Yes, it appears 8-year-old Stephanie paired an oversized sweater featuring Scottish terriers with pink zebra print leggings.
The first time a man talked to me about my âpussyâ I was 8 years old. For those who can only assign value to a woman based on how she relates to various men, I was someoneâs daughter, sister, niece and aunt (my parents were way old when they had me).
I was a child. I loved Barbies and longed for a trampoline. I made elaborate mud pies in my backyard and kicked serious ass at the BMX course in California Games. My favorite food was grilled cheese. I had seen exactly one R-rated movie: La Bamba.
It was recess and one of the two girls I was playing with had to pee. We were on the school playgroundâââone of those badass sprawling wood ones with towers, swinging bridges and a tire swing. Separating the playground from the school was the large field where we played capture the flag and kickball.
The teacher stuck with recess duty gave us permission to walk back and use the schoolâs bathroom, as long as we stayed together. Rather than let us run across the field from the school to the playground, our teachers always made us walk in an orderly line on the sidewalk that ran along the street at the edge of the field.
My friend had finished peeing and we were walking back to the playground on the sidewalk. All three of us were carrying pencils with Dixie Cups pinned to the erasersâââgames we had made in class. Dangling from each pencil was a pompom on a string. The goal was to flip the pom into the paper cup.
So we were walking, talking excitedly and flipping our poms into our cups when a car came to a crawl on the street next to us. There were several men inside.
âNice toys,â called the passenger, leaning menacingly out the window, motioning to the pencil games clutched in our hands. We walked faster, and tightened closer to one another. The car continued riding beside us.
âI said âNICE TOYSâ,â he repeated, demanding our attention, demanding a response. We mumbled âthanksâ and gave weak smiles, quickening our pace more still.
âI bet you have nice pussies, too,â he sneered. He howled with laughter, accompanied by the driver and back-seat passenger, and the car peeled off. We ran the rest of the way back to the playground, three poms swinging wildly; six shoes pounding asphalt.
We huddled inside one of the playscapeâs towers and debated what to do. I didnât even know what the word pussy meant beyond its feline definition, but I could tell it was bad.
âIt means vagina,â my friend with older siblings and paper thin walls said. I gasped.
Do we tell the teacher what had happened? Should we tell our parents? None of us felt comfortable reporting what had happened. We were afraid and despite having done nothing wrong, we were ashamed.
We decided to tell no one; to do nothing.
Except one of my friends couldnât live with the silence and several days later told her mom what had happened. Her mom called the school and our parents were contacted. That night my mom summoned me to her bedroom, where I sat on the edge of my parentsâ bed, avoiding her eyes.
She asked if it was true. I said it was. She asked again, and told me the vice principal said the girl who reported it, my friend, had âa tendency to fibâ because victim blaming is nothing new.
She told me if she found out I was lying, I would be in serious trouble.
We three girls were called into the vice principalâs office one at a time to recount the story. They sat us on the chairs in the hallway as we waited our turns; the chairs usually reserved for the trouble-makers, for the bad kids. I had never sat in those chairs before and my eyes, which I kept focused on my feet, welled with tears as I imagined what everyone who passed by must think.
I knew I had done nothing wrong, but it sure felt like my fault. I wished my friend hadnât told her mom and gotten us into this mess because at 8 years old I learned that keeping quiet would have been easier; that telling meant risking getting in trouble.
So years later when I was waiting to cross a street and a stranger reached his hand up my skirt and squeezed my ass, I did nothing beyond whirl around in fear. He winked at me and trotted across the street in the other direction, leaving me feeling violated and ashamed.
And when a man in a crowded elevator groped with purpose as he pressed by me out the doors, I jumped, watched the doors close and tried to control my terrified breathing the rest of the way to my floor.
Every time a man demanded a hug, just as Billy Bush demanded of his colleague Arianne Zucker, I politely obliged. When he held on too long, too pressed-into-me, I learned how to giggle and duck away.
When I decided enough was enough and reported a male coworker who hugged too long, hovered too close and asked if I had ever considered getting a âboob jobâ because Iâd âlook good with one,â I was told âthatâs just how he isâ and âboys will be boys.â Except, like Donald Trump and Billy Bush, the coworker wasnât a boy. He was a grown man who made me terrified to do my job.
Mr. Trump, you say that you never actually did the things (sexual assault) you bragged about doing in that video; that itâs just âlocker room talk.â Many of your supporters have backed this up, claiming gals just donât know what itâs like to stand around with the bros in towels talking about grabbing pussy without consent. Former Republican presidential candidate and snoozefest surgeon Ben Carson said, âThat kind of banter goes around all the time.â
But hereâs the thing: Women? We know these things you call locker room talk have been done to us. Weâve been groped and kissed without our consent. Weâve been grabbed by our pussies. Weâve had our bodies used to make us feel afraid and ashamed.
If itâs just locker room talk, then why is it spilling out of our locker rooms and onto buses, playgrounds, street corners, offices, women and girlsâ bodies? If boys will just be boys, do girls and women just have to be their victims?
If bragging about sexual assaults you never actually committed is just locker room talk, just a man thing, then whoâs doing all this assaulting?
And if we allow a man who boasts about violating womenâs bodies to become president, a man who points at a young girl and declares that one day, heâll date her, how many more boys will grow into men who shout out car windows at young girls about their pussies?
(Originally published on Medium)
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