Once upon a time, I was a nice, quiet, sweet girl who tried to get along with everyone. As such, I had no idea what to do when, in my early teens, men began to harass and grope me. These incidents left me feeling grossed out, confused, and frustrated.
Hoping that men would eventually leave me alone or that someone would stand up for me didn’t work very well. Actually, it didn’t work at all. There weren’t many options to change my predicament. I couldn’t control men’s behavior and I couldn’t change the system. The only thing I could do was take charge of myself. Ultimately, I chose to recreate myself: to become more confident, more assertive—tougher.
It was a slow process that took far too long. Although I witnessed a few women calling out bad behavior here and there, I had no consistent role models. All of the girls and women I knew were passive like me. I read dozens of self-help books in an effort to discover the tools for my transformation. Little by little, over many years, I found the information I needed to start making changes. This guidebook contains all the things I wished someone had told me, or that I could have found in one source a long time ago.
The “consent movement” helped champion the idea that we shouldn’t touch others without permission. As children, many of us were taught to keep our hands to ourselves; to me, this felt like we, as a society, were reinforcing this concept for those who didn’t quite get the message. Then, #MeToo gave people an outlet to come forward and raise awareness about how prevalent harassment, assault, and rape are in our culture. Victims need forums for discussion and support, and more resources are now available.
Unfortunately, follow-up studies show that, for most women, not much has changed. Statistics say that approximately eighty percent of us have been harassed and that twenty-five percent of women will be assaulted in their lifetimes. I suspect it’s higher than that. Many women told me stories that they had never reported. Some had never told anyone—not their husbands, boyfriends or family. And why would they? First, we know that we might not be believed. Then, we will likely be subjected to questions of what we did or didn’t do that allowed the incident to happen.
During the summer of #MeToo, my friends shared their stories. One woman in her mid-twenties spoke of a job where one guy constantly grabbed and groped the female employees, using the common ploy of laughing it off as a joke. Another devout Christian southern lady in her seventies spoke of how, in her sixties, she had two separate incidents where men created excuses to reach down her shirt. Modest dress and age do not necessarily protect us.
Yet another woman had her booty slapped twice in once month: once by a stranger while she was bending over a dairy case at a store, and again by a friend of a guy she was dating. Her girlfriend asked her boyfriend when the woman could expect an apology from the friend. He replied that his friend had already apologized—to him. Not to the person he had assaulted, but to the man whose “property” he had violated! Upon hearing this, I was livid. I began sharing with her the strategies that would become this book.
Like many people who find their way into healthcare, especially fields of bodywork, I’ve always been the type of person in whom people felt they could confide. As a result, I heard stories of harassment and assault from friends, colleagues, and even strangers for years, beginning in high school. In addition to my own experiences, which I’ll get to soon, I spent decades in healthcare, listening to hundreds of women’s stories. I am a Chiropractic Physician, which might seem random and unrelated to this guidebook, except that it gave me the opportunity to be there for women who needed someone to hear them. When you put your hands on people to ease their pain, they often come to trust you with highly personal information.
As I worked on my patients, they would tell me everything. I listened, sympathized, and recommended counseling on a regular basis. However, due to negative perceptions of therapy, most of my patients insisted that they couldn’t or wouldn’t go to a psychologist, saying that they preferred to just tell me. So, I listened to horrific and heartbreaking stories as I worked to ease their physical aches and pains—and I kept their secrets, as I was and still am bound by doctor/patient confidentiality.
After two serious auto accidents just a few years apart, I had to retire early from full-time practice to heal my own body. I started teaching anatomy, physiology, and other healthcare sciences at a massage school and then at an acupuncture college, where my students told me their stories.
Next came the incidents related to me by the cast and crews in the film industry, where I worked part-time for over twenty years. On one project there was a serial offender, harassing and grabbing crew members regularly. He tried with me, but by then I was more assertive: I whispered in his ear that if he touched me, I’d break his fingers. He left me alone, but he was so relentless with the other women that I reported him on their behalf. But it didn’t help.
