Don't Touch
We are socialized early to take what men dish out. When the older man put his hands on her, she was talking to the cashier in that animated way of young people sharing some information – I think it was about a band. She wrote down a name on a white napkin for the cashier. She looked happy. Then he was there, the dirty uncle, slipping his hand around her waist. It was unexpected, and so quick. To move from happy to harmed can take a minute and at the end of the minute he was done.
There's no time in their lives that most men are going to know what it is like to move through the world with the constant threat that a man is going to put his hands on you.
The move to a conference room when a man slips his hand into the small of my back as if I have been struck blind and need to be guided into the room. The man slipping his arm around the young woman at the cash register. The touches and adjustments and bumps in any crowded public transit.
