Feminism is a four letter word with most women I know, even the ones who know how to spell almost everything else. I recently discovered, in the middle of an argument over whether the word cunt, regardless of whether the user’s intended meaning was the cheeky British slang or the more perjorative version common in America, that the bright young woman I was arguing with didn’t consider herself a feminist, because she doesn’t dislike men, and she does like to cook. There’s more to it than that, of course, but what this girl was telling me was that she doesn’t want to be thought of as hard and scary, a bitch in combat boots looking to emasculate every man she meets. Because she didn’t want to be thought of this way, she doesn’t identify as feminist. I’ve had many conversations with this person, and I can assure you that she’s on board with essentially every principle of third wave feminism you can think of.
But I understand where she’s coming from. It wasn’t that long ago that I, afraid that I’d be adding to the somewhat unfair rap I’ve got for being tough and unladylike, refused to call myself a feminist. It made me feel something like a coward not to call myself that, but I wouldn’t. I didn’t want the people who think the fact that I’m not afraid to throw a punch to defend someone means that I’m not really a girly type to have any extra ammunition. Hell, I wear makeup. I genuinely enjoy pornography, and not that softly lit, romantic, long deep kisses type they market to us gals. I bake delicious things when I’m upset. I love high heels. Surely, I told myself over and over, that’d get me kicked out of the feminism club right off the bat.
It took me longer than I’m proud of to figure out that none of those things meant I wasn’t a feminist, and that none of the things that make me a feminist make me less of a woman, despite some people’s frankly stupid and deeply upsetting thoughts on the subject.
One of the things that took me the most time to muddle through was the idea of equality. I absolutely believe men and women should have equal rights. I believe in equal pay. I believe women should have the choice to do whatever they want to do, not just traditionally female jobs, and I believe that women should be given an equal opportunity to do those things. Here’s where I run into trouble: Where equal can be said to mean the same. If one thing is equal to another, is it the same as the other? In common usage, it can. That’s a problem for me, for anyone, honestly, who is looking at the subject of men and women being treated equally, if equal can be said to mean the same.
We aren’t the same. It’s that simple. In obvious ways, most of them physical, we are not the same. These physical differences create the situations that are often the hardest for me to deal with on an emotional level, as a woman, as a feminist.
A few months ago, after a Sounders game, I was at the usual bar, having drinks with the usual people. One of the usual people was drunk and hitting on me, which was not all that unusual and was also harmless. A friend of his, not a usual person at all, a person instead that I had never even been introduced to, reached around the usual person, and grabbed ahold of both of my breasts in an incredibly nonchalant fashion. If he’d done this to one of my friends, I’d probably have punched him. Since he did it to me, I froze. I told him that since he was a friend of the usual person and clearly drunk, I’d let it go this one time. He apologized, and about a minute later began rubbing his elbow aggressively into my breast. (Breast, boob, tit. I hate all of the usual words for mammaries. I hate mammary too. There’s no good choice here. It’s not like “dick, penis, cock” – there’s a good choice there. I digress.) I was shocked and walked away to where a small group of my friends, all men, stood. They could tell I was upset and asked what was going on. I told them, and moments later, Captain Fuckwit wandered over, trying to get past them to talk to me. They all told him to have a lovely evening somewhere else. He came back. They repeated themselves. He yelled some incoherent nonsense about trying to talk to me. One of the larger guys pushed him away. He came back. I lost my cool and threw a drink in his face. The bouncer, a usual person, got involved. I said he didn’t need to be kicked out, just kept away from me. He came up to me again inside. Again, two male friends stepped in between. I went ouside. He actually slammed into me, pushing me into the wall. I ran inside. I told the friends I’d promised a ride to that we were leaving. Now.
The next day, I got endless apologies from Captain Fuckwit’s friend, the usual person I’d been talking to when all this started. I got apologies from him on several occasions. I told him I wasn’t mad at him, that it wasn’t his fault. I forgot all about it.
This past Friday, standing outside another usual bar after a Sounders match, with usual people, I saw the original usual person, who had apologized so abjectly. I headed over to say hi to him when I realized that the friend he was chatting with was the same friend. Furious and freaked out, I stormed back into the bar, shaking. A good friend of mine saw me and asked what had happened. Once I explained, he, my brother and a couple of other friends went to go deal with the situation. I’ll admit that everything I know of their conversation with Captain Fuckwit and the person who brought him is secondhand. I wasn’t part of the conversation. With that said, here’s the thing that absolutely blew my mind: The person who brought him was angry at me. Accused me of causing drama. Wanted to know why I was overreacting. Said it was months ago. Why was I still angry? Said it wasn’t a big deal. My brother, a generally very calm person, tried to explain that it was a big deal, that I wasn’t overreacting, that the person who brought Captain Fuckwit couldn’t possibly understand, probably didn’t have to be afraid of being sexually assaulted at a bar full of friends.
