I Am Not Dirty

TRIGGER WARNING: This post deals with the topic of sexual harassment/ assault

I wrote this up a few days ago and have debated whether or not to post it, but I have come to the conclusion that I did not start this blog as a tool of recruitment for Peace Corps, but because I wanted to give you my insights into service, and my experience, and this is part of what that all is. I'm fine now, I'm still 100% confident in my decision to join Peace Corps, and for the most part feel completely safe here. 

I want to preface this post with how much I love being a woman. I want to make it clear that I adore being female, and what that means and how it contributes to how I see and interact with the world. I understand that I have also benefited greatly from cis-gendered privilege (i.e. I was born with female sex organs and also identify as female) and am thankful for that. This is not about how I feel about my gender but about how the world deals with it.

With that said, there are times when I just wish I could be a guy. What I should be saying in this sentence is that there are times when I wish I didn't have to deal with the crap that goes along with being female, but I know this isn't going to happen within my life time, and it seems like the only way to escape it is to be male. I was so excited about getting dressed up for Botswana Independence Day and the party that my friend Daniella was hosting. I did my makeup, I had cute sandals on, Danny showed me how to use hair products and I wore a “new” dress (inherited from another volunteer.) I looked adorable, and I felt fierce and I just wanted to be able to dance my booty off; and for the first three hours, I was able to do that.

Then the party died down a bit and there were just three of us girls along with about 6 guys. 5 of these men were awesome; talking, dancing, laughing, and having a good time, but among men there always seems to be a boy. This guy would not stop grabbing me, despite me pushing him away and telling him to back off, multiple times.

Those of you who come here a bit more often have probably read my "A Letter to Men" post, and I want you to know that this post is not going to be like that. I don’t want to talk about how horrible this guy was, I want to talk about how pissed I was at my own reaction, and the mental process I went through both during and after this point in the party. I did not swear this guy out in the middle of a group of people, I didn't punch him in the face, I didn't scream and order him out, and I should have. When the harassment started I figured pushing him off and telling him to stop would be enough, but it became clear pretty quickly that this wasn't going to work. Everyone was having a good time and drinking, and I didn't want to be the party pooper.

At this moment I would like to say something along the lines of “I hope this story doesn't prevent those of you reading this from joining Peace Corps” but to be honest, I think most women who are willing or have already done some world travel, know that they are signing up for this.

My next tactic was letting people know I was getting sleepy and that I was going to go lock myself in the bedroom. At this point a friend of mine pointed out that she would be the only girl up then. She was saying this because she didn't want to party alone, and because she wanted to hang out with me more, and because I hadn't made it clear to her that I was trying to get away from someone. How it read to me though, was that if I left, she would be the new target, and so I stayed out in the main room. This is how women think, and for the men reading this, don’t you dare think that I’m the exception. We socialize in packs, because there are safety in numbers. I couldn't leave her behind.

So I took it, I kept pushing him away and telling him to stop and not escalating it any further than that even though I knew in the back of my mind that I should. This is not how all women would have reacted, I know plenty who would have brought it to the level that it needed to go to truly get this guy to stop. Public humiliation works great in this country, and yet I didn't take it there. I didn't want to screw up the good mood of the party, I didn't want to embarrass a guest in a home in which I was also a guest, and I didn't want to be that whinny woman that couldn't just take it. I consider myself a pretty powerful, confident person and yet this was what going through my mind, this is why I didn't tell the little shit to go screw himself. 

Things got worse...

Two days later while hitching back to my village I got a ride with a man I had seen a few times driving through Ramokgonami. He is in his mid-50s and runs the hardware shop in the village over. I was tired, I was still feeling dirty and violated from the two nights before, and I just wanted to get home to be able to be in my own safe space. We spent the entire ride with him putting his hand on my leg and me removing it. He would also take my hand, kiss it, and rub it on his face. I felt completely trapped since we were in the middle of the bush at this point. He kept saying how beautiful he thought I was, and how he had so much love in his heart for me, but not "dirty" love. 

