angry woman
This morning on the subway back to my apartment, a man walked onto the car screaming. He was yelling at the cops on the platform, “filthy fucking racist pigs,” but shifted his attention to the woman across from him as he sat down. Instinctually, as it’s done a thousand times before, my body tensed, bracing for whatever was to come next.
He began screaming about an ex-girlfriend, how she did him wrong. The girl across from him shifted, and all of a sudden he was screaming at her.
“Yeah that’s right, look straight ahead bitch. I’ll cut your fucking face off. I’ll kill you.”
Her and another woman leapt up and exited the train at the next stop. I held my breath until I was home.
I’ve been thinking A LOT lately about my experience with being a woman in the world, particularly the scary parts of it. It feels like somewhere in the Girlboss era it became uncool to acknowledge the scary shit. For a while, it seemed the collective focus on becoming equal with men meant pushing all the unwanted bits to the side. It was almost as if looking at them would be admitting a weakness. It would burst the bubble.
A while ago Joy Sullivan released a newsletter titled Woman on the sidewalk, shouting about her experiences on the sidewalk as a woman, all the ways in which her body made to feel not her own. It made me think about the first time I was ever followed by a man. Since reading that newsletter almost two months ago this memory hasn’t left my brain. Maybe putting it here will clear it away for a bit.
I remember that day with such clarity. I felt like it was my fault. I was walking to my friend Sophie’s house for a sleepover, my first sleepover. I was so excited and decided to wear a new pair of shorts. They were white and red striped. I remember hesitating because they were shorter than all the other shorts I owned, but still I wore them. Sophie’s house was three long blocks from mine, a 7 minute walk if I was really dragging my feet. My mom gave me her flip phone for the night; I was to call if I needed to come home.
Less than a minute into my walk a man on a red bike pulled up next to me. He began talking at me, asking me questions. How old was I, where was I going, where were my parents. You’re cute, he sneered, I like your shorts.
For the entire walk he lingered next to me, slowly pedaling up the hill. He was begging me to come with him. He wanted to get to know me. He would show me a good time. When I finally reached Sophie’s building I nearly collapsed into her doorman, tears running down my face, breath ragged. The man pedaled off.
I was 10 years old. I never wore the shorts again.
Every single woman I know has a story like this. Or 10. Or 50. I could build a whole newsletter on how many times I’ve been followed or catcalled or groped on the subway. How many times I’ve held my breath and tucked my chin to my chest and prayed that the yelling man didn’t look my way.
I guess I wrote this all down and am sharing it because I am tired of pretending like the scary shit doesn’t exist. It is fucking hard to be a woman sometimes. It is scary to feel like you do not have the right to your own body, your own personal space. All the ways in which that sentiment is reinforced by our politics and our sad excuse for a government. It makes me angry, so deeply filled with rage, because this is not a women’s issue. It’s everybody’s issue, but it starts with men.
