Not for the faint of heart...

Dear Men,

It's been a while since I have written you and I hope that this letter does find you well, but I have a few things I need to tell you. Please don't take this personally- take it as a chance to grow and understand your fellow woman.

1:
If you are not my family/boyfriend/best friend, don't put your hands on me. If I am blocking your way, you do not have to put your hands on my hips and move me, I promise you I will move if you just say "excuse me." Try it, words are magical. If we are standing next to each other, do not put your arm around my shoulders/waist. Same goes if we are looking at a book/computer screen/whatever. We can both look just as easily without you touching me. Don't kiss me on the cheek, hug me longer than you KNOW you should, poke me, and DON'T FUCKING TICKLE ME.

ALL OF THIS is unwanted physical contact, and I am sure that I am not the only woman who has felt this (can I get an "A'men?") so next time that you go to put your hands on a woman that is not your family/girlfriend/best friend, please just don't. Don't even ask. When you put your hands on me, you first of all put me in an awkward situation of removing your hands, which I will only do nicely ONE TIME, MAYBE. You do it again and I will bite your finger off, I'm serious. Second, it is a blatant way of asserting your power and dominance over me. Like you deserve to walk around putting your hands on whatever lady part you want and we are just supposed to grin and giggle like we enjoy it. I am not a walking bop-it/Simon/scratch-and-sniff/arm-rest. It is ALL subliminally sexual and I DON'T LIKE IT.

2:
Been through this before but I am going there again. If I am walking on the street to work/to the gym/with my dog/to my feminazi meeting/whatever, don't talk to me if I don't know you. Don't say "hi," don't say "good morning," don't tell me to "smile," don't call me "sexy/beautiful/bitch/baby," nothing. Unless you say hello to every stranger walking by, I am going to assume that you are targeting me and react accordingly, which will be with pepper spray or a taser. Again, if you touch me I will bite your finger off. I do not walk down the street for your entertainment.

As I said before all of this is just asserting your power over me and I DON'T LIKE IT. I don't want to talk to strangers everywhere I go, and I don't owe you a response. These men act like they are not only worthy of my time, but DESERVING. Like I am the "bitch" if I don't stop and respond to you. Dude, you are a stranger and I don't talk to strangers on the street- it's what my mom taught me my entire life. If I don't know you and you begin talking to me while I am alone on the street I am going to consider you a dangerous threat to my well-being and cannot be held responsible for my actions.

3:
You will never know what is like to be a woman. Don't say that you do, that you can imagine, that it's not so bad, or that things are much better than they were. You make yourself sound like an uneducated jerk-off. If you want to have an idea of what it is like, shadow me for a week and MAYBE then you will get a small glimpse. You will begin to realize that almost every interaction with men is turned into some kind of flirtatious sexual innuendo. You will  feel  see the terror and embarrassment that I feel walking the streets alone, for example crossing a construction site. After all of that you will still have no idea. I know a total of TWO men who I feel really sympathize and understand me as a woman, and they are both gay. I am pretty sure that they will also testify that you, if you are a hetero man, will never understand. This isn't to knock you from trying though, because I really do sincerely appreciate those men who try and I consider them my allies.

4:
While I am on this topic, what is it with construction workers? Do they inhale too much toxic gases that for some reason almost ALL of them think it is okay to harass all passing women? Maybe it's the helmet that makes them think they have wizard powers to lure women in with their crude and offensive remarks...

This list could go on longer, but I will end here for fear of offending the delicate male egos that have taken centuries to develop. If anything has sunk in here, I hope that it is number 1 & 2 since this is what affects me every day, and most women are too shy to say anything. Try and read body language and be a little less emotionally numb than your kind has so famously become. It really is easy to tell when a woman is uncomfortable (shoulders go up, avoids eye contact, talks a bit lower and faster, fiddles with hands, etc), just step out of yourselves for a minute and read the signs. No matter what I am wearing, whether it is a track suit or a mini-skirt, I should always be treated with respect. I am never asking for "it." I don't want "it," I don't like "it," and I will not stand for "it."

I remember one of my good friends (my aforementioned ally) told me a story...he was walking home from classes one night and found himself walking behind a woman. As they were both walking she kept glancing behind her whilst picking up her pace and clutching her bag to her side. After a few minutes she was almost in an all-out run. Now, anyone who knows this man will testify that he is the most kindest guy in the world and would NEVER hurt anyone intentionally, so this was a traumatizing experience for him. That woman saw him as a predator, he scared her and he couldn't do anything about it. He scared her because he is a man. This story is the perfect example of the societal power dynamic we have created here and it can be changed. It starts with men taking an active role in changing their approach, as well as women taking an active role and setting boundaries (will do my next post on my good friend Erik Kondo's concept of "Progressive Boundary Setting" http://progressiveboundarysetting.blogspot.com/.

Baseball

There is that stupid saying that I always hate hearing, ¨you never know what you got till it´s gone.¨ I always knew that I liked baseball. I like playing it, I like watching it, I like coaching... why didn´t it ever occur to me that I would miss it so much? It was so routine in my lifestyle, so easy. Baseball, I am so sorry I took you for granted and I promise I will never do it again. If I ever get the chance to go to a game, I will never leave after the 7th inning stretch just to beat the traffic. I will time my pee breaks for commercials and changes between innings. I will always keep the strike-ball count. I will cheer as loud as I can when we (Yankees, duh) get a hit, score, steal a base, or just generally make an awesome play.

