Sunday, March 16, 2014

How did I become always only a woman?

It was just after 9 pm on a Tuesday. I sat on a mostly deserted train heading west. In front of me was an older white man speaking to a slightly tipsy older black woman. I could tell she was tipsy from her slurred speech and can of Old English. He kept egging her on about her relationship with god, asking her if she really thought she was a good person. She was earnest, replying to his questions with seriousness. I wasn't sure if he was being so condescending because she was black or if it was because she was a woman. In all likelihood, it was a little of both. Yay intersectionality.

Occasionally during his needling, he would turn around and stare directly at me. For various reasons, I didn't feel like entertaining him. I would stare off into the distance. The older woman seemed to be engaged with him, as she'd continue speaking long after he stopped encouraging her, so I didn't feel the need "help," however that would have happened. 

She got off at the main terminal after he admonished her about leaving her beer can on the bus in the most patronizing tone you can imagine. I knew I was in for it. He turned around and faced me fully and insisted, "Hi."

"I don't feel like having a conversation."

"What?"

"I don't feel like having a conversation tonight."

"Did your nose ring hurt? I bet it did hurt."

Nod. It's the reply I give to any stranger who wants to ask about my septum ring.

At this point, my reluctance to talk to him edged from distaste to outright rage. Under different circumstances, maybe I would have felt like chatting. But the reality was we were now alone in a train car, at night, in a town with no real good side of the tracks. He obviously felt entitled to refuse my desire to be left alone in order to keep himself occupied while on the train. I am 99% sure it was because I was a woman.

"Where are you going tonight?"

"I still don't feel like talking."

"Jesus! Fine."

Then I began wondering about what to do if he got off at my stop. Or what if I got up and he followed me? I could probably take him in a fight... 

Fortunately, he got off at the next stop. Before he left, he turned around again and glared at. 

"Have a good night. I hope you don't try to talk to anyone because they might be *mean* to you!"

I'm sorry - I hurt his feelings?!? Because I didn't feel like talking to him, he made it all about my unstated bitchiness. He didn't know what the rest of my day had been like. I had subverted the "natural" course of interactions between the genders by refusing to accommodate him in the first place. I might have played along if he hadn't so obviously been taunting the tipsy woman, acting like he was superior while assuming that she wouldn't pick up on the fact that he was being an ass.

I am proud of myself for just saying no. I wouldn't have had the courage to do that even five years ago. But then I returned to the script women and girls are socialized into, that there are consequences for not going along with a man's wishes. I started worrying about assault and rape. Aside from being an overbearing ass, I had no indication that this man had nefarious intentions. I was pissed, however, that he had no sense that the situation was making me uncomfortable. I also hated that the situation made me uncomfortable. In many ways, I am forced to pay attention to my gender in Cleveland in ways I have not had to in years, and not in a celebratory I-am-woman-hear-me-roar kind of way. In professional settings with men, I have to prove that I am competent enough to be there in ways that they do not. It is frustrating, to say the least.

I had thought my experiences with sexism was a process I grew through and beyond. By the time I moved to Texas, I was under the impression that the perceived slights I experienced in New Orleans were due to my zealousness for feminism which is experienced by new converts. For years I was angry about everything. Time mellowed me. I was able to discern flirting from harassment. I gained the type of confidence that automatically demanded respect (I thought). I knew that other women and girls faced discrimination but I had broken the mold.

The truth was that it was more circumstantial than that. The Texas town I lived in was progressive, by most standards. For four years, my gender mattered less than it might have other places. In addition to that, my white and cis privileges allowed me to ignore (to some extent), the other forms of sexism that were taking place around me. In fact, it was absurd, since gender informed a large part of my analysis of the kinky community. I thought about my dissertation all the time and was oblivious to the reality around me. I also worked in a municipal department where, from the department head down, almost all of the supervisors were women. Most of my coworkers were women. It was easy to feel un-oppressed.

Then I moved to Cleveland. For reasons discussed elsewhere on my blog, race has become foregrounded in my consciousness. I am paying more attention to intersectionality. At the same time, I am being treated in the same ways that forced me to feminism's door, kicking and screaming, in the first place. I always have to work a little harder if I'm outside of my institution, which is lead by a strong woman who herself is a force of nature. I have become friends with a group of incredible womyn who brook no nonsense yet most events are for womyn only, cutting down the chances for male influence. I have to be aware of my surroundings because my new neighborhood isn't the safest. I know I move through it differently from my partner after years of socialization that my gender puts me at greater risk. I have to put up with men talking to me constantly at the train stop. Sometimes, I'm up for it. I don't mind passing the time, although I usually have to eventually deflect the inevitable come-on. It isn't even that I feel harassed, it's just the incessant-ness of it. It would be nice every once in a while to strike up a conversation with a man that didn't end with me stressing that I am sexually unavailable.

There are a lot of things I love about my new hometown. Constantly being reminded that I am a woman first in the minds of every man I meet, with all the assumptions that entails, is not one of them. The work is not done and I am not exempt from the struggle because I'm somehow more educated, more evolved, or more oblivious. It's a bit disappointing.

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