This Is My Brain On Sexual Harassment

WARNING: Strong language and content

 

 

I’m angry. 

I’m angry because I was sexually harassed. I’m angry because I blamed myself. I’m angry because my response to my harasser was “Oh, I’m so sorry, it’s not you, it’s me. You see, I’m the one who’s broken. I don’t respond the way ‘normal’ people do. There’s nothing wrong with you. It’s me. I’m so sorry.”

Yes I’m so sorry that I wore makeup.

I’m so sorry that I cover my gray hair with hair dye.

I’m so sorry that I wore a business suit that actually fits me.

I’m so sorry that my parents decided to straighten my crooked teeth.

I’m so sorry that my eyes are an unusual color and that my cheekbones are high and that my face is arranged in an aesthetically pleasing manner.

Yes I’m so sorry, because you know, all these things - my eye color, my face shape, my straightened teeth, the clothes I wear, my hair dye, my makeup – you’re right, I do it all to attract attention, specifically male attention and then I gloat after I turn men down. Ha! Ha! I got him!

I got him? This makes me angry.

What I got after being harassed at a conference I had worn a business suit to present my original work was days in lock down at home afterwards. I didn’t eat. I didn’t shower. I didn’t go to the gym to work out (something that I love to do because it makes me feel so healthy). I certainly didn’t wear makeup. And in fact I didn’t even get out of my pajamas. I barely left my bed as a matter of fact. I felt so bad that I nearly discarded all of my work on Accidental Talismans. I never wanted to go to another conference ever again.

I’m angry because what I got after being harassed at that conference was the idea that my work was irrelevant. That I was irrelevant. All that mattered about me was that I possessed a hole for a man to put an appendage in – that was what I was worth.

What I got after being harassed at that conference was this notion that I had brought my misery on myself because I wore makeup and dyed my hair and wore a business suit that fit my athletic frame. I blamed myself because I thought I had led men on because I was interested in their ideas and wanted to share my own. “How stupid I was,” I thought. “I led them on.” Because I listened and smiled enthusiastically because I got excited about the sharing of ideas. I blamed myself. “How dare I,” I thought. “It’s my fault.” I got excited so they thought I was ‘sexually’ excited. That’s reasonable isn’t it? So it is my fault.

Would it have made a difference though if my teeth were crooked? Would it have made a difference if I hadn’t worn makeup? And please, explain to me what was I supposed to wear at a conference where I am presenting my work? If a pant suit is not appropriate what is? A bag?

I’m angry because I felt so compelled to blame myself. Instead of shutting down my harasser with, “You’re behavior is out of line,” I instead expounded on how I am ‘broken,” that I don’t respond to courting cues like ‘normal’ people. Courting cues like being told that I needed to have a relationship with a man I had known less than 24 hours because I dyed my hair, wore makeup and had the audacity to wear a business suit.

Why on earth did I do that? 

Well actually for the longest time I really did think that there was something wrong with me. You see, I don’t think about sex, at least not when I meet someone for the first time. I don’t judge people based on their outward appearance, I want to listen to what they have to say. I want to hear their ideas and what moves them. I want to know what they are passionate about and where they want to go in their lives. I am completely confused when a person expresses that they want to have sex with me.

For the longest time I thought there was something wrong with me because no one, ever, in my life has ever once wanted to have sex with me as an expression of their love for me as a human being. They have known nothing about me. For example at the conference my harasser had not yet heard my presentation, he had no concept of my ideology. He had no idea that I loved to sing. He had no idea that I was passionate about fitness. That I love to cook and that I make pies. He didn’t even know my occupation or that I had won awards for excellence there. He didn’t care. Because to him I had a hole for him to put an appendage in. That was it. My ideas, my passions, my fears, they didn’t matter. To him, he had the right to be angry that I didn’t want to have sex with him because my hair, my makeup, the clothes that I wore, they had nothing to do with me. Those things were for his pleasure, because I was irrelevant.

There is something very wrong with this, not with me. 

I am angry because I can’t read a women’s fitness magazine without being bombarded with articles about sex. How to please a man in bed. What does this have to do with fitness? It’s not efficient cardio, so what is it doing in a fitness magazine?

