The Undercover Introvert

2020 Burn Book: Men, I’m Lighting You Up

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I already compiled my resolutions for the new year, but in light of recent events, I’m adding one more and moving it to the top of the list:

Men, if you commit sexual harassment, assault, or just general unwanted creepiness, I am calling you the fuck out.

I’m done. Time to burn this motherfucker all the way down. And y’all are on notice. Don’t act surprised when I tell folks how you really are.

First, let’s set some parameters. There’s definitely a spectrum when it comes to creepiness. On one side is unwanted messages from men we don’t follow on social media asking for dates, pictures, to know more about us, etc. Gross, but that’s what the block function is for. On the other side is full on life-shattering sexual assault. In the gray area between these two poles lie microaggressions, gaslighting, unwanted sexual advances, pressure for sexual favors, victim blaming, retaliation, and the list goes on. And on. And on.

Men, if you do any of this shit going forward, get ready to be exposed for the disgusting POS you are. I plan to go out of my damned way to make sure people know.

Why the sudden need to put all of this out there, you ask?

I just got off the phone with a close friend who called me first thing in the morning to tell me about some creep that sexually harassed her at a business meeting. At one point, he followed her into the bathroom, locked the door, and attempted to go even further. Thankfully, she was able to escape. Though shaken emotionally, she said nothing and tried to continue doing her job, which was why she was there in the first place. But this dude wouldn’t stop. He kept making advances and being handsy. When it was finally clear that she wasn’t interested, he ended by calling her a bitch in front of another man involved in the meeting. She left the situation as quickly as possible.

When we spoke, she was angry, frightened, and at a complete loss as to how to move forward. This meeting was about future consulting work. Should she tell others involved in the project? Should she pull out of this business opportunity so she wouldn’t have to see and work with this attacker moving forward? Should she make a big deal out of this? Or just get on with her life?

This helplessness, this terrible, roiling fury that too often ends up turning inward to eat away at us, is such a fucking textbook response to the kind of situation that can happen to women anywhere and at any time. We are always in danger of harassment and assault. We learn to live with it, because what other choice do we have? We teach our daughters how to live with it. We shore up the crumbling defenses of our friends when they take a hit, no matter how severe, and then we do what women have always done: we pull up our big girl panties and we get back to our lives.

It’s unconscionable that we live like this as a culture, that half the population just has to suck it up, buttercup, while the other half gallivants through life, setting fire to the women around them at will.

I’m calling bullshit. I’m not playing the game anymore. I’m done.

While I was talking to my friend, she repeatedly mentioned that she hadn’t been wearing anything that could have led this asshole on (see: appropriate business attire). She mentioned a few times that this was a business meeting that took place in the middle of the day (socially acceptable time for women to assume personal safety). She mentioned that she hadn’t done anything at all to make this POS think it was okay to follow her into the bathroom and then continue to harass her throughout the rest of the meeting (society teaches us that our behavior is directly responsible for how men decide to act). Even as she corrected herself, sometimes mid-sentence, to acknowledge that she understood it didn’t matter what she was wearing or what time it was, it was important to her that I knew she was dressed appropriately and that this occurred in broad daylight.

This call isn’t the first conversation I’ve had with a female friend about a situation like this, and it won’t be the last. Some situations haven’t been as severe, and some have been much, much worse. But the emotional aftermath looks the same in every case: the woman is left feeling helpless, angry, ashamed, and unsure of what to do next. Should she report it? What would happen? Would anyone even believe her? If people did believe her, would they care? What about retaliation? Should she quit her job? Or should she just take a personal day, cobble herself back together again, and then pretend nothing happened?

We should not have to live like this.

This is my solemn oath that if some man says or does something shitty and I find out about it, I will talk about it loudly and openly. I will out you, and I’ll keep telling people until someone fucking cares. If it sets your personal or professional career ablaze, that’s on you. Because women have been paying the high price for men’s decisions for centuries. And silence only helps the aggressor. It allows for the creation of additional situations in which other women are victimized by repeat predators. Even worse, this silence causes our insides to corrode over time. It poisons who we are. It makes us question ourselves and other women. It isolates us.

This bullshit has to stop.

Women shouldn’t be forced to continue removing themselves from professional and social situations to avoid men who have attacked or harassed them. Why do men get to continue on in their lives and careers unhindered by their own behavior? Why are women routinely left to bear the consequences?

