I was filling my car up with gas, when I heard a car drive by. The male driver yelled, “Hey, hey can I take a pretty Mama to lunch?” My back was to the car as it drove by, so I didn’t turn around. I was worn down. I didn’t have the energy to face sexual harassment, name it, and fight it in the parking lot of a gas station.
Sexual harassment is defined as:
harassment (typically of a woman) in a workplace, or other professional or social situation, involving the making of unwanted sexual advances or obscene remarks.
But too often when I have pointed out that a comment is sexual harassment, the response I’ve received is, “It was just a joke. I was only kidding.” It’s not a joke. It’s an attempt to make a person feel uncomfortable and unsafe. It’s testing boundaries of professionalism to see how someone will respond and react. And it’s always directed at an individual, usually a woman, to exert power over that individual.
It’s not a joke. It’s sexual harassment. It’s sexual harassment when it’s spoken out loud. It’s sexual harassment when it’s sent in a text message. It’s sexual harassment when it’s sent in a DM on social media.
Until we, as a society, can be brave and courageous enough to name sexual harassment when we experience it and when we hear it, we will continue to have 1 and 3 women who report that they have been sexually harassed in the workplace. We will continue to have to wrestle with the fact that
Every 98 seconds someone in the U.S. is sexually assaulted. That means every single day more than 570 people experience sexual violence in this country.
We have created a culture where sexual harassment, violence, and abuse is normal. It doesn’t get us riled up. It’s so common, we just gloss over it, explaining, “We all make mistakes.”
I want to create something new. I don’t want this to be the culture my children grow up in. I don’t want to have to tell my girls that they should report these incidents, but they probably won’t have any action that follows the report.
Thanks be to God, for good people working and hoping that we can together create something better.