I’m angry because the same women’s fitness magazines tell me how to be “bootilicious.” Bootilicious? So I’m not training for myself, to be healthy and strong, to feel the rush of endorphins and enjoy my life. No I’m training to be bootilicious. I’m not on this earth for myself. Because I’m a woman, I’m irrelevant. I am simply a hole for a man to put an appendage in.

And you know, there’s just so many other holes that I have to be the most bootilicious of the bunch.

Because my hair dye, my straight teeth, my makeup, I can’t possibly be doing that for myself. Why on earth would that be for myself? I’m irrelevant after all, so there must be some other reason that I’m doing it. If I am doing it for myself, then surely there must be something wrong with me. If I’m not interested in having sex with a man, then there must be something wrong with me. I’m the one who’s broken. I must be broken because that’s what women are for. To be holes for men to put appendages in.

Oh and holes don’t have feelings. We are just holes, we’re really not supposed to like the appendages. Nothing is for the woman after all. Women are irrelevant. They don’t have feelings, or ideas and women certainly don’t dye their hair or wear makeup for their own pleasure. No, no not at all. It’s for the pleasure of men.

So yes. I’m so sorry. I’m broken.

I’m broken because I’m not interested in having a man I’ve known for less than 24 hours put an appendage inside of my body.

I’m broken because I have original ideas.

I’m broken because I have feelings. Did I mention that I was angry? 

I'm even angrier because when I made the mistake of admitting I was angry to a another man, I was told that I was the one who had to be “nice.”

 "Oh you can’t say that!” the man said.  

You can’t say “No, thank you,” your kindness will be misleading. You can’t say “Fuck off asshole,” because you’ll be hurtful. You can’t say, “I’m not interested,” because clearly, you are. Because you’re a woman and you dye your hair and you wear makeup and you wear clothes that fit you. Because you can’t be doing any of that for yourself because you’re a woman. You’re irrelevant.

I’m a woman so what I wear is not for me; it’s for the pleasure of a man. And what I say, well, I have to be careful because Gods forbid I upset a man. Never mind that I’m upset, that I wasted several days of my life unable to dress myself at all for fear anything I chose would be misconstrued and inappropriate. I’m a woman, what I feel is irrelevant. I’m not supposed to feel anything anyway.

I’m so sorry.

I must broken.

Because I AM angry.

Fuck off asshole. I refuse to be irrelevant.

It Is Easier to Get What You Want, Than to Know What You Want

It takes me days to compose and implement a magic spell. That time doesn’t include the additional journaling, meditation and dreaming that I do when I decide to go after something I really want. On one hand my meticulous ways ensure for the most part, that my spells work with few unexpected results. One the other hand, this practice makes it exceptionally difficult for me to do “magic on the fly.”

Once, I had to compose a magic spell on the spot during a rather intensive class I was taking on ceremonial magic. I made a hasty decision to cast a spell for debt reduction. I thought that would be a rather safe decision; who doesn’t want to get their finances under control? But not only did the spell not work with my usual rate of accuracy, it backfired horrifically, leaving me in the worst state of financial panic that I hadn’t seen since my divorce.

What the heck had gone wrong?! I thought it had been a good spell, with specific wordage for my intention. And yet the money in my bank account continued to dwindle and my panic continued to rise. So I began journaling and meditating and dreaming to figure out what had gone so horribly wrong. Then one day it was as if the curtain was drawn aside and I saw the Great and Powerful Oz for who he (or she, in this case) really was. I didn’t want debt reduction. I didn’t want it at all. No, even eight years after my divorce, I still wanted to punish myself because in my mind, I was a failed wife and a terrible (single) mother. I was divorced and unwanted. I wanted to be unwanted. I wanted to be a victim. Because then everyone could look at my sad eyes and crumpled form and nod their heads and say, “Oh yes, poor Amy Alice, she’s just been through so much.”

“Well, that’s kind of dumb,” I said.

So then I opened up my spell template (yes I have a spell template – its four pages long) and I started writing about what I was willing to do to get my finances on track. I made a simple decision – I prioritized each bill. If low priority bills only got five dollars sent, that’s what they got. If they didn’t get paid on time, they didn’t get paid on time. I made the decision to work with the resources I had. I wasn’t going to punish myself for not having the same resources as other people or more specifically other women (who were successfully married and not single mothers). I made a decision that I was not a victim.

I made a decision. I made a plan.

