Why I am a feminist. Edit: April 18

People ask me why I’m a feminist. Sometimes the questions aren’t quite as direct as that. They could be: “Why are you so passionate about women’s issues?” There are many reasons, and I’ll list them here, just so I’ll never have to list them again. Some will have been written about in posts already, but this will be the grand summary. Some of them are tiny little things that may not matter much in the big picture, but a lot of small things added together make big issues, as most will agree. Other experiences could have the honour of making me a feminist all by themselves. Sometimes I react passionately to women’s issues because I see how legislation and attitudes might affect me, if not now, then maybe one day should I get pregnant, be raped, be harassed, need an abortion etc etc mostly though, I react to not only women’s issues but to all issues of injustice, because I have a well-developed sense of fairness. I want things to be fair – or at least as fair as possible. To everyone.

This list will not just be examples of injustices towards women, but also towards other oppressed groups, whose rights I will also speak up and out for. There will be more examples of injustices towards women, because those are the ones I experience personally. I seldom, if ever, experience racism directed at me, since I’m as white as they come, so mostly it’d have to be incidents I saw rather than experienced, same goes for ableist attitudes and other oppressions.

The list won’t be in any chronological order as some incidents go so far back I can’t place them precisely, some incidents I have only just remembered recently, and I’m sure more will surface later on and will be added to the list as I recall them.

Anyway here goes:

When I was 14 and travelling on a packed bus I suddenly felt a gentle touch on my butt. I couldn’t turn around and the hand kept caressing my butt. When the bus stopped and a lot of people got off, I moved up front, but still had to stand up, hoping to move away from whoever had been touching me. I couldn’t tell who it was. And then suddenly the touch was there again. This time I could turn around though, and I turned towards what turned out to be a man of around 50, and told him in as confident a voice as I could manage: “Please stop that.” I was terrified, but he did stop. I have no idea what he thought, I wasn’t dressed provocatively, long trousers, sleeveless top that wasn’t low-cut at all. It was an obvious sexual caress of my bum by a total stranger. I don’t know if he thought it’d lure me in, if he did I can’t imagine how the heck he could think that. I suppose I was lucky that I didn’t meet him alone in a bi-street. I have my reasons for reacting very badly to being touched without warning, this is one of them.

****

A series of incidents which I recall vividly stars a co-worker of mine. When he’s in a good mood he’s jolly and can be amusing company, but he can turn around 180 degrees without warning – a reason I simply cannot work with him. I feel like I have to tread carefully all the time, and that’s causing me major amounts of stress.

When it started I had recently started working there. I was learning my way around the storage facility, which is frigging huge and so takes at least some months for most people to get used to. I didn’t yet have a license to drive a fork lift then, and this bloke missed no opportunity to tell me I was useless. I ground my teeth and bore with it because I was new and didn’t want to cause a scene. I had messed up a scanning and it’d take a while to sort out. I was new, I hadn’t known that what I was doing was wrong, I’d done what I’d learned, but this scanning was different than the ones I’d doner so far. When it become clear that it was I who’d messed up the boke told me “This is why I hate working with women.” I told him this has more to do with me being new than it has to do with my gender. I don’t recall what he responded to that.

Later on I was sent to help out him and another picker with their shipment. It is custom that when you pick a pallet full of goods you scan them yourself because *you* know what you put where, and someone else hasn’t a chance to find wares hidden out of sight. The bloke just dumped a pallet with me and told me to scan it, I protested I’d rather pick goods myself than scan his pallet because he was too lazy to do it himself. That made him angry and he told me to do as I was told with the argument “equal pay for equal work”. As if it was equal work that he did the fun stuff while I could just spend my time sorting out his messes. And yes, he is an irresponsible worker. He smashes more colli than most other people on the facility.

I talked to one of the other women, Gitte, over the lunch break one day. I asked her how she handled his abrasive attitude, ’cause I wasn’t sure how to handle it myself. I thought he was behaving like an arse, and I needed to talk to someone about it, so I talked to her and asked her for advice. Unfortunately the offensive bloke overheard us. And so when we retuned to work he became so offensive, he was angry with me for talking about him with someone else. If I had a problem with him I could bloody well tell him in person, he yelled at me, and generally behaved very threatening. I was afraid he might even become violent. He didn’t though.

I couldn’t handle it any more. I broke down. The woman I’d spoken to and one other saw me crying and asked what was wrong. I told them and they told our boss who took me in for a conversation. And believe it or not, I actually felt I had to use an excuse about stuff going on in my life for not being able to handle the offensive behaviour.

The offensive bloke was told to speak nicely to me. Not in general, just to me, because apparently I’m special. What a message to send: We know you’re just being a man, but try to be little less of a man around Jem, because apparently she can’t handle it. They may not have said it like that, but it sure was what I felt they were thinking.

