I had to ask my husband if what I thought was sexual harassment was--before I wrote my Me Too tweet and Facebook page.
And yet the one huge sexual harassment incident in my life, I didn't ask about. I try not to think about it. Yet, yeah I have been thinking about it off and on for the last few months. I'm writing out most of it here, but I'm trying to keep some of the details to myself. Mainly because---well, because.
On my seventeenth birthday my crush and his best friend gave me a novelty item. It was sexual in nature. They gave it to me in front of an assembled group of kids at my locker. It was in a wrapped box, like you'd imagine long-stemmed roses come in. I opened that box to find another wrapped box. When I opened the second wrapped box I heard a
giggle. My first real clue that whatever this box contained, was not something
I wanted. Then, when I peeled the
wrapping paper back on the second box I saw what it was. Everyone around me--my girlfriends too--started to laugh. I tried to meet my crush's eyes. I was so naive at this point I didn't know what this was, much less what it was for. When some of the assembled people made crude gestures, I got the idea. When I think of my 17th birthday I think of people I barely spoke to coming up to me and making crude gestures.
So, if this happened today it would be all over youtube. The kids in question might get arrested or something. Every time someone did a google search it would come up. I really don't know. But that would be the wrong thing to happen.
You see, I still consider the crush one of my oldest and dearest friends.
"You forgave him?" I can almost hear the horror.
Yes. I did. I do.
Understand that by the end of that day, he realized what he had done was not just wrong, it was heinous. He sent me yellow roses--two dozen of them. For those who don't know the language of flowers, those mean "forgive me." The next day when someone made a crude gesture, he shut it down and shut it down hard. By the end of that week, maybe even that month, I would say that he became someone who could never do that again.
That's the difference between him and say a Harvey Weinstein. He learned from his mistake. He felt horrible remorse. When I allude to this, he cringes as much, if not more, than I do. He hates the 17 year old boy that he was that did that to me. I see that and I forgive that 17 year old boy because the man he became is a good and kind one. He is not entitled. He is respectful of everyone, women, men, everyone.
He had to learn by making that horrible mistake in judgement.
People can change. They have to want to. They have to have empathy enough to realize that what they were doing was wrong. My crush did. The current occupant of the White House doesn't. Now the big problem is when do we stop giving people a chance to change?
The chance you gave him to change did work out positive in this case and i am glad it did but sadly it did not happen to me and left me in more pain than ever :-(
ReplyDeleteI'm so sorry. That's the problem, so many men are just s**t.
DeleteThank you for sharing. I've posted #MeToo oand #IHave on Facebook, etc., and, probably like women of my age, it didn't just happen to me once, or even by a single boy/man. And the most public was, of course, by a teenage boy, surrounded by his friends. The minute I heard that miscreant explaining that "when you're famous, they let you do it . . ." I was instantly transported back to that episode in my life--and I am certain that boy never learned and honestly hope he heard/felt the same humiliation when he got to prison.
ReplyDeleteI'm hoping he got the same treatment when he went to prison too! I like calling the occupant "miscreant" good descriptive word.
DeleteWhat disturbs me about your story is that there was a crowd of kids, all of whom thought it was OK - funny, even. How can that be? It's bad enough that no one said, "Hey, not cool," but the encouragement.
ReplyDeleteThat's the thing, though, isn't it? It's so common that none of them think to say "hey, not cool" or at least, none of them are brave enough, simply because it isn't the usual thing that gets said in these situations.
ReplyDeleteI'm so depressed by all this. Because even though people change, there are always new ones coming through taught by those who never changed.
Yeah. A few years ago, I was pawed by a group of groomsmen (they were waiting for the bride, groom, and bridesmaids to finish taking pictures) while walking into my church for the Saturday evening vigil mass. It was minor - 30 seconds of creepiness - but if one of the four had said, "Not cool" it wouldn't have happened, would it?
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