Wanderings in my Mind: Places of the Heart

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Reclaiming our Time, Reclaiming our Bodies and the #metoo Movement

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The women coming forward regarding Joe Biden’s “Handsiness” are being ridiculed, accused of being political pawns, being accused of lying or being oversensitive, “it’s just a hug”, being accused of “being paid” by Republicans to make these accusations.Men and women alike are incensed, saying the #metoo movement has “gone too far.” I have even seen statements that treating “handsiness” as an “assault” is doing a disservice to people who have “actually” been sexually assaulted.

Let us review this movement, because I believe the #metoo movement is evolving now so that it is addressing a CONTINUUM of the bodies of men and women alike, being treated and used by others as their property to force physical and sexual attention and touch that the owner has not been asked for or given consent to touch or use.

It’s only been since 2016 and Donald Trump’s “Pussy grabbing” tape, that we have realized the scope of people, male and female, who have endured physical assaults from grabbing of body parts to rape, to sexual abuse to sexual harassment.  Before that time, none of Bill Cosby’s “victims” was able to gain any traction with police or in the courts, despite the first victims coming forward 20 years ago.  Nor were the gymnasts under Dr. Nassar’s “care” treated as credible sources when they complained to USA Gymnastics or Michigan State University.  It turned out that both entities had known about the allegations for at least two decades.  Dr. Nassar was still being allowed to “treat” patients even as he was being investigated in 2014 and before he resigned from USA Gymnastics in 2015.  Ultimately over 300 victims/athletes would come forward and say they were violated during supposed “treatments”.

Despite the pussy tape and over 20 women coming forward to say they had been violated by Trump, he was still elected and there has been no acknowledgement of any wrongdoing by Trump.

Then the story of decades of sexual malfeasance and manipulation of scores of actresses by Henry Weinstein was broken by the investigative reporting of the New York Times and the New Yorker.  The #metoo hashtag initiated a decade earlier by Tarana Burk, was given new life by Alyssa Milano and the stories of hundreds of survivors, male and female were told throughout the world of social media.   Then the accused in positions of power throughout the entertainment and media industries began to resign or be fired.  These revelations have spread to Universities, Congress, and most recently was a major part in hearings for a Supreme Court Justice. Many livelihoods and careers have been affected or cut short.

Allegations that were never investigated or were never made started filling headlines in droves, showing us that neither Federal nor Corporate Sexual Harassment Policies were being adequately implemented.

And here is where the generational gap comes into play.  Since women have entered society and the work force, fighting off not only sexual advances, but grabbing of body parts, sexual innuendos, cat calls, etc. were just another part of everyday life for women and girls of all ages.  Not until 2016 did our culture change enough that women found the unacceptable no longer an acceptable cost of working with men.  People previously silent, sometimes for decades, finally felt safe enough to come forward to the entities that were supposed to provide safe work environments for all their employees, but also to come forward to tell their stories and say “This has to stop.”  Until then, the onus was on men and women to endure violation of their physical space and bodily autonomy as part of the power structures in place in many work environment.

No longer are butt pats, boob grabs, boob brushes, unwanted kisses, unwanted dick pics tolerated and up to the molested to stop.  No longer are people accepting that they must change jobs and even careers in order to maintain bodily autonomy.

Along with this, we are discovering that young boys as well as girls under the ages of 18 are being sexually abused.  Stats are varied and changing as the whole scope of sexual abuse in our culture is slowly becoming clearer, but the most recent I have seen are 1 in 5 girls and 1 in 7 boys.  This is a major change from the 1 in 53 boys that RAINN is still citing.  Slowly, men of all ages are coming forward with their own #metoo stories. 

I would like to point out that the women who are advocating listening to Biden’s accusers are not complaining about hugs, pecks on the cheeks, pats on the shoulders.  They are complaining about smelling of hair, stroking of hair, hands on the body uncomfortably close to breasts or bottoms, hands resting on thighs, but most of all are concerns for the children who are pulling away, turning faces, hiding faces from unwanted or too familiar touches.  They are not complaining just about over familiarity, but invasion of PRIVATE bodily space without consent.

Yes.  Lucy Flores could have pulled her head forward, turned around and faced Vice President Biden and tell him “hands off”.  But he was the Vice President, present in Nevada to campaign for her.  The power differential here is enormous.

More concerning are the uncomfortable children, who have no voice with adults that they are being asked to trust.  They rely on the adults around them to keep them safe; to be their voices when they’re visibly uncomfortable.  We now know that most child sex abusers are people who are well known and trusted by the very people or ARE the very people who are supposed to keep them safe.  We now realize that “stranger danger” is a myth.  What does it tell the child, when their obvious reluctance to be touched or kissed is overridden by their parents?  What do they learn about their own bodily autonomy?

Most of us still don’t know the history of the people around us.  We don’t know if they had a history of childhood sexual, physical or emotional abuse.  We don’t know if they were assaulted in the Military.  We don’t know what kinds of touch, hugs, kisses are uncomfortable or even triggering for these people.  Because I am a survivor of both sexual and emotional abuse,  and because I want children to know that I respect their autonomy, I ALWAYS ask both children and adults if they are okay with a hug and I respect their answers.  In my work as an Occupational Therapist, I worked with kids with Autism and other sensory processing disorders that made them actually ill or kicked in fight, flight or fright responses when touched, especially without warning.  This can be genetic, but is also a typical response for children who have undergone multiple invasive medical procedures.  It is also a response for soldiers in combat, people who have been physically, emotionally or sexually assaulted, prisoners of war, for people who have been tortured, etc.

It should no longer be up to the individual person to have to fight off unwanted and inappropriate touch.  This is a global concern.  In Africa, some tribes iron the breasts of adolescent girls and bind them so that they don’t attract the unwanted attention of men.  We should not be expecting people to be fighting off unwanted touch.  We should be raising our boys and girls, retraining our adults, to respect the physical space of others including their physical body.  A mature society respects all members, all ages, and all genders and allows them to say how they are to be treated.

Tarin Ann Vincent

Copyright April 3, 2019

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