Whenever people actually did tell him directly when they were unhappy with his behaviour he got angry with them and started shouting at them. I’ve seen and heard him do it on several occasions, but spite of several complaints nothing is ever done to actually stop him.

When a woman, Luciné, was in training in the warehouse office she was out working a bit in the warehouse to get a feel for what was going on. She had been driving along the storage facility’s main thoroughfare, which means she had first rights to the ‘road’. The bloke came driving from a side passage and very nearly barreled into her. She was shocked and shouted “Hey! Watch out!” at him, and then he became all bausive, yelling at her etc etc. I didn’t see it happening, but I saw her immediately afterwards and she was white as a sheet and shaking with rage. She filed an official complaint with her boss about the bloke’s behaviour. But nothing could be done about it, so they filed it as a near-accident. Yes it was a near-accident, but that wasn’t her complaint. Her complaint was that he scolded her for being shocked and frightened after he nearly ran her over. Just like he scolded me for being uncomfortable with his behaviour.

Then there was the incident where he and a woman worker had been teasing each other a bit, and after a while apparently he said something that crossed the woman’s boundaries and she said stop. I don’t recall what was said, I just recall thinking it was a real cool way of saying it. But apparently he didn’t agree. Nevermind that he told me off for not telling him stop in person, this woman did tell him stop, and then he became completely ticked off and scolded her for even engaging in friendly teasing in the first place. If she couldn’t take it all the way she shouldn’t engage in it at all.

It just proved to me that I had been right in not confronting him in the first place, but boy do I regret not showing my support for poor Jeanette who had shown support for me when I had been on the receiving end of his abuse. I still feel bad for it. And we live with this every single day at work. The man is 38, you’d think he’d have learned appropriate behaviour by now…. but alas. We have a new boss now, so next time we have the mandatory talks with the boss about how things are going, I plan to present a case against the offensive bloke. Here’s hoping the courage doesn’t fail me. This new boss seems to be more assertive and less afraid of taking action than the old one. The old one just said: “Well we can’t be friends with everybody”, no, indeed, I don’t think anybody’s trying to, but it’d be nice to be able to go t work without being afraid you’ll be scolded for just being a woman.

****

Then I recall incidents with my now deceased grandfather. I don’t recall anything like this from my childhood, but when I grew up and he grew older and slowly also became afflicted with Alzheimers, the hugs we shared somehow didn’t any longer involve him enveloping me in his arms, no, one arm would be around my back, and the other hand would be placed on my side…. on my ribs uncomfortably close to my breast. I didn’t know what to think of it. I thought it was probably nothing, but right now I can’t think of a single reason for him not being able to give me a good and proper hug. I’m not sure that anything was truly wrong here, but goodness knows I felt awful ‘hugging’ him because his hand always strayed so suspiciously close to my breast, it made me feel very uncomfortable and uncertain, and on one hand I feel bad for suspecting him of semi-copping a feel, on the other I really do wonder.

****

In 2003 I had a friend who turned into a stalker, when I rejected his offers of a love-relationship. He posed under a different name in chat and attempted to question my boyfriend about what I like in bed, he attempted to do the same with me, he also asked me (still using his alias) whether I’d acept the offer of lesbian sex from an anonymous girl on the internet. He forgot that I’ve proof-read many of his writings and therefore know his stock grammar and spelling errors intimately. I called him on it, he pretended to be innocent. I should’ve kicked him from my life right then and there, but I felt sorry for him and his complete lack of social skills – yes, I was naïve. On the messageboard I moderated, he publically asked everyone for advice on how to get a date with the girl he was in love with – and he did so, knowing that I would read it, and thinking that I wouldn’t figure out it was me he was talking about. And all the while I could see him following the advice they gave him without knowing it was me. And NO ONE told him that if the girl said no, maybe he should just accept it. If the girl said no, he just had to try harder. Everyone, even the girls on the site, told him that a ‘no’ never actually meant no, it meant ‘try harder’. He brought me expensive gifts (for his income level) that I’d told him not to. When I was sitting at a school dance flirting heavily with a friend of mine, he wouldn’t leave us alone. When I went home with my flirt, my ‘admirer’ asked if he could crash at his place too. As I later learned, he actually lived closer to where we were than where we went to sleep, so that pretty much proves it wasn’t about the distance, it was about being where I was. I can only wonder what might have happened between me and my flirt, if my stalker hadn’t been under the same roof, but I wasn’t my place to boot him from a home that wasn’t mind. When I eventually did boot him from my life, he started a telephone storm. Even telling his shrink (that I has referred him to) lies about it all, so the shrink eventually wrote me and said that the bloke was very sorry, it’d be nice of me if I’d contact him. Just goes to show what an ‘effective’ shrink that was, sorta proves I was right when I stopped seeing her a few months before that happened. After I’d asked him never to contact me again – it was in early December 2003 – he asked me what he should do with my Christmas present. ‘Cause apparently he’d bought me one even though I had told him I wanted him not to. I told him I didn’t care, and due to the telephone storm I had to re-direct all my calls to my dad’s phone. Eventually the jerk got the message and stopped after my dad had sent him a letter threatening him with the police.

