The Subtle War of Sexual Microaggression

When we ask ourselves why we didn’t say “no” loudly enough, we aren’t asking the right question

On a blind date with a fire fighter, I sat there in the movie theater in silence, trying to twist away from him as he groped me between my legs. Yes, unbelievably, I endured that for two hours instead of demanding that he stop, or better yet, just leaving. Why? Because I had just left an abusive relationship and was afraid of how he might react to being rejected. And because he had paid for our tickets and I felt like I owed him my polite behavior even though he was trying to finger-rape me ten minutes after meeting me.

Years later, with a man I was dating, there was the “head push” to a blow job that I tried to out-maneuver. Outside the bedroom, he constantly rejected my invitations to dinner and would not even tell any of our mutual friends that we were dating. Yet when I became disillusioned with the “relationship” and turned down his offer to go to lunch one day without an explanation, he followed me to my apartment, stood at my door and demanded that I apologize for my rude behavior.

There was the man who grabbed my arm when he wanted my phone number and could see I didn’t want to give it to him. And the co-worker who parked in front of my car one night so I couldn’t leave — not until I agreed to go out with him, he said.

My last partner, in the end, made it clear that he didn’t have feelings for me anymore (little did I know he was dating someone else). But when he was lonely or depressed, he would make sexual advances, and if I denied him, telling him I didn’t want to be intimate until we could get on the same page about our relationship, he’d say I was hurting him, that I was punishing him because he couldn’t give me the commitment that I wanted, that I wasn’t being fair, that I was manipulating him. Once, he pushed me onto the floor, pinned my arms down, and fucked me while I cried and said no, over and over and over again.

And then… A man came along and made not one, but two hard thrusts into my world, declaring his sexual desire for me. The first one seemed innocent enough. A mistake, maybe. The second…no. Surely not after the boundaries I had drawn.

I responded in frustration, my anger tempered far more than it should have been.

And then he told me how hard his life was. How much pain he was in. Hurting so badly from a lack of intimacy. From an inability to connect with his wife. He was so sorry, he said.

My anger suddenly felt wrong. Surely I could have some compassion and forgiveness for this, right? I said it was okay — all was forgiven. I said we could move on in friendship.

But I still felt violated. And when he asked me to trust him, to believe in his care for me, I gave more loyalty to him than I gave to myself.

Everything went downhill from there.

Are we asking the right questions?

I learned to blame myself for most of what went wrong in my relationships — or even dates that went bad or encounters that left me shaken. I didn’t do enough. I didn’t make myself clear.

But how much fault should I actually carry? Certainly not more than 50% — which is far less than the usual weight I take on.

It took the #MeToo movement to finally start internalizing the realization that my feelings matter, too. My boundaries matter, too. My body matters, too.

And yet, still, I find myself feeling trapped and manipulated by these sexual microaggressions (that aren’t always so micro). I often don’t even recognize it when it’s happening, because I’ve been so indoctrinated into the normalization of that behavior.

And afterwards, I still tend to blame myself. Why didn’t I scream? Why didn’t I leave? Why didn’t I block him? Why didn’t I report him?

But are those the only questions we should be asking? Why is the onus on women? As Laura Bates writes in The Guardian:

…our focus remains firmly on how women should tackle and defuse the situation rather than on how we might dismantle male entitlement and abuse in the first place.

This is the first time in my life that I’m asking a different question.

Instead of asking why I didn’t run out of that movie theater or at least insist that my date remove his fingers from between my legs, how about we ask why he felt it was okay to touch my vulva ten minutes after meeting me?

Instead of asking why I enduring the head push and the accompanying dismissive behavior, how about asking why he thought it was okay to follow me home one day and demand explanations and apologies for denying him my attention when I got fed up with his treatment of me?

Instead of asking why I didn’t block the married man who told me he was putting his hand down his pants when he thought of me, despite the conversation we’d had earlier about appropriate behavior, why don’t we ask why he thought it was okay to objectify me in that manner and to make a sexual advance when I’d earlier been very clear about my boundaries with married men?

I’d like to see these conversations happening — not just more often, but every time a sexual microaggression occurs. I want to see women feeling empowered enough to not just call this behavior out, but to do it so consistently that the message starts getting across.

Why is this happening?

There are many reasons behind this kind of behavior, some of which only apply to very specific circumstances. But in my own life, I have seen two specific manifestations of this: one in which the aggressor is simply exercising his culturally-approved dominance and the other in which some men fail to see women as much more than sexual objects here for their gratification. And in fact, these two mindsets often overlap.

Clinical psychologist David Ley says, “There are intense issues of entitlement and power and control that have gone unchecked that lead to situations where men feel it’s perfectly fine to engage in these kind of behaviors.” In other words, the men who do this don’t think they’re doing anything wrong and therefore, there’s no issue in their eyes.

I have seen this time and again, in the instances when I have called someone out on their behavior and they insisted they did nothing wrong. I, in fact, was accused of being unreasonable to perceive any misbehavior on their part.

And then there’s the sexual objectification that blinds so many men, especially if you work in certain types of jobs (like, oh, I don’t know, writing a column about sex…?). Suddenly, you are no longer a real human being. You don’t have feelings, desires of your own, dreams, goals, deadlines, challenges. You are just there to exist for someone’s pleasure.

Shawn Burn, Ph.D., a professor at CalPoly in San Luis Obispo, says women

…sometimes face increased levels of sexual harassment because their jobs implicitly condone their sexual objectification. Some men take this as permission to process and react to these women not as people, but as fantasy sex objects without personal sexual boundaries. [Emphasis mine.]

Being perceived as someone without personal sexual boundaries is a terrifying feeling. I have been there all too many times. It feels like you’re naked, holding up a flimsy dessert plate in an attempt to deflect what’s coming at you and you know it’s inevitable that you’re gonna take a hit, eventually.

Unfortunately, some of these microaggressions are easy to brush off as a faux pas. Just a slip of the tongue (or hand).

But then it happens again. And again. And again. And again.

That’s no accident. That’s no faux pas.

This is not just our fault. This is not just our responsibility. On the contrary — in our culture’s imbalanced power structure between men and women, the aggressors need to be held responsible for their behavior.

© Yael Wolfe 2019