Not Me

The entire Internet has been going through the Me Too phenomenon, women (and occasionally men) posting about sexual harassment and abuse and men apologising and saying they didn't know. 

I have nothing to offer.  Unlike the entire rest of the female population, I've never been abused.  I was followed for less than a block on my way to school in third grade by a guy once who walked behind and asked me if I was a good girl, but that's the extent of it.  I'm not a victim of anything; I wasn't even afraid because we'd been warned about him and I made it to school.  I didn't even think about it again for years. 

This kind of movement has always had the effect of making me think there's something wrong with me.  I'm not normal, I haven't been abused, I'm not a victim. 

The assistant stage manager yesterday relayed a story to me.  The set was in place earlier this week, and after rehearsal, she went to walk a particularly complicated actor exit path.  The production manager was in the space, watched her and told her he wasn't comfortable with her doing what she was doing.  She explained that it was some of the blocking in the show and she'd come down to check it on the set, what about it was unsafe?  He explained a couple of details, and asked her not to do that. 

The ASM passed this information on to the director, who was perturbed by this.  The next day, the director came to the ASM and said, "The production manager told me it isn't a problem."  "I'm telling you what he told me," she said.  "Why would he tell you one thing and me another?" asked the director.  "Because I'm a woman."  And the director stopped, she told me, and his eyes got wide and he realised that not only had this not occurred to him, his question made it sound like she had lied to him for some reason, whereupon he apologised for everything.  "Don't be sorry," she said, "This is this industry for me.  Don't be sorry, be aware." 

And she tells this to me like this is something I understand, that I experience, that I recognise.  By and large, no.  I spent a semester working for a technical director who I hated for reasons that were entirely related to his ability to do his job, but he was also sexist.  Years later, when I understood that telling women to smile was a thing men did, I remembered he did tell me to smile once, and I shot back, "I'll smile at your funeral," whereupon he shut the hell up.  Then there was the gay, tenured professor from the year I spent in grad school who found out I was married and, on the first day of class, asked when I was planning to be pregnant.  "I'm not."  "That's what they all say, you wait."  He'd once been married to a woman and had two children.  Presumably, that's his bitter backstory showing, but I don't know.  He was a dick and a terrible writer, and hated everything I did, but that was the extent of the actual misogyny. 

A friend from high school always tells me that she envies my ability to not give a damn about authority and people who treat me poorly, that I stand up for myself.  And maybe that's the difference, that I don't experience this not because it doesn't happen to me, but because I don't categorise it as, "men harrass me because I am a woman," but, "hey you, stop being a jerk to me."  Because I've gone up against more women who have made it clear they think I'm a liar, and a threat to them- most of my teachers were women. 

I could suppose, like Blossom did in her op ed, that it's because I'm not pretty and I don't drink and because I'm smart, and sometimes I do (though, generally not aloud and in public to strangers, because, gee, Blossom, people are going to take your words way out of proportion; it ceases to be self-deprecating when the New York Times publishes it) but I know that implies that the inverse is true of victims of sexual harassment and abuse, and it isn't. 

So, Not Me.  And maybe the question is simply, "when?"