Let's talk about it

I would like to invite you to join me in a conversation.  It may not be an easy topic to discuss and it is only one of many problems that we have in society today, but I still would like to invite you to join me.  Your role right now is to listen.  And if you need some guidance as to how to prepare to listen, please first check out my post titled “Shut up and listen (please)”. 

For as long as I can remember, I have heard people say that a girl needs her father to show her how a man loves a woman.  When she doesn’t have a fatherly example of love, she will grow up seeking it in other men…men who are similar to her father.  If her father was absent or abusive, then she will likely end up with someone who has those same character traits.  So she becomes stuck in a cycle of moving from bad man to bad man.  It’s an interesting theory and I know that I can’t be the only one who has heard it.  Maybe there is evidence-based research to back this up, maybe not.  What I am more concerned about this narrative and others like it, though, is the tales they tell us about women.

We hear so many negative stories about women that sometimes it is difficult to comprehend just how they have shifted our perception of them.  I never thought about it as a kid.  I was a huge tomboy, as they say, and had a large number of boys for friends.  I could play video games for hours, collected an endless amount of Pokémon cards, and wasn’t afraid of a wrestling challenge (which I usually won, of course).  It didn’t matter that we were boys or girls because we were friends.  Slowly, it all changed, though.  Once a child roaming freely amongst her peers, now an adult fearful of men.  In a world where the power to create the narrative is in the hands of men, our lives, whether we consciously know it or not, have all been impacted and it’s created a world of women who suffer as a result. 

Before I go any further, I want to clarify a few things.  This post is not a political statement nor is it an attack on any one person.  It is a post about my experiences, just like all of my previous posts.  I’ve never shied away from sharing difficult stories from my life because I believe, in the right context, vulnerability allows us to grow together.  It is always up to you to interpret them as you will, but I do hope that you will put aside any lenses (or biases) you may have in order to hear me out.  I am sorry if whatever I share makes you feel uncomfortable, but I challenge you to ask yourself, “Why?”  Why are you upset or defensive?  A major life goal of mine is to foster connection and we need to have these difficult discussions that evoke difficult emotions in order to do so.  Also, probably most importantly, this is not ONLY a Ugandan problem.  The entire point would be missed if you could say, “Well, she must be talking about Uganda because that’s where she’s living…so it cannot be a problem here.”  This problem is an issue all over the world (that we may never resolve), but one that I cannot keep quiet about or try to work towards mending.

I love being a woman because it is at the essence of who I am as a person.  I am who I am largely due to my sex and I enjoy it!  One thing I never understood was why girls hated on other girls saying that they “caused drama” because I didn’t like this division amongst us.  And let’s be honest – boys can also cause just as much drama as girls.  While I will always love this part of me, I have learned about the hardships of what it means to be a woman in this world.  Somewhere in humanity’s history, my guess is at the very start, women have been made less than to men.  I’m not talking about the way there is something innately built into men be leaders, but about a classification as being a less human than men.  This once harmonious leadership instinct has been twisted into what it is not because we, unfortunately, live in an imperfect, sometimes cruel, world. 

I hate being a woman for this very reason because, somehow, it is okay for men to treat me any way they would like…what does it matter if she’s just a woman?  I’ve shared about how I am hyper-visible in my community and stand out no matter what I do to blend in, but it’s not a woman’s eye that I fear whenever I leave my house.  Sure, being a mzungu warrants a type of extra attention, but my sex then determines how I will be treated by others.  I once was violently grabbed as I was walking in a Kampala market by a man selling some electronics.  The man who did it and his friends laughed at me when I gave him an angry glare and pulled my arm out of his grasp.  Later, I told my colleague about what had happened and how badly I felt about it.  She completely understood because this happened to her frequently, which is why she kept her finger nails long so that she could pinch the men who did this to her as a way to frighten them to let her go.

That incident was not the only time that I have been involuntarily touched by a man.  While it in no way excuses the behavior, I, thankfully, am not frequently touched by men.  Yet it has happened enough to put me on guard and ready to respond in any given moment should it happen again; it’s exhausting.  However, I sometimes wonder if I will be able to use my response because I seriously fear a man’s retaliation.  On one occasion, I had two men calling out taunts as we passed one another on the street.  When I didn’t respond to them, they said, “Fuck you, mzungu,” in harsh tones and crude laughter.  What if I tell a man to get his hands off of me and he decides he wants to do more than touch me?  Because I know that if a man truly wants to display his power over a woman, there is nothing she can do but fight back in order to stop the assault.  She is, just a woman, after all and sometimes “women need to be put into their proper place.”