What happened next was nothing short of magical. Not only was the debt dwindling, my bills were getting paid on time! And even more shocking – I had money left over at the end of the month. What was so unexplained is that no variables changed: I had the same job with the same income and I had the exact same bills. It just so happens that my union’s contract was finally approved and I did in fact get a raise. That happened after I saw a $1000 dollar cushion in my savings account instead of a negative balance in my checking account. It happened after. It wasn’t the source of the magic, it was a part of it.

Just this year I took my son on holiday to the Cayman Islands and I paid for it in cash.

I still have some debt that I work on each month according to my financial priorities. In my new financial plan, I gave myself to 2018 to eradicate the current debt. I am absolutely sure that I will be able to do that. I am also absolutely sure that I will acquire new debt as I plan to take a loan for my son’s college education. I am absolutely sure I will be able to cross that bridge successfully when the time comes.

I learned something important from that tragically failed debt-reduction spell. I learned that it is so much easier to get what I want than to know what I want. I was so sure that I wanted debt reduction, but in reality I was wearing my debt as a badge of honor, and I wanted that badge – that debt - more than anything else. The moment I let go of that want, it paved the way for new opportunities I had never even allowed myself to imagine were possible.

Imagination is the very foundation of magic. 

I learned that I have got to be open to incredible possibilities, but if I’m clinging so dearly to my limitations, I will never be able to articulate what it is that I want. At least not with any rational perspective. Limitations can be seductive excuses.

Now, I do not mean to say that everyone wishes every calamity that befalls them on themselves. I had cancer. There were enough environmental and genetic explanations for that disaster. I do not believe I wished that on myself with magic. However, my perspective of that situation made a huge difference in my outcome. I could have given up utterly, and succumbed to this limitation in my life. My cancer was not life-threatening, but as it was in my throat, there stood a possibility that my singing voice would be destroyed. But I was open to the possibilities, whatever they might be. It just so happens, my singing voice is even better than it was, probably due to the removal of the huge tumor that was in the way.

One of my favorite aunts, my Aunt Sal, did however, have a life-threatening cancer and she did in fact die from that cancer. I miss her, but I’m not sad for her, because she was also open to possibilities. She turned a six-month life expectancy into five well lived years. She made a decision. She had a plan. Despite her limitations she was going to live her life fully. And she did. She used the resources she had, limitations and all. She knew precisely what she wanted: she would live her life to the fullest for as long as she could; and she didn’t allow her cancer to get in the way of that. Her desire did change after five years though. What she wanted then was to die with dignity surrounded by the people she loved; and she did.

That’s something else about magic, it’s flexible. 

If I really want to do some serious level magic, I have to be prepared that what I want today, may not be what I want tomorrow. Hence, once again it is so much easier to get what you want than to know what you want.

Recently at a conference, I shared this perspective of magic and an attendee approached me in frustration. She had lost her job and was in danger of losing her house - a house that she had struggled to obtain. I asked many questions to help her get to the root of the problem. She couldn’t get a job because she was too old. She couldn’t get a job because she didn’t have the right training or education. She could not under any circumstances let the house go because it had been won in a great legal battle with her family. She could not ask her family for assistance. She couldn’t take a border or a roommate because that was just too dangerous. Over and over again, with each question I asked her, she was determined to give me her limitations. “No magic worked,” she said.

I truly believe that is because like me, she wanted her limitations more than she wanted…a job? Or was it the ability to keep the house? I honestly don’t think she knew. She didn’t know because what she wanted were the limitations. Because of that she was absolutely closed down to any possibility. A plan cannot be made if there is no room for possibility. She was so focused on her limitations that there was nothing she was willing to do.

If she wanted a job and she evaluated her resources, and she determined new training was in order, she could find a training course she was willing to attend.

If she wanted a job and she evaluated her resources, and she determined that she was too old, she could be willing to change her hairstyle, clothes and makeup to make her appear younger.

If she wanted a job, McDonald’s, Walmart and Starbucks are almost always hiring if she was willing to do the work those jobs required.

If she wanted to keep the house she could have looked to her family as a resource, if she was willing to approach them with a plan to share the house that had been such a contention.

If she wanted to keep the house she could employ the resource of a background check service to help her select a safe boarder or roommate.

Or she could evaluate her resources and be willing to sell the house.