And after all that: He told some of my online friends that I refused to speak to him for no reason. And he just had some questions about the site I was Admin for. He couldn’t contact my co-Admin or the Mods, no no, it had to be me. Most of them just ignored his whiny ass and told him that if I didn’t want to talk to him, I probably had a good reason – ask the co-Admin. But one of them, a girl who was very sweet, but also very naïve about certain things, believed everything he told her, and next time I saw her in chat she pretty much scolded me for treating the poor bloke that way. I told her the full story, and then she said that had she known that while she was Admin of the site (she was my predecessor), she would have kicked him immediately. “And that,” I told her: “is why I didn’t tell you before, because back then he hadn’t done anything that broke the site rules, so kicking him wouldn’t be right.” The interesting thing was that after I booted him from my life, he never actually posted on the site anymore – he just chatted with some of the members privately, and tried to spread his lies.

****

Then there was the boyfriend who managed to talk me into anal sex, and actually asked me if I felt a difference. Yes, he actually asked me that. What the fuck do you think, moron? And immediately afterwards he requested a blow-job. OMG EEEEWWWW. Quite clear where he got his sex-ed. Not that his parents would’ve helped any if they’d talked to him about it, then again, maybe they had talked abut it – his dad tried coming on to me several times while I was visiting with them. I don’t think I need to expand more on that.

****

And there was the boyfriend who after our breakup complained that he deserved better than the treatment he’d received. I’m sure he did, but saying it to me made it sound like a demand for what he perceived I owed him. And if there’s one thing that goes for all relationships it’s that emotions cannot be owed. They are either there, or they’re not, you can’t owe someone your love and affection, not if they are to be true at least, and if they aren’t, there’s really no point, is there? But that was a classic case of entitlement issues. I deserve better than this – yes, I’m sure you do, but I’m not the one to talk to about it. I got very angry with him, which in turn made him angry with me. Consequently communications broke down – unsurprisingly so.

****

Then there was the Kung Fu club where I was out-voted at a board meeting on the issue of allowing 8 and 9 year olds into the Kung Fu classes. The nearby karate club allowed younger children in now, and so we had to as well so they wouldn’t steal all our potential members. What they forgot to take into consideration was that the Kung Fu style we practised and the way we practised it made it unsuitable for kids under 11 – the previous age limit – and that most of our new members were 16 or older so the issue was irrelevant anyway. But we did end up getting 3 little boys into the club. One of which removed again when he returned from training with bruises on his arms. What did you expect, mommy? It’s a martial art, not a cooking course.

But during training sessions when we’d get to the hard stuff I was asked to take the kiddies away and do something easier with them. Excuse me? When am I supposed to learn the hard stuff? I paid to attend these classes and I didn’t even have a rank that allowed me to teach anyone anything. But at age 15 I did happen to be the only female there over the age of 12 and that somehow must have made me the only one suitable for teaching the kiddies. Nevermind that I hate kids. Nevermind that I was there to learn, not to teach. I complained to the male instructor and requested that he not have me teach others. It helped for about two weeks. Then we were back to normal. I quit. And last I spoke to someone about it, the girl told me I should’ve spoken up about it. Ahem, I DID. At the board meeting and to the instructor, nothing seemed to help and I’m not one to waste my energy fighting a losing battle if I don’t have to. I miss practising my favourite martial art, but I don’t regret leaving. Not at all.

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Another incident was the one I’ve detailed in this journal many posts ago, about the father denying his daughter a latex LARP sword because “girls don’t play with those things.” I told him he was wrong, but it didn’t change his mind – not that I’d expected it to. Eventually he steered his daughter towards the pinkly decorated shelves with dolls and doll accessories, and he even commented that she was quick to choose what she wanted. Maybe, dear old dad, that was because she didn’t choose what she wanted, she just picked something random because YOU didn’t allow her to choose what she REALLY wanted. I’ll bet my entire fortune (all of which belongs to the bank anyway) that whatever doll accessory she chose lies unused on the floor.

****

Then there are all those numerous accounts of remarks like “Ohhhh must be that time of the month, huh?” No, maybe I just have a complaint that you don’t want to consider valid. And so, somehow my otherwise well-argued and well-exemplified complaint must be invalidated by suggestions of irrationality due to blood in panty-liners.

