Me Too, Dammit

Spent a pleasant Sunday with neotoma, mostly just talking with a certain amount of eating included. Saturday was spent with my friend Elle who is in the process of converting to Catholicism. I find it fascinating to watch her. She still hasn't read the bible. Nonetheless, it's giving her comfort in her widowhood, and I'll do what I can to make it simpler for her.

During my discussion with neotoma and another discussion with Gileswench, I've been reflecting on some of the ways I've been harassed. There are small things which roll off my back, like guys curb crawling if I'm out walking late at night. 99% of the time, they'll go away if I shake my head, and the worst of it happened when I was living near known areas of prostitution. (In Mannheim, my large and comfortable apartment was affordable for two reasons: it was two blocks from 50-mark strasse, and it was on the boundary between the Greek and Turkish neighborhoods. In London, Ladbroke Grove has never been upscale.) I can handle the catcalls from construction sites, mostly because I've never had any epithets that were horrible yelled my way.

Then there are the ones that years later still have an impact. The professor who kept making passes at me and tried to make my grade contingent on sleeping with him who then attempted to follow me from London to Brussels. Fortunately, we'd already moved back to the U.S., and our former concierge refused to give out our information. My family wouldn't let me answer the phone for three months.

There are two, though, that still infuriate me.

One was while I was living in Boston, in my late 30s. I was walking from the T stop to the grocery store on my way home and a man, my then age or a little older, was walking in the opposite direction with his son who looked to be about 10. The man made a remark about my breasts and then said to his son, "You should grab a handful of that." The ten year old grabbed my breast and squeezed. Other than a yelp, I said nothing. I don't know what I could have said that wouldn't have ended up worse for me.

The other was around the same time as the sleazy professor. It was a year abroad program, though in my case the "abroad" was only from Brussels to London. A group of us on the same program were heading to class at Central London Poly. We crossed Oxford Street at Oxford Circus. There's an island in the middle and pedestrians weren't expected to make it all the way across the street on a single light. While we were standing on the island, traffic going by around us, one of my male classmates grabbed me from behind (arm under my legs and one around my shoulder) and threw me in the air.

I was livid. It was dangerous. I was wearing a dress, so my underwear was visible to at least some of the cars. And when I yelled at the guy who did it, everyone -- including all but one of the other women in the group -- took his side. It was a joke. A prank. Why couldn't I lighten up? He caught me so it wasn't that dangerous. I was overreacting.

It's been over thirty years since it happened, and I still feel helpless and a bit frightened -- and livid -- about the incident.