It´s been so long, it doesn´t even look right when I spell it out. Baseball, that is how you spell it, right? It is dark times here...

Every day the players sacrifice their bodies for the ball, jumping over fences, diving face-first into the turf, sliding into home base. I miss the scratches and bruises. I miss hitting the ball and that feeling when you see it go flying over the outfielders head. I miss getting hit by the ball. I miss that adrenaline rush when you are on first base and given the sign to steal second, when the catcher drops the ball and you are on 3rd and have less than a second to decide ¨do I go for it, can I make it?¨ I miss watching the relief pitcher warming up and judging her curve-balls. I miss grabbing my glove and running out to the field and tossing around the diamond with my teammates.

 Baseball/softball friends, Amurricans, I know you know what I am talking about. Ecuadorian friends, you don´t know what I am talking about (not most of you), so please help me start a team here. I need it, my body is craving it. Every time that I throw the tennis ball to my dogs I can´t help but think ¨damn, my throw has gotten WEAK.¨ And even with my weak, out-of-practice arm, I STILL can throw farther than my boyfriend.

Victim Blaming

I'm taking this blog to the streets...the epidemic of street harassment. Sorry for the corny intro...not going to go any further than that. First a disclaimer, I will probably refer to all cases of street harassment below in the form of "he" as the perpetrator and "she" as the victim. Not to take away the power from other cases of street harassment, of which I will acknowledge that street harassment is also a huge problem for gay males as well. I'm not even going into the harassment of heterosexual men by women...honestly, I feel like it just doesn't happen but please feel free to prove me wrong.

My argument is that our (referring to the world culture in general, more or less) concept of masculinity has been seriously fucked up. Man = strong, loud, heterosexual, assertive, aggressive, emotionless. The list can go on. Our concept of femininity is no better, although evolving slowly. Woman = quiet, weak, docile, domestic, passive, emotional, irrational. Again, the list can certainly continue. I am talking about stereotypes here people, and how these stereotypes have created hostile streets for us women.

I have been slowly brewing a deep burning intense hatred for the male gender, cultivated after years of being harassed in the streets. I walk down the streets with mace in my hand, and if I don't have it I feel completely defenseless and spend my entire walk thinking about what I have in my backpack that could possibly double as a lethal weapon. I'm not kidding, I actually walked home with a sharp cement rock in my hand last week. This is the world WE have created, this is what WE let happen. I am the first to bare my teeth and attack when someone practices "victim blaming," but if we don't recognize the role of the victim in these circumstances we can never work towards real change. There is a reason that THIS harasser chooses THIS victim. It's not fair that the victim has to defend themselves, but if we practice all of this "victim pampering" nothing will ever change. It's shitty, it's not fair, but it happens so let's do something about it.

I walk a lot, so I have a lot of time to watch the people walking in front of me and see which man turns their head, whistles, yells something offensive, whatever. From my experience, it is not always about looks. A beautiful woman will turn heads, but not necessarily receive the same type of street harassment as the next jane.  These perpetrators do not follow social rules (as in the rule of don't piss off or scare the shit out of your fellow woman), but they generally know how to avoid being caught. Like a lion chooses the sick antelope, a man chooses his "silent victim" (as termed by my good friend, Erik Kondo). Maybe that's not the best analogy, but I like the mental image it conjures up. These men look for the woman who will not say anything, which is many times even a friend or family member. What these assholes don't know (and either did we women know until recently), that their low-life strategy gives us the power. We can choose to not be the silent victim, calling him out on his fuckery. Teaching this attitude is much easier and effective than self-defense. We will not crush a guy's trachea for cat-calling us on the street (or better said, we SHOULDN'T do that), but if we knew the right verbal response we can still defend ourselves and crush his prick perverted spirit.

It's not our fault, we didn't know we have this power. We, as women, have been well conditioned to be quiet, docile, weak, passive, blah blah. And men have been taught to be the strong, loud, assertive, blah blah. So, what we can do is turn the tables and become the strong loud assertive person and tell this man to fuck off...but really FUCK OFF. This is all just theory, so please don't sue me if it doesn't work...with some men it just fuels the fire and they become more excited- in that case pull out your mace, call the police, blow hot raging fire from your mouth, do whatever you need to do to get away from a possibly dangerous situation. It is important to always be aware and evaluating your surroundings. If you are in a desolate area it might not be such a good idea to practice this strategy. In a well-populated area, get loud and embarrass the shit out of him in front of the world...its really pretty satisfying.

Anyways, I'm not trying to victim blame or to say it is our sole duty to change our misogynistic culture because that's not fair. But we don't live in a vacuum and we are not powerless helpless women. We can help become part of the change one day at a time and hopefully one day when I leave my house without my mace I will not spend my walk looking for hard sharp objects to lodge into someone's cranium.

By the way, check out this awesome story about a tough chick who spoke up: http://jezebel.com/street-harassment/