I know women who have left jobs, who don’t volunteer with certain organizations, who don’t leave the house at night alone, who refuse to date, because of things men have done to them. I know women who are horrified to learn that I go running alone before the sun comes up, because of what a man could do. But I prefer to run in the dark. Running when the sun is out invites honks, shouts from open car windows, and men pulling their vehicles over for an unwanted chat. I also altered where I run to avoid main roads, which, together with running in complete darkness, has really cut down on the harassment.

That’s the long and short of what women have to do to get by: alter our lives to cut down on the harassment. Choose another route home from work. Quit your job. Start shopping at a different grocery store. Stop taking public transportation. Walk around with headphones jammed into your ears, even when you aren’t listening to music. Move to another town. Don’t make eye contact with male strangers. Only go out at night in a large group. Dress in less form fitting clothing.

But it’s never enough. No matter how disciplined we are in policing our own behavior, we can’t control what men will do to us. Because the problem isn’t us. It’s them.

Men, you are the problem. Your behavior. Your sense of entitlement. Your belief that women are here for your enjoyment. In 2020, I intend to make it my duty to disabuse as many of you as possible of the notion that we are simply receptacles for your unwanted attention, abuse, and harassment. We aren’t in the workplace, gym, store, classroom, social gathering, or wherever waiting for you to notice us. And we aren’t the ones that need to leave a situation after you do something wrong. You are. And, please, let the door hit you on the way out.

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One ‘Year of the Woman’ is Not Enough

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2018 was called the Year of the Woman. The first election cycle to take place fully ensconced within the #MeToo era came to a close with a historic number of women running for office and winning. Many of these newly minted legislators were women of color, and the doors they flung open simply by their mere presence at the table reverberated through the nation’s marginalized communities. As a black woman, I felt the power of it. Representation matters, and I saw more faces that looked like mine in a crowd of lawmakers than I’d ever seen in my life.

More of us are at the table. That means we made it, right?

Well, not quite.

We still have a long way to go before we reach the fabled promised land of racial and gender equality. Last year was yet another baby step in a seemingly endless line of baby steps. Slow and steady wins the race. We step forward twice, get pushed back once, maybe even twice, ad infinitum. Meanwhile, the road ahead of us goes on past the horizon, the goal completely out of sight. No one quite knows the distance between where we stand and where we want to be, but moving forward is the only option, because we know exactly what dangerous territory lies behind us.

Thanks to the many hundreds of thousands of women who came before me, being a woman in 2019 is better, but it’s still not easy.

I may no longer pass from the dominion of my father to that of my spouse, but I’m not paid the same as a white man for identical work.

Birth control and access to safe, legal abortion may give me the kind of control over my reproductive system that women living decades ago could only dream of, but the war on women waged by old white men rages on and, if successful, would leave me with few options that didn’t include being either celibate or perpetually barefoot and pregnant.

I may be able to go wherever I want, whenever I want, without asking any man’s permission, but I’m not safe walking alone after dark, being too friendly to a male stranger, being too dismissive of a male stranger, or leaving my drink unattended at a party for fear of what might happen.

I may be able to set my sights on any job that strikes my fancy, but I can’t be taken seriously in most professional spaces, and I often have to push back extremely hard on men who believe, simply by the grace of their gender, that they are more learned than I am, no matter the subject or situation. When confronted on their mansplaining, most men seem taken aback, because they don’t even notice themselves doing it. Yet it happens ALL. THE. TIME.

And those are just a small sampling of the many complications of being a woman in this country.

When you add being black on top of that, all of the aforementioned difficulties magnify, and the discrimination becomes labyrinthine in its complexity.

After an incident, I often find myself wondering: was this because I’m black? Or because I’m a woman? Or both?

But there are no clear answers, only the dark, ugly feeling of being targeted, humiliated, overlooked, or attacked.

Discrimination exists as a claustrophobic maze for those of us that call more than one marginalized group home, and the uncertainty inherent in its twists and turns often makes it impossible to find our footing. You flounder, you double back, you forge ahead, hoping for something better around the next corner. An exit, though you don’t ever expect to find one.

I live in a country that once owned people who looked like me, and also a country in which people of my gender we never expected to contribute to society in any meaningful way. Women were to bear children and look pretty. Black women were to bear children and toil until they died. And though we’re no longer seen as property or lesser than men in the eyes of the law, we’re still nurtured by a society that views us as fundamentally weaker than men, both mentally and physically. Our bodies are still the subject of a dogged legislative agenda that won’t stop until it completely strips away control over our own reproductive destiny. Our bodies are still seen as existing almost exclusively for male enjoyment.

