Could buy some fruit for today's meeting?
No problem. I worked in one of the most chic areas of the city. Of course, it is amazing how a neighborhood can change in just a few blocks. A few blocks south and the sidewalks started to look a little seedier.
I turned the corner and saw four men unloading a truck. I am not quite sure from where the voice in my head arose, but it instructed me to turn around. Immediately. Nevertheless, I ignored the admonition. After all, I was tough. I was not going to allow a few burly looking men on a deserted city block intimidate me.
First came the looks. You know the kind: as if I were a piece of meat hanging in an old European meat market, the kind of cut that makes your mouth water if red meat appears in your wildest fantasies. (Okay, just don't look at them.)
Then came the whistle. (Oh, why don't I ever trust my instincts.)
Someone tipped their hat at me. I heard him leer "Good mornin'" to me as I brushed past. I felt the presence of two men start walking behind me. Another one was walking backwards two yards in front of my face. "My, my, don't you look beautiful."
(Please please please. Please don't touch me. Maybe if I keep walking they will just let me go ...)
They let me go. (Thank you, thank you.) Like a trapped animal, I had escaped.
Many issues are wrapped in the complexity of this five minute episode. Hopefully, most people would agree that this experience was an abusive outrage. After all, the excursion was part of my job; it was something I had no choice but to do. However, how many people would categorize it as abusive if I had been taking a walk down this street on my own accord? Would it then be something I deserved?
To put it in Dartmouth terms, is it any less horrifying for a woman to be raped while walking alone from a party, than it is for a woman walking home from Baker Library after studying until midnight? The party was a choice, the library most likely was not. The answer, in either case, is no: both rapes are equally outrageous, and both cases of harassment on the street are equally egregious. The blame falls on no one but the aggressor.
Next, if these men had not practically cornered me, but had still verbally assaulted me, cooking that red roast over and over in the depths of their minds, would it still have been abusive? After all, they weren't really going to hurt me, right? They were just admiring that fine piece of work that I was, walking down the street for their personal viewing enjoyment. Just as long as they did not physically touch me, it was just a momentary scare. Right?
Wrong again. No matter how "minimal" street abuse may seem, it is always degrading and always threatening. Often, the psychological affect of abuse is just as painful and harmful as the physical assault. In this case in particular, women are scared into silence, hoping that this group of men is not that which will commit the unspeakable, the unthinkable.
In my five minute scare, I blamed myself for not turning around at the top of the block. Unfortunately, this is what I have been socialized to think, and this is what I retreat to when I am frightened. Instead, I should have blamed those few men who reduced me from a woman to an animal, from a feeling, thinking human being to a piece of meat.
There is a name for this sort of outrage. It is called Street Abuse, a term used by Maggie Hadleigh-West, who is speaking at Dartmouth tonight as part of Sexual Assault Awareness Week. Hadleigh-West first exploded onto the scene with her thirteen minute film called "War Zone," a sociological study which documents this abusive behavior by "turning the lens of a camera on her harassers." She finds street abuse indicative of the disrespect towards and mistreatment of women in every realm of society.
Hadleigh-West exposes "The Abuse of Women on the Streets of America" with her controversial and thought provoking film "War Zone" tonight at 7:30 in 28 Silsby.