Everything about this situation, from the initial tit-grab to the confusion over my being upset, is at the heart of my confusion over how I feel about feminism and gender roles. When I say that if equal means the same, then we can never be equal, one of the things I am thinking of is physical strength and expectations of physicality and touch. Physically, there is no doubt that this person, the one who grabbed me, elbowed me, pushed me into a wall, and would not fuck off, is stronger than I am. Had he had more sinister intentions than the ones he had in his shitfaced state, I would have a hard time winning that fight. I am one tough lady, but it’s a simple fact: He is stronger and larger than I am, and I was afraid of him. Another difference is the meaning and expectation of physical touch. If I was a man, I would not fear being grabbed in a sexual way by a stranger in public. I would also not have feared being seen as a drama queen for being angry, shaken, and upset about it. And I did fear that. I feared that the night it happened, and I feared it on Friday night. Easily fifty percent of my anger that night was over the fact that I was being accused of being dramatic and over reacting to what my brother was right to call a sexual assault. It isn’t innocent or cute for a stranger to put their hands on you in a sexual or violent way, but for some reason, even the relatively intelligent and enlightened men I like to think my friends are seemed to think that I was making a mountain out of a molehill.
I guess it’s misleading when I say it took me a long time to be comfortable calling myself a feminist. I still struggle with it, I just struggle with it for different reasons. I was and am really angry about what happened on Friday night. I am pissed right the fuck off that anyone thought I was being dramatic about it. I am intensely angry that he thought I was overreacting. I was, as my brother also pointed out, underreacting. I didn’t punch him then or when it originally happened. I didn’t pitch a screaming fit. I didn’t, actually, do anything. I’m mad at myself for that. I should have just hit him and been done with it. But here’s the thing. I’m a loud woman, a smart girl. I’m a very opinionated, passionate woman. And yes, I can be tough. So, fair or not, when something happens that involves me, the tendency of the people around me is to look at me and think two things: That I can handle it, and that I probably deserved it. Being someone with a history of abuse, that might be the hardest thing of all for me to deal with. I’m so terrified that people will think that I caused whatever the problem was, or that I’m being a drama queen, that I try way too hard to avoid making a big deal out of things like this. Beyond that, it’s also not at all always true that I can handle whatever situation comes up. When the initial incident happened, I was scared. Especially when I was outside, alone, having a cigarette and he came up and pushed me into the wall. I was terrified, and I wanted someone to help me.
Here’s where the feminism thing gets really muddled for me. I wanted a man to help protect me. I know that that’s not what I am supposed to want, but that is exactly what I did want, and I felt stupid for wanting it. I always feel stupid for wanting it. On the flip side of that coin, though, is the fact that I feel that the simple fact that Captain Fuckwit thought this was even remotely acceptable behavior, blind drunk or not, means that feminism is obviously not past relevance. It’s tough for me to reconcile my feminism with my desire to feel small and girly next to the men I date, with my wanting men to step in and protect me when another man is threatening my safety and wellbeing.
Being a woman is hard. Being a man is hard, too, for a host of reasons. Only some of them can I even claim to begin to understand, just like a man could never really understand all the ways that being a woman is hard.
If you’re wondering how Friday night ended up, nothing happened. I was angry, and I tried to move on from it. He and the person who brought him stayed in the bar, but away from me. I tried to stop being pissed off and upset about it, but as you can probably tell by my writing this, it didn’t exactly work. It’s not really the incident itself that I can’t stop being upset about. It’s the attitudes around it, both the personal attitudes in this situation and the broader societal attitudes behind it. Driving home, I thought back to the linguistics debate my friend and I had engaged in earlier that day. I had told her I thought she was a feminist, and shouldn’t be embarassed to say that, or try to distance herself from the label. Thinking about all of the above, though, I have to say that I think it’s all terribly complicated, and that blithely telling her to claim her feminism was denying the complications.
So, life is hard, sometimes, I guess. But then you go for a run, bake some cookies, and it’s just a tiny bit better.
