Let's All Be Badasses.
Dec. 21st, 2010 12:38 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
perpetual_motionThere's an update at Jezebel about the awesome woman who yelled down her subway harasser.
The update is all kinds of positive, and the comments are full of stories of women talking about their own reactions to harassment. What's so amazing to me is that there are people talking about how they didn't speak up and how they look back with regret. And I want to say: It's okay. Who you were then isn't who you are now, and because you now have the grit to tell someone to leave you the fuck alone doesn't mean you should ashamed you didn't have you in you then. It's a learning process.
My learning process came over years. My childhood had huge chunks of absolute shit, and that led to be deciding I wasn't going to let anyone get me again. It wasn't a perfect process. Growing up where I did, there was a lot of "boys will be boys" bullshit, and it took a long time to realize that harassment came in a lot of varieties.
But I learned, and maybe you can learn, too. So let's have story time:
I grew up in a very, very small town. A very southern football town where the guy in charge of punishment at my high school was the football coach. Football players (and athletes in general) had free reign to be the kind of assholes you see in after school specials. I actually knew a guy who got a hernia due to football hazing, and the coach/vice-principal wasn't fired because he got the team to lie for him and say he was in the lockerroom.
In high school, I was all chest. My hips hadn't come in yet, and I was a 36C with a 29-inch waist. Top-heavy only begins to describe it. Due to this, I was sexually harassed nearly constantly from the time I was about 14. My senior year in high school, I got the gift of a guy we will call Clark Fuckbrains. Clark Fuckbrains was a first-stringer on the football team and decided his goal in life that year was to be an absolute douche to me every single day during seventh hour German. Our German professor did what he could, but as Clark was a football player, he never got punished for being a douche, and so I was left to defend myself.
Let it be known: My parents knew what was going on, and they wanted to help, but they were very aware of the status quo at the high school, and I told them I had it handled.
For awhile, I did. I've never been one to fall to verbal attacks (courtesy of the requisite fucked childhood). Verbal attacks, to me, were a chance to point out what a fucking moron Clark Fuckbrains was. The guy had no clue how to use language as a weapon. Case in point, he walked in one day with a T-shirt that read, "Your village called. They want their idiot back," and the following exchange occured.
HIM: "Hey. Hey, Perpet. Hey."
ME: "WHAT."
HIM: [Pointing at shirt] "Look at it. What are you gonna do? Huh?"
ME: [Taking my time reading the shirt.] "Well, I guess I'll help you pack. When do you leave?"
The people around us started howling with laughter. It took him five minutes to figure out he'd been insulted.
That was the worst of it for months. Fuckbrains would try to insult me, I'd verbally win against him, and he'd sulk away. From there, it escalated to name-calling. Bitch. Whore. So on and so forth. Stuff I hadn't learned yet was full-on harassment but that I knew was wrong.
And then he touched me. You want to watch me snap and go full-on attack mode on you, touch me when I don't like you. It, like previous stuff, started out small. Fuckbrains would throw his arm around me, and I'd throw it off and shove him away and tell him to back off. He would for a day or two, and then it repeated.
One day, walking down the hallway, I heard him yell my name. I did not turn around. I did not acknowledge him. Then he yelled that he'd enjoyed our time together last night.
ME: "No one believes you, asshole. Everyone knows I wouldn't touch you."
He chased after me and threw an arm around my shoulder, which I knocked off.
HIM: "Oh, come on, you know it's funny."
ME: "It's not funny. Leave me alone."
He threw his arm around me again. I shoved it off. He grabbed my ass.
He. Grabbed. My. Ass.
I'm small, folks. Assholes like Clark Fuckbrains assume that "small" means "unable to defend herself." I jammed my elbow in his solar plexus, ran him against the lockers, and clenched my hand around his throat. I put my knee up to his groin.
ME: "You touch me again, I will fuck you up, Clark. Do not mess with me."
He tried to laugh it off. When he tried to squirm away, I tightened my grip and raised my knee.
ME: "I. Will. Fuck. You. Up."
He tried to laugh it off again and grabbed my breasts.
I brought my knee up as hard as I could. When he tried to crumple to the floor in agony, I held him up by the neck for a second, just to get my point across. He was on the ground, curled into a ball, trying not to cry, and then I heard a voice.
"Perpet. My office."
It was the football coach. He made me sit in his office, and then he tried to paint it like I'd done something wrong.
"What was that?"
"He's been harassing me for months. He groped me. I told him to stop. He groped me again. I kneed him in the balls."
"That is inappropriate."
"Which part?"
"Fighting is against school rules."
"But harassment is okay?"
He tried to convince me that I was going straight to suspension. However, being well-read on the student handbook, and with literally nothing else on my record, I knew he was full of shit, and I demanded he called my parents.
