Words of sexual violence in the street

Today, a (likely mentally unwell) man said deeply violent and disturbingly sexual things to me in the street. I’m ok but it was fucked up. This wasn’t mild cat calling.

That hasn’t happened in a while. I forgot how much it sucks.

I forgot that inherent sense of unsafeness in your own body an incident like that can bring. Especially when specific parts of your body are spoken about in detail.

Ya see, I’m 39, white, femme ish, currently able bodied, and fairly fat. In public in my community, I enjoy an invisibility that comes with being the exact kind of middle aged, “unsexy” unremarkable person that a lot of y’all wouldn’t notice or if you did you’d see and think “she’s like my aunt Amy” or a kindly art teacher you had in middle school. I’m undeniably chunky sure (hence adding to unsexiness already present bc I’m over 35) but chunky still w/in an “acceptable” level of fatness that doesn’t catch too much attention day to day and while I face all kinds of systemic barriers my point is I usually can blend into a general crowd like a chameleon.

So yeah since my early 30s, I frequently feel invisible in public sometimes annoying ways (bumped into a lot, folks let doors close on me) but ALSO helpful ways. Safety giving ways.

I forgot how helpful that invisibility is to my day to day mental well being.

Ya see, I used to be cute and 12 and 16 and 19 and 22 and 25 and only a teeny bit fat and I got my adult size boobs by age 11. It meant that I experienced my first terrifying incident of street harassment not unlike today at AGE TWELVE. Not all incidents were scary…sometimes it was kinda flattering depending on the situation but I can still remember many of the words of the worst ones like it was yesterday. By the time I was 24 it felt almost routine. (I also lived in a place back then where that was more common overall to everyone than where I live now.)

Feeling now how I feel, I can’t believe that I felt that routinely as a child. A literal child.

No one at any age should have to hear what was said to me today. But DEFINITELY no child should have to deal with it and I know they still do bc I work at a youth org and the girls tell us.

It’s so upsetting.