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There was the bloke I met at choir rehearsal who walked me home. I’m usually fairly open about who and what I am, sexually, politically, ideologically. His words were: “Owh, when you said you were bisexual you became like… SO interesting!” he gestured with his hands towards the sky. “But then when you said you’re a socialist, it all just disappeared.” Suffice to say I didn’t talk to him ever again, other than the occasional neutral and polite greetings at choir rehearsals. So when you can fantasize about me sexually, about things that’ll never come to pass I’m interesting, and that was the word he used. Not attractive but interesting. But the moment I actually have an opinion it just goes *poof*. The bloke just proceeded to flirt with the 14 year old girls in the choir, that wouldn’t have been so wrong if not for the fact that he was 24 at the time. *shudder* Women are supposed to fuck toys without opinions – yup, welcome to the world of the patriarchy.

****

There was the bloke I met at university, whom I befriended. We were truly just friends and he accepted that, he never tried anything. Not until we went out to have dinner (and a lovely steak it was ) and spent the evening at my place, talking. He lived out of town and needed to catch a train home. He conveniently hadn’t checked the train schedule beforehand, and he had conveniently forgotten to borrow my internet connection to do so until after the last train had left. This was the day after I had a wisdom tooth pulled. I was in pain, hadn’t slept well, and now I suddenly had a bloke whom I found physically repulsive, but a good friend nonetheless staying the night in my one-room flat. A very TINY one-room flat. I didn’t sleep at all that night. Good thing it was during the autumn vacation, and I didn’t have classes to go to. I was so beat. I never spoke to him again. I couldn’t forgive him for pulling that stunt. Looking back I’m amazed I didn’t kick him out, but I suppose I fell for the “Ooops, time and the good convo ran away with me”.

****

M was raped at the age of 13. All her dad gave her was a teddy bear, but his presence at the hospital when she was treated and later on aborted the pregnancy the rape had caused was non-existent. She received no support from her family, as if it was her fault, as if she was the one to condemn. She was THIRTEEN! Is it any wonder that when I got to know her at he age of 17 she had cutting scars up and down her arms. She was raped again at the age of 17, because two blokes had wanted to get back at her boyfriend for something. And as we all know: violating a man’s property ie. his woman is the best way to get at him. She didn’t want to report it because then her mother would have to be told because she was under-age. So she waited till she was 18, but decided to involve her mother anyway. What happened? The mother told the police officer that M couldn’t be trusted because she’d used all her money on drugs. Lies, and M had been away from the marijuana for two years to boot, but her mother effectively sabotaged any chance M might have had of achieving justice.

****

H was also raped when she was 13. I got to know her when she was 25, I was 19. We met at a music course and instantly hit it off. I was her best friend while her budding relationship with a wonderful man bloomed. And one day in chat she asked me for advice concerning sex. I was a bit perturbed, she was 6 years my senior, I had expected her to know. I agreed to try and answer her questions, and said that I assume she was aware of the basics, to which she responded: “Yes…. you see, technically I’m not a virgin, I’ve just never had sex.” That completely floored me. And the most horrid part? She never told anyone of this. This woman was under treatment for schizophrenia because she was hearing voices, at some point she quit her medicine and apparently was functioning fine without it. But here’s the kicker: schizophrenia is incurable, so she can’t have been cured. However, schizophrenia-like symptoms can occur when the patient has been exposed to immense amounts of stress. Say for instance after being raped at age 13. But she’d never told anyone about it, not her doctors, no one. I asked her why she hadn’t done that and thereby brought the wrong treatment upon herself for so long. She explained that it was private, it was none of their business, it was her personal life.

Yes, I understand that it was deeply personal, but that she could even have gotten the idea that being raped is part of her personal sex-life astounds me. Rape is not a part of a woman’s sex-life even if the patriarchy wants it to be. It’s a CRIME and the CRIMINAL needs to be apprehended so he can’t do to other women what’s he’s already done to my friend. She spent 12 years as a diagnosed schizophrenic all because she couldn’t bring herself to even tell a doctor about her rape. That is so much beyond tragic I have no words for it. On a happier note: H is happily married to the wonderful man I mentioned earlier and she’s doing fine now. It just took far too long for her to reach that state of well-being.

****

D never told anyone of her rape either. She’d been at a party, and long into the wee hours of the morning and after much consumption of alcohol she was tired and found a bed in the house and took a nap. She woke up naked with a bloke on top of and inside her. And she still blames herself, because she *had* flirted with him, and she *had* laid down on the bed. What she fails to realise is that she hadn’t consented, that when she laid down she was alone, and that when she laid down she WAS STILL DRESSED. And yet, she blames herself, and therefore no rape was ever reported. And even if it were, I’m sure that many would attempt to classify it as the infamous bullshit term “grey rape”, simply because she’d been wearing sexy clothing, had flirted, had been at the party in the first place, had been drunk, had laid on the bed. And this sort of thing makes me want to kill something. Preferably the rapists. Or even better, lock those rapists in a cage with big horny male gorilla. Not very civilized, I know, but there really is nothing civilized about rape.

