#MeToo

I don’t think I’m the only one who had a strange moment of introspection when I first saw the wave of women making #MeToo posts on Facebook and Twitter this past fall. Do I qualify? Is this me too?

I have never been raped, had never consciously identified as a survivor of sexual assault or sexual harassment. But as I read and talked with other people about this movement, particular memories began to pull at the back of my mind.

My first kiss was a tongue-shoving make-out at a fraternity party a week or two after I arrived at Michigan. I was drunker than I had ever been before. He walked me outside, then upstairs, then kept on shoving with his tongue and hands and body. He held me in place, one arm tight across my back, fingers gripping my leg hard. He kept on holding while he told me over and over how pretty I was. He kept on holding until my friends found us.

I have felt uncomfortable at work because of the way my boss addressed me. I have felt uncomfortable in lab because of the way the grad students talked about another student’s crush on me. I have endured sharp, persistent pain during sex (I should have asked again for softer, slower — but then again, he should have listened the first time). I have apologized to and mollified someone angry at me for refusing sex that night.

I have said nothing, done nothing, built walls out of “should have”s. Endured, stayed quiet, forgiven. Coerced encounters, ambiguous consent, perniciously bad sex: all are so much a part of our atmosphere that pointing out what crosses a line, or indeed, where the line is, is daunting. But when I work hard to put aside the excuses, to feel for a deep-down, fundamental line: yes, me too.

I graduate from Michigan in a few short weeks. When I think about this movement — a movement that has been hashtagged for longer than it’s been covered and has lived in women’s whispered conversations for longer than time — and when I think about my own silence and reluctance to condemn, I cannot avoid some larger questions.

Aren’t I stronger than this somehow? Didn’t I enter college and the world of sex with principles defined enough to recognize assault for what it is? Why haven’t my beliefs trickled into my own life?

And then: Didn’t I know who I was, once? Before college, before sex? Do I now?

I have strived and worked long hours to distinguish myself here. I have adapted and optimized myself for a dozen types of classes, teams, and work settings. I spend most of most days in a state of careful self-modulation, trying to hand-pick the wordsW on others’ lips after I leave — humble, polite — trying to hold off the wrong ones — bitch, control freak. Increasingly often, I think I project nothing at all.

I have dealt with the hurts of assault and harassment by letting them fade, drops of ink into water. I feel sometimes as if the more I tailor myself to please my various worlds, the more the pieces of me fade to irrelevance too, drops of ink into water.

Mine is a distinctly feminine and traditional self-ablation: sacrificing, making do, keeping a smile on. The jagged mismatch between my feminist ideals and my realities extends beyond sexuality. Me too, me too, me too.

I am tempted even here to demur: It could be so much worse. After all, I am still here. I still undeniably have a hard kernel of self. But to say “me too” is not to paint my whole story in shades of tragic or to understate the fruits of my work and modulation. Even borderline assaults are worth stopping. My self and my natural modes of expression are worth preserving. We must actively improve this culture that encourages silence and looks the other way. I must actively try to stop sanding myself down.

This is, of course, the crucial #MeToo question: How do we go forward? How do we refuse to let the ink dissipate? How do we spare the women who come after us? As I leave here and look back at the ways that I have both grown and lost myself, I wonder whether what we do to answer these questions will help those future women stay whole. As for me: it is not my job to appease those who cause me discomfort, but to work for those who are also uncomfortable— those who, months later, still feel unsure whether they can say “me too.”

By Anonymous