Men may not always be touching me with their hands, but they nearly always are touching me with their eyes or words.  I have been shouted at and whispered to by random strangers, being told how “beautiful” and “sexy” I am as I mind my own business walking through town.  I had a tall man once stand very close to me in the supermarket line with his hands on his hips looking me up and down with a smirk on his face.  But I absolutely hate when men come at me in a group when I am alone.  Like the time I was getting a rolex (a popular Ugandan street food consisting of an omelet rolled in chapatti) at night and men passing by on the street decided to stop and holler at me.  It was not too late, maybe 7:30, but I was alone, simply waiting for my food to be done while five men laugh and shout at me for attention.  Once they stopped, I had to watch them walk away to make sure that they were not simply moving somewhere to wait to follow me home.  It is intimidating enough when it is one-on-one, so a cluster of them is a bit terrifying and overwhelming. 

Women never do these things to me.  It’s not that I haven’t been taunted by women in the community, because I most definitely have, but mostly women leave me be.  And when they do try to talk to me, it’s a very straightforward “how are you” and we go about our days…they don’t follow me or speak in strange ways or come at me in groups. 

There are some truly kind men.  I have walked by guys who say “how are you” and just keep going like it’s a normal day.  Others have looked out for me against men who have tried to inappropriately approach me.  I have worked with some men who have treated me respectively as a colleague.  Some still have encouraged me of my worth and spoke life into my spirit.  I am not saying that these types of men do not exist, but I have had one too many married men with children approach me to start a romantic relationship as well.  The negative outweighs the positive.  It’s heartbreaking, yet this negative reality is the reality for so many women worldwide.  It all goes back to the narrative in place that women are not worthy as humans to be treated in a respectful, loving, nurturing manner.  If this were not the case, then people would not kill newborn baby girls in their first minutes of life because of their sex…girls (and women) would not be sold into sex slavery against their wills for the pleasure of men.

So now what?  Again, I wish I had the answers for how to make it all better.  While I don’t know how to make this complex problem fixed worldwide, I do know that it starts with a conversation that is filled with vulnerability, empathy, and active listening on both sides.  I’m tired of hearing reasons for why people cannot be empathetic.  And I’m strangely suspicious that people don’t want to experience empathy because we are afraid about what we will feel about ourselves if we connect with others in this way.  But something that people fail to see about empathy is that empathy does not demand for you to completely understand my experience…empathy makes up for this deficit and allows you to connect with me through our similar experiences, emotional or otherwise. 

Maybe you are a man and feel like you have no idea what I am going through because you have never experienced them yourself – it’s a foreign concept to you that a woman would feel this way about a man.  I get that because you have never had to think about the world in this way, but I know you can relate to me in some way because you (hopefully) have emotions.  So if you have ever felt afraid or lonely…confused, betrayed, hurt or frustrated…angry, violated, or heartbroken…if you have ever felt even one of these emotions, then you can understand me on some level.  Our emotional experiences are shared, even if the reasons for them are completely different, and this means you can begin to understand my experiences, too. 

As humans, we are so bad at being wrong.  We would rather stick to our pride than admit to our wrongdoing.  Someone could even be speaking on behalf of a group of people who need a voice but could be doing so with malice.  Whether it is black or white, right or wrong, hate should never be a factor because hate cannot settle our differences.  I feel so lost in this world where hate and anger have been the primary methods in which we all communicate with one another.  This may come as a shock to you (maybe not now after what you’ve just read), but I really, truly dislike people.  The reason I studied social work was the result of my deep love and concern for humankind but, during my Peace Corps service, I realized how much I didn’t care about people because of how horrible they could be.  I had a bit of a crisis because I had dedicated my life in servitude to people who did not deserve it. 

Then I remembered my favorite scene from Wonder Woman (spoiler alert).  It was the moment when Diana realized that humans truly did not deserve her, but she was not going to allow the shortcomings of humans stop her belief in love and kindness.  So I can’t say that I believe in or even care for humanity anymore, but I do believe that this world should be one filled with love, hope, and safety…and I will do what I can to make it that way for those around me.  Our differences are not what divide us. This is not a war of women against men; it is a war of humanity versus our own corruption, our own ability to cause destruction to those around us based on the darkness in our hearts, and we all need to band together to fight it.  Until we are able to allow ourselves to recognize this, we will continue to be utterly divided. 

If I am asking for too much, then thank you for listening; it’s a start and all discussions must have some beginning.  I am convinced that if we could have these types of conversations that our differences would no longer need to divide us.  And you don’t have to be perfect in order to engage others in this way.  A big part of vulnerability is being willing to ask for forgiveness and being willing to forgive others.  I am not perfect.  I have hurt people in the past and will probably hurt people in the future; I am stubborn, want to be right and sometimes impulsively act/speak.  The act of dying to one’s self is the hardest journey I’ve engaged thus far…I have to purposely choose every day (and some are harder than others) to practice this type of mindset, but it is necessary in order to build connections with others.  We are all human, after all, and can do so much better than we have done.  TOGETHER. 

Xoxo,

Emilia

DISCLAIMER: The contents of this website are mine personally and do not reflect any position of the U.S. government or the Peace Corps.