I've got a bowling ball in my stomach

Photo by Marc Szeglat on Unsplash

I am so angry. Hot, infuriated tears are falling from my eyes right now because I don't know what else to do but cry and rage and yell and cry even more.

I just read a story about a local incident of harassment and intimidation by a high school boy to a high school girl. Six rapes have been reported in my town since the college academic year began, TWO FUCKING WEEKS AGO. My daughter told us about the car of young men who hung out their car window and yelled at her and her three middle school peers as they walked home from school the other day. Harassment. Intimidation. Assault. Rape. Everywhere. EVERYWHERE.

There is a high school girl walking between classes right this minute hoping she doesn't run into her assailant.

This isn't just a local story, it's a story that is happening everyfuckingwhere everyfuckingday.

I remember the first time I got yelled at by boys in a moving car. I was 10 or 11, still in elementary school, and apparently I had the audacity to walk by the high school down the road from my house. I don't think I even knew then what words were yelled, but it didn't matter, I got the gist, even in the mid-80s, even without ever having been spoken to about harassment.

It didn't matter that I was a little kid, scrawny and undeveloped, nothing like the images of sexy that are, and always have been, thrown in the faces of all people in our society, regardless of gender or age. It didn't matter when I was in my 30s and pushing a double stroller down the road either. I've gotten called at regardless of my physical appearance, regardless of my weight, regardless of my clothing, regardless of my haircut, regardless of everyfuckingthing.

Having adult-aged men hang out of their vehicle and yell as they drove by is now part of my daughter's life story. Ask the women in your lives, no matter their age, and you'll find that their life stories have similar chapters. Again. And again. And again.

I'm fortunate that my chapters stop just short of assault and rape, but they come damn close. Not every woman can say that, and it needs to stop. This needs to stop being our reality. We need to stop sighing when we see sexually-threatening banners hung from rental houses in time for move-in week and wondering what technicality of our town's codes have been violated. Why is a code infraction the thing that would get a sign taken down rather than the fact that it talks of shoving a fist into a woman?

I wish I knew what to do. But right now, I need to do something. Something more than sit here and tap on my keyboard and cry.

I talk to my sons. I talk to them candidly, more forthright than I wish I had to, than I wish they had to hear. I talk to my daughter in a way that is disappointingly realistic, preparing her for the inevitable, acknowledging the shit that she will have to slug through living in this world as a female.

I kid you not--  Just now, I clicked to a different tab for a moment to clear my head, and one of the first things I see is a petition to Amazon, Party City, and the like to stop selling some ridiculously offensive "sexy cookie scout" Halloween costume. Because what says fun more than dressing as a character wearing a child's outfit but turning it lewd and sexy? I know, I know, not a new concept when it comes to costumes. Why all this outrage at something that has literally been part of our society for as long as most folks can remember?

How can we NOT be outraged? All the time? This is just one issue, and one issue that I personally identify strongly with, but there are countless others that deserve all of our collective outrage.

I have no way to close this on an uplifting or hopeful note. I don't feel any ounce of relief after writing this. I don't know that these words will even reach anyone's eyes to make one iota of a difference in someone's thoughts. This is about as close to screaming into an empty void as I can get, I know this.

But I've got to scream today.


Title inspiration: "Crucify" by Tori Amos