fightback

Elsbeth

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Jerusalem – 3rd of April 2018 The following happened to me on my way home from the city centre to Damascus Gate after midnight: I spent the evening with my temporary lover and decided to walk home to my flat in the Old City. Since it was already past midnight streets were pretty empty. I am not afraid to walk alone through parks in the dark and I do feel safe in public spaces. The experience of being sexually assaulted hasn’t changed this in my case even though it shook my sense of safety. Two guys approached me while I was walking on Yannai Street. Since I wasn’t interested in chit chatting I tried to pass by without giving them much of attention. From then everything seemed to happen pretty fast: They didn’t let me pass and one of them pushed me with both of his hands against a fence next to the walkway. Meanwhile his friend started to grab me under my shirt. He touched my belly, my back and parts of my breast. For seconds I was totally paralysed. I couldn’t move and felt the weight of patriarchy crushing me down. My female body seemed to belong to anyone else but myself. This feeling of powerlessness and objectification let me freeze like a statue not able to defend myself verbally or physically. After my self-esteem kicked in again I took advantage of creating a moment of surprise and pushed away the guy who was trying to fix me against the fence making a necklace out of his hands for me. Doing so gave me the opportunity to run away. Shocked and not able to express myself properly I arrived back at my lovers place and shared briefly what just happened to me. He hugged me and it actually felt good to entrust my body to a male person after experiencing sexism in such a way. Not knowing how to deal with the situation and with the good intent not to enforce him on me that person left me alone in his bedroom in order to finish a movie he was currently watching. Feeling vulnerable, alone and fragile I didn’t even come up with using obvious resources such as calling feminist friends or asking my lovely roommate to pick me up. Once again I haven’t felt treated as a subject that deserves attention and care. Finally I stayed overnight at his place and managed to express my needs and feelings towards him. What I realised after this experience is that sexism is part of my life. This could have happened anywhere to me. As a feminist it is part of my daily struggle to raise my voice in order to strive for, amongst others, the equality of the sexes. Besides that I believe we have to share our stories with our male counterparts. We can expect more from them than sexist behaviour. In fact we have to reach out for men as allies we can trust. Furthermore I want to point out that texting my best friend after getting home safe on a random night out is not overly cautious. It is damn necessary even though we are living in the 21st century. We are not all simply human beings. Not yet!

Marga

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Berlin – Disco Havanna, 7th of April 2018, around midnight I was out with friends in a salsa club and wanted to go to the restrooms while my friends were still dancing in the 1st floor. So I went down the stairs on my own to the ground floor. Two guys came towards me (I wasn’t even paying attention to them really, there were so many people going up and down the stairs) but then out of the blue one of them took some strong steps in my direction trying to kiss me. I blocked him by holding his shoulders and then tried to tell him that this kind of behavior is not cool, that he is crossing a limit and that he should never ever do that again, to no one. But instead of understanding he just moved his head towards me again, trying to kiss me a second time. So I slapped him in the face and started to shout at him, on what the hell he thinks he is or what gives him the right to behave like that. In this moment his friend joined the scene, holding my shoulder and trying to convince me that there is no problem, and I was overreacting and so on. I was getting more and more upset and pushed his arm away and told him in a quite angry voice not to touch me. That pissed him off so he tried to push me away now, saying things like, “Ok, crazy girl, she is totally overreacting…etc. etc.” By that time we were already heavily arguing down the stairs and I considered just leaving, but that behavior (turning the whole thing around and making me the person losing the temper without reason) really made me angry. Luckily there was a girl that saw us and she asked me if everything was all right. I would like to say thanks again to that woman who gave me the support and the confirmation in that moment that something has to be done and that it is not ok to accept this as something normal and ignore. I spoke to the security and they immediately took action. I have to admit that I was positively surprised about how they dealt with the situation. We searched for the two guys and found them (there was another person that had seen the situation as well and that told us where they were) and I was asked if I wanted to make a formal complaint but then I just said no and the guys were just thrown out of the club. I don’t know if it would have been better had I filed a formal complaint. One of the security personnel told me later, when I went back in, that I was wrong not to do it. But in that moment though I wasn’t sure if that would not be overreacting somehow. Retrospectively, now I ask myself if that is not exactly what the patriarchal society makes us believe every day (and what that friend-guy also told me), that we are overreacting when affected by sexist behavior and unfortunately, in the end we believe it (because it is so ingrained in our heads) knowing at the same time that it is NOT true and that we are NOT overreacting.