We need to realise that rapists are nothing more than horny male gorillas who feel entitled to a harem at their beck and call. And that’s not being very fair to the gorillas.

****

I have been spared such horrible experiences as these myself; my complete lack of social life and party activity means that I won’t get raped at a party, but it seems I’ve been lucky while simply walking through town as well. But considering the kind of pain I’ve felt, at the misogyny I’ve experienced personally, I can only imagine what these three women must feel at having experienced so much worse violations of their bodies and their persons. In fact I don’t think I can imagine, it’s simply too painful. And the worst part is: it’s an everyday occurrence. We just don’t hear about it very often.

****

When I was 10 or 11 (or thereabouts, I can’t quite place it) our gym classes in summer meant changing in the school’s locker room, leaving the school yard, walking along the side-walk, past the neighbouring kindergarten to the soccer field. Everything belonged to the school grounds, but for some reason a path on the grounds had never been made, so we had to enter the public sphere on the side-walk. Mind, the school also owned most of the old villas on the other side of the street, having converted them into a library, a day care center, etc etc, and the road was a cul-de-sac, so it wasn’t exactly heavily trafficked. None of this mattered in the long run though because one day, one incident was all it took for me to be paranoid about being around people (men in particular) and about my body. We had had our gym class outside, and we were walking on the side-walk on our short way back to the school building where the locker rooms were. The stretch was about 30 meters if I recall correctly. I was wearing one of those classic brightly coloured leotard/body-stocking things. Long sleeves, torso covered, no legs. Technically I had a pair of leggings too, but it was so warm that day so no one wore their leggings with their leotards. I was the first of the girls in my class to develop any kind of curves, and though I don’t remember it specifically, it must have started by then. At least that’s the only explanation I can think of that I was targetted and the others weren’t. Come to think of it, I can’t say for sure that others weren’t targetted, ’cause  never talked to any of them about it. We were walking all of us together, and I was on the inside of the side-walk. And when we had passed the kindergarten’s 5 car parking space and got to the gate in the fence, three men were standing there. The gate was open, and they were talking – I assume they had business there, perhaps they were parents to some of the kids in there. And just when I passed them, one of them said: “Heeey, sexy ladyyyy…” to me. I don’t know if anyone else heard. I ignored it as I best could and didn’t break step, but it has followed me ever since. Outside a kindergarten a man, who probably had a child in that very kindergarten, said THAT to a child only a few years older from the school next door. I felt betrayed by my body. Why did it call that kind of attention to itself when I didn’t want it? And to this day I still hold those feelings of blame towards my body – when in fact the sole blame lies with the perv on the side-walk.

****

There was the time in my early pubescent years, we were vacationing in the small summer house my grandparents had (no electricity, no heating aside from a kerosene oven, no hot water, fridge and stove run by a mobile gas can – primitive and sweet). It was before I had been properly indoctrinated to keep female bodily functions well and truly secret from the world, and somehow I had let my three years younger cousin know that I was on my period. She hadn’t yet had hers, and she asked if she could see what it looked like. Not yet having been taught to be ashamed of it I agreed, and we went across the lawn to the tiny little toilet shed together. My dad saw and called her away from there, and scolded me for involving others in my dirty underwear.

****

There were the many subsequent times, while I still lived at home, I was told by afore-mentioned dad of mine to place my blood-stained menses panties in the laundry basket in such a way that no one would be able to see that they were blood-stained. To my knowledge no one in the house-hold were told/asked to fold their dirty laundry so no skid-marks would show, no, it was just me and my bloody proof of female-ness that was to stay hidden. It was dirty laundry for fuck’s sake! What kind of asinine anal-retentive ass studies the contents of a laundry basket? For a girl who bled very heavily each month, it was extremely hard if not impossible to avoid blood stains in the panties, and just try to imagine how hard it was to remember to carefully place my panties in the basket, rather than just dumping them like most people would. Think I managed every time? Think again. And what about those times when something is pulled out of the basket for one reason or another? No one’s going to rearrange someone else’s dirty laundry to spare the sensitive eyes of Father – especially when they don’t even know of the order to do so.

****

There was a time I was standing in line in a shop. A woman standing a short ways ahead of me was having a hard time making herself understood. Her Danish was broken – she had probably immigrated here from a country that would have been the death of her had she not come here. She was a woman of colour, that much I remember, though her exact features and skin tone I do not. What I do remember is my shock at the shop clerk apparently not understanding her. What she was saying was perfectly clear. Broken Danish, sure, but easily understood compared to some of the rural dialects from our country. I was very young when I experienced this the first time. I seem to remember my mum stepping forward and helping the woman, though, I don’t really recall what she did. Perhaps she scolded the clerk, perhaps she ‘translated’, my mum is good with words, though she doesn’t consider herself to be, so I can imagine how she could have ‘translated’ Danish to Danish in such a way as to make it perfectly clear to everyone, just how little she needed to actually translate.