She was not willing to do anything except find more and more limitations to her predicament. She wants to be limited, that is what is most important to her. And if she doesn’t change that, no matter how powerful a witch or magician she might be, she will never get a job and she will lose her house.

Magic is not just waving around a pretty stick, magic is driven by will. 

As in: What am I willing to do to get what I really want? If I’m obsessed with my limitations, and my need to be a victim, then I most assuredly will get precisely what I want: I will be a victim. If the only thing I’m willing to do is find every possible excuse for why nothing is possible, then I will get exactly what I want: Nothing will ever be possible.

So then the real question then is: How the heck am I supposed to know what I want? 

Particularly if this magic stuff is so flexible and things change and I change?

I suppose that I have to be as flexible as the magic. My personal solution is journaling, meditation and dreaming with heavy emphasis on the journaling. I would also have to say that magical disasters are great for separating what I think I want from what I actually want. Actually, my debt reduction spell worked like a charm! I was told to declare bankruptcy. That certainly would have eradicated my debt. I came to know that I didn’t want debt reduction. No, I wanted financial freedom. I wanted a little money in the bank and my bills paid on time. More importantly though, I wanted the freedom to make financial decisions without anxiety, even if that decision meant acquiring a little more debt. It’s hard to say if I would have figured that out without the spell steering me towards bankruptcy. It is, without a doubt, much easier to get what I want, than to truly know what I want. Knowledge is often hard won; but nothing worth pursuing is rarely easy to come by.

2018 Update

I thought you'd like to know that as of June 2018 my spell came to fruition and I am now debt-free.

September Lessons

September is my work “birthday,” so to speak.  In September of 2002 I took the job that would alter the course of my life.  Now there are many advantages to my job and I am grateful to have it.  Yet I have often noted that gratitude is a far cry from love.  My gratitude to the job I have held for 14 years now was not helping my attitude which gradually and ever increasingly began to plummet further and further into darkness.

I was sporting full blown depression when I encountered a clever Forbes Magazine Article that changed by life.  My co-workers noticed an immediate change in me, "I am impressed by this new attitude of yours!  It's infectious!" 

I'm laughing more, definitely smiling, and my stress level is the lowest it's ever been.  What is my secret?  What was the life changing article?  “Ten Advantages to Hating Your Job” by Liz Ryan - This article helped me realize that I hate my job, and that is a good thing! 

The reality I have to face in my workplace is that I have to work with some seriously unhappy people.  I’m not referring to those to whom I give service, I can appreciate why they sometimes might be unhappy.  No, the people who really lowered my spirits were my co-workers.  Two workplace bullies in particular who I believe attempt to pleasure themselves by making as many other people as miserable as themselves.  Their antics were demoralizing until this article released me from their tyranny.  Their vile little comments and direct antagonism mean nothing to me now.  They can complain all they want about my behavior.  They can even threaten to go to the supervisor.  But they cannot threaten me with a reprimand in the company file if I have no emotional investment in the company.

Before the realization that I hated my job, a supervisor stopping by would have sent me into a fit of anxiety.  “They think I need a babysitter!  They must think I'm not doing enough!"  Now I refuse to compare my work ethic to anyone else.  I give as much as I am able, that is enough.  The supervisor now gets a true smile and a "thank you for your help."  

And oddly, acknowledging that I hate my job has enabled me to provide better service.  Now, I can give someone my full attention.  "I have all day," I say with a smile.  The next assignment is no longer a source of stress.  I'm in the moment with the person directly in front of me.

However, in accepting that I hate my job, I had to acknowledge the reason why.  I really have learned all I'm ever going to learn at my current job.  It's not about changing locations, it's the actual job.  I have gone as far as I can go.  So now, the quest becomes where do I go from here?  But instead of wasting my energy blaming my job for wasting my time, the responsibility is now on me to seek the answer to that question.

What am I here to do?  That is a huge question.  One Deepak Chopra pressed me to look at in the article “How to Find the Purpose of Your Life.”  I found the idea of making the answer to that question viable every day of my life downright daunting.

I have come to understand that I'm one of those people determined to do what I think others want me to do.  I'm aware that is an impossible task and yet I am still determined to do it anyway.  My martyrdom though is avoiding the question:  what am I here to do?  If I'm busy guessing at what everyone else wants, then I have effectively deflected the question of my own destiny.

