Follow along
Subscribe to my newsletter to keep up with my writing!
Glennon Doyle’s podcast, We Can Do Hard Things, debuted in May and has quickly become one of my favorites. Unsurprisingly, I identify heavily with the introverted, sensitive, empathetic mother who started writing when her kids were young and is super close to her sister. They talk about feelings and can’t help but dig deep with topics ranging from anxiety and boundaries to sex and infidelity. A recent episode covered writing and art during the time when I wrestled with how to proceed with this blog. The timing, which was nothing less than perfect, gave me the push I needed.
Prior to that, they featured Tarana Burke (founder of the “me too.” movement) on a couple of episodes and talked about sexual violence and the intersectionality with racial justice. The week I finished those episodes, I began a four-part podcast called Because of Anita, which just so happens to feature Ms. Burke as a guest. The series revisits Anita Hill’s testimony about Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas and the repercussions and lessons we have (and haven’t) learned from that seminal moment. In a particularly powerful episode, Professor Hill sits down with Dr. Christine Blasey Ford (who testified about nominee Brett Kavanaugh 27 years later) for a conversation about their experiences.
Dr. Ford’s testimony was only three years ago, and I remember the comparisons to Professor Hill’s, but I didn’t really grasp what that meant. At five years old in 1991, I had no awareness of politics. Bill Clinton’s impeachment laid the foundation for my understanding of political/sexual escapades.
Listening to what happened 30 years ago showed me how much I don’t know. And remembering how Dr. Ford fared just a few short years ago makes me angry. Both times, powerful men denied and successfully diminished women’s claims to become even more powerful. Women, who already had their boundaries ignored by these men, were publicly humiliated and gas lit in front of the world for sharing those experiences.
What struck me in the second episode of Because of Anita, when Anita and Christine spoke together, was when co-host Cindi Leive asked, “I wondered how much of coming forward was a sort of act of citizenship for each of you.”
Christine credits Anita with giving her the courage and the idea to speak out, “I realized that I would never have thought in my mind that I needed to say something if it wasn’t for Anita, because if Anita had never testified and we had never seen her do that, it would not have occurred to me that that was even something we were supposed to do or that a person should do.”
Her point made me think of the me too. movement as a whole. When women band together to point out sexual harassment, they’re stronger than an individual. It takes multiple women with accusations to take down a single man in power. (And let’s be real, even that’s not enough in most cases.) Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey chronicle this phenomenon in She Said, their book about reporting on Harvey Weinstein’s sexual misconduct. Until other women speak up about their experiences, others may not realize that what they’re going through isn’t acceptable.
I’m guilty as anyone. Years before #metoo spread like wildfire on social media platforms, my two younger sisters pushed back against sexual harassment on the street. They expressed their frustration at being cat-called and groped on public transportation. I’m embarrassed to admit this, but I remember getting frustrated with their frustration.
At the time, sexual harassment was just something women experienced and put up with. Suck it up and move on, I thought inwardly. Why complain about something that isn’t going to change?
My earliest memories of being sexually harassed are as a tween. My father’s friends commented on my body and what I wore. If I spoke up about my discomfort, they laughed it off as a joke or me being “too sensitive.” As I got older, comments expanded from family friends to strangers on the street or boys at school.
In college, I ran into a former high school classmate on the el. We chatted for a bit, and then as I got ready to get off the train, he grabbed my butt and squeezed. I looked back in embarrassment, and he grinned in a way that dared me to call him out on it. By then, I’d been conditioned to just accept it as a compliment and move on.
Didn’t my sisters get the memo?
Once the me too. movement caught on, I realized how women as a whole were fed this line of thinking. Society convinced us this was our lot in life. Much like how boys teasing and picking on you in elementary school meant they liked you, men catcalling and groping meant they found you attractive. In our society, that’s the pinnacle of femininity.
We should just be grateful to be noticed by them. If we’re not, then they poke holes in our experience and blame us for their actions. They try to make us think we’re in the wrong for being upset. And unfortunately, they often succeed.
Tarana talks about this in the first part of her conversation with Glennon on We Can Do Hard Things. “All these different places, girls get these messages that we are the guardians of our bodies, and if somebody’s attracted to us, it’s our fault because we didn’t do enough to protect ourselves.”
It’s our fault men find us attractive. It’s our fault they can’t keep their hands to themselves. If they want us to smile, we need to smile. If we refuse, we get labeled as “uptight” or any number of misogynistic curse words.
The Because of Anita hosts, Cindi Leive and Dr. Salamishah Tillet, agree speaking up about sexual assault and harassment isn’t going to stop. “But,” Salamishah argues in episode four, “we want to live in a world in which harassment and assault don’t happen, period.”
“And to get there,” Cindi replies, “we need more than personal stories. We need the law.”
I agree wholeheartedly with this statement. And yet, who makes, passes, and reinforces the laws? Men make up the majority of those responsible for protecting us. Which is why we need more representation in politics, but that’s a whole separate soap box.
Of course we’ve made progress since Anita first spoke up against Clarence Thomas. It’s just not enough. I don’t have all the answers for how to get to where we need to be as a society where sexual harassment and assault aren’t commonplace. However, I do think talking about it more openly pushes us in the right direction, because normalizing these actions just extends the anguish for women in the next generation.
So let it stop with us. Let’s take a stand, like my sisters did. Instead of normalizing this disgusting behavior as just “boys being boys,” let’s normalize calling lewd acts for what they are: harassment. Assault. Call it what it is so more people realize it’s not normal or acceptable.
Because it’s not.