Inhabiting a female body

Inhabiting a female body

Yesterday afternoon, my WALK was asked to smile more.

I was in my neighborhood, heading on foot to my son’s baseball game, when a car slowed as it approached me from behind, sidled up to the curb, and the driver called out to me through the passenger window he’d rolled down. “Excuse me, miss.”

(I am 52 years old.)

“I couldn’t help but notice you walk very fast.” He smiled. He was missing several teeth. He sat there, expectant, had clearly not gotten to his main point.

I said nothing, a non-committal expression on my face.

“And I just…well, you don’t have to be so stressful,” he added, leaning towards me and removing his hands from the steering wheel to make that unmistakable simmer-down gesture, to accentuate the word stressful. He took my silence as an invitation to elaborate on his advice, which he generously offered in my own best interest, “It’s a beautiful day out. You should just take time to enjoy your walk.” He sat back self-satisfied, seemed to be done talking.

I flashed back a bright, brittle smile of my own, made brief eye contact, and said in a pleasant, neutral voice, “But I enjoy walking fast.” And then I moved off down the sidewalk, as jauntily as I could muster, as if happy in this day, in this exchange.

I regretted the word “but,” immediately. I registered the speed, the very slow speed, at which his car began to move. He lingered behind me for the rest of the block, until I got to the intersection, when he finally allowed his car to pass me to make his turn. Halfway across the street, I realized I was suddenly breathing again.

Do men know this kind of thing happens to women constantly? That on a sunny May afternoon we can be heading to a high-school baseball game and suddenly be forced to calculate risk and response: What is the likely threat level posed by this particular man in this particular car at this particular time of day on this particular street? Dare we ignore an overture? Nine times out of ten, we do not. Dare we respond with anything but indulgence? Not if we want to ensure that the situation does not escalate.

Do men know that when this kind of thing happens, women automatically tally up details: How long did had the car been following me? How was the driver looking at me as he spoke? What did his body language indicate was the likelihood he might get out of the car now idling at the sidewalk? How closely was he watching as I turned to walk away? What should be my path if it seemed clear he was going to continue following me through the intersection? Dammit, should I not have started across the street at all, remained on the left-hand side, so that he could not follow me as easily?

Do men know that women grow up learning to betray their emotions and preferences with their faces and their bodies, so as to preserve themselves? That the knots in our bellies and the calculations running in our heads remind us to keep our voices light and our posture relaxed because we know that for some men, our fear is a stimulant? That we know we have no choice but to smile, and treat as pleasant conversation, an accosting address from a man who thinks it is playful to offer a rebuke for adding stress to his day by walking too quickly, and who considers it helpful to suggest a walker slow down and enjoy herself more?

I think many men—even those who would never be this man—have no clear idea that women train themselves from the time they are girls to assess encounters with boys and men not just speedily, but in terms of whether the safest answer to “fight-or-flight?” is stay. Stay. Because resistance verbal or physical may only escalate your danger.

There is an absolutely straight line from these calculations—instant, harrowing, necessary—to the calculations that lead women to say yes when they want to say no, because they are terrified that no could get them killed, and yes will at least result in something less permanent than death.

More men, good, feminist men, need to sit with this fact.

Admittedly I look young for my age, and the sunlight was dappling the sidewalk, and the car was pulling up from behind, and I walk in a lilting way, and the man could not possibly have known that I was heading to watch my eighteen-year-old first-born play baseball. All of which would have been his excuses. And all of which only makes the whole thing worse. Because he appeared to be my age or older, and he appeared to be quite happy to accost what he assumed was a young woman walking alone, as if she would welcome an extended address from a stranger about the pace at which she should move through the world.

It took me until I was seated in the stands at the game to restore my normal breathing and move from panicked calm to anger.

Plenty of men feel free to strike up conversations like this, offering unsolicited advice about how women should carry their bodies. Enough men that it is absolutely imperative that women assume ALL men feel this free, and that MANY men will follow up that advice with action, should women offer any signs of resistance to the proffered wisdom.

Even this morning, I am furious at the impotence of my own self-preservation. I am furious at the necessary fact that not speaking up is the only safe choice. I am furious that I thought only of myself in that moment instead of saying something to put that man in his place, and thereby potentially protect my daughter—who walks down that same block every single day to and from school—from a repeat of this danger. And I am furious that I have to be furious about all of this.

Know this: Inhabiting a female body that is moving down a sidewalk is not an invitation to critique. It is not an aggressive choice to distress your otherwise lovely afternoon. It is not a choice aimed at you at all. And neither is our smiling response.

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