Positively Glorious!

So I’m walking down the street last night. It’s dark, and I’m walking fast because I’m meeting my fair Jessica at a restaurant and want to be there before her, because I don’t mind waiting for her, but I know she doesn’t like waiting for me.

So, I’m walking faster than usual.

It was a beautiful night, actually. Pretty warm. I had my favorite brown leather “not used for a motorcycle anymore because I sold that to Jessie’s father” jacket and a new pair of  “original, hard as freakin cardboard because I’m not buying any of that ‘about to break down pre-washed’ crap” Levi jeans.

So there I am, hair down and flowing, all 6+ foot of me, striding down the hill thinking “I can’t wait to get to the restaurant and read my book until Jessie shows up.”

But that’s not what other people were thinking, I guess.

I’m not my inner geek

As it turns out, despite my inner “scared, scrawny, geeky Indian kid who gets beaten up everyday after school” view of myself, other people have a rather different view. Sometimes, that view is something like “huge, imposing, scary long-haired guy that’s going to steal my wallet and beat me up.”

This pretty much always freaks me out.

So, I’m walking down the right side of the street and about two blocks ahead of me is a woman talking on a cell phone. At least, I figure she’s talking on a cell phone, because Hood River is a quiet enough town that I can hear– at two blocks away– that she’s talking.

She keeps looking around, and I eventually settle on the question of whether or not she’s looking at me. “Why would she look at scrawny, geeky me?” I think, immediately– as I often must do– reminding myself that I’m not “scrawny, geeky me” to, well, anyone but me, really.

So, then I’m all worried. What if she actually is looking at me? At that point, I feel something of a responsibility. I don’t want to frighten this woman, Jessica says that I’m big and scary (calling me “the big, scary monster” often). Should I cross the street and give her room?

Of course, I also don’t want to think that the entire world revolves around me. “It’s not about you, John” is something I remind myself all the time. I mean, how ridiculously arrogant to assume that this woman, blocks ahead of me, cares one way or another about me. Talk about egocentric!

But I’m still worried. I don’t want to slow down because I want to get to the restaurant, I don’t want to speed up and get it over with either. I don’t want scare someone, but I don’t want to needlessly worry about scaring someone either. I have to cross the street eventually, so I could do it now, but this side of State street is much nicer to walk on, so I don’t want to cross until much later.

What to do?¹

The crossing

By then, I’d reached a bit less than a block behind her. She turned around and looked at me again– about the 4th or 5th time– and crossed the street. I was relieved, because now I didn’t have to go through that whole “how do I pass this woman, do I cross, do I not cross?” series of questioning.

I kept walking, eventually passed her on the other side of the street, and would have thought nothing more of it. I went on, about two blocks more, and then decided to cross, well in front of her to continue down to the restaurant. I would have thought nothing more of the event except that when I turned to look in the road before I crossed I noticed her, about a block behind me, crossing back to the right side of the street.

The world in which we live

That’s it then.

Am I the guy your mother warned you about? That guy on a dark street that will do bad things to you? That guy that– even while he’s all worried and concerned that he’s being too ecocentric about people noticing him– you will cross the street to avoid?

It made me really sad. Not because this woman would avoid me. That’s a small thing, really, and who am I to complain about it.

It made me sad that the world is such that any woman would avoid anyone. Just the fact that a woman walking down a street always needs to be conscious of that. That we live in a world where women might routinely cross to the other side of the street so much that it actually becomes, well, routine.

It just saddens me to see that happen, and know that it’s the case, and know that I’m actually one of the reasons that it’s the case. Not because I’d ever do anything, but just because I’m there, and big, and walking fast.

And a man.

It just made me so sad. So I looked things up. Here are some fun facts to cheer you up:²

• 1 out of 4 women is sexually assaulted at some point in her life.
• Every 15 seconds a woman is beaten by her husband or boyfriend. (FBI Uniform Crime Report, 1991)
• 2-4 million women are abused every year. (American Medical Association)
• 95-98% of victims of domestic violence are women. (Bureau of Statistics)
• Approximately 25% of all women in the U.S. will be abused by current or former partners some time during their lives. (American Medical Association)
• 82.8% of sexual assaults occur before the victim reaches the age of 25.
• 78% of sexual assault victims were assaulted by someone they knew.
• Over 50% of victims and 70% of assailants had used drugs or alcohol prior to the assault..
• Fewer than 20% of crimes of sexual violence are reported to the police.
• Approximately 2% of acquaintance rapes are reported to the police.
• Only 2% of reported sexual assaults have been determined to be false reports.
• 1 in 8 college women is the victim of rape during her college years. 1 in 4 is the victim of attempted rape.
• 95% of these rape victims did not report the rape to officials.
• 25% percent of women were raped and/or physically assaulted by a current or former spouse, partner or date during their lifetime.
• 84% of the women knew the men who raped them; 57% were on dates.

The emphasis is mine, but probably not for the reason you think. On the surface, I could be upset that this woman might have been afraid of me when all the evidence points to her being extremely more likely to get assaulted by someone she knows. It would be easy for me to pull out the “what the hell is she worried about me for?” card, but that’s not where I’m going at all.

My point? What the fuck kind of world do we live in that fully 25% of women are sexually assaulted and 85% of them by someone they know?

Yet women still have to be afraid on the street of people they don’t know?

You mean, basically, women are pretty much unsafe at home and unsafe on the street?!

What. The. Fuck. World?

It made me so sad to think about this that I actually started to cry.

For the most part, I love life, and love people.

Sometimes, however, I just feel physically sick.

And sadly, sometimes I feel ashamed and depressed that I’m a man.

1. Yeah, it’s pretty funny that this “woman walking on a dark street” scared me so much. [↩]
2. http://www.rwu.edu/studentlife/studentservices/counselingcenter/sexualassault/rapemyths.htm [↩]