It would never occur to me to tell a man minding his own business in a public space that he should smile, that he’s good looking, or that I’d be interested in dating and/or sleeping with him. These are all things I’ve heard from complete strangers, and not just once. Not even just a dozen times.

It would also never occur to me to interrupt a man who was a subject matter expert because I assumed I knew more than he did, though I was not a subject matter expert, nor was I invited to speak on the topic. Yet this is also something that happens to women with annoying regularity. Even when we are speaking about our unique experiences as women in the world, men will often dive headfirst into the fray to talk over us, muscling their way into a conversation that shouldn’t even feature them.

Again, these are just small things, but if you add enough of them together, they become weights heavy enough to hamper our upward mobility and obliterate our spirits.

So, yes, let’s celebrate 2018 as the Year of the Woman. But let’s not forget that there have been thousands of years celebrating men, their achievements, and their exclusive centuries’ old dominion over the world and all the women in it.

We women can’t be content with a single year that only sees our total representation in Congress reach 25% while we make up more than 50% of the population. We have to keep pushing until the many layers of glass ceilings shatter, and we can breathe the fresh air and feel the full strength of the sun on our faces.

The thought of a world in which the full range of possibility and promise isn’t limited on the basis of sex, race, disability, who you love, or how you self identify is what keeps me going every day, despite the constant backsliding, the defeats, the frustrations, and the heartache.

As always, women of color, disabled women, women identifying as LGBTQ have a harder path, one we’ve often had to walk alone as our more privileged sisters moved quickly along the path ahead of us, leaving us behind. But none of us will truly be free until we all are, meaning we’ll have to wait for that last woman to make her way across the finish line before we can consider the battle won.

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Grab ‘Em By the Childcare

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When we talk about the concept of women’s liberation, the conversation often centers around burning bras, shattering glass ceilings, providing the full range of reproductive freedoms, and women no longer allowing men to dictate the conditions of their existence. But there are other ideas that are even more revolutionary than these, and they aren’t what you might think.

Recently, Elizabeth Warren, a candidate running for president in 2020, floated the idea of universal childcare, and it shook the ground beneath my feet in a way that very few policy proposals have done. This is mostly because I understood how much of a game changer a program like this could be for the everyday American female.

Reproductive freedom and the refusal to allow men to continue to control how much women are able to achieve in their personal and professional lives are all extremely important to a woman’s overall autonomy. However, they don’t address a large part of the problem women face when attempting to fully actualize their potential. Since women are the ones biologically responsible for birthing children as well as the ones society still pegs as the primary caregivers, childcare remains a persistent obstacle that so many — especially single mothers, women of color, and women of all races living just above or in poverty — cannot overcome. The cost of childcare is outrageous, oftentimes more than what a woman would earn actually working a 40 hour per week job. The exorbitant cost also keeps women from pursuing higher education or technical programs that could lead to jobs that pay more competitive wages.

When we normally talk about strategies to lift folks out of poverty and into higher wage careers, we always hit on incentives and programs to increase access to education and job training. If the conversation focuses on women, we might also mention access to comprehensive healthcare, inclusive of contraception, in order to provide her with more control over when and if she has children. But once the woman has already had children, family planning, education, and job training are often a day late and several dollars short. What good is access to a wide range of programs if a mother can’t find anyone to take care of her child while she’s earning a degree or learning a skill that will drastically increase her earning potential? Removing that obstacle, that worry, would change everything for so many single mothers and working class families struggling to make ends meet.

Universal childcare is a big, bold idea. And, as with most big, bold ideas, we’re going to hear a lot of grumbling about how we pay for it. These concerns are valid, but it’s important to think of the drain on our economy created by so many individuals who are unable to rise to their full potential because they are drowning in poverty with no sturdy life raft in sight.

A program that offers universal childcare could be that life raft.

The country would reap the benefit of a more educated, more highly skilled, more productive population. We would see the wage and opportunity gap between men and women begin to narrow and finally, after centuries of systemic inequity, to close. Something as simple as providing childcare so women can pursue the same educational and professional opportunities already available to men could be revolutionary, and the return on investment would be beyond our wildest dreams.

**Original article published in Florida Today

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On Doublespeak & Raising Daughters

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The Orwellian way we raise girls — the words we use, how we prepare, warn, and terrify them — upholds each and every component of toxic masculinity.