I spent the next twenty four hours trying to feel "clean" again which involved working out at 5am in the morning and curling into a ball on the floor and crying.My phone was broken so my normal support network was also cut off to me. Again, I felt like I had failed myself, that I was the one to blame for not being louder, more persistent, for not giving both these men hell for what they were doing. During all of this my wiser, more logical self kept trying to push gentle reminders that none of this was my fault, but for a while my more hysterical side tended to be louder. I worked at a sexual assault center for a year, I knew better than to victim blame, especially when the person blaming and getting blamed are both you. Maybe part of this comes from some internal issues but another part of it comes from social conditioning.

This is where we get into a conversation about why I felt like my personal comfort is an acceptable price to maintain a nice atmosphere for those around me, but the thing is, is I don’t know why. I grew up around strong women, I was told that my body is mine and no one else’s and that others should treat it with respect, I was given every opportunity to empower myself, and yet when this particular time came, the prospect of confrontation kept me silent. It is like an extreme version of those moments when you are arguing with someone and then realize what you really wanted to say only after you have walked away from it.

Here is the real mind blowing bit though, at the end of the night, after screaming and running my hands through my hair about a million times, and cleaning things up just so I didn't have to think about what had just happened. I was more angry with myself than I was with this pink shorts wearing bastard, and placed more of the fault on my own shoulders than I did on either of theirs. I was not raised to take this! I was not educated and empowered to be this woman! I WAS GIVEN A VOICE! And yet here I was, not only unable to use it, but blaming myself in the process. This was not my fault, this guy should have stopped doing what he was doing the first time I shoved him off me and told him to stop (hell, he should not have been doing it in the first place), I shouldn't have had to have a plan b. Here is where we come back to the beginning.

At some point, in my objectification, in my humiliation, in my self-blame comes the sad truth that no matter how empowered I am, it is a man’s job to take it to the last step. To stop objectifying, humiliating and creating situations in which he is the creator of my blame. This won’t happen in my life time. I’m all about being a step in the journey to reach this goal, but I won’t reap the ultimate benefit of equality. We aren't even close yet, we haven’t even begun to see the light in the end of the tunnel even though we have been in the dark for so incredibly long, and have come so incredibly far from where we started. Since I will not be around for the end of the tunnel, I want to be outside it. I want to be able to be a guy, the type of guy that should be, the type of guy I know exists in abundance out there.

I want to be able to walk around the streets at night, I want to be able to buy booze without being looked at like a floozy, I want to wear whatever I want without worrying about someone invading my space, I want to travel to ANY COUNTRY I want, I want to be more likely to be given a raise, and piss wherever I want without worrying that someone is going to follow me into the bush and watch (yeah, that happened.) I don’t want to have to travel in a pack because I want to know that I don’t have an especially large target on my back. I don’t want to have to constantly be explaining to the opposite sex how “yes, if you tell enough ‘women’ jokes, it does make you a chauvinist asshole; there is a line, and if you are asking, you have probably crossed it.” I don’t want to have to worry getting kicked out of a hitch because the creepy old driver keeps putting his hand on my leg. I want to be too tired to speak up, and not have to worry about it because no one is trying to get at me. I want to have a voice and not have to use it so damn freaking much.

Most importantly though, when these things happen, which they will, I want the woman who is going through it not to blame herself as I was. I want her to feel supported and loved and safe enough in her own skin to

be able to say "this was horrible and crappy, but it was not my fault and I am not to blame." I was not to blame for what happened this weekend, and those of you out there that share this experience, you are not to blame either. We don't have to come up with excuses to clear our name, we don't have to convince people that we couldn't have done anything more to avoid the situation, it is not our fault, we do not carry the burden of proof when it comes to our own innocence. 

"Until we are all free, none of us are free." ~Emma Lazarus