By CJ Vallis
Friday night just before Christmas. One beer after work at a loud Newtown pub. Just to be social. I’m keen to head home, slump on my sofa in tracksuit pants, and watch a mindless Thriller.
Back to the car, I bunch keys into my fist—more out of habit than fear—mostly I’m camouflaged by middle age and attract little sexual interest.
Around midnight I park under a streetlamp. So far so good. A young, neatly dressed man walks nearby. In the dark street I don’t recognise his face. Is he the neighbour’s teenage son? Some friend of my daughter? I return his smile in a mum kind of way and turn to lock the car door.
YEAR = [1989, 1999, 2009, 2019, …] But you can re-order the dates if you like, the maths is the same.
*
I think it was 2017.
Even in Sydney, thousands of kilometres from Hollywood, the #MeToo tag was supplying static electricity to work conversations. Harvey Weinstein was clearly a dick (his reply to angry, abused women was lame and blamed his behaviour on 60s and 70s culture).[1] Yet surely film industry insiders knew the worst about Harvey Weinstein for years. Powerful, sleazy men were the norm, we agreed. But would Weinstein’s outing lead to real change? What about legal process rather than social media inquisition? The more cynical among us argued that #MeToo was a bandwagon headed nowhere. Others thought the fuss would soon fizzle.
Like many other women, I hoped.
*
My back is to the street, my keys dangle from the door lock. His hands are on my arse. Both hands lifting my arse from behind. I don’t even notice him approach, draw so close to me. For a nanosecond, I’m paralysed by opposing thoughts—I can and I can’t fucking believe this is happening—then I have adrenalin. Oceans of it. Decades of sexual harassment intimidation have primed me for this moment. I swing around. Overcome the choke inside my chest and bellow, ‘Who the fuck are you?’
*
Actually, it must have been 2018.
#MeToo had lifted a rusting piece of corrugated metal and a mass of Hollywood creepy-crawlies were scurrying away in the sunlight. Questions were also asked in Australia, and accused celebrities like Don Burke, blamed the Weinstein media movement.[2]
Remember Oprah getting in on the outrage? #TimesUp was supposed to end sexual harassment.
I asked my teenage daughter if she was ever hassled.
She met my eye as a woman. No longer my girl-daughter. ‘All the time. I hate it.’
*
‘What the fuck?’ I scream.
Nobody hears. Not my husband who is inside watching telly. Not the old man living across the road who doesn’t like me to park in front of his house. Not my Portuguese neighbours to my left who often have family BBQs and bake pizza in their outdoor oven. The single mum who rents on our right side is not home, her car is gone, her windows shuttered.
It’s over quickly. He smirks and hot-foots it into the distant shadows of my sedate suburb, leaving me with a set of unhelpful questions:
Is he mentally ill? (I’m not exactly a fresh bloom of Spring.)
OR
Did he mistake me for someone else? (He would’ve said sorry.)
OR
Are my jeans too tight? (I wear large shirts to cover the saggy bits.)
OR
Did my smile encourage him? (Every day I smile at lots of different people who don’t grab my arse.)
AND
Why would he do this? (It must be my fault somehow.)
*
My colleagues’ opinion about the suburban arse-lifter is polarised. They ask all the above questions.
In addition, my mate Dan guesses he was a practical joker. (Ha ha. Joke or not, he can touch me and get away with it. Scare me for fun.)
Another friend urges me to report him in case he lifts another arse, or worse. (The act is too trivial, too humiliating to bring to police—#TooTypical.)
She insists the police would take me seriously and she’s probably right. (I couldn’t even describe what this young guy looks like. I feel worse than ever because my silence is wrong. My inaction could potentially harm others.)
Which gets me thinking, at my workplace, would I be too embarrassed to report being man-handled by someone half my age? Possibly. Unlikely I’d shout what-the-fuck if I knew exactly who I was dealing with.
Maybe someone else would speak out for me—#HerToo. With all my education and white privilege, why would I need a ‘silence breaker’ like Milano to rescue me?[3]
I really don’t know. By the age of fifty, I thought I’d have this stuff figured out.
ilano’s courage makes me a coward.
*
It could have been much, much worse. For many women it often is.
Fear for my daughters eats at my insides. I feel sick. She’s had to deal with it too wolf whistles and cat calls and all sorts of men acting like dogs in heat.
Why did I think it would stop? (For all of my reproductive life I have ignored wolf-whistling on suburban streets, trains and buses.)
Did I speak out against the high school teacher who propositioned me? (He was drunk at our graduation party. He said I was bursting out of my school blouse all year. I/he didn’t know any better then.)
Did I call out bosses winking in meetings? (Condescending, yes, but I just assumed winking was friendly rather than a put-down.)
Did I tell the fiancée that her betrothed tried to get me into his car to have sex at their engagement party? (As far as I know they’re still married.)
The list is too long, the set too large—an ugly, unsolved equation.
‘I’m sorry’, I tell her. ‘I thought things would change. You shouldn’t have to go through that.’
But I can’t hold my daughter’s eye.
*
Fuck that.
Tweet #MeToo some more. At least it gets people talking. But don’t expect a hash tag to change systemic Weinstein behaviour. Sexual intimidation—it’s ordinary and every day. And it’s not my fault.
*
On any night before Christmas.
YEAR = {2029, 2039, 2049, 2059…}.
A set is a group of elements that we can change.
My daughter has been out with friends to watch a gig. She’s dawdling home alone and enjoying the balmy night, the perfume of frangipanis and crescent moonlight. Her keys are safely tucked away in her bag, not clenched in her fist.
Let’s #MakeItFuckenHappen.
[1] October 5, 2017, Statement From Harvey Weinstein, New York Times, retrieved 12 October, 2019.
[2] Don Burke denies sexual harassment allegations in statement, news.com.au, retrieved 12 October 2019.
[3] 2017, Time Person of the year, New York Times, retrieved 18 October, 2019.