The wOmAn’s dilemmA: mAn Or mOnsTer?

Trigger warning: Includes mentions of sexual assault and harassment.

When I was nine, the son of my next-door neighbor put his hand in my pants while we were swimming in his pool. Later that day, his brother watched me through a window as I changed in the bathroom. this in the right situation? The perfect circumstances—down to the ambiance, the time of day, the alcohol content. Is this evil just waiting in all good men, dormant, like some kind of virus? Perhaps it is parasitic, and my dreams are its host. Perhaps that could

Even as a young child, my first instinct was not one of recoil— of disgust and offense—but rather shame and insecurity; he had seen my ugly, prepubescent body naked.

When I was twelve, jumping awkwardly at my first school dance, a boy pulled the hem of my sleeve to tell me, “I can make you feel pressure between your legs.” I wanted to laugh out loud at his overblown confidence. By that point in my adolescent life, my faith in boys had already been eroded. I knew the lay of the land; I no longer flinched in surprise when boys rated our swimsuit bodies during P.E. or groped us on “Slap Ass Friday” in the hallways. Depressingly enough, I bought into the mantra we all know: boys will be boys.

When I was thirteen, a senior prodded me to tell him “how

“far” I’d gone. “Have you touched yourself?” His eyes gleamed with satisfaction, and I wondered if he Picture this. Just the right parI feel like I’m shouting ty, with just the right number of guests and just the right reverbergot some sick pleasure out of the question. Maybe the answer would be material for him to think about while he masturbated. Maybe to gauge how “pure” I was—innocent, untouched by the hungry, corrupting hands of lust—and fantasize about the extent to which he may unravel me. The thought that my mere existence could be so sexual in the eyes of a man disgusted me to my core.

When I was fourteen, a boy in my grade wrote two erotic stories about me and a couple other boys who had been crushing on me. They spread through text message, and I got a firsthand glimpse of how boys saw me. A perverse fairytale through which I could grasp the fruits of their desire. I, a scrawny, awkward nerd with A-cups, was depicted as some sort of sex goddess—an object to satisfy these boys’ desires. The blue sweater I wore to school every day was a garment I could seductively remove, and my flat chest was a pair of “cute boobs.”

When the administration called me in to testify about the stories and against a student who would eventually be expelled, I felt surprisingly indifferent. Numb. And, somehow, I found my feminist self shrugging and repeating the same phrase I’d vowed never to believe: “boys will be boys.”

Sitting here, recounting this, I’m stupefied, and all my brain and fingers know to do is write. Write to vent, write to educate, write to “raise awareness.” It all feels so futile, knowing my words will never reach the ears of those who need to hear them. And, if they do, they might just smirk with the knowing air of someone who won’t be caught or insist they’re not like the men I speak of.

In all of this confusion, I have one question. Are they all like explain the nightmares that leave me paralyzed with defeat in the dead of night. In my dream, I am talking to a friend. He is telling me it wasn’t his fault, and to trust him, and that she wanted it. In the next dream, a handsome man with friendly features is breaking into my home and telling me to be quiet. In the next, I try to scream, try to move, but I can’t. I am silent and still, waiting for what is inevitable. Waiting for the day that I, too, can add my name to the statistics, add my account to a catalog of sad stories we read online. I think this to myself in the calm of dawn as early birds begin to chirp—the only welcome I receive upon waking up from my nightmare. I find myself crafting scenarios that could unearth that virus, that urge—that instinct in hibernation. into a void. I feel like ating bass, deafening everything in its wake. Just the right low lighting we’re all too far gone and just the right amount of guests wallflowering in the corner, dancto call out misbehavior ing with friends, throwing back shots, hooking up on the couch, so you can slip away with just the right when we see it. I feel like vulnerable drunk girl, undetected. It was consensual, right? You I don’t trust myself to tell hardly know, and who could blame you? The night was a whirlwind, the difference between a and now, you have a headache— just go to sleep and forget about it. ” There won’t be any consequences, after all. Maybe a questioning text in the morning from a girl you used to be friends with and the awkward distance that ensues. But you get to keep the rest—your friends, your family, your education, your reputation. What a deal. I don’t know what my point is, exactly. What I do know is that a man and a monster. friend I trusted to accompany me home when I was being harassed by a man in my neighborhood is now being investigated for raping one of my classmates. What I do know is that a sober man will jump at the opportunity to hook up with a drunk girl. What I do know is that I don’t have enough fingers to count the number of women I know who’ve been assaulted. I feel like I’m shouting into a void. I feel like we’re all too far gone to call out misbehavior when we see it. I feel like I don’t trust myself to tell the difference between a man and a monster. And, most of all, I’m struck with a profound sense of mourning. What does it mean to be a good man? And are there any left?