My mother hung up on him. He called and said, "I just caught Perpet having a fight in the hallway," and my mother responded by asking what had happened, when the coach said Clark's name, my mother cut him off and demanded to know what would happen to Clark. When the coach tried to say it wasn't Clark's fault, my slammed down the phone.
So coach tried to call my dad. Dad had recently arrested one of the coach's first-stringers for robbing the school, and coach had responded by not suspending the kid. And, in fact, playing him the very next game. My father told coach if he looked at me funny, he'd have him arrested, and then he came screaming up to the school and burst into the office.
DAD: "What the fuck is going on?"
COACH: "Well--"
DAD: "I wasn't fucking talking to you." [Looks at me.] "Honey, what happened?"
ME: "Clark groped me. I shoved him against the lockers. He groped me again, I dropped him."
DAD: "Fantastic." [Looks at coach.] "We done here?"
COACH: "She assaulted a student!"
DAD: "Who has harassed her every single day for the whole school year. Now, I can take my daughter to lunch and congratulate her, or I can arrest Clark Fuckbrains for harassment."
COACH: "I don't approve of this."
DAD: "I don't give a shit. Let's go, honey."
We left. We had lunch. He offered to take me home for the day. He offered to actually arrest Fuckbrains. I turned him down for both. To say I go headlong into things is pretty minor.
So, back to school I went, and Fuckbrains and his friends were waiting.
CLARK: "You think you're pretty brave with your fucking dad around."
ME: "Funny, Clark. I don't remember my dad kicking your ass. MOVE."
He moved. He even let up for a few days. It didn't end--and, in fact, it went on until I graduated--but he never, ever touched me again.
Clark Fuckbrains, in the epilogue, went to prison for dealing cocaine. I win.
This isn't me telling you to do what I did. I was in very specific circumstances, and I'm a very, very blunt person. You fuck with me? I fuck with you. It's that simple.
So take away this, if nothing else: It's easier to be a badass knowing someone will back you. My parents kept out of it at my request, but when it came down to the line, my dad was there, and my mom was there, and I went back to school and got Clark Fuckbrains to leave me the hell alone for a few days.
And if you're looking around and thinking no one will back you, I'm right here. Someone fucking with you? You yell at that person? I'm backing you. Someone fucking with you, and you remove yourself from the situation without saying anything? I'm backing you. Someone fucking with you? I'm backing you, no matter how you respond.
The update is all kinds of positive, and the comments are full of stories of women talking about their own reactions to harassment. What's so amazing to me is that there are people talking about how they didn't speak up and how they look back with regret. And I want to say: It's okay. Who you were then isn't who you are now, and because you now have the grit to tell someone to leave you the fuck alone doesn't mean you should ashamed you didn't have you in you then. It's a learning process.
My learning process came over years. My childhood had huge chunks of absolute shit, and that led to be deciding I wasn't going to let anyone get me again. It wasn't a perfect process. Growing up where I did, there was a lot of "boys will be boys" bullshit, and it took a long time to realize that harassment came in a lot of varieties.
But I learned, and maybe you can learn, too. So let's have story time:
I grew up in a very, very small town. A very southern football town where the guy in charge of punishment at my high school was the football coach. Football players (and athletes in general) had free reign to be the kind of assholes you see in after school specials. I actually knew a guy who got a hernia due to football hazing, and the coach/vice-principal wasn't fired because he got the team to lie for him and say he was in the lockerroom.
In high school, I was all chest. My hips hadn't come in yet, and I was a 36C with a 29-inch waist. Top-heavy only begins to describe it. Due to this, I was sexually harassed nearly constantly from the time I was about 14. My senior year in high school, I got the gift of a guy we will call Clark Fuckbrains. Clark Fuckbrains was a first-stringer on the football team and decided his goal in life that year was to be an absolute douche to me every single day during seventh hour German. Our German professor did what he could, but as Clark was a football player, he never got punished for being a douche, and so I was left to defend myself.
Let it be known: My parents knew what was going on, and they wanted to help, but they were very aware of the status quo at the high school, and I told them I had it handled.
For awhile, I did. I've never been one to fall to verbal attacks (courtesy of the requisite fucked childhood). Verbal attacks, to me, were a chance to point out what a fucking moron Clark Fuckbrains was. The guy had no clue how to use language as a weapon. Case in point, he walked in one day with a T-shirt that read, "Your village called. They want their idiot back," and the following exchange occured.
HIM: "Hey. Hey, Perpet. Hey."
ME: "WHAT."
HIM: [Pointing at shirt] "Look at it. What are you gonna do? Huh?"
ME: [Taking my time reading the shirt.] "Well, I guess I'll help you pack. When do you leave?"
