Dear dickwad who called me titties,

Imma let it go. Just let me get this out first.

To all of you besides my best friends/family/BFF’s entire residential hall/ brother’s awkward friend at the Bucca di Beppo at which I spilled this story with as many interspersed “asshat”s and “titties” and “patriarchy”s as possible, or the lucky few who got to read the 2 previous blogs I wrote about this which were pure pathos, rage, aggression, and sadness, let me explain.

I worry a lot about women’s place in the media. What the media teaches women we are, how we as women and men perpetuate this negative and broken ideology that ultimately doesn’t help anybody out.

I’m also a woman, so unfortunately, like every woman within a million feet of you, I have been harassed and belittled, objectified, and asked to mute my loud, obnoxious, resounding voice if ever it gets too damn opinionated for the little weenie heads like the guy who called me titties.

So, once upon a time, I was having a moment of loud conversation in a public place on my college campus with a dear friend of mine, Corrine (of course her name isn’t really Corrine), about our concerns about women’s place (or lack thereof) in media. Insert Dickwad and his friend, Reformed Dickwad (who later apologized). DW and R.DW approach Corrine and I and patiently listen. I begin to ramble about women and power. DW interjects,

“Well, your titties are powerful. I love titties; I wear the bracelet and everything. Your titties give you so much power over me.” DW proudly displays his I <3 BOOBIES bracelet as RDW/ fellow caveman nods aggressively. Corrine and I stare at the cavemen, mouths agape.

Caveman say what?

“So, DW, are you saying that you would vote me into congress for my titties?”

He laughs at my audacity to question him and walks out the door. Corrine and I dismiss it. Obviously he was just trying to get a rise out of us, right? Another day, another dickwad.

But the longer I let it fester, the more I realize how truly horrifying that exchange was.

Sure, dickwaddish bullies exist and they do terrible things like reduce people and their power and agency to a fraction of their anatomy, imply that a woman’s only power is not in the partnership of men but rather the sexual coercion of them, effectively dividing us all when we should be working to unite (which basically sucks because we’re all so much more powerful working together), but the worst part was I didn’t even realize that at the moment, and the fraction of me that did didn’t feel like I had the right to speak up and really assert to DW how wrongheaded he had been. Because even if he was trying to get a rise out of us, he still thought that that was at all appropriate, maybe even a little bit humorous, to say to a couple of women he barely even knew.

That is why this incident has stuck with me so strongly.





Women are socialized not to defend themselves at the expense of someone else’s comfort.

I once sat next to a 60-year-old man on an airplane. He asked my name, my school, and my age. Without fear, like the naïve child I was, I told him my name, my high school and that I was 15. (Plenty of info to Google me…) For the next 4 hours, he harassed me. Reading my book over my shoulder and commenting on it, not allowing me to end our conversation, asking personal details about my life, imploring me that I owed him a coffee date (what I owed him for I will never know), invading my personal space, and eventually asking for a picture of my hands as they were so beautiful as I read and he simply had to have a photo of them.

That’s right. Somewhere in Michigan there is a 60-year-old man (probably) masturbating to my hands. The worst part of this whole thing is that the man sitting on the other side of me said nothing, and neither did I.

Why?

Because telling a man he can’t photograph your hands or call you titties is aggressive and unladylike.



(Interestingly, the man sitting on the other side of me was a missionary who offered me a bible at the end of the flight. I refused, partly due to disinterest but mostly because there were a whole lot of more practical things he could have done to “save” me at that point.)

I am a black belt. I have learned about self-defense. I am the daughter of two of the most empowering parents in the universe. I have a wonderful boyfriend loves me for my shine much more than for the knobs of flesh on my chest. I have tons of friends who value my voice and listen to long, frustrated feminist rants and have no interest in shutting me up (at least until hour 2 of a rant… then, it’s understandable).



Still, when confronted with situations like these, my knee jerk reaction is still that my comfort, my voice, my safety, are all less important than the feelings of these major DWs. This equation, my safety < the feelings of creepy men I have never met, is pretty upsetting.

I know I am not the only woman who feels this way. I have heard countless stories just like these two of my own, each ending with the same grossed out, stunned, frustrated idea that Wait a second, you mean to say I could have said something to defend myself??

Oftentimes after I recount these incidents to my male friends, they will ask me why I didn’t just tell the man to shut up or back off, but the feeling in the moment is something akin to a ladylike heart attack. I am literally at a loss for words except for the occasional “Mmhmm” and “Sure, I guess you can take a picture of my hands, creepazoid.”

These two examples are also pretty benign. Sure, I was pissed off or spooked, maybe jerked off to by a creeper, but I lived through them without much physical or emotional damage. They weren’t nearly as bad as what happens to many other women. As a culture, we have to examine what grooming our daughters to be ladylike teaches them, and allows abusers to get away with. We have to work hard to stop DWs at every turn and realize that a woman’s safety for the feelings of an asshole is not a fair trade. We also have to start telling these uncomfortable stories, if only to ourselves. We have all been privy to uncomfortable moments when we didn’t stand up for ourselves or somebody else in need. We need to start to recognize what those situations look like in retrospect so eventually we can diagnose them at the time of and take action.

Most importantly for me, I have to let the DW go. He has lingered for far too long in my brain space. He has to go. They both have to go. I deserve better.

I like to think that, like R.DW, DW’s eventually realize their waddy ways. I like to think that they realize that calling me titties turned me into a powerless sexual object instead of a person, and I like to think they realize that that is wrong, and also not helpful to anyone. (I also like to believe they deleted the picture of my hands because they realize that the coerced it from an unwilling and uncomfortable child, and it’s just damn creepy.) It is a reaction of fear to attempt to put a woman (or anyone else) in her rightful place as titties. I like to believe DW has eventually realized that he wants to live in a world where I am not just titties, but rather titties fused to a body filled with a heart that pumps blood to a brain that holds the basic DNA for a person like me, a person who is smart and deserving, albeit a bit loud and unformed, whose voice deserves to be heard, and whose humanity and real, authentic, past titty power deserves to be acknowledged.