Hey, sexy, hey, honey, hey, sugar, hey, baby, hey, cutie, what's your name? On my way to my very first job interview, walking with that kind of innocence, you soil me.
You're hot, you're a nice piece of ass, good job to your boyfriend- to my boyfriend: "Good job, good on you, nice property, nice piece of ass." It feels good to win a trophy, but not to be one.
Fuck you, you dumb bitch, you dumb cunt, your comment is cancer, you're illogical irrational emotional stupid stupid stupid girl, stupid little dumb girl, you need help, you need to see someone. Feminism is cancer. This movement you have built yourself in, this community this love this group that validates your pain, that listens to you when you are hurting because people hate you for what you are, is cancer. It's a fast growing mass that ruins everything it touches, and it touches everything.
Nothing is safe for me anymore, I've suffered too. Let me in your space, this is mine too, let me in or else you're selfish and I'll hurt you. You have to include us too in every conversation you have, in every thought that floats through your head, because to do otherwise is transgressive.
And for me? This may be as bad as it gets. There are labels you plaster on them they don't get applied to me, there are facts about my body that help me stay afloat in this world I was born into. And I'm still hurting. I'm still afraid, that's what you've done, you've only ever walked in your own shoes, only ever lived in your own head, only ever existed in the world with a body you use to keep me under the water.
It feels far too exhausting to exist in this body filled with pain, designed to be pain. I feel like my sex was a curse bestowed upon me by chance and a chromosome. And to this child, I give, the gift of eternal suffering, attention from those who wish to do her harm, a body that tears itself apart, a body ripe for abuse. And I cast her into a world filled with people who will not just wish, but will, do her harm, will fail to treat her as one of their own, people who will not listen when she asks for more, people who will tell her she has enough already, people who tell her she is too much by asking for any more.
And when she and people like her, people who have been outed and made to suffer, try to build up a better world, those who hurt them will say, let us in or we will tear this apart, and they know there is little they can do to stop them.
I'm so tired of being a girl. I'm tired of wondering who the next man to catcall me is going to be. I'm tired of wondering when I'll run into the next man to talk to me like an object. I'm tired of my pain being dismissed as fake, or real but not real enough to warrant a cure, or any sympathy, or empathy. It hurts, despite the people who do listen, who do build me up and validate and listen and comfort, the people who try to help me heal. And I'm still privileged. I'm still sitting near the top. This is what it's like near the top.
I am not a victim but vile men make me out to be. They shout things at me that victimize me, and those things don't exist in a vacuum. I cannot pretend real things are fake, and their thoughts, their personalities and the world that allows them to be that way without recompense, is real. If the world is so perfect, why are some people still poison?
Nothing about the abuse of my own sex even surprises me anymore, there's no more emotion in my responses, no matter how deep the horrors. I feel as if I have read all the stories there are to be told about the things I should be afraid of.
Catcalls aren't just comments, they're ways of saying "I noticed you, I like you, and you have no way of knowing how well I handle your response, whatever it may be." There is no correct response, and it feels like a nightmare to live in a world where people just like me are victims of crimes that take advantage of the bodies they have and they receive no justice for it, only further violence by a society that refuses to believe monsters like their abusers exist in their own ranks. In that dynamic, of girl and abuser, the lesson learned is always that nobody will believe me, and the abuser gets away with it. And I'm ridiculous for being afraid of the man who harrassed me until I gave him $80 when I was walking alone in the dark on my way to school? And I'm ridiculous for being afraid of the man who said "Hey, cutie, what's your name?" To me on the way to my job interview? I'm ridiculous for being afraid of the man who pulled over in his car after he stopped for me when I was on my bike at a stop sign and I pointed at that stop sign angrily, that man who felt the need to confront me to say "I was just trying to be nice" and made me yell at him that he wasn't driving safely? I'm ridiculous for being afraid of the man who told my boyfriend, in earshot of me, from the back of a taxi cab, "Your girlfriend's hot"? No. I am not some stupid girl making up sympathy sob stories, I am a girl raised to be on her guard for the incident that sets off more abuse. I have been raised with horror stories that once you are abused, you must spend the rest of your lifetime trying to cope with the fact that you received abuse and not justice after the fact. Fuck you. You don't know the fear I live in every day for existing in public like this.
And you don't know their fear. People have been killed for being like me, but not white, but not cis, but not able bodied, but not able minded, but not what girls typically look like. I am not naive enough to think I have it the worst of all. I am not naive enough to think I am not shielded from some of the world's abuse. And I should not be thankful for that, I should be angry- how dare you treat me better than them? How dare you treat me- treat any of us- different from someone like you?
I'm not here to debate this. I'm not offering up an argument on my lived experiences. I know how they have gone, I know my own story, thank you very much. The comments on this, though I know they will likely remain empty, are not open for debate about whether or not I should be afraid, about whether or not I am smart, about how cringey this entire post is. I know it's bad art, it's clumsy poetry. I never claimed to be an artist; if you don't like what you see, you can leave.
Furthermore, this comment section is not for the issues and the plights of men. This is not your space. Your troubles and concerns are not welcome here. Do not act so entitled as to deserve that like you do with ever other female-created safe space on the internet. I have said this so many times I feel like a robot. This space is not for you. Do not be entitled. Do not be selfish. If you don't like me, if you don't like what I have to say, leave. Nobody is making you stay here.
-swegan
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