A Letter to Men

I have been thinking about writing a post along these lines for a while, and an incident a few days ago that I have since thought on has finally inspired me to do it! This is also me trying to keep to my commitment to post more. The two people I am "writing" to were in two different incidents that stand out in my mind but the content of the letter itself is to a much broader audience. This started off as a vent about the "Dude in the bar" but i have altered it to include "Bus Guy" too. Here is goes.

This post contains explicit language, and is rated PG-13

Dear Guy on the bus/ Dude in the bar,

GET YOUR FUCKING HANDS OFF ME. 

You see, some of you seem to think that you have a free pass to my shoulders, or my ass, or my breasts, or my arms. You seem to think that these are some sort of public park area that you can frolic through freely or grab or touch at will. I hate to break this to you but not one damn inch of my entire fucking body is a public zone to you. You are not welcome here and I have no idea what made you think otherwise.   

Dude in the bar, I don’t know what gave you the impression that attempting to pull me out to your car by the arm was a come on. Let me assure you that had you gotten me anywhere near the door before I wrenched myself free of your drunken grasp that, that hand would’ve been making contact with your face, simultaneously with my knee making contact with your crotch. Though it would be easy for me to write this off as an “African thing” we all know that this could have been any bar, in any country, in all the world. And when I say “we”, I mean your sisters and mothers, and aunts and grandmas, and even your daughters, because every single one of us is privy to the knowledge that there will always be men like you.

Guy on the bus, what part of me telling you I wasn't interested did you not understand? I even made up some crap about how I never wanted to get married or have kids (both falsehoods) to get you to go away and you continued to prod me about how you wanted to create African American children with me in order to "spread your genes." When I said I was going to go sit somewhere else if you kept not listening the the words coming out of my mouth, you laughed and didn't take me seriously. When I pretended to fall asleep you called up your friends and told them in Setswana that you had a white woman now, and when you tried to tell the conductor the same thing, I called your bullshit, and you were surprised since you didn't think I understood what you were saying. I am not "your woman" you are a disgusting pig who doesn't know the first thing about class, respect, or chivalry. I don't want to have anything to do with you as a human being, none the less as a romantic partner.

You see what angers me more than anything is that I know there are good men out there whom you are shaming. I was raised by a good man, and my brother is a good man and he is only 17. I have good men for cousins and uncles and grandfathers and teachers and preachers and bosses. I have good men as friends and I have had good men as lovers. I have met good Motswana men who treat me with respect and I’m serving with good men as fellow volunteers. These men wouldn’t have touched me the way you did, or greeted me in the way to indicate to those around us that I was your property (yeah, I knew what you were saying.) I would’ve loved to just beat the shit out of you; my walk home/ the rest of the bus ride was filled with mental images of your limp form on the ground as I screamed in your face and crushed your balls under my converse in front of all the bystanders who watched your advances silently.

When I went to the bar to buy a beer so I could bring it back to my house and watch a movie, it wasn’t an indication that I wanted sex, or that I was looking for someone to take me home. Likewise, when I sat down on the bus and put my backpack on the seat next to me, it wasn't a call for an asshole like you to move it in order to sit down. You made a point in telling me that no one would sit down next to me because I was white. You sat next to me for that same reason, and so how does that make you any better?

Bar guy, I’m not a delicate flower so while you were just thinking about getting me outside, I was making note of each exit, the swiss army knife in my pocket, the metal chair I was standing next to and the beer bottle on the counter that could quickly become a weapon if I had needed it. I have to think like this, not because I am in a war zone, but because I am a woman and because men like you have forced me to.

It kills me that I live in a world where I have to wonder if all the good men in my life are actually members of a global minority. That I live in a world where 1 in 3 women will be sexually assaulted by the time they hit 25. It’s hard not to start thinking that after all the domestic abuse cases I have heard about lately through the clinic that involve bricks and fists and knifes. I got into Peace Corps in part because of my work at the MSU Sexual Assault Center, where I got to see what men like you do to women like me, first hand. I know this letter is violent, I know this letter is angry, and I know that this letter is more a venting mechanism of mine than anything else, but it is time that you heard it. I don’t think I could list the name of a single woman who doesn’t either know someone who has been raped or assaulted or has not been raped or assaulted herself. 

That’s really screwed up.

To end on a positive I want to thank the men that I listed above, who show the world that there is a standard that must be met and that it is high. I want to thank each and every one of you who’ve treated a woman with respect, especially if we didn’t return the favor. I thank each one of you who have stopped when they heard the word “no” in any given number of situations to a stranger, or a girlfriend, or a wife. I want to thank Adam, Alex, Nathan and Joel for giving me hope in our own generation and immense pride in the young men of our family. Lastly I want to thank Michael for being my longest running example of what a man, father and husband should be, and how they should act. Daddy, you give me hope and I love you.

There are no public places on a person’s body, and if you trespass on my property again there will be consequences.

Rata Thata,

Claire