itsallovernow | Boobs Ahoy

Okay, so skimming through the flist yesterday, I came across the boob kerfuffle, and I didn't follow the links because I was too busy and I assumed it was simply male geek dumb-assery, and I was happy to see women outraged, and I felt a little… arrogantly, snobbishly… ABOVE IT ALL. Except then today, I read the original post about the situation, and I read some of the reactions and I… yeah.

So here's the thing, here's the story: bodies are not public domain. And we know this right? Or we're supposed to, but apparently, it's not common knowledge.

And here's my story about how I learned that.

I'm a hard-cord commie feminist. Not anti-male, but certainly pro-women, pro-self esteem, pro-rights, pro-equality, pro-choice, pro-I say who touches me. I've protested in college. I've protested all my life for the right to have a safe space where people don't leer, don't touch without being invited to. I protested the way our culture turns women into sexualized objects, strips them of a deeper selves and fetishizes their bodies. I grew up quickly, at least my physical self did, and my vast discomfort with men looking at me as a sexual object has been part of my awareness for most of my life.

And men don't… I don't know if they don't have it, but it's not the same, not in mainstream society. 11 or 12, and already I had boobs, and I was tall, and looked older, and I walked through the door of a restaurant with my father and a man my dad's age looked at me and made a pass at me. In front of my father. And sure, the guy was drunk and stupid, but I was embarrassed. I was ashamed. I was humiliated. Because of what this man assumed was allowable. Of what I somehow had put out there as being allowable.

But you know, that's not the story.

10 years old and my young cousin's baby sitter wants to play spin the bottle with me. And I say no, and make my cousin go to bed, and lock our doors.

But that's not the story either.

As I got older, as my libido and my body and my brain struggled to at some point all be on the same page, as I found people I wanted to touch and wanted to have touch me, little things started to make more sense. How to offer, how to deny, how to set up body language that said "fuck off very very much." And if you ask the men in my life, they'll tell you I wear that language more often than I wear the "please fuck me" language. Because I had to. It was about protection, it was about setting myself up in a safe space of control because society, male society, certainly wasn't going to do it for me.

So I learned, and at some point had to unlearn part of it because turned out sometimes I wore the "don't fuck with me suit" when I wanted to wear the "come talk to me" suit, and it's always been a negotiation for me. Always been a struggle to find that safe space in the wider world where women are sexualized objects and not women. Where my tits define me more than my talent does.

So years passed, and I came to live with M. and we had a complicated relationship that develops between heterosexual people sharing the same space, and there was a little bit of sex and there was a little bit of inappropriate touching, and eventually I decided no more. It didn't make me happy, it just made me bitter.

But M. never quite got the message. He never could get past the idea that because I didn't want him to touch my boobs, that was all that mattered. He'd wheedle, and beg, and cajole, and try and make me feel sorry for him, and manipulate me the way that men have been sexually manipulating women for eons. He'd say, "But we've done it before. And you liked it." And here's the kicker. I let it happen sometimes. I never walked out. Well, I did once, and he promised to stop, and honestly, he hasn't stopped asking but I stopped responding.

I set my boundaries, I say no and fuck off, and sometimes it gets so old that I almost say yes because I'm lonely, or I'm tired, or I just don't want to have the same goddamned fight about why he can't, or why I don't, in trade want to see his penis.

Men, here's a clue. Those of us who like cock do indeed like it. But I have NEVER met a woman who thought to herself, "Man, I'd sure like to see that wang. Not the rest of him, but that big ole dangly bit." Not saying it doesn't happen, but well, I'm not in that category. A nice ass cheek. A forearm, a bare neck. But never the cock itself independent.

And maybe it's because men think of themselves independently from their penises. They give them names, and they pretend that they can't control their actions when their cocks rule their brains, and we indulge this little reality, and so maybe they think it's the same with boobs. That they're independent agents, freelancers from the main stage.

But guess what. It's a lie. I'm the package. I'm the body. I'm the tits, and the ass, and the cunt, and none of that is up for grabs unless I say it is.

To the women who allowed the groping, well, okay, that's your deal. But… why did you? The physical pleasure? Curiosity? Pressure? Shame? Joy? Know it, okay. Know why. Say to yourself why it seemed okay. Why relinquishing your space was acceptable (this is not a lecture, I'm just saying. Not a condemnation. Everyone's got a different touch/no touch system. Everyone has to know it).

But I will say that I STILL feel apologetic when I say to M. for the millionth time, "No, you cannot touch my breasts. They're not yours. They're not up for grabs. This is not an option." APOLOGETIC. Because somehow, I have trained myself, I have been trained to apologize for not being a sexual object that's up for grabs. And I know better. I get angry, and I know that I'm in some absurd awful abusive cycle with him, and me still being in that house is a careful negotiation of risk and responsibility. M. is not a threat to me. He'll do what I ask. But the asking on his part? Is still a violation. So is his alcoholism, but they're tied together and part of the ugly cycle.

I choose who puts his hands on me. And I choose when it's acceptable, and when it's not, and I feel guilt for my desire, and I feel shame for it sometimes, and I don't know what to do when it's not returned, but it's mine. It's my space, belongs in my house. My self.

Bodies are not public space. Female bodies are not subjective. Breasts are not independent agents.

I figured out, at some point, why I wasn't okay with M. groping me. I mean, I wasn't going to sleep with him, and he knew that, and it was like the boobs were just out there. But that was the thing. He wanted that touch, he wanted that "feel" without wanting ME. And that's where it came down to me figuring out why it was wrong, and what was wrong. I'm part of the equation. No part of me is separate. I'm more than that. Once I figured it out, it was far easier to put a stop to the issue. (And let me tell you, having a conversation like that with a drunk, even when sober, is still humiliating for the person setting the boundaries. And sometimes, the humiliation of the act is enough and it gets too hard to say it outloud.) I learned how to stop it in my last relationship when it became clear that the physical was having less and less to do with me and my presence and more to do with the act. But that, at least, was honest. And discussed.

Because the thing is that M. is not the exception to the rule. He's the drunken embodiment of it. Men leer in public. They ogle. They grab. They honk. They talk to you when you don't invite it. They try and touch when they aren't invited. (And no, not all men,definitely not all men, but still, the space is open for them to try. Society opens that space by putting women on display as bodies without resonance. Our films, our media, our magazines, our fucking precious "the interenet is for porn." By putting their skin out their like it's community property. By insisting upon it, in fact. By condemning those who won't, or those who don't comform to a standard of security and body image. By saying, "You're not worth seeing, or touching. But I've got the right to touch you anyway.")

I can trace this stuff, this weird combo of setting boundaries and letting M. in and mostly it comes down the idea of being wanted too early and then losing the confidence that I'd even be wanted, but at some point it comes down to me being the equation. The package deal.

So, I'm proud of these women who come to the front and say, "Sexist. Unacceptable. My body, my rules." I'm so proud. I'm not above it. I'm below it, struggling to get back. And thank you for reminding me of that. Thank you for making me say these things outloud.