only 16. And after that summer, I carried a long knife in my car under the front seat. It was not for myself I carried it.
A year later or so, after her and I moved in together, I had my best friend over my house to visit. I loved this kid. I stuck up for him when he moved to our high school. People tried to turn him into a freak, and I put my entire reputation on the line (no, I didn’t think of it that way at the time) and backed him. I thought he was cool as hell. And he was. And then, when he visited us, a couple years after I was gone from high school (I quit at 16), he violated her privacy when she was sleeping. I didn’t learn that he had lifted up her robe and tried to…I don’t know what he would have done, but he wasn’t violent and he wasn’t crazy. I guess he was just…a guy. She told me later. After he went home. Why didn’t you tellll me??? I said, furious that I had been smiling at him after that night, talking to him, doing anything with him. And she told me that she kept it to herself because she “didnt want to ruin our time together.”
Because to a woman…this is a fact of life.
And I weep even as I write this. Because I keep learning more and more that this is so. Because today I learned that Mary was attacked by the creep she had filed charges against a few weeks ago. He had been waiting, naked, for who knows how long, in her stairwell. And when she came home late from work and unlocked her door, he sprang up and tried to rape her. And they struggled inside her apartment. A neighbor heard and broke the window to get in.
When she asked me earnestly, a week after the Attempted Rape, why he had hurt her after all when he said he didn’t want to, tears came to my eyes again. There is no answer I can give to explain the sickness in some souls.
So now he’s in jail. For how long? It won’t be long enough.
When my first love filed charges for rape—oh and she was brutally raped—I watched the whole court process unfold. I watched the state let him plea bargain, and I watched the LAW call it “attempted rape.” Attempted? The woman’s jaw was smashed. Both her legs were black and blue. He used her body like it was his meat. Attempted?
I watched him get out after two years. And I’ll tell you something. When he was inside, I wrote a letter to someone I knew in the jail (I had been in County shortly before and knew a few people still in) and well…let’s just say I inquired as to his health. Unfortunately, he left jail as healthy as he went in.
So what will happen to the creep who attacked Mary? Not much. And she? As I said, she is for the most part okay. Physically, that is. She only ended up spraining her wrist in the struggle. But mentally? Well. Mary is on pills now. Incoherent. She is sleeping all day. She no longer goes to dance class. She no longer takes bike rides by herself. She no longer does much but stay with a friend who she work(ed) with. You see, this is not her first trauma at the hands of men. Not by a long shot. Just as my first love’s rape was not her first time, either. No, that found her in her own childhood home. Just like Mary.
But you know that. Especially if you are a woman. Because for you, this is a fact of life.
Mary gave me a book years ago. She mailed it to me and I found that very kind. The book is by Derrick Jensen and it’s called The Culture of Make Believe. I quote the book here, and I’ve spoken of it for years in my blog (the El Grito incarnation). In The Culture of Make Believe, Jensen asks a question more than once. He asks Why isn’t rape classified as a hate crime?
I’ve not yet thought up an answer that satisfies. Except maybe that when the culture itself hates you, what would motivate those empowered by that very same culture to do such a thing?
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thank you for commenting and sharing this. and i agree. this is not about the individual women i talk of…i just speak of them as symbols of what all women live with, or what i see women living with. and this is why i talk about the culture that hates women at its core, as you say it is about the messaging and the systems in place.
regarding telling their stories…i’ve tried to speak of this in a way that may educate others, or support them and what they have gone through. they dont keep these stories private, so, it felt okay to package them together with a meaningful purpose. but if i find i have violated their space further by doing so, i will definitely take the post down.
i have changed names and some details.
UPDATE: this comment kept coming back to me. i so dont want to be doing that to anyone. i wrote “Mary” and asked her how she felt about it. if she indicates in any way she doesnt want this up, i will take it down.
UPDATE2: Mary has responded and she is okay with my posting the story, feeling it is not what patriarchal systems would encourage, and feeling it is best to tell the story. I thank her for that. And acknowledge that it is a touchy area and am grateful she is willing to share.
i’m very deeply appreciative of this post. it isn’t often that i have the opportunity to read or hear words from men who recognize the victimization of women and do not support it.
this society does not value women outside of the potential for the use of our bodies: we are bust it babies, we are jumpoffs, we are everything but living, breathing, vibrant, life-giving beings! and upon challenging those notions, we are called everything but children of god. this is sick and wrong. and i call it out. i thank you for calling it out, continually.
thank you, sparkle.
Ah, yes. The problem is that one is expected either to get over it really fast - it is nothing, just a fact of life - or be destroyed forever. I suppose the Madonna / putana dichotomy lives on.
Thank you for writing this.
Thank you for getting it.
i want the world to be better to people. i want to be a part of that if i can. thank you.
interesting, Z. thank you for that viewpoint. you may be right…and oddly, the human mind, so capable of nuance and complexity does seem to love a good dichotomy, hey? maybe it appeals to our day/night awareness. dont know.
