Caryn Riswold
If we started telling the truth we might never stop. And then what would happen?
You’d know about the leering older men we worked with at our high school jobs. The burly customers who mocked us for not knowing what “tuna taco” really meant.
You’d know about the murky nights in college when we couldn’t really consent to any of it.
You’d know about how ludicrous it is when two men should “hey baby!” out their car windows at you in the middle of the day in the middle of the campus of a top tier university hospital. And how unsettling it is when a young man drives slowly alongside of you, chatting you up as you walk home from your first real job. It doesn’t matter that you have a briefcase now.
You’d know that when those men on the city bike path whistle at you, it isn’t your two graduate degrees that they’re drawn to.
You’d know what it feels like to be dismissed as just another one of those young women on campus making trouble. And how strangely frightening it is when a senior male colleague targets you in code during of one of his public rants. It doesn’t matter if anyone else knows; you do.
You’d know what it’s like to be summoned to the president’s office and shown a letter he received from a convicted perpetrator’s friend; it’s a letter that explains all the ways that you are a horrible person for educating young women who are trying to survive sexual assault. Three pages. Don’t worry. “You didn’t do anything wrong.” (Isn’t that precisely what we tell survivors?)
You’d know what it’s like to be actually afraid that these people will come to your campus, your classroom, your office. To realize how terribly public your life is, even before Facebook was a thing. How vulnerable and targeted you feel. How even tenure doesn’t protect you from terror.
You’d know how it feels to navigate public spaces when travelling as a female professional, when just trying to get french fries and a beer alone means you have to be aware of male predators; when your friend has to ask the front desk staff at a hotel to keep an eye on the man who just propositioned her outside the lobby, and ask the friend who just dropped her off to drive back to the hotel and help her get up to her room safely.
You might also find out that promotions don’t protect you, that young men sometimes mock older women, and that even your own classroom isn’t a space free from misogynistic insult.
You’d learn how many second thoughts you have and how many other people and things you have to think about before posting a blog essay telling the truth. And you’re still not sure you should do it. And you’re a little bit worried to do it anyway.
Yes. All women have stories.
They are even part of the fabric of some pretty decent lives.
Just ask us. We might tell you.
Then you’d know.
Then … what will you do differently?
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