Street harassment is an important issue for me. As it happens all the time, and as I have been opposing the behavior since my youth, and am still, for a while longer, committed to writing about it (creatively, in a way that fully involves me psychically and emotionally), I have many stories of challenging harassers. A woman who fights back has to be careful, as those who wish to suppress the outing of problems of inhumanity, lack of empathy, disrespect/impropriety, will limn her as problematic, for speaking, for speaking more than once, when occasion arises, whenever she feels called to say no to something wrong. They will twist and ignore the reality that she is only awake to something pervasive, structurally condoned, and constant.
I have recently completed doctoral work at the University of Missouri-Columbia. About three years ago, a librarian in the main campus library looked at me in a way that was not right- not lustful, but lofty and very hostile (and absurd, strange, without logical/sensible motivation- however, familiar, for females)- for, it could only have been (he was a pure stranger), my manner of dress that day- which was “provocative” by some standards (not by mine, of course). Two more times I had a similar interaction with this man, until one day, maybe having been harassed on the street earlier in the day, and fed up, I basically said, What? What is the problem? If you are objecting to my manner of dress, please understand that I can wear what I wish to.
This man, in the small town (for me, a New Yorker) of Columbia, Missouri, an employee of that library for maybe decades, got his male friends in the library, as well as his women friends in the library to harass me in petty ways from then on, as he committed himself to doing. (The women were willing to assume about a stranger based on their male coworker’s say-so and were willing to spit on a woman’s anger in response to a man’s intrusive, reductive gaze being put on her.)
I’m writing about all this and won’t go into much detail here, but these strangers, first men, then the follower women, became hostile to me. To be pointed at, whispered about, and laughed at by strangers, to be glared and scowled at, for people to refuse to look me in the eye when I would have need to talk to them, all of this happening in a place I would visit almost daily, for years, a place that exists for students to work in peace– all of these things I would not do to another, and I certainly would not punish a younger female who said no to a man’s impropriety in such a way. I’m a person especially sensitive to any mob effigizing me, as in college (an elite college)
I was raped by a young man and the boy went on to tell his buddies that I had simply given it up fast, that I was ‘easy’, a ‘whore’. This memory is fresh in me, it is with me every day, as I have not done all the creative work I want to with it (i.e., I am not done with remembering that time in my life, trying to vivify and tell it out in my work). I went to Columbia to do that writing, as a creative writing PhD student; thus that trauma was with me every day that I was there. That injustice, from years back, that I have carried with me, scarred me, and I do not abide the unethicality of being savaged verbally by strangers; I resist it, I try to stop it and fix it (this quixotism, yes; but I did my best, I asserted my language).
I fought what was happening in the Missouri library for three years, never making anything up to strengthen my case, only telling the truth, about a hostile work environment for me, about daily malice, gestural aggression, maligning. -As the director of the library and the head security guard of the library were two involved in bothering me, the last time I complained, I was barred from entering the library.- A campus cop called me on their behalf and spoke to me deplorably, having taken in their story (another stranger hostile to me- truly angry toward me- based on the words of people who do not know me, people covering themselves); he told me the library was not a public space I could enter anymore, because “you think you’re right and they’re wrong.” (They were mad at me, I had fought for myself, I had defended myself, and they sicked an extremely disrespectful cop on me, to tell me I could no longer get books. I am a graduate student in writing and literature…)
I am posting this story to ask anyone reading to please defend me, as I have defended myself for years with little help, with little progress, with this culmination. Please call the Assistant to the Chancellor of the University of Missouri-Columbia, at 573-882-3380, and request that I be allowed to get books from the library. You don’t have to say where you read my story (since then they may search out this posting, read it, and get angrier at me; I think I have free speech- if I am not lying, and not even making an accusation of unlawfulness (just ugliness, just interference with my peace, work, integrity)- but, they have tried to tell me otherwise; they told me not to ask anyone again for help on the matter, implying I would be charged with harassment if I did; and I know, the angrier they get at you, the more you insist (on the ethical), the more they may come after you). Please take a moment to convey a word in support of me to the university chancellor. The chancellor knows about the issue but did not deign to speak to me and left the matter fully to the library’s director- one of the men who (not unlawfully) was disrespectful/harassing to me, on two occasions; otherwise, the director simply did nothing to help me and refused to speak to me too, as the man who began it all is his buddy. We know that street harassment is not against the law; when I say “harassment,” I mean it; but I have to be careful with what I say, and spell out that I am not making a criminal accusation, since those people could use anything to harm me further, I am still technically a student there, though done with my work. It has been very, very hard for me to be treated as I have been treated by my institution.
The information here describes what I complained about, what they did not help me with- beginning with a sexist provocation by a man.
There is also a great and relevant journal article called “Gender and the Gaze: A cultural and psychological review,” by Alison M. Heru.
That my institution did not help me, and punished me for asking for help, was, honestly, a repetition of trauma for me. My experience in college caused me to gear my life to defending myself, and others, to righting in some way what happened then, to outing the reality that my young self lived. I saw my past situation repeating at MU, and I wanted to take back my school/my surroundings, this time, as I had not done as a college girl. They did not let me. They silenced me, they have treated me as if I am crazy and a criminal. Those debasements are old hat for women, and for Latinas (I am Latina), and I am deeply disappointed.
I’m still trying to feel better; when they first banned me, and treated me in such an ugly way, not engaging with me in a human way at all (the way I was taught, as an instructor there, to deal with my students), being so disrespectful to me, when I had not lied and had only sought their help, disrupted my sleep, until I finally had to go to the hospital, for being so exhausted and frankly on the point of a breakdown. They treated me so badly. and for what; just to not tell their friends/those empowered: behave, leave her alone.
They invited me to that school, that program, putatively because of credence in me and to support my speaking/my writing; and I am grateful I got to do my graduate work; but in other ways, certainly with this situation, I feel that they spit on the person they invited to their institution.
Thank you so much for taking the time to read this, and please call and ask them to let me (Lia) get books from the library again (just that; since I asked them to make the employees stop- and they will Not help me with that).
Thank you,
Lia