The people around us started howling with laughter. It took him five minutes to figure out he'd been insulted.
That was the worst of it for months. Fuckbrains would try to insult me, I'd verbally win against him, and he'd sulk away. From there, it escalated to name-calling. Bitch. Whore. So on and so forth. Stuff I hadn't learned yet was full-on harassment but that I knew was wrong.
And then he touched me. You want to watch me snap and go full-on attack mode on you, touch me when I don't like you. It, like previous stuff, started out small. Fuckbrains would throw his arm around me, and I'd throw it off and shove him away and tell him to back off. He would for a day or two, and then it repeated.
One day, walking down the hallway, I heard him yell my name. I did not turn around. I did not acknowledge him. Then he yelled that he'd enjoyed our time together last night.
ME: "No one believes you, asshole. Everyone knows I wouldn't touch you."
He chased after me and threw an arm around my shoulder, which I knocked off.
HIM: "Oh, come on, you know it's funny."
ME: "It's not funny. Leave me alone."
He threw his arm around me again. I shoved it off. He grabbed my ass.
He. Grabbed. My. Ass.
I'm small, folks. Assholes like Clark Fuckbrains assume that "small" means "unable to defend herself." I jammed my elbow in his solar plexus, ran him against the lockers, and clenched my hand around his throat. I put my knee up to his groin.
ME: "You touch me again, I will fuck you up, Clark. Do not mess with me."
He tried to laugh it off. When he tried to squirm away, I tightened my grip and raised my knee.
ME: "I. Will. Fuck. You. Up."
He tried to laugh it off again and grabbed my breasts.
I brought my knee up as hard as I could. When he tried to crumple to the floor in agony, I held him up by the neck for a second, just to get my point across. He was on the ground, curled into a ball, trying not to cry, and then I heard a voice.
"Perpet. My office."
It was the football coach. He made me sit in his office, and then he tried to paint it like I'd done something wrong.
"What was that?"
"He's been harassing me for months. He groped me. I told him to stop. He groped me again. I kneed him in the balls."
"That is inappropriate."
"Which part?"
"Fighting is against school rules."
"But harassment is okay?"
He tried to convince me that I was going straight to suspension. However, being well-read on the student handbook, and with literally nothing else on my record, I knew he was full of shit, and I demanded he called my parents.
My mother hung up on him. He called and said, "I just caught Perpet having a fight in the hallway," and my mother responded by asking what had happened, when the coach said Clark's name, my mother cut him off and demanded to know what would happen to Clark. When the coach tried to say it wasn't Clark's fault, my slammed down the phone.
So coach tried to call my dad. Dad had recently arrested one of the coach's first-stringers for robbing the school, and coach had responded by not suspending the kid. And, in fact, playing him the very next game. My father told coach if he looked at me funny, he'd have him arrested, and then he came screaming up to the school and burst into the office.
DAD: "What the fuck is going on?"
COACH: "Well--"
DAD: "I wasn't fucking talking to you." [Looks at me.] "Honey, what happened?"
ME: "Clark groped me. I shoved him against the lockers. He groped me again, I dropped him."
DAD: "Fantastic." [Looks at coach.] "We done here?"
COACH: "She assaulted a student!"
DAD: "Who has harassed her every single day for the whole school year. Now, I can take my daughter to lunch and congratulate her, or I can arrest Clark Fuckbrains for harassment."
COACH: "I don't approve of this."
DAD: "I don't give a shit. Let's go, honey."
We left. We had lunch. He offered to take me home for the day. He offered to actually arrest Fuckbrains. I turned him down for both. To say I go headlong into things is pretty minor.
So, back to school I went, and Fuckbrains and his friends were waiting.
CLARK: "You think you're pretty brave with your fucking dad around."
ME: "Funny, Clark. I don't remember my dad kicking your ass. MOVE."
He moved. He even let up for a few days. It didn't end--and, in fact, it went on until I graduated--but he never, ever touched me again.
Clark Fuckbrains, in the epilogue, went to prison for dealing cocaine. I win.
This isn't me telling you to do what I did. I was in very specific circumstances, and I'm a very, very blunt person. You fuck with me? I fuck with you. It's that simple.
So take away this, if nothing else: It's easier to be a badass knowing someone will back you. My parents kept out of it at my request, but when it came down to the line, my dad was there, and my mom was there, and I went back to school and got Clark Fuckbrains to leave me the hell alone for a few days.
And if you're looking around and thinking no one will back you, I'm right here. Someone fucking with you? You yell at that person? I'm backing you. Someone fucking with you, and you remove yourself from the situation without saying anything? I'm backing you. Someone fucking with you? I'm backing you, no matter how you respond.
