power

Maddy

Earlier this month a man wouldn’t let me leave his house. I’d voluntarily got in the uber with him, but had changed my mind and wanted to leave before we got in the front door. He said when we were inside I could call another to go home. The house was in the middle of nowhere, I didn’t know where I was and then he said he’d let me call an uber if I got into bed and let him spoon me. I said I wasn’t going to do anything, so he lay there for hours narrating his sex life and holding me down. I was too scared to kick up a fuss because he was far stronger than me. At one point I was hyperventilating and he told me to stop. Eventually, after the whole night of lying there clutching my phone, under his weight, he let me leave at 8 am. What makes it worse is he’s on the same sports team as one of my friends and has told him a very different story. Looking back, I should’ve just called a friend to come get me but I didn’t want to cause a fuss. It was the whole flight or fight thing, but I completely froze. I didn’t properly get scared until I got into my bathroom at home shut the door and it all hit me and I had the worst panic attack I’ve had in years. Nothing actually happened, and I don’t know why it’s got to me so much. Since it happened I haven’t had a proper night sleep, which is making my mood get low and I’m panicking going places that he might be (campus), and what he’s exactly said to my friends.

Angie

A heightened atmosphere of sexuality existed in my first place of employment, a large corporate law firm, in Washington, D.C. It was firm where a majority of law partners and associates were men and all support positions, the secretaries, law clerks, paralegals, receptionists were women. Sadly, the one single woman in a position of power was the hiring manager, yet deliberate in hiring women who met the most important of criteria of being young and attractive. In my twenties, she hired me as a receptionist. At the time I was young and naive and soon became aware of the extra-marital affairs going on between some of the secretaries and lawyers, which was common. While I was working at the receptionist desk, the much older and powerful director and managing partners of the firm came up and asked me to tell them if I thought “bald men were sexy?” Like most men their age, they both had receding hair lines exhibiting male pattern baldness. Feeling like I could lose my job if I said “no,” I was able to gather my wits and respond by saying “I plead the fifth.” They, in their positions of power, chuckled about my quick wit and seemed satisfied with my response. While attending a holiday party that year with my boyfriend at the time, the same managing partner came up behind me and slide his champaign glass down my bare shoulder. I knew I couldn’t go to our hiring manager to complain. After all, he was a senior partner at the firm. It was also the early 1990s when sexual harassment in the workplace was rarely talked about and not usually believed. I’m sharing this now because this and other forms of sexual harassment that I experienced as a young woman, like the catcalls and being groped in public, was normalized by other women, many of whom were in positions of power themselves. Each form of harassment contributed to being self-conscious about my own body for years. There’s a need to need share these experiences so that perhaps men and women realize this shouldn’t be the norm and things will eventually change.

Marisa

I had just finished law school, and was working without pay for an assistant public defender. This man’s boss ordered me into his office for “work”, then locked me in, flung me to the wall, groped and kissed me without provocation. I kneed him hard in the crotch, and he collapsed, so I unlocked the foor and escaped. But it changed my life: I went back to university, and worked very little as a lawyer after that event. (24 years later, he forced another young client into sex, and his licence was revoked for three months.) The worst part for me was that two of my male attorney friends advised me not to make a fuss, because my attacker could legally destroy me. I suffered from feelings of terror and helplessness. Both my male friends apologized, 20 years later, for their failure to support me.

Julie

A man, about 50 years old, asked me in the middle of a street if I wanted a job as his secretary, because he needed someone who is fluent in German. That was a lie, he actually wanted an escort lady. He asked me how old I was, I said 20. He said: “Interesting, my daughter’s 19. THANK GOD, SHE IS A VIRGIN”. I became angry, left at once. When I stood up, he pulled 400$ out of his jacket and waved with them. Apperently he thought I didn’t take the job because I didn’t believe him that he was able to pay enough!!!