Resist Passive Acceptance of Abuse
By Mara Agolleti via UN Volunteers
Where I live all
young girls are told how to act and dress properly. There are lots of spoken
and unspoken rules surrounding how girls should avoid provoking unwanted
reactions from men. I was told what to wear, where to go, and who to hang out
with.
Don’t misunderstand
me, I know those are the concerns of a loving family, which have always guarded
my health and well-being. However, I have recently realised how these rules
deeply effect my existence, I now question if this “responsibility not to provoke”
should weigh on women?
I came to realise
how many things you can be shamed for (as a woman). You can trigger a reaction
by walking along an off the centre lane after 6:00pm. It is your fault if something
happens after you let out a bad reaction after an absolutely unprovoked sexual
comment. It is your fault if after a night out with your girlfriends you don’t
want to make out with some guys you have just met. “Why would you be on a night
out otherwise?!”, they say. Apparently, it is common knowledge that girls could
never be enjoying themselves on a night out without intention to spread their
legs open for some random dudes.
These pressures have
passed from being an occasional consideration of mine, to effecting my daily
habits. As I have restarted university, I found a very convenient parking spot
next to the train station in my hometown. Every working day I used to get off
the train at 6.15 p.m. to reach my car 4 yards away. Over a week I collected a
plethora of insulting and indecent sexual comments. Over the time of a short stroll,
a dozen strangers made comments about my breasts.
As I went home,
still shaking with anger I conversed with my father over what happened. I told
him that it is unacceptable to be the object of all kinds of insults for doing
nothing more than walking alone in public. The reaction was not what I was
expecting.
Dad told me that it
was unrealistic for a woman to expect anything different in that area of the downtown.
He explained that I was to shun that kind of situation by parking somewhere
else. He made me feel like it was on me to take extraordinary measures in order
to keep strangers from making unprovoked comments. My own father, whom I
expected to side with me, made it sound like a fee paying female student can expect
to feel relatively safe and respected only if she pays € 50 per week for a
parking spot. He said it, like it was the most natural thing in the world, that
if a young woman goes to certain places or badly reacts to a comment it is normal
for something to happen to her.
Unfortunately, I am
not an isolated case. A friend recently told me that someone shamed her face-to-face
for being sexually assaulted by a stranger while smoking on her own doorstep at
1 a.m. After all she was out alone at night, what else could she expect?
Over these recent
experiences, I came to realise that for women it is almost impossible to just
pretend respect. Women are even shaming other women for not being constantly
afraid of what could happen. Is it a crime to just pretend respect when walking
or having a smoke? Are we crazy to
pretend this much? What are we teaching the younger generations if we accept
this as “normal”? Apparently, my father thinks that women must expect to be
shamed if they exercise their right to walk in public.
Friends and families
groom girls into believing that it is their responsibility to act accordingly
to the bad behaviour of others, they teach them not to react. Women are told
that they are to avoid being harassed by giving up on their freedom.
When I told my
parents how that kind of reaction makes me feel they just replied “oh, you are
so childish, would you rather take the chance of something really bad to
happen? When you have children of your own, you will get how concerned we are;
this is not something to be stubborn about.”
Women shouldn’t be
forced to give up basic freedoms in trade for support and understanding. Any
woman should be able to claim respect from any man independently from the
circumstances. There should be no passive acceptance of harassment. No person
should be told that it is her responsibility to guard herself/or himself from
the consequences of someone else’s ignorance.
I have been driven
to write this article to let girls know that they should not feel obliged to accept
abuses because they have the support of people who went through the same
experiences and share the same feelings. Together we can change the pattern and
stop being cornered into being second class citizens. Passive acceptance only cuddles
the problem into becoming bigger. Women must react together because shaming
each other for being harassed will just lead to more abuse.
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