Most days I love the world and I feel very lucky to know good people and to be as incredibly privileged as I am, but you know, I’ve been thinking about the the shootings since I read the news this morning and today is just not one of those days. Those deaths, and all the attendant pain and fear and general awfulness (notifying the student body that there had been two murders in the dorms via email?), are somehow connected with all the Kathy Sierra stuff and the Don Imus stuff and Duke lacrosse thing and the rapist currently running amok here in Wellington and of course the murder-suicide back in Seattle a couple of weeks ago.
I’m sitting here on the couch in my living room in my yoga pants waiting for my dinner to finish roasting and I’m about as safe as I can be, I guess. Both doors are locked and as far as I know no one is stalking me and wanting to kill me at my work or in my home. I haven’t received any death threats, either online or in person. I have generally avoided most serious, though not all, forms of sexual harassment from assholes and feel okay about walking around Wellington alone, although as the nights get darker and longer I think I’m going to be taking the bus more, just to be sure. I haven’t been molested or raped or abused. None of this stuff that I’ve been thinking about and getting more and more upset about this past couple of weeks should have anything to do with me, right?
Oh, but it does, though. I think this is a very terrible part of being a woman: no matter how many precautions you take, no matter how well you protect yourself, no matter how uncontroversial and invisible you think you are, no matter how many restraining orders or locked doors are between you and someone crazy who wants to hurt you…you can be discredited, you can be threatened, you can be hurt, you can be killed. So, of course, can men, I know that, but…it just feels different. It wasn’t women out of their minds about their male partners’ breaking up with them that resulted in all these deaths. It’s not men, is it, constantly being told to be careful, be careful, don’t walk alone at night, don’t wear that short skirt, check the backseat of your car before you get in, cross to the other side of the street if you hear a man walking behind you, don’t make eye contact with strangers, don’t trust anyone you don’t know, and even if you do know someone, a man, he can turn out to want to hurt you in the end anyway and probably you should have known better.
I live my life pretty much the way I want to, most of the time, which is most certainly not in fear. I like to believe that men are not my enemies and that we can all work towards equal relationships and the eradication of violence. I like to believe that I can be careful, that I can take care of myself and of other people and that it will all shake out that no one will get hurt. Today, though, thinking about the girl whose boyfriend came to kill her at seven in the morning and then thirty other people at her school, I am wondering if, by believing that, I have been sublimely ignorant of just how awful people can be, and if I will pay for that ignorance one day myself.
Comments
3 responses to “Most Days”
You seem to be tuned in to your surroundings. Always trust your instincts. Don’t let the actions of this guy affect the way you live your life. There were 9,000 others on campus who were not a danger to others. They are the people I choose to focus on. I think most people are not a threat but if I get any weird vibes and I skedaddle
Notifying by email is not as crazy or callous as it may seem. That’s how they notified people at UW. It’s a huge campus and it’s not like they have a campuswide intercom or loudspeaker system. And the way most students are wired up, I imagine it was the most fast and efficient way to let them know they should stay put where ever they were.
A book that I recommend to people is Gavin De Becker’s The Gift of Fear. It’s not about trying to convince you that you should be afraid all the time, but rather that you should pay attention to your surroundings and heed your instincts. Women are too often trained to be nice. That guy on the elevator creeping you out? Well, it would be rude not to get in. He’s probably perfectly harmless… Stuff like that.
I was reading an interesting book about transgendered people recently. It was discussing how male-to-females often get “themselves” into trouble because they didn’t grow up with all the safety rules that people who’ve been women all their lives follow. And likewise, female-to-males are suddenly treated as a hostile person even when they’re just walking down the street. Others cross the street to avoid them.
I asked men who read my journal how they deal with being treated with suspicion.