#MeToo

 
The first time, I was about 8 years old. I’d been hanging around with an older boy in the neighbourhood where we lived. I liked playing knights with him, and messing about on the common ground area in the square between the houses. One cold, grey day, he just cornered me, pressed up close to me, and mashed his mouth against mine. I backed away, looking at him, completely taken aback. He shrugged and said, “I just wanted to see what it was like.” I was confused, and shrugged it off, too. He was just messing around, right?

A few days later, he invited me back to his house, and in his bedroom, he did it again, but lay on top of me, pressing my body into the carpet. I wriggled free, and jumped up. He said, “I couldn’t help it, you taste so sweet.” I thought that was weird because I felt sick. I avoided him after that, and never hung out with him again.

The second time, I was about 12, and had gone to the races with my parents. I was in a crowd around the parade ring, trying to catch a glimpse of the racehorses. I wanted to be a vet, and was entranced by these amazing equine athletes. I felt him rub against me – at first thinking it was an accident due to the crush. But then I felt his erection rubbing up and down against my buttocks. I tried to wriggle away, keeping my eyes fixed on the horses in front of me, but the crush of the crowd was too tight, and I couldn’t move. I could feel his breath on my neck. I could stand it no longer, and launched myself backwards past him, and out of the crowd and ran to find my parents. I never saw him.

The third time, I was collecting for charity in Princes Street in Edinburgh. I was about 15, and had volunteered through my boarding school to help with collection, partly as a way to get out of school for a Saturday afternoon. As I stood there rattling my collection tin, a fat, old man, in a light blue mackintosh approached me and backed me into the corner between two buildings. He put his hands on me, and shoved his tongue into my mouth. I remember his bristly mustache scratching my top lip. I struggled, but couldn’t make a sound, and although it felt like it lasted forever, he was gone before I could do anything. I stood there, shaking, as the busy shoppers streamed past. I never told anyone.

The fourth, fifth and subsequent times were my Chemistry teacher looking at my breasts whenever he spoke to me, and my Physics teacher making crude jokes about girls and women in class, as he told us why girls couldn’t do Physics. I was the only girl in the top set. I remember the boys snickering. I put my head down, cheeks burning. After that, I lost count.

My first year at university, when I was 18, I got a bit drunk at a college party, and started snogging a good-looking guy in my year. We ended up in his room, and he backed me onto his bed, and started forcing his knee between my thighs. I sobered up really quickly, and started saying “no.” He kept going, his weight crushing me onto the bed, fumbling with my underwear. I started struggling harder, using my elbows to dig him in the chest. I shouted, in between soggy kisses. He finally stopped and looked at me fuzzily. I managed to wriggle out from under him and fled the room. The next morning, he saw me and said that it was probably a good thing that I had been sober enough to call a halt on things, otherwise we might have both regretted it. As if we had both got carried away, consensually. He grinned at me cheekily. I couldn’t look him in the eye for the rest of our time at college.

The last time was when I was a young vet in practice, working as a locum for an equine vet who was covering a big horse show at the state fairground. The deal was that I would cover his practice for a few days, and then come and take over from him at the horse show for the last two days, and stay in the hotel room that the horse show provided. But the evening that I arrived to take over, he got drunk at a party at the show. He approached me as I was heading back to my room and told me that he couldn’t drive home drunk, and so he needed to stay in my room for the night. I told him no, and told him to get another room. He said the hotel did not have any more rooms, and he would sleep on the floor. My skin crawled at the thought. I said no, again, reminding him that I was married (as if that mattered). He got angry, and started yelling at me, saying he thought that Europeans were supposed to be more laid back about “that kind of thing.” I ran to my room and locked the door. I finished my stint at the horse show, and did not do any more work for him again.

These are the times that I remember the most. There were others. I may not remember things clearly or accurately. Memory is a slippery eel, and the more I try to pin it down, the more it wriggles away, a bit like how I learned to wriggle away from all those male bodies. But I do remember the fear, and the sense of shame and isolation. Most of all, the shame. It never occurred to me tell anyone. What good would it have done? I knew, instinctively, that this was just part of being a female human in this world. These events were mundane, and trivial compared to what others experienced. I never put any words or language to any of it, not even in my head.

Later in life, I volunteered for a while as an advocate for a rape crisis organisation. I would sit with women, either in the emergency room, or at the police station, as they underwent rape kits or gave statements about their assaults. Some of the stories I heard were horrific. Other times, I never learned the details, but saw the effect on the women whose hands I was holding – the fear, and the shame. I also saw the way that some of the male police officers looked at those women.

One woman told me that she was a grandmother. She was the same age as me, and I was expecting my first child. To say that our life experiences were different was an understatement, but we connected as women. Trauma will do that – bring you together on a human level. The police officer investigating the case insisted on mentioning that she was a known prostitute every time he talked to anyone about the case. Another woman had been assaulted multiple times by her boyfriend, and then her boyfriend’s friends while they kept her imprisoned in her apartment for a week. The police kept sighing, and looking dubious about her statement. They would not let me stay in the room with her when she made her formal statement. What do you say to women like that when you know that their stories are not being believed, or heard? All I could do was to sit with them and listen, and let them know that someone heard and believed them.

This week, I posted “me too” as my Facebook status, along with so many other women. It was the first time that I have ever considered that what has happened to me was sexual assault and harassment. I thought of those women with whom I had sat, and I read the stories of all the beautiful, glamorous and famous women who were assaulted and harassed by Harvey Weinstein and other powerful men. And the stories of so many women less glamorous or famous. So many stories. It is hard to talk about it, and I feel so tired and dispirited by it all. Most of all, I think I was surprised by how taken aback and defensive many men were by the stories. But then, how could they have known about these experiences, or what those incidents feel like from inside a female body? We never usually talk about it with them. We’ve internalised the message that this is just part of life, and that it is mundane, even trivial, to be afraid of weaponised sexuality. So, it is a step forward to be talking about it at all, even if it feels clunky, and embarrassing, and hard. That is why I am claiming my stories today too. Not because they are unusual. But because they are not. Because they are all too common. And it needs to stop.