Honestly, when I first started scrolling through Facebook, it seemed like every girl I knew had updated their status to #MeToo. Seriously, every single girl had that as their status. I remember rolling my eyes as the hashtag gained popularity, almost as quickly as the ‘Ice Bucket Challenge’ did a few years ago – it seemed to me that something that was intended to raise the awareness around a serious subject slowly trickled down to just being trendy. But soon, I realised I was wrong.
The more I thought of it, the more it made sense to me. Sexual harassment, for a long time, was believed to be something that happened late at night in dark, dodgy streets. It seemed like it was only serious enough to warrant a hashtag because too many women landed up in the hospital, therapy, or worse: nowhere besides their bedroom because some creep thought they were his plaything. At Least, that was my idea of sexual harassment. Something that was so traumatic that it unhinged a person – leaving them to be a ghost of themselves. But here’s the thing: sexual harassment does not only count if there’s physical scars to prove it.
According to the Merriam-Webster, sexual harassment is the “uninvited and unwelcome verbal or physical behaviour of a sexual nature”. For me, the key word that stuck out was “uninvited” – as in not wanted. Personally, if I thought about how many times I’ve had unwanted attention from the opposite sex, I would never be able to put a number to it. I subconsciously quicken my pace when a man walks too close behind me on the streets. I mean, he could just be minding his own business, but the sad reality is, he just as well could push me into a waiting car. And the catcalls? Truly, there is nothing that makes me more uncomfortable than an old-fashioned catcall from random men I pass in the shops. There is nothing more menacing about a strange male telling you to smile, coming close enough for you to take a step back. These are the experiences women face on a daily basis.
In fact, these unwarranted advances by random men are termed “street harassment”. The truly frightening part is that they don’t expect you to be flattered by it. No, they do it because they can. Making a young woman visibly uncomfortable, especially in a public space, boosts their ego and fluffs up their manhood. They are flaunting their male privilege to all who are willing to watch. Even those who are not.
What they, and most other ‘decent’ men, don’t understand is that is truly terrifying for women. If a man is not afraid to follow you for a few minutes, then what’s to stop him from following you home? If a man isn’t stopping himself from making a crude remark out loud, what’s to stop him from becoming aggressive, if you fight back? There are way too many worst-case scenarios that go through your mind, as a woman, in such circumstances. So, what do we women do? We ignore them; and pray they’ll stop, or get bored and go away. We carry on walking with our heads hung low and our earphones blaring music with the hopes that it will drown their noise out. We make ourselves smaller.
So now, after careful thought, I write #MeToo as my newest status. I have been made to feel embarrassed and objectified. I’ve felt scared and nervous. I’ve felt angry and frustrated at those random men. “No sir, I don’t need to give you a smile because I don’t know you!”. #MeToo represents a way of fighting back. A way of finally unlocking the door to a mansion of repressed and unexpressed hurt and anger. #MeToo is about telling the groups of girls who hide under their hoodies or walk with their keys in their hands, that they are not alone. That even though not all men are creeps, but the all creeps women meet are men. So, to all those girls who hate feeling so powerless, #MeToo. To all the girls who are tired of keeping quiet, #MeToo. And to all those ladies who feel as though their experiences could have been worse; just because it isn’t doesn’t make it anymore okay. So #MeToo, I refuse to keep quiet.