Confession: I love airports. The noise, the excitement,
people flying off to distant lands, people being reunited with loved ones. It’s
got it all. And there’s something amazing about watching a plane coasting down
a runway, accelerating and speeding up, and finally launching itself up into
the sky. Plus duty free shops, so I could happily live there.
So one day, at Auckland’s domestic airport, I wondered off
to watch the planes do their thing. This was back in the 80’s when there was
the old school fugly pattened carpet to hide the stains, and giant windows down
below where you had front row seats to all the action. Next to it was a bar made up of
tables flung out higgidly piggidly and you had to walk through to get there.
Half-way through I was brought up short – a gentleman, and I use that term so
loosely that it if spoken aloud it would be an incomprehensible string of
noise, had decided to reach out and grab my arse.
He made some comment, but I was too in shock to make out
what was grunted at me. I whirled back around and went back to where my mother was
standing. I was ten. I probably brought it on myself from the slutty Paddington
bear t-shirt I was wearing and from being metres away from my parents. A minor incident,
but the first time I can remember being sexually harassed. Awww, there should
be an annual cake to celebrate. Baby's first groping.
The other times? Honestly, I don't think I could even remember them all. Apparently wearing
a school girl uniform is pretty much harassment bait (maybe my skirt was too
short, if only a talkback host could weigh in!) and it was years of fun dealing
with teenagers and adult males making advances and throwing out comments. I would love to say that it was because of my
spectacular beauty, but sadly that’s not the case, and in fact my experiences
was pretty typical from others girls accounts. In my twenties, staggering to the
diary after a night out for an emergency life saving mince and cheese pie and
coke, still wearing the same clothes, and what I suspect was vomit clinging to
my hair, I also managed to elicit a few show us your tits for good measure. Kind
of bought a clue at that point that it wasn’t what I looked like that they were
responding to, but that I was female, so a perpetual walking target.
There was the job I had to leave because the boss was a
little bit too free and easy with the touching and the comments. Everyone was
aware of it, but as it was sheepishly admitted to me it was cheaper to replace
me than to replace him. Their strategy was to hire a woman in their fifties. There
was the men in the street that told me that I should smile more, or the man who
decided to reach out a grab a boob in the middle of the street in broad
daylight. Me and those t-shirts, you’d think I’d learn!
There was telling men through body language “No”. There was
telling them verbally “No”. There was pushing them away because “No” seemed to
be heard as “keep trying”. There was leaving early because I didn’t feel safe.
There was hearing about a friend passed out in a nightclub bathroom after one
(spiked) drink, there was hearing about friends having been raped. There was
being grateful and so thankful and so lucky that it hadn’t happened to me.
There was rearranging my schedule to avoid late classes, rearranging my life
because not me, not me, not me, but knowing that I’m not immune to something
that’s happened to so many.
My life is not your life. My life as a female is different
to your life as a male. That should be stunningly obvious, but apparently it's not. My experiences are different because our socialisation
has been different, and because of this, my voice, her voice, a female voice,
should, and needs to be heard, especially when it comes to issues pertaining to women. History was written by men, pop culture is still
largely written by men writing dialogue for female characters, commentators are still largely men, but now that we’ve
squeezed a tiny (tiny) space for ourselves, now that we can speak for
ourselves, stop trying to speak for us and getting it so horribly, horribly
wrong, and stop trying to silence us. Just stop. No.