question for our female readers: how many times have you felt sexually harassed ?

[Squinch]

64. It is a continuous thing in a woman's life.

Flashers when I was very young. A raging rape culture in college, which included many unreported rapes among my friends, some of them quite violent. I was lucky and was not raped, but the experience opened my eyes. Some of the perpetrators were boys I had previously considered friends and "nice guys." I'm sure they thought of themselves that way too. Though I was not raped, I came to understand that a woman can never really know if she is safe. This changed me fundamentally.

Continuous in my early jobs including being groped and cornered, being joked about to my face, being called a member of one boss's "harem" by another executive, and being called "cannon fodder" when I was one of the young attractive women who was required to wine and dine prospective clients "and make him feel like he's on a date." Lower pay and expectation of more servility than is required of men on every job until I got a union job.

Gropings on trains, men who required conversation on trains and yelled insults at me or followed me or threatened me when I did not give it to them. Friends' fathers propositioning me.

And that is in addition to the daily cat calls that a woman received in those days simply for walking down the street from the age of about 12 to about 45.

Now I am older. The harassment takes a much different form. An older woman is invisible. This is much preferable to being "visible" but it often takes forms that are quite rude and perplexing. A surprising percentage of man do not feel they owe civility to women they don't want to fuck. I am not vulnerable any more, though, which is an enormous relief.