Many years later I experienced that situation repeated and this time, remembering what my mum has taught me, I stepped in and ‘translated’ while looking nastily at the clerk, and asking the woman if she’d considered visiting the similar store around the corner.

****

I remember being asked by a woman of colour in a supermarket about the price tag on a notebook. She was yet another of those unfortunate souls, who have had to leave their home country and move to our little northern country. Her Danish was perfectly fine, but she was apparently rather insecure about her own linguistic ability (but hey, rather that than making stupid mistakes due to overestimating one’s own skills), so she felt the need to ask the nearest person – in this case me – if the notebook and the price tag on the shelf really did belong together. I assured her that her confusion stemmed from a linguistic mix-up with the staff, rather than any lack of ability on her part. It really is no help when the thing is called one thing on the package and something else on the price tag. That could confuse anyone. While talking to her I never really got any further than my upbringing that says: “Treat your elders with respect, and help those in need of your aid.” She was probably at least 15 years my senior, and she had requested my aid – I helped her out without even thinking about anything but the issue she needed help with.

It wasn’t until afterwards that I started thinking about the encounter. And then it struck me. When she asked me the question; Her eyes, her voice, her posture, everything about her signaled “I know, I’m inferior, please excuse my existence, I hope you can find it in your heart to help me, even though I’m unworthy.” I may exaggerate a bit here, but it had such a profound impression on me. I didn’t decode all of that while talking to her. I have only seldom been exposed to racism and only once or twice has it been directed at me, so I am oft times quite slow on the uptake. It takes me a while to spot. But here I did spot it. Or rather, I spotted the racism that she feared or perhaps even expected to hear from me, when asking me for help. She probably expected me to treat her badly, and thus initiated the encounter by showing clear deference – probably to diffuse or at least lessen a potential conflict. It could also be because as a female she had been raised to behave that way at all times, of course. She was clearly a muslim, her head-scarf testified to that, so it could just be habitual behaviour. But since I know that in general, muslim women are brought up to defer to men and to their elders and can be pretty open and unabashed when talking to other women, and since I am neither man nor her elder… I figure my first assumption is correct. It showed me my privilege. And it makes me cry for her to think about it. She expected abuse of the racist kind, and to avoid it she granted a white person such deference as no one ever should another person. It scares me that I didn’t notice it immediately – how many other situations have gone completely unnoticed by yours truly? I can’t tell. It’s a small comfort that I wasn’t busy and therefore had plenty of time to help her, reassure her about her understanding of the language and do so with a genuine smile on my face (so sue me, I like the warm fuzzy feeling I get from nice to people). I hope I have restored a little bit of her faith in humanity – goodness knows I lost some of mine after that encounter. Truly, some people speak of ‘reverse racism’ as when POC express anti-white sentiments – I disagree with that definition. That’s just justifiable bitterness and anger (most of the time). To me this encounter epitomized ‘reverse racism’: Racism is expected and precipitated and therefore becomes unnecessary to act out for the white person, who thus benefits from it without having to take the trouble of being actively racist. THAT is reverse racism to me – and it’s what gives me and every other white person out there privilege (when it comes to skin colour).

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Update March 12

Remembered this episode I posted about back in August:

I was at a friend’s 30th birthday party last night. Big whoo hah, 50 people, live band, free drinks ad libitum. I was sober, ’cause I was driving, and besides it’s a bad idea for me to get drunk while among many people. I have these demophobic tendencies that can cause panic attacks when it gets to crowded. I have learned to manage it, learned to see the signs, so I can leave the party and take a breather all solo before a panic attack strikes.

The music was very loud, so I also needed to rest my ears once in a while anyway. And the room was very hot and smoke-filled, so lots of good reasons to explain my absences without having to relate the details of my mental well-being.

One of the times I left for a brief stint the rain was pouring down, however. Not wanting to get completely drenched I decided to just sit in the entrance hall a few steps away from the front door. There weren’t a lot of people coming and going at that particular time. So I figured I could find peace there for long enough.

So there I sat. On the floor. Leaning against the wall. Some older guy comes out – presumably to get some fresh air. And as he walks by me he says: “You can’t just sit there, come on out!”

I reply: “I’m fine, thanks.”

Him: “Isn’t it cold? Come on with me.”

Me: “I’ll be colder outside in the rain.”

Him: “It’ll do you good with some rain on your head.”

Me: “Thanks, I’m fine here, I’ll be colder out there, I just wanna sit here.”

Then he grabbed my wrist and attempted to pull me up. What with my issues with being touched this was not welcome at all. I know a lot of people are very ‘touchy’ in their communication, that touching their convo partners is a natural thing for them, so I don’t get angry immediately when it occurs. Most of them are simply unaware that it can be uncomfortable for some of us. But as he grabbed my wrist and arm and tugged, I broke free of his grasp and said: “Don’t touch me.”

