That's me when I started developing in third grade. That's the shy nerdy girl in fifth grade who was instantly a notorious "slut" when she suddenly developed very large breasts. That's half the girls (including me) in my junior high who staged a "walk out" during class because they were being explicitly sexually harassed and wanted something done about it --- and whom faculty immediately dismissed. That's me when I was sexually assaulted nine days after moving to Capitol Hill 2.5 years ago, when a man forced my hand to his exposed erect penis and tried to force his way into my apartment building, after which I was so terrified that I couldn't leave my apartment and had to call a friend two apartments down the hall to come help me. (It was classified by police as "attempted stranger rape" and I walked around for months with pepper spray in one pocket and sharp rusty scissors in the other.)
It's why I got my bachelor's in Women Studies. It's why sometimes I'm glad that I can't hear what strange guys say to me, because it'd make me so goddamn angry and upset.
no subject
Date: 2008-08-20 11:12 pm (UTC)That's me when I started developing in third grade. That's the shy nerdy girl in fifth grade who was instantly a notorious "slut" when she suddenly developed very large breasts. That's half the girls (including me) in my junior high who staged a "walk out" during class because they were being explicitly sexually harassed and wanted something done about it --- and whom faculty immediately dismissed. That's me when I was sexually assaulted nine days after moving to Capitol Hill 2.5 years ago, when a man forced my hand to his exposed erect penis and tried to force his way into my apartment building, after which I was so terrified that I couldn't leave my apartment and had to call a friend two apartments down the hall to come help me. (It was classified by police as "attempted stranger rape" and I walked around for months with pepper spray in one pocket and sharp rusty scissors in the other.)
It's why I got my bachelor's in Women Studies. It's why sometimes I'm glad that I can't hear what strange guys say to me, because it'd make me so goddamn angry and upset.
Motherfuckers just don't have the fucking right.