I wanted to share with you all a couple of things I did in my past that now I can review in different light and with gender awareness. I believe at the times that these things happened to me, I was not conscious of the exact dimension of the sexism and gender violences I was fighting back, but surely I had an intuition and went with it. I even think the vocabulary wasn't even available for me to express what was happening to me so for many years.
One of them happened when I was very very young, maybe 14 or 15 years old (1983 or 1984). Living in Lima, the capital of my country, Peru, I lived in a middle class district where there was not a lot of crime so it wasn't too dangerous to walk around in terms of robberies, but, there was something different that made walking those streets scary: men. I don't remember ever talking to anyone about it or heard anyone in my circle talk about it. Neither was this something ever discussed in the news, but somehow, we knew. The women, we knew of this threat: the catcalling, the threatening looks and whistles, or even approaches.
So, as a teenager walking to a friend's house some 20 to 30 minutes away from mine, I had resorted to a very creative way of feeling safer. Every time I would start my walk, I would take several minutes to look around for rocks. Yes, rocks, small and not so small rocks that I will put in my pocket. I remember that just knowing that I had those rocks with me made me feel a lot bolder to walk on the streets; I will feel I was winning over my fear with confidence (Koskela, 1997) that I could defend myself if it was necessary. And of course it was.
As soon as I would see a man or several in the distance, I will try to evade their path, but if it was not possible, I would put my hand in my pocket and without taking it out just grab on my rock real tight ready to draw it out like a gun and throw it to my enemies and then fleeing rapidly if it was needed. I remember one particular instance in which a guy in a car slowed down right next to me and said whatever lewd comments while I started to walk faster and grab my rock in my pocket angry. He wouldn't stop following so I reached out for my weapon and threw it to his window what immediately scared him and made him stop to see what it was. I threatened him with a second rock if he didn't leave so he started driving away screaming at me that I was crazy. I kinda laugh because I got to scare him away and that felt good, but I also felt nervous that he would go around and try to get revenge, so I went inside a restaurant in an adjacent street and then took a non main road for a while. I got to my friends house safe and empowered!
The second thing was when I was about 18 or 19 working in Miami Beach, Florida, in the bar of a hotel on the beach. I worked the part of the bar that only served sandwiches and salads, which I had to serve. Over and over again I will get all kinds of weird and drunk guys come over trying to talk to me, to ask me out, to say things about me they thought they had the right to only because I was a woman, young and working there. So, one day of 1988 or 1988 I came up with the perfect solution: I completely cut my long hair off, shaved it off completely bald and went to work like that. And it worked!! I did not have ever again while I lasted in that job a guy come hit on me! It seemed to me, some of theme looked at me actually like I was a weirdo since in the 1980s a woman with her hair shaved was not that very common.
I find that after this class readings and topics, and after everything that is going on with the feminist movement and awareness gives me resources to analyze and re-read things in my own live. In this second case, I used my body as a place of resistance; I shaved off a very symbolic part of femininity that can be tied to sexuality for men, my long hair; and I was able to deflect sexism and intrusion of men in that way. While in the first example, I designed my own tactic of resistance by getting an artisan weapon to make me feel confident and courageous of walking my streets, the streets in my neighborhood, reclaiming them and not letting fear to men keep me away from them or from my right to mobilize myself.
It also makes me somewhat optimistic that the awareness is growing, although I am not overly optimistic because as the awareness grows, so does the backlash. Which means we need to resist and insist. Never stop or give up.
References
McDowell, Linda. 1999. "In and Out of Place: Bodies and Embodiment." Chapter 2 in Gender, Identity, and Place: Understanding Feminist Geographies. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Hamdan-Saliba, Hanaa, and Tovi Fenster. 2012. “Tactics and Strategies of Power: The Construction of Spaces of Belonging for Palestinian Women in Jaffa-Tel Aviv." Women’s Studies International Forum 35: 203-213.
Koskela, Hille. 1997. “‘Bold Walk and Breakings:’ Women’s spatial confidence versus fear of violence.” Gender, Place, and Culture 4(3): 301-320.
Johnston, Lynda and Robyn Longhurst. 2010. Space, Place, and Sex. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. Chapter 1.
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