It
is time to blow up fantasies about what it is like to go through life in female
form in Donald Trump’s America.
It
isn’t sexy.
It
isn’t fun.
It
isn’t easy.
And
it often isn’t safe.
I am
now a woman in her senior years, and I think back on the incidents in my life,
my fairly ordinary middle-class life lived in three different states, and how
they have helped formed my consciousness as a woman.
To
travel back down the memory lane of sexism and rape culture, I recall the
following:
When
I was eleven, a close male relative shared a bedroom with me one night when a
family house guest was given my bedroom. My thirteen-year-old relative stripped
me in my bed, groped me all over, and tried to persuade me to do the same for
him. I was afraid to protest, but I refused to reciprocate and, mercifully, he
then hesitated and left me alone for the rest of the night. Decades later I
recalled the repressed event and told a female relative, whose response was,
“You must have been playing doctor.” Nope, no way, no how.
When
I was about eleven I was called over to a vehicle parked on the street next to
my family’s suburban residence. The middle-aged male driver asked me if I
wanted to see “something funny,” and he removed a newspaper from his erect
penis which was propped up on the steering wheel. Thoroughly frightened, I ran
back to the house and told my father, who called the police, but the man had
driven off by the time they arrived.
When
I was sixteen my then-boyfriend put his hands into my panties and tried
clumsily to arouse me. I was a virgin. He said his buddies had consulted
together and recommended this plan of action. He was not embarrassed to make
this confession. He became a rabbi.
When
I was seventeen I was on a class trip to New York City, and in the subway a man
started rubbing his erect penis against my body in a crowded train. An astute
female classmate understood what was happening and pulled me away from the
attacker. I was bewildered.
When
I was eighteen I was “pinned” to a fellow college student who was nuts about
me. His fraternity brother, who had wanted to date me, spread the rumor that I
was “putting out” for my boyfriend. I was still a virgin.
When I was twenty-one and
temporarily substitute teaching in New York City in a Lower East Side junior
high school, a group of teen-age boys began to surround me in my classroom
after school was dismissed for the day. As they backed me into a corner and I feared
the worst, another teacher entered my classroom and the boys scattered. I was
close to tears and limp with relief. I didn’t teach again for seventeen years.
When
I was about twenty-six and still living in New York City, I was ascending the
stairs to an elevated subway when three adolescent boys slid down the banister
next to me, the first groping my thighs and crotch under my skirt, the second
watching with curiosity, and the third ducking as I raised my umbrella in fury.
When
I was twenty-eight and temporarily living with an actor—who was also a special
FBI agent—in an island summer getaway, he was especially obnoxious to me. So I
slapped him. In response he punched me in the face, and I saw stars. The. Only.
Time. Ever.
When
I was twenty-nine or thirty and walking home from law school classes along an
urban park next to a busy multilane roadway at sunset, I was stalked by four
adolescent males, who were gaining on me as we approached the entrance to the
dense grassy park. I ran out into four lanes of rush-hour traffic—barely
escaping being run over—to dodge my pursuers. I have no doubt that otherwise I
would have been gang-raped. When I reached a nearby sidewalk I told another
woman what was occurring, and she grabbed my arm, turned me 180 degrees, and
fast-walked me to safety.
When
I was about thirty-two and appearing in a lower state court on behalf of a
litigant, the sitting judge asked me sarcastically in open court if I were “a
Miss, a Mrs, or a Msssss or whatever.”
When
I was about thirty-five and eating lunch at a local bar and grill during a
break from court, a married lawyer who had previously made several passes at me—which
I had ignored—finally asked loudly from the other end of the bar, “Are you a
lesbian or what?”
When
I was thirty-seven and representing a group of investors and entrepreneurs who
were seeking issuance of an FCC license to operate an FM radio station, and had
been able to ascertain and notify the FCC that a competing group had failed to
disclose the identity of all its board members (whom I listed), I received an
anonymous telephone call from a man who threatened, “I will kill you, bitch.”
When
I was forty-five and handling a real estate closing on behalf of the sellers,
the attorney for the buyers, who had already cursed at me over the telephone
prior to the closing, came over to me in the presence of two other male
attorneys, the buyers, the sellers, and two realtors and called me, twice, sotto voce, a “fucking cunt.”
When
I was about forty-seven and trying to resolve a divorce case on behalf of a
wife regarding custody without a lengthy trial that neither party could afford,
I went to the probate court records archive, the only private space available
during a break in the proceedings, to try to work out a compromise with
opposing counsel—an older married man who was at least six feet tall. He backed
me up against a concrete wall, inches away. “Leonard,” I protested without
missing a beat, “you’re in my personal space.” And Leonard slowly moved back as
I resumed talking about the case.
As I
continued to represent the same wife in her divorce proceedings, her estranged
husband on two occasions came to my combined residence and office, after dark,
when the lights were on in my house, and vandalized the professional shingle
attached to a post in the front yard. This same man was later tried and
convicted on child rape charges, fled the state, and was arrested and
imprisoned in another jurisdiction after a shootout with law enforcement. He
had been a suspect in the unsolved disappearance and presumed murder of a young
woman in the original state some years previously.
When
I was about fifty and participating in the taking of a witness deposition in a
matrimonial matter, opposing male counsel began cursing at me on the record,
and the deposition was continued to another date.
When
I was fifty-one and representing a wife in a divorce proceeding, her estranged
husband sent an anonymous note to about fifty attorneys who practiced in my
community which featured a drawing of a witch on a broomstick and recited that
it was in my “honor” for my “dedication to legal ethics, justice, truth,
brevity, courtesy to all, and fair play.” It further stated that “If Assholes
Could Fly, [my address] Would be an Airport!”
When
I was about fifty-five and living and working in New York City, I was on a packed
commuter subway when a young man got on next to me. Within seconds after the
doors closed he began rubbing against me with an erect penis. I drew back a
fraction of an inch and gasped, unable to move away from him in the crowded car.
He then ceased, and at the next stop, before I had the presence of mind to
alert anyone else on the train, he ran off.
When
I was about sixty and traveling on a New York City subway, a man began openly
masturbating a few feet away. Others have done this on numerous subsequent
occasions although they generally attempt to mask their actions under jackets
or other clothing.
When
I was in my sixties on another New York City subway, three or four pubescent
boys began harassing and threatening me verbally until an older man about my
age shamed the boys by scolding them that they wouldn’t like it if someone
treated their mothers like they were treating me. The boys reluctantly quit
their campaign.
And
these memories are only the ones I can clearly recall. Others flit by in
fragments.
Life
in America among the boys. The ones who never grow up.