His grasp had been rough and clumsy, probably because he was rather drunk, and it had further unsettled my already semi-frayed nerves that were the reason I’d left the party hall in the first place. I probably sounded terse and panicked when I said “Don’t touch me.” There was no ‘please’, I was not polite. It was an order. “Don’t touch me.” I said it just once at the moment when I broke free of his grasp.

His reaction was pretty much a growl: “Stupid annoying bitch.”

I was too preoccupied with fighting off the impending panic attack to react immediately to what he said. It took some moments before it sank in. Then I told him “knock that shit the fuck off” which he imperiously ignored by keeping his back turned.

There’s nothing truly surpising in what happened. Women who refuse advances, touches, even just a well-intended but unwanted aid are bitches for doing that. Had I been male, this complete stranger would most likely not have kept pestering me when I said I was fine. He most likely wouldn’t have touched me, and even if he had, he definitely wouldn’t have called me a nasty word for telling him not to.

So yeah. For not wanting his company, for not wanting his ‘help’, for not wanting his touch and for telling him so. I’m and stupid annoying bitch.

****

There was a time while I worked in the storage facility, when I managed to drop a pallet of colli. I actually nearly hit a co-worker (oops!), that co-worker later became my boyfriend but that’s completely unrelated stuff. I dropped that pallet because I hadn’t spread the forks of my fork lift wide enough, and I’d packed the load amateurishly unbalanced, so it was going to fall no matter what, it was only a matter of time. Of course that also meant I had to withstand the fond teasing of co-workers who’d all done the same thing or similar when they were new-ish. Some still do it after many years… go figure. It’s all good, it’s all part of the jargon. But one man’s comments were not. Not too long after it’d happened, someone was telling someone else what had happened, I was standing right there during the telling (somehow stories are always more fun that way…). And this man felt it was necessary to let me know that “that’s what happens when you don’t spread your legs enough”. They’re called forks, calling them legs was obviously a ridiculous nick-name he employed to make his pervy joke work. I decided to completely ignore that he’d said anything at all. That just meant he repeated himself – twice over. Yeah, you drop things if you don’t spread your legs enough, har har, very funny. And goodness knows I would not dare to confront him about it, his temper is famous and he’s made a female boss and a female lorry driver cry, because of his irate ranting at them. I’ve never heard the rants, but I do know that the one directed at the lorry driver, did include a large dose of misogyny. Enough for her to be completely broken by it, and she’s used to being around macho men with attitudes. This hot-tempered idiot also happens to be a very big man, so the intimidation factor is also high, and that hardly makes it any better.

****

In Metro a customer has been banned from the shop only a day or so prior to when I started there. Customers have to be registered card-carrying customers in order to shop here, so banning them can actually be quite a serious problem for business and such. But Metro had no qualms about banning this customer. He’d offered one of the female sales assistants sex and asked her how much it would cost to get her to sleep with him. She reported it, and since most customers are regulars, the personnel knows them. He was reported and the next time he showed up, he was asked to leave. That he behaved that way in the first place was horrid, that Metro handled it like they did is applauded by the staff. I don’t know if the harassed woman reported him to the police, it’s none of my business really, but as it is he won’t enter her work-place ever again.

****
Update: April 18th

Back when I was 13 or thereabouts I was walking home from the music school (I think it was). A man came towards me on the side-walk. I thought nothing of it until we met and he addressed me. Would I like to marry his son, he asked me. I was flabbergasted. Excuse me, I said, I don’t think that’s an appropriate question to be asking. Oh but his son was a good man, very nice, very good. That’s all very well, I told him, but I’m only 13, so that’s really out of the question. Goodbye.

At least he accepted it and left me alone after that – as far as I recall.

****

I first started teaching my Role-playing class some years back. My colleague and friend had told the kids, who’d be in my class, what heir new teacher’s name was. My name is obviously female, and one of them suddenly had a very ponderous look on his face. Then he said to my friend: “So she’s female, huh? I know why she got the job. She’s your girlfriend!” Oh yes, as if that’s the only reason a woman could ever get a job.

****

One week after the above incident I walked into class and introduced myself as their new teacher. Some of them looked very perplexed and had to ask me if this was really the role-playing class. Yes, indeed it was. “But…but…but you’re a girl!” they stammered out, and looked utterly mortified that a female might actually have something to teach them – the geeky lads – in terms of role-playing. I bow to their powers of observation – yes, I’m a girl.