The countless stories I heard had some common threads. Almost all the women felt guilt or a sense of shame. They wondered what they had done wrong, or what they shouldn’t have done. They second-guessed normal, everyday choices that men never have to think about and beat themselves up with self-blame. They suppressed the anger they felt—or turned it against themselves.
We had another problem in common: we didn’t know what to do when it happened. Growing up, we all got the same programming, which definitely did not include standing up for ourselves. The most common response was freezing, followed by denial and self-blame. Most of us couldn’t speak up for ourselves when men said suggestive, insulting, and vulgar things. And we had no idea what to do when they touched or grabbed us. Many of us were more concerned about making waves, or causing a scene, than the violation of our bodies.
It seemed like we had no control over if and when any random male would put his hands on us. After all, if we had done A, B, or C—or had not done X, Y, or Z—then it wouldn’t have happened. We were “asking for it” somehow, or so certain men (and women) thought. “Boy will be boys” was the standard response.
A small percentage of men (and yes, sometimes women)—let’s just call them “creeps”—have this idea that women, girls, and boys are theirs for the taking, that they are entitled to touch them whenever they want, and that society will defend them and give them cover—and it does. In a bizarre convolution of the concept “innocent until proven guilty”, in cases of harassment and assault the victim is rarely presumed to be innocent. Can you imagine victims of a mugging, robbery, or arson being questioned about how they might have been “asking for it”?
Men started putting their hands on me when I was fifteen. When I was in chiropractic college, which was ninety percent male, I started asking the guys why they thought it happened so much. The feedback was that I was…wait for it…too nice. Lots of guys, they told me, see smiling and being friendly as a “green light”. Geez.
Immediately, I started trying to project a colder, less friendly, less approachable persona. It was tough because I genuinely liked people—and men. But I figured it was worth a try. Also, during college I experienced a few intense, frightening incidents which I’ll share in a bit. Those incidents woke me up and fueled my desire to change whatever I could to help me deal with future problems.
Fast forward to the summer of 2018, with #MeToo going strong. After my own experiences, reading people’s stories, and hearing from young friends, I started to become angry—not for me, but for the younger generations who must deal with the same crap. I’d had enough of “Boys will be boys”.
Something more, or different, needed to be done: something more proactive--and surely someone was doing something along the lines of what I had happened to figure out. But hours of research came up mostly empty for guidance in dealing with the incidents that occur in all areas of our lives.
Then, one morning at 3:00 am, I woke up and it hit me like a bolt of lightning: I had made it from doormat to defiant, so others could as well. I wrote a roadmap based on what had worked for me. My goal is to share it with the hope that it will help decrease the frequency and trauma of the incidents that girls and women—our friends, sisters, daughters, nieces, and granddaughters—might face as they go through life.
Recent social and political events have shown us the current state of women’s and victims’ rights, and it doesn’t look good. We have always been blamed for being harassed, assaulted, and raped. Not only has it not gotten any better, but it appears to be getting worse. The “boys will be boys” mentality is on steroids, and the men in power have shown us that, yet again, we are not to be believed—if they even bother to listen.
Telling our stories doesn’t protect us, and I’m not convinced that filing sexual harassment claims helps all that much, either. We get transferred, demoted, blacklisted, and fired. And harassment and assaults don’t just occur in the workplace; they happen in stores and markets, at concerts and parties—with strangers and men whom we know, like, or even love.
Since our society is unable to protect us or give us justice, what can we do? I waited for years for others to help me and it didn’t happen. Do you want to keep waiting for others to do the right thing, or have you had enough?
Alright. Let’s take a minute to acknowledge how irritating it is that, yet again, change seems to be up to us. It’s not fair. Yes, men should just behave. They should stop groping us. And stop raping. In a better world this might happen, but I’ve seen no sign of this world in my lifetime and now things seem to be moving backwards. I hate that this is the way things are. And yet, in my opinion, if there are a few more things that I can do that will help, that might make a difference, I’m going to do them. Even if my efforts don’t always work, I can console myself knowing that I tried and free myself from any personal blame.
And if people are going to keep using the “boys will be boys” excuse—and they are—then maybe we need our own phrase. I’m going with “Women will be warriors.” Why not? Your inner warrior can be in reserve and called upon whenever you need her. But you have to know how to connect with her…