I say this as a single mother of a daughter, as a perpetrator, and as a recipient of such words, preparations, warnings, and terror. And even in mid conversation with my kid throughout the years, I fully understood how fucked up my words were, but I also fully understood how completely the world was on fire, and that my primary responsibility was to make sure my child wasn’t burned to a crisp the moment she leapt from the nest of my embrace and into the world, her eyes on the horizon, excited to fly solo.

Don’t get me wrong, my daughter and I had all kinds of conversations, and we talked about systemic sexism, the insidiousness of rape culture, and how women had an inherent right to bodily autonomy in all spheres of public and private life. But we still had so many of the other types of conversations — about not being out alone late at night, about not getting too drunk at parties, about not leaving her drink unattended at said parties, about showing up with her squad of girlfriends and leaving with every single one of them, about how I’d pick her up anywhere, no questions asked, if she was messed up (or not) and felt unsafe.

I’d start by saying something along the lines of: you are not responsible for some asshole taking advantage of you and then get into the nitty gritty of how she could avoid putting herself in situations that might increase the chances of rape. The delicate doublespeak of mothering girls. This isn’t your faultcoupled with but here’s how you can avoid the vulnerability in the first place.

I fucking hate the reality of what it means to be a woman in this country. Knowing that at any time, some guy could decide he wants to put something in my drink. Or physically overpower me. Or get me so wasted I can’t say no or fight him off. Or break into my house at night to stand over the sleeping shape of me before striking. These are the scenarios that were placed in my head as a young girl, not just by my mother, but by every adult woman, every movie, every TV show, every news program broadcasting sorry tales of unlucky females who didn’t better protect themselves.

Women are in perpetual danger everywhere we go, and the opposite sex is the culprit. Will the guy you decide to go out with on Friday night ultimately turn out to be as nice as he seems at school? Or, once he has you alone in his car, his house, his friend’s basement, will he refuse to take no for an answer? These are the calculations that go on inside a woman’s head from the moment she begins to see the world clearly for what it is: an involuntary guessing game that runs from cradle to grave, and the prize is never being raped. Or not getting raped again.

Not guessing correctly can be dangerous.

Not guessing correctly can be fatal.

Can I trust him?

Should I walk the few blocks home alone after dark?

Is another drink wise?

Am I safe alone with this guy? Where are the exits?

I like this dress, but is it too short? Does it send the wrong message?

These calculations, this guessing game none of us asked to play, is utter bullshit. I hate it. And yet, I made sure my daughter knew how to make split second educated guesses. I made sure she understood the rules. I passed down the toxicity that was passed down to me.

What other choice did I have?

I couldn’t very well pretend as though my kid, by virtue of being mine, would magically be exempt from the way things are. It doesn’t mean I’m accepting the status quo, but while I do my best to tear down the motherfucking patriarchy, I had to prepare her before she stepped foot out of my house. I had to keep up the doublespeak — you can do and be whatever the hell you want in this world together with keep a lookout in the parking lot and make a fist around your keys so you can strike once and run — because if I didn’t hammer the warnings into her skull, who would?

We mothers of daughters act in good faith, but the tools at our disposal — the careful, desperate, conspiratorial words — uphold toxic masculinity at the same time we busily work to dismantle it.

One step forward, three steps back.

I told my daughter I’d believe her, no matter what an assailant told her in the brutal minutes, hours, or days she was victimized. That she could come to me. That boys should be taught not to rape, not to take advantage of an intoxicated woman, that girls don’t owe them their time, their bodies, their attention.

But I buttressed every feminist affirmation with warnings, shoring up her safety, though the knot in my chest, in my stomach, never unraveled. I worry for her, walking around in this world. But I worry for myself too, of what could happen at anytime and in any place. I worry about friends who take what I was raised to believe are unnecessary risks — going home with someone she just met, traveling long distances alone, wanting to stay at a party when the group has decided to call it a night. Women are raised to worry, to assess potential risks in seconds, to take full responsibility for whatever happens to them if they fail at the guessing game.

How do you change a society built for men? How do you alter the rules for a game you’re playing against your will? How do you shift a narrative that forever places women in the wrong when tragedy befalls them? How do you balance fostering your daughter’s magnificently rebellious spirit with the all consuming need to keep her safe? Will there ever be a time when we can stop worrying for our basic safety? Stop checking the locks at night? Leave our keys in our purses on the walk to the car after dark instead of positioning them between our knuckles, our tense bodies anticipating an attack?

I repeat the words, the warnings, the secrets to staying safe as many times as my daughter will listen, and then again. The knot in my chest tightens, my heart breaking a little more with each word. Because there is no magic to staying safe. There is nothing that can be done to safeguard ourselves from sexual violence, not really. Until we alter the culture, the game, the narrative, the way we raise both boys and girls, nothing will change.

