Asking For It?

This past Sunday I became a statistic. I became one of the 87% of Canadian women who, every year, experience sexual harassment.*

What exactly happened?  I was walking down the street (Bay Street, to be exact, just off of Bloor in a rather upscale and safe neighbourhood), carrying a bag from the bookstore I had just visited, and reaching into my purse for my cellphone. It was at this point that a random man passing me on the street reached out and stuck his hand between my legs. I whirled around, shocked and upset, and shouted, ‘Jesus Christ! What the fuck is wrong with you?’, but my attacker hurried on without acknowledging that any type of interaction had occurred.

I didn’t get a good look at his face.  I barely even noticed him approaching as I wandered down the street, minding my own business and smiling to myself with anticipation about getting home to delve into my new collection of Flannery O’Connor stories. When he continued on without so much as a backward glance, I wanted to burst into tears and rush to the nearest police station to report a crime. However, with no witnesses and no way of identifying the man, I also had no leg to stand on in the eyes of the law.

At this point some people would rush to point out the fact that I was out alone in a big city, and that maybe I should have been dressed more demurely or gone home earlier. However, I would argue that this so-called logic is actually insanity, as it excuses the douchebag behaviour of the deadbeat who thought it was ok to just grab a squeeze on the fly and instead shifts the blame to the victim by insinuating that her behaviour is what needed to be moderated. To this absurd reasoning I respond that:

a) I was walking through a busy pedestrian neighbourhood at five in the afternoon.

b) I was wearing a long sleeved button-down shirt, a massive wool cardigan, leggings, jean shorts, men’s-style oxford shoes, and a wool scarf – not a string bikini and a sign saying, ‘Hey Dickbag, please grab my vagina!’

Yet despite knowing that I did nothing wrong, I still felt dirty and guilty for hours (ok, in all honesty, days) after. This is what society has taught us about rape culture: that if you were attacked, you must have deserved it, if only in some oblique way. You were drawing attention to yourself and, thus, were punished for your behaviour. You were asking for it.

The fact is, I was doing no such thing. I was keeping to myself and enjoying a sunny Sunday afternoon, and if something like this can happen to me – an educated, intelligent, world-experienced and thus cautious person – it can happen to anyone, and as a society we need to start taking the epidemic of sexual aggression more seriously. It is not a joke or something that only happens in ‘dirty’ developing countries or when ‘boys are being boys’. This is a serious issue that has become a dangerous and destructive element of our daily lives, made obvious by an incident which didn’t happen down a dingy alley in [insert negatively stereotyped country here]; it happened on a brightly lit street in the middle of Canada’s largest city, which many locals would try to have you believe is the greatest, cleanest, politest place on earth.

An image from SlutWalk Toronto.

So next time you read an article about those kids with the bright future whose lives were ruined by that ‘middle school slut’ or hear a story about that ‘skank asking for it’, take a second to think about what really happened. Maybe that girl was dressed provocatively or she did drink a bit too much, but no matter the case, unless she (or he – let’s not forget that men are also victims of sexual assault) specifically gave her attacker permission to touch her, she did NOTHING wrong.

Yes, this incident was horrifying and humiliating, but I will not alter my behaviour out of fear. I refuse to walk around with my hands balled into fists, with pepper spray on my key-ring, or with a knife in my pocket simply because I am a woman. I will continue to dress how I like, wear bright lipstick, dye my hair, and walk alone.

A photo from SlutWalk Melbourne.

 However, I also refuse to pretend this didn’t happen. In doing so it would send the message to my assaulter and the world at large that his behaviour was acceptable. What he did was disgusting, violating, disrespectful, and a dozen other distasteful adjectives. It should not have happened to me, and my heart breaks for the dozens of other people who will experience similar things today, tomorrow, this week, and further into the future. In sharing this demeaning story, I am not seeking sympathy. Instead I am putting another voice into the world in the hope that people might start to re-evaluate their perception of sexual assault and maybe even change their attitudes or behaviour in the future.

*stat courtesy of Statistics Canada: Violence Against Women Survey, Nov 1993. (I can’t imagine things have changed much since then…)