****

The first boy, who had so cunningly figured out how I must have gotten that teaching job, spent almost two years of classes coming on to me with the most lame-arse pick-up lines I ever heard. Example exchange: Me: “Alright, you walk into the inn, it’s fairly crowded, but you can still manage to get a decent look at the patrons.”
RP’ers: “We look for someone who might have news of the road. A ranger type or something…”
Me: “Good call, there is indeed a ranger-type sitting at a table. Clad in a brown woollen tunic, a long sword by her side, and her long hazel brown hair in practical braids.”
RP’er: “Wait… did you say her? It’s a she?…. Whoah….. does she look good?”
Obnoxious boy: “What he means to say is: Does she look like you?”
I was so stunned I had no idea what to reply, so I ignored it an continued on.

Once the obnoxious boy found out I read a lo of books, he also made a habit of arriving 15 minutes early for class and just sit there and read Nietzsche. As if 15 minutes of reading that will net you anything of worth. He was totally trying to impress me. Especially as I noticed that his bookmark never seemed to move.

I wore a lot of black back then. I was rather goth-y in appearance, though I never actually bought into the whole life-style and attitude thing. After a few classes the obnoxious boy also started going goth. After almost a year he’d skipped the look again, and tried to look very mature as he said: “I’ve realised that chicks don’t come flocking to goth guys, so I skipped the style.” Maybe, dunderhead, chicks just don’t come flocking to fakers. And the conspiratorial look he sent me was just hilarious.

After some time he entered the same choir I was singing in. He was really trying to impress me with that, too. He was totally fishing for personal praise and compliments as he mentioned he’d thought about joining. I merely said: “Oh good, I heard you’re a tenor, we always have too few of those, so you’ll be well-received there by the choir master.” Eventually he joined after having given up on getting me to personally beg him to do so for my sake. I’m pretty sure that’s what he wanted.

On Christmas Eve there are always three masses in that church. I was there for all three of course and for the breaks inbetween I’d brought a book. An obvious thing for someone like me. It was The Road to Xanadu, fairly heavy reading, with criticism and analysis of Coleridge’s poetry focusing on The Ancient Mariner. I sat there reading it, and as its cover and title looks much like a novel would, I can see how it’d fool some people who are too proud to ask. So obnoxious boy comes up to me and asks me what I’m reading. I tell him, of course, and he says “Oh, that’s a good one.” I look at him, schooling my features in a look of surprise, well-knowing that he’s a lying bullshitter. “You’ve read it? I didn’t know you read literary criticism… what do you think of how he traces the origins of the Mariner?” At which he looked completely at a loss, and back-pedalling he tried to save it with: “Oh uhm, I, uhhh haven’t read it myself, but I frequent a online forum where someone mentioned that it was good.” All I could do was nod and go “Uh huh.”

A few days after Christmas we met again. He told me of how many books he’d been given for Christmas. It was completely insane. He’d added up all those pages in all those books, and he’d found that he had yet to read 1270-some pages. It was hilarious how he was trying so desperately to impress me. I said: “Hmmm, I have over a hundred books on my shelves that I haven’t read yet. Multiply that by an average of 400 pages each and you’ll have my number… so you’re really not impressing me.” I stated that specifically, and at the suggestion that he’d been trying to impress me, he became completely flustered and uttered something like: “Oh, uhhhh, uhm, errr I’m uhhhh, not trying to impress you… really!” Oh really, I thought to myself, while holding back uproarious laughter.

I do so wish that boys (and men alike) would once and for all learn that women are not computers or robots, whose interest-buttons you push and, then they’ll respond accordingly. We’re people, we’re different, and if you want to score a date it really helps if you’re likable and not full of yourself.

Obnoxious boy once walked me home from mass and when we got to my building, I said goodbye and opened the door to let myself in. And then he actually made moves to get in as well, I saw it coming and quickly blocked his way with my retreating back. I’d already said goodbye, dammit, take a hint!

****

There was a time, while I studied at university, I lived in an apartment building meant for students. Most of us kept to ourselves behind our locked doors. And one night when I was sitting up late studying – I was in my pjs – my doorbell rang. I opened the door only to find that the dude in the flat across from me had guests and they were having a ball ringing everyone’s doorbells. I got back inside and got back to my books. Some time later the doorbell rang again – this time I was angry, and as I opened the door I was of a mind to give them a piece of my mind. I never got the far, when I opened the door they were standing there taking photographs down my tank top. I slammed the door. The next weekday I called the organisation that owns runs the building. See, I happened to know that there are surveillance cameras to reveal those who vandalised the building. I asked the lady if she could find surveillance photos from that night at about 2:14 AM. She asked me exactly what I needed that for. Well, I would like to report whoever it was for harassment, I’d like to complain about being kept up at night by their doorbell-playing and about being photographed non-consensually in my pjs. Ah, she understood that very well – she’d follow up on that immediately. One month later the dude was no longer living in that block. I don’t know if it went into a police report, the woman did ask if I wanted to file charges, and I did say yes, but I never followed up on it. I was just relieved that he was thrown out.

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