Motherhood is a sword that only cuts one way. You open your wrists, that vital warmth leaving you in a rush as you work to raise them in a manner that eventually eliminates their dependence on you. Worry is omnipresent, an heirloom that just keeps getting passed down from mothers to daughters. But we see it now. That makes a difference, right? Please tell me it makes a difference.

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Let’s Talk About Consent, Baby

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What comes to mind when you hear the word consent? A man and a woman on the precipice of having sex? Him asking, are you okay with this? and her saying yes? Or maybe not really saying yes, but meaning yes? Because, in this culture, the lack of a definitive no is considered a yes. Hell, sometimes a no that isn’t forceful enough is considered a yes. The ever shifting guidelines are murky at best.

The problem with the concept of consent is that we don’t teach the full range of what the word actually means, only the most extreme example, and in a way that skews the reality of real world examples. We should rewind, talk about the basics, and drill them into kids the moment they start to understand the meaning behind words and how those meanings apply to everyday life.

Let’s start with a basic definition. Dictionary.com defines consent as: permission, approval, or agreement; compliance; acquiescence.

Simple, right?

Then, why the fuss over the concept? Why the perpetual confusion over what does and doesn’t indicate consent?

Well, by narrowing our collective focus to sex acts that occur between willing partners, or aggressors and victims, we fail to teach children the depth of meaning contained within the word. Because consent isn’t just about sex. It’s about leaving people the fuck alone if they want to be left alone. It’s about respecting a person’s autonomy over their own time, body, and choices.

These kinds of lessons should start early if we want them to stick. When Grandma comes over and wants to give little Susie a hug, allow little Susie the freedom to decide whether or not she actually wants to be hugged. Forcing kids into situations in which they are touched without their enthusiastic consent only lays the groundwork for future breaches of their bodily autonomy. Though girls are often treated as society’s mobile petting zoos (the amount of times I’m touched, uninvited, in a day is staggering, and pregnant women are like community property), this lesson is just as important for boys to learn. No one should be subject to unwanted touching, nor should they touch others without an unequivocal invitation.

But it goes beyond just touching. Kids should know that they don’t have to give of their time and energy unless they choose to do so. What does that mean? So glad you asked.

In public, men will often start talking to me as though they have a right to my thoughts and feelings, asking personal questions and invading my physical space as they wait for answers. These inquiries fall well outside the realm of friendly small talk. What the hell kind of nerve must you possess to demand another person smile? Or ask that other person why she doesn’t seem happier? Why she’s so dressed up? Where she’s going? Etcetera.

Think of how quickly society would change if we taught little girls that their time was a valuable possession they could spend or keep to themselves as they liked. Think of how the world might shift if we taught little boys that they had no inherent claim on a girl’s time simply on the basis of their biological sex. If we taught kids that they controlled how their bodies moved through the world, as well as the conditions in which others could touch their bodies. If we bred respect instead of constrictive gender roles that nourish toxic masculinity and the heightened sense of alarm that is so closely intertwined with what it means to be female in America.

I’ve had my time stolen, wrenched from my hands when all I wanted to do was venture out in public, safely ensconced within my own head, pondering any number of things. I’ve been touched by men without my consent, shrugging out from under the unwanted weight of muscular arms, or stepping back to stay safely out of hands’ reach, lest my proximity indicate tacit agreement to being touched again. And again.

And some of those overly demanding men — complete strangers — haven’t taken too kindly to my refusal to answer their rapid fire questions, to give freely of my time and attention. Some have seemed annoyed by my obvious discomfort at their unwanted physical contact. I’ve watched for those men as I moved through whatever public space I was inhabiting, trying to avoid another encounter. As I walked out to the parking lot, keys fitted between my tense knuckles, I fully expected them to spring from behind a car, grimly determined to seize what had earlier eluded them. I wondered what might happen when, one day, my no, my complete lack of consent to give of my time and access to my person, would not be accepted.

What then?

So, I like to imagine instead a world where little boys learn to keep their goddamned hands to themselves. To mind their own business. A world in which girls are empowered by the knowledge that they own their bodies, their time, their rich inner lives, and they don’t owe anyone access. Because when half of the population is vulnerable and at risk, mostly from the other half of that same population, it infects everything, and no one is healthy. We can be islands unto ourselves if we like. Or we can consent to allow a ship to dock at our rocky shores. The choice should be ours alone.

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