As a woman who has, through sheer luck and I know it’s just luck, escaped this sort of thing thus far, but thinks she might just snap and punch the next guy who complains about women having trust issues, or women overreacting to “nonviolent” violations (as though if you don’t bruise you can’t have been hurt)…. thank you so much for this post.
yes…i understand what you mean. you see injustice after injustice after injustice to your people, you feel it in your own bones, you meet the moments yourself and then you see it all reframed in the common dialogue and you are not supposed to be angry??? fools. as has been said. “if you arent outraged, you arent paying attention.”
thank you for your feedback, Isabel.
You had me in tears with this one Nez. We don’t talk about this enough - the over-riding sense of fear that women live with and its roots.
You know that I love your series on “Nexus,” and I think, like you and Jensen have pointed out, there is a pattern behind this kind of violence and fear-mongering that feeds so much of what is sick in this culture. I wrote a bit about my journey to understanding all that in a piece I titled The Blade.
thank you, NL.
Thanks for this post, Nez. I’m going to link to it from my blog.
thank you joan.
Thank you so much for writing this. As a rape/sexual abuse victim and a woman who is routinely sexually harrassed simply walking to and from work, I greatly appreciate people like you who understand the inherent danger to us living in a misogynistic society. It is so hard to be always trying to bring stuff like this to the forefront only to have it met with people blaming me or my clothes or whatever for the shitty way someone thinks they can treat me just because I have a vagina. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
may, your feedback and story and feelings are great to have here, thank you.
mary is the name of a warrior, deserving of respect and appreciation for her battle.
yes put this shit on the table. our culture is as sick as it’s secrets. the shhhh factor.
“I know what terror is like. I know what cyclical thinking and intrusive thoughts and hypervigilance are. I know what it is like…”
…hypervigilance is exhausting, a ware and tare… always a women must be careful…too often from what should be protecting her.
speaking of walking…when moving to a bigger city, (even though the experience was the same in smaller towns), i was approached by men, every f’n place i walked, at all times of the day or night. (and i walked everywhere having no vehicle or $ for public transit) get this…when i mentioned this to a friend, i was told, because i was walking, that maybe there was an assumption that i was a “working girl”?
what is it that makes the guy who followed me into the parking lot of the motel think, that by opening the passenger side door - showing me his dick, is gonna make me want to take the ride he offers? no i didn’t take the ride, but kept my distance, and yes i took it as another day in the life of…
thank you nezua for this acknowledgment for women…
We’re taught, as women, from a very early age, the word “please”. They tell us it’s so we can be polite little girls. What they don’t tell us is that someday we might have to use it as a plea for our lives, for our sex, for our dignity and sanity. They don’t tell you that “please” when mixed with “stop” or “don’t” can be seen as a challenge. I’m sorry for Mary, and for your first love, because my own 10-year remembrance came and went this year, and all I could do was cry. I cried for the years I lost, for the years my family didn’t believe me, for the time I didn’t believe it myself. I cried, went to sleep, and got up for work the next day.
It’s been said already, but yes: thank you. You don’t know what it means to have this acknowledgement from a man. May there be generations like you.
“May there be generations like you.”
sweetleaf…yeah, there’s no thinking process behind that kind of gross stuff…just some kind of imbalance in the spirit or the mind, i think. thank you for sharing your story and supporting this.
Mel, what a horrifically poetic way you put that…from “please” to “please.” oof. wow.
thank you. while i am feeling good to have you all thank me on this, it gives me a twinge of sadness too…that a man simply acknowledges what is fact and it is so very commendable. that says so much about what a lonely fight and existence women must sometimes have and live.
i wonder if sometimes these truths are not that hidden, but instead too hard to contemplate, and people turn away because of that…
[...] fuck it First off, this is another post at Nezua’s lately that hit me hard, in valuable and also painful [...]
Nezua, if the facts of female existence were truths universally acknowledged, I don’t think we’d have the problems we have. We thank you because for once, someone gets what we’ve been trying to have understood for too long. Really, how do you explain violation to the violator? What logic do you give without feeling as thought you’ve wasted something precious?
We live and breathe our tears and our struggle. And yet I still get called a bitch and have some little bastard at school (I’m a teacher) tell me to suck his dick. You have to undo the damage one at a time.
This post you wrote…well, you’re my hope. I’ll drag my truths out into the streets if it means unearthing more like you. Whatever thanks you’re getting are deserved.
point taken.
thank you.
This post made me cry. Following your tweets, Nez, I got little bits of the story, but I haven’t had a chance to read the whole post until today.
I think it is incredibly important that you write, and that you are angry, and that you care.
Something you said in a comment up thread struck me kind of funny, though. When you said, “this is not about the individual women i talk of…i just speak of them as symbols of what all women live with, or what i see women living with.” My first response was, “but well, it is about these specific women. They live with these traumas, violations, betrayals, and pain every day. It’s always personal, and specific, for these women.”
