Feeling her Fear

Last week, I partook in my first act of public violence.I was in the women's bathroom of a club, talking tipsy niceties to the line of girls I stood among, all of us waiting for the next stall to open up. From where I stood, I could see the underside of some high heels poking out from beneath a stall door. Someone was on their knees, evidently puking into a toilet. On the other side of the bathroom, I made out one pair of motionless legs over a toilet in their expected position, and another pair of legs pacing inside of the same stall. I didn't mind it much. Typical drunk girls, hanging with their small-bladdered friends in the bathroom. It was all pretty normal. Until a male bouncer barged into the room."We need to get her out—she's been in there for too long," the bouncer said in reference to the girl with her friend in her stall. I thought it was strange that he was less concerned about the girl who was visibly vomiting. In hindsight, the only rationale for this bouncer's choice of target seems to be that the club only wanted to get rid of women who made a public spectacle of their bad time. Maybe they were more concerned with the vibe than with any of these girls' well-being.At first the bouncer just yelled over the door, trying to make the two girls come out. I was next to him now, also trying to cheerily encourage the girl on the toilet to come out by speaking words of comfort through the crack in the stall. But then the bouncer somehow maneuvered the lock and flung the stall door open himself. In a flash, I saw the girl look up, mortified, and hastily pull up her underwear. She had a terrified, vulnerable look on her face. I recognized that look.That look was the combination of fear, helplessness, indignation, and humiliation that us women feel every day. It accompanies our all-too-frequent harassment and harm. Normally, it seeps slowly over us as we mull over a creepy subway encounter after the fact, or while we hear about our friends' most recent awkward escape, or as we read the tragic tales of women who didn't get away in time and the seemingly innocuous lead up to their sad fates. But in this moment, that feeling hit me with force, as if I was in the mind of that scared girl myself. It was so sudden and so raw, I felt like I was being jerked awake. Like someone splashed me with cold water to flush the alcohol fog from my brain.Without thinking about it, I turned and pushed my weight into the bouncer.  I shoved him to the opposite wall, and I only let up when I saw the girls in the stall leave. It was an instinct-driven impulse, but I suppose I was hoping to give the girl some space. It should be known at this point that I am not a very strong person. I think the only reason I was able to knock him over was that he was taken aback. He wasn't expecting me to turn on him. I was taken aback too, because although this was a particularly forceful shove, I had never physically confronted a stranger in my life.While he yelled at me, asking who the fuck I thought I was, the girl had yanked her skirt down into place and scrambled from the bathroom with her friend. I was so relieved to see her go and regain some safety from that creepy, authoritative, unrestricted male gaze, that I didn't even hear the rest of the bouncer's tirade. Still, I walked out of that bathroom more perplexed than vindicated.That night I realized that as a woman, my security and dignity are so easily nullified by such unimportant men for such inadequate reasons. In the act of being catcalled, harassed, or assaulted, my entire being can be reduced to collateral damage or the cost of doing business or just a way to pass time, all of which are infuriatingly meaningless causes for wildly steep emotional and mental costs. As someone so aware of this, there is still so little I can do to protect the women around me from these dehumanizing experiences. Even when I can, like on this night, I can only feel that it isn't enough.I wrote this at the suggestion of a friend, who reminded me that organizing and sharing my thoughts may soothe me and empower someone else. It's hard to feel healed from a lifetime of these experiences, but at the very least I hope this will make some of us feel less alone.