A couple weeks ago, my body became the subject of lewd dissection by a man I had never met before.
We’d swapped the usual waiting-in-line courtesies. Then …that. A crass line about my body said to the cashier, said with a smirk, for me to overhear.
I felt ashamed by features defined by genetics and not choice.
I felt sexualized wearing plain jeans and a baggy sweater.
More than anything, I felt tired.
I defaulted to my usual reaction in these situations. I managed somewhere between a grimace and an awkward smile and hurried through the transaction.
This wasn’t my first such interaction and it likely won’t be the last. Women experience this (and worse) daily; we all have our default way to delicately withdraw with our dignities more or less intact from the outside.
I relayed the incident to my friend later that afternoon in an ‘aren’t people weird?’ sort of way and made a joke of it. He got very quiet. “I don’t know how women do it every day,” he said. “I couldn’t.”
It didn’t hit me until that moment. This was coming from a kindhearted guy but one that can give off a ‘don’t-fuck-with-me’ vibe by his sheer stature. Until he confessed that moment of quiet frustration, I didn’t realize how much of a violation the stranger’s “compliment” really was.
I made excuses for that man’s behavior and laughed about it.
I was complicit in his unwanted, unsolicited objectification.
I thought to myself, “But he meant it as a compliment,” rather than letting myself see it in the moment for what it was – him claiming verbal ownership over my person simply by the fact that I was in front of him. I allowed him to take that power by not saying “No”.
Because I didn’t want to be rude.
Because, as women, we’re conditioned to be charming and giggle. Maybe then, the man won’t get aggressive.
Complicity shouldn’t be grounds for survival.
We’re part of a culture that tells women their bodies are public property and tells men that women who say “no” are just buying time until they say “yes”. Our culture tells men that they deserve to get the girl and tells women that objectification is flattery.
Obviously, not all men will threaten or harm women. But all women have been subjected to threats, violence, and the loss of ownership over their bodies. We KNOW not every man is a rapist. But the ones that are look just like the ones that aren’t. It’s like putting four poisoned candies in a bowl of hundreds, inviting someone to take a giant handful, and getting angry at them for being wary.
When your end goal is survival, your culture is already dangerously far gone.