I wasn’t going to go here; in fact, I wanted to just keep it light, but I think in this situation I have to be very clear. I want to keep being honest with yall, and it’s not going to happen if I have to keep myself from broaching a certain topic.
Over the weekend I received a very disturbing email from somebody with whom I had exchanged emails and been sort of friendly in the past. It was creepy, completely uncalled for, and I feel profoundly disrespected. I keep trying to go back into my memory to find something I might have done that gave this person the wrong impression, either about me or about the tone of my emails or whatever, so that I never do it again. And my mind is coming up blank. I talk about my family every day on this blog, and while I do sometimes write candidly about issues we might be having, I think I make it very clear that I love my husband more than anything in the world (besides my daughter).
But that’s not even my point. This is my creative space, one of very few spaces where I feel safe. I have done nothing to give this person any idea that I would invite that kind of attention or contact, and yet here I am, fighting for my right to feel safe in MY SPACE again. This is the nature of being a girl: going to unreasonable lengths to avoid unwanted attention, feeling unsafe everywhere you go, never really being able to deduce a man’s intentions when he talks to you. When bad things happen, as women we are constantly asked what we did to allow or ask for this. It’s a man’s world, and we just live in it, right?
Countless times in real life, I have avoided dressing “provocatively” (that word itself problematic, because it seems to absolve perpetrators of the responsibility of their own actions), I have changed my route while walking so I wouldn’t have to pass through a group of men, I have opted not to take the bus so I wouldn’t have to deal with some guy, I have stopped hanging out with certain friends and avoided certain social gatherings because I didn’t feel safe. I can’t tell you how many times simply being nice and friendly has gotten me into “trouble” and given somebody the wrong idea about how close I’m willing to get. Because of it, I have become a pretty cold, introverted person in real life.
I have been blogging for a long time and I, rather naively, believed that the internet was a level playing field, that I wouldn’t have to fear the same things. I’ve dealt with a lot of hate and trolling, but this shit really put me in a different place. I am so pissed that I even have to address this, but a line was definitely crossed. My physical space has been intruded so many times and I’m tired of having to defend those boundaries. I shouldn’t have to be put in a position where I have to defend my creative space as well.