The intention I read in your comment was that it’s not just the women you mentioned. That men’s violence against women, rape, and sexual assault are issues for EVERY woman, but the experiences of the women that you love can’t be broken up and doled out to all women everywhere to dull the pain. All women are impacted by every act of brutalization, it reinforces the fear we must constantly live with, but the sharing of the pain doesn’t necessarily lessen it for the specific women who have been hurt.
So, no, it’s not just about them. It is about all women, but not in lieu of these women. It is now, and always will be, their experiences, their lives, their pain - them, specifically.
Don’t lose sight of the fact that it is many, many, many individual women who suffer. Not that I think you’d forget, but I do think it bears repeating.
Actually, that line was a response to Maegan’s comment left first, which was to remind me this is not just about these women or a couple.
Thank you so much, I take all of your comments deep into consideration for my future actions and writing.
and by funny, I don’t mean in a “haha” kind of way. that should be clear, but in case it’s not…
and i hope it is perfectly clear from the tone of this writing that i could never, ever, ever forget that these women individually suffer and have been impacted. i hope that actually goes without saying to most. if it weren’t about these women as people and individuals at all…well, i wouldn’t have written the stories about their lives. trust me, i carry these with me.
but i do appreciate what you are telling me.
thank you. this touched my heart. it made me remember hard things. it also made me remember with great love and great appreciation all the wonderful men and women i know and have known who take the humanity of women under their particular care, good men and women who speak up to their brothers and sisters when they see acts and speech that diminish women’s humanity. power and blessings be theirs. my friend says that true power is when you help someone else get to where you are and go beyond you and even then you are happy for them. thank you.
1st thought:
This post got me thinking of the post on Janna’s blog where I learned the horrifying odds of being raped on the journey if one is a Central American migrant heading here.
And it did help me re-align my sexual violence beliefs to be closer to the truth.
My little sister’s going to her first humongous city where she won’t have her own car w/ her. (Chicago’s her only other big city where street harassment is so prevalent that she might have been likely to encounter it in a short trip.) And what’s more, she won’t speak a single language that even comes close to the language in this city where she’ll be for 3 weeks.
Everybody was worried sick about her but me. I think I already had a hunch that the chances of anything bad happening to her were extremely low compared to the chances most women in the world face. Higher than they are in her current life, since she’ll be in a humongous city where street harassment is prevalent and she’ll be at the mercy of whoever lives in the home of her host family for the trip, and she won’t speak the language. But lower than they are for most women in the world by a long shot, nonetheless.
Anyway, I was working myself up to the worry level of everyone else in my family the more I heard them worry. Thinking, “Shoot, how can I teach her as much as I know about how to deal w/ violent people before she goes w/o making her life and her experience there worse?”
Of course, if there’s time when we’re together before then, I will try to teach her a thing or two I know about how to deal with violent people.
But the amount I feel pressure to fit in is lower, and the amount of pressure I feel to fit it in is lower.
I do, tonight, finally have conscious explanations for my subconscious feeling that she was highly likely to be all right.
It’s because she will still be traveling in a way that affords her a far less risky walk through the world than the majority of women in the world. And that’s something I need to keep in mind. Something I always hope to keep in mind. Something I’m glad came to mind, because that level of risk for “the majority of women in the world” needs to fucking change.
my friend says that true power is when you help someone else get to where you are and go beyond you and even then you are happy for them.
**sigh** Another apt, conscious description of something I subconsciously believe is true, against the worries and words of my mother and many of my friends. (”Why should you work in the world to have things taken away from you??!!”)
Why can so few people I’ve loved, through my life, see it the way I see it? That my dream is to stay somewhere appxroximately where I am (in terms of risk to my safety in life and the risk to my health in life) and help others surpass me? That I see it as standing still and dropping in relative place to the back of the pack because I’m happy where I am in an absolute sense, not being shoved to the back of the pack?
Okay, finally, what I meant as 2nd comment, but is now 3rd, and was the 1st I thought of, which was so powerful it made me come upstairs to type:
Even though you and me would know this man was a real danger, the law—in its typical woman-despising manner—told her he had done not much illegal. … Made the stalker write a letter apologizing.
What on earth do I have to do to get the future justice-servers of my culture to be better freaking people?
I wish I knew what I could do to make the maximum impact possible on boys and girls before they become administrators and judges.
Jump to comments
No se.
Pero it is real. The real day to day that happens to mujeres. The real fear, anger, sadness, and on and on.
This is exactly why we as a community need our systems of justice making, porque we can’t count on a system that is based on violence and oppression of women anyway, especially women of color. We can’t expect a system that brutalizes as part of their “company policy” to prevent further violations and bring justice. This more that about 1, 2, hundreds, millions of mujeres. This is about the daily messages that make it ok to hurt, demean, control and violate mujeres.