I am not afraid of men. I am afraid of a lot of things—the dark, that parasite that crawls into your brain in hot springs, peacocks—but not men. I am a freshman in college in Washington, D.C., and I will admit that I walk by myself all the time and I am never afraid. I go places by myself at night that I definitely shouldn’t (don’t tell my parents), and I have never once felt unsafe.
Recently I watched a documentary on rape in the Democratic Republic of Congo in my sociology class. I watched as women recounted being raped by groups of men, brutalized, sodomized with branches and the barrels of guns. These women often develop fistulas due to the tearing of their vaginal and uterine walls. They are left incontinent. Social pariahs unable to care for themselves and their children. In Congolese society, being raped is often a social death-sentence.
I walked out of my class at 1:00 p.m. feeling ill. I needed to get off campus. My favorite pho truck was parked on 7th and G Street so I made my way to Chinatown. I got off the metro and headed towards a row of food trucks when suddenly a man grabbed me by the hand. His grasp was so firm that I thought he had broken my bone.
“Hey, what’s your name?” he said.
“Hi...I’m sorry I have to go,” I managed to stumble out.
I tried to keep walking but I was jerked back with force. He wouldn’t let go. He pulled me closer to him and put his other arm around my waist. He smelled like grease.
I started to panic. I was practically screaming, pleading with him to let me go but he was steadfast in his grip. About a hundred people were watching, but no one did anything. I began to cry, he softened his hold on me for an instant and I bolted. I ran up to a group of businessmen and pretended to answer a phone call as my assailant calmly strode away. These men had seen what had happened but none of them said a word to me.
In a daze, I ordered my beef pho and sat on the side steps of the National Portrait Gallery. Everyone was staring at me. They had all watched from their perch as one of the scariest moments of my life unfolded like it was some sort of Aeschylean drama, and now they watched me cry over a Styrofoam bowl of soup. I felt like some sort of modern Blanche DuBois facsimile, listless in high-waisted shorts and a striped sweater as my Stanley faded into the crowd.
The reality is that I am considered “lucky.” I was not raped, I was not severely beaten and I have incurred no fistulas. My experience today was incredibly scary, but there will be no lasting damage. But does that make it okay? Is it acceptable that this man was allowed to walk right up to me and make me so afraid that I later cried and vomited in front of my favorite art exhibit?
I am not afraid of men. I will continue to walk by myself whenever I damn well please. I will not be afraid of what’s lurking in the shadows. I am terrified, however, of anyone who says that he or she hates feminism. Anyone who thinks that women seeking to live in a world where being grabbed on the street isn’t considered “lucky” is some sort of an affront to men. Anyone who thinks that feminism is about women wanting to have their cake and eat it, too. Anyone who can deny that women disproportionately bear the brunt of poverty and conflict. Anyone who can acknowledge that women face rape, genital mutilation and sexual humiliation as a product of war and still ask, “But what about men?”
Equality is not a zero-sum game. By increasing the rights of women, nothing is taken away from the rights of men. By advocating for equal pay in this country and equal access to education in another, men do not suffer. The consequence of feminist success is not a militant-lesbian hegemony in which all bras are burned and men become untouchables. The consequence of feminist success is progress.
