Why Can’t Women be Left Alone?
By: Alexandra Tsuneta
Tags: Feminsim, Violence, Women, Equality, Femicide

Why Can’t Women be Left Alone?

Photo by Nadine Shaabana on Unsplash

This morning I woke up to a message on Instagram threatening my life and my husband’s life for “mixing politics with Instagram”. Though not surprising, being told that I should “stop complaining about guns because I’ll be running from one soon”, was a bit startling. However, I was prepared for the commentary because nearly every single day I get a comment on Medium from mainly, old white men, threatening me, abusing me, and otherwise putting their nose where it doesn’t belong. Which, brings me to my query: why can’t women be left alone, why can’t we do anything without receiving commentary from men? I, for one, am exhausted by this behavior. Truly, I am so very tired.

I’m not only tired because I get this kind of unnecessary abuse every day, I’m tired because I grew up with this abuse. I grew up in a racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, fat-phobic, abusive household. I grew up being told to shut my mouth. I grew up being told that if I wasn’t thin I wasn’t worthy. I grew up being told that women do not have a place at the table, we are to be quiet, to shut up and put out, to marry rich, to understand that we are nothing without men. Here’s the kicker, I am not special, this story is the same for most women. Most of us grew up this way.

My first rape was at age twelve, from then I learned that my body wasn’t my own, it was the property of men. This belief has been reinforced every day since then. With men touching me, assaulting me, the two rapes afterward, and now the commentary, every day, on articles about my body, about my lived experience, from men who love to tell me that my body is not my own. The most prevalent example of this commentary is that on an article I wrote about being a tattooed woman, where nearly everyday men tell me to “cover-up” so that I wouldn’t be touched or that my body wouldn’t be commented on. One man even went as far as to tell me that I would be more comfortable in a Burka, which may be true, if not for the fact that women who do wear Burka’s and Hijab get raped, abused, religiously mocked, and are fearful for their lives every day as well.

It does not matter if we are covered up from head to toe, our bodies are not our own, they are the property of the public. It does not matter, because men will interject, whenever they can, to let us know that we are public property.

Even our government will not let us have sovereignty over our own bodies. Our rights are up for debate every four years or whenever somebody wants to remind us that our organs are also public property. We do not have the right to choose whether to have a baby or not to have a baby. Our organs are on yard signs, they are in protests, they are argued about in the law. For women of color, reproductive justice is even further out of reach. Our bodies, even our organs, are not our own. They are the property of the public.

Outside of America, we are forced to iron our breasts and participate in female genital mutilation. We are forced into marriages that we do not choose. We are forced into situations that we have no say in even though those situations are forced onto us, our bodies, our lives, our organs. We have no say because we are not our own, we are the property of the public.

And when we dare to complain, when we dare to fight for our rights, we are told that our fight is useless. We are told that we have rights! We can vote! Yes, we can vote, but can we vote on the fact that we have no rights or sovereignty over our own bodies? Absolutely not. Can we choose what we can do with our own bodies? No. Can we simply walk around and enjoy our day without our bodies being mocked, commented on, shouted at from vehicles on the street, or worse, raped, abused, and killed? No, not yet, not in 2020. Not when Amy Coney Barrett, a woman with literally no experience, is elected to the Supreme Court, only because she is anti-women and LGBTQIA+ rights. Not today. We are not our own, we are the property of the public.

Patriarchal society tells us that men are above us in every single way. They are in charge of what we can and cannot do. Rape culture tells us to be fearful because as a product of a patriarchal society, rape culture allows this kind of behavior. It is normal. Joking about rape is normal. Joking about our bodies is normal. Supporting artists like Little Pump & R Kelly is normal. These are such small examples, but they are pertinent nonetheless.