On Fighting Back
Finding ways to reduce fear
Lately, I’ve been thinking about an incident that occurred during my first newspaper job after college. At the time, I was working as a police reporter, and always happy to chat with cops, firefighters, and paramedics while on assignment.
But…
I lived alone and worked odd hours, often getting home after dark. Sometimes I was the last person to leave the office, or the first to get in. I frequently visited homes of people I didn’t know and had to go to locations that weren’t on the map because the area was being built up at such a rapid rate.
There was no way to deny the danger — not when I often covered stories about violence against women — but I did try to mitigate the risks. I took self-defense classes, kept a key pointed out between two fingers when I was in a parking lot, checked my backseat before I got in my car, used extra security bars for both doors to my apartment, and had a person I texted when I was home each night.
Maybe a year into that job, I received an email to my work account from a guy claiming to be a local paramedic. He said he enjoyed watching me work and wanted to know if I’d like to go out for coffee.
I broke into a panicked sweat as I reread that email.
In terms of threats, it wasn’t explicit, but there’s something about the words “I enjoy watching you” that makes your blood pressure spike.
After getting over the initial shock, I sought out my immediate supervisor, who was a man. He was pretty unconcerned, even said I was welcome to go on a date with him if I wanted... But I absolutely did not.
No way, no how was I getting coffee with that guy. One, I had no idea who he was, or why he’d never made an effort to say hello in person. Two, the creepy factor was too high to ignore.
My return email basically said, thanks but no thanks; I don’t date potential sources. His reply was curt and a little angry — and did nothing to ease the anxiety he’d provoked. The next time I was out at a scene, I asked around about him. No one seemed to know him, and that made it a million times worse.
Eventually, a firefighter I knew well figured out who he was — and he was indeed a paramedic — but the entire episode made me rethink how I interacted with people in my job. Made me slightly less friendly. Slightly less open. Slightly more prone to check over my shoulder, even when I was surrounded by sheriff’s deputies.
Since the election, that same kind of anxiety has plagued me.
Yes, we now know a majority of Americans didn’t vote for the man who won.
Yes, blue state governors are embracing steps to increase protections for their citizens.
Yes, one of the cabinet nominees was forced to remove himself from the running.
But underneath all of that remains a darkness. A whispered promise that life as we’ve known it will change, and it’s evident in every news article published about the incoming administration. However, I know many of you have paused reading the news for your mental health, so I’m sharing this next bit because it’s important.
Recently, news agencies across the country published stories about a report by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue that showed a spike of online misogyny after the election. Across just four social media platforms, there was a 4,600 percent increase in the use of the phrases “Your body, my choice” and “Get back in the kitchen.”
Let that number sink in for a minute. Not four-point-six percent. FORTY-SIX HUNDRED percent.
On Facebook alone, there were 52,000 posts during a single 24-hour period with the “Your body, my choice” phrase. There were also reports of girls having the phrase “chanted” to them at school.
As if that wasn’t enough, females reported threats of sexual violence, too. One parent said that their daughter was told to “sleep with one eye open tonight.”
This isn’t just an American problem, either.
Over the last few months, the French media have been covering a trial where a man was accused of allowing more than 50 men to pay to rape his drugged and unconscious wife. Even before all those men were found guilty, Gisèle Pelicot decided against remaining anonymous, saying she hoped it might save another woman from suffering the same fate. And while the support she’s received is heartening, the fact that this could happen at all is incomprehensible.
How did we get here? How did we get to a place where an entire gender can be threatened by an entitled, depraved subset of another?
I keep trying to figure out how to change the trajectory. How do we stop the “manosphere” from plunging us “back into the kitchen” and to a time where women spent their lives putting aside their own passions to keep house and make a family for a man?
How do we not lose the ground our mothers and grandmothers and great grandmothers fought to gain?
In truth, I have no idea. But maybe it can start small. Back when I replied to that paramedic, I should have left it no thanks without the apology. There was no need to justify why I was turning down an anonymous, unsolicited date invitation. Or to feel an ounce of guilt about doing so.
But I did, and as a gender, it’s time to reject the social “norms” that demand we apologize because it’s not a two-way street. Those same men who would force us back in time aren’t apologizing — they’re trying to strip us of our rights and autotomy, and we need to be prepared.
So perhaps it’s time to say enough. Enough with grinning and bearing it. Enough with excusing poor behavior. Enough with “letting it go” to make life easier for others.
Embrace your anger, embrace your fear, and use it to create change.