Not only am I deflecting my destiny, I’m deflecting people too.  My need to guess at everyone’s intentions gives me quite the excuse to avoid people altogether.  My friends do a remarkable job accommodating me when I routinely bow out of get-togethers.  KJ Dell’Antonia made me think hard about this practice of mine and made me think about my contribution to my relationships in the article “Am I Introverted, or Just Rude?”  

I am finally beginning to understand that if my schedule is full I do not have to overwhelm myself to be of service to others.  I also have the right to say no, just because I want to.  If I begrudgingly do something that I don't want to, I'm not doing anybody any service.  There is a difference however between an invitation from my second cousin whose political leanings drive me batty, and the birthday party of my best friend.  If I fail to show up to the birthday for the second year in a row, that is an issue that needs to be addressed.  I can blame my absence on my schedule and my priorities or on my boundaries and introversion but none of those excuses is going to help me foster my relationship to my best friend.  

Relationships are based on sharing - our time, our energy and our selves.  I can't expect to be exempt from reciprocation.  Parties may not be important to me but if they are important to my best friend, her party should make it to the top of my priorities.  If she really is important to me. 

I can show up.  I can talk to my friend's mother.  I can share how we met with her second cousin whose political leanings drive me batty.  I can choose to put aside my annoyance of crowds and my anxiety of being judged and even my need to guess at what someone else wants me to do.  Yes, it is possible that my friend's second cousin will think I'm a lawless godless witch out to destroy humanity as we know it.  And it is more than likely that I will be unable to correctly guess at the right behavior that second cousin wants from me in order to feel comfortable and not as though she is about to be eaten by the lawless and godless witch.  But so what? I'm not important in these circumstances.  It's my best friend's birthday, it's her time to be important.

And after an hour or two I can go to my friend and say to her, "Happy Birthday! I'm so grateful I had the opportunity to be here with you!"  And then it's not just my words that communicate how important my friend is to me, it's my actions.  They are synchronized.  And that intimacy between us has meaning.

I want intimacy with all things.  

I came across this Matt Daniell’s Ted Talk through the article "Are You Just Sleepwalking at Work?" By Bruce Kasanoff. As I watched this video I realized that I was similarly inspired. I want intimacy with all things. I want to have an awareness of the present moment. I want clarity of focus.

Mr. Daniell points out that receiving is important. Receiving is a step of being present. I have to be willing to receive information not just from my environment but from myself as well. I need to know how I'm breathing and what I'm thinking and what I'm feeling. I need to have this awareness to obtain that clarity of focus with the present moment. If I really want intimacy with all things, I have to be willing to sip my tea, and observe and receive in order to stop the internal war within.

I wasn’t sipping tea, it was coffee when I had the epiphany that I hated the job I have been so grateful for these past fourteen years. When I realized that, I had to face the fact that I’ve been so busy doing this job because that was what I thought everyone else wanted me to do. And then I had to face that I had forgotten who I am.

During the depression that I mentioned, I started to read Rhonda Britten’s book Fearless Living. She has this amazing concept that there is an essential nature to every individual. She gives a list, but there was one word on that list that I would not under any circumstance acknowledge. The word was creative.

One of my all-time favorite actresses is Nicole Kidman. I revere her because in her movies, you don’t see her, Nicole Kidman, you see the character. She’s so good, sometimes she’s unrecognizable until the credits role. It is also true that I think she is the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. For most of my life I believed that I was ugly. I didn’t exactly want to change my body, but I thought I was nothing special and most certainly plain. Then, when my son was still in diapers, one of his babysitters held up a fashion magazine with Nicole Kidman on the cover and she asked my son, “Who’s this?” He responded quickly and simply, “Mommy.” My babysitter was trying to show me something which I refused to see. The woman I revered for her talent and her beauty - I looked like her.

I can also sing and I can also act, like the woman I so revered. I am creative like Nicole Kidman.

Creative is my essential nature whether I want to acknowledge that or not. I am grateful for my job and yet I cannot grow anymore there because it does not allow me to be creative. In fact, my job rather frowns on creativity.

I didn’t really understand why I was so resistant to what was supposed to be my essential nature until during some research for my previous blog post on Accidental Talismans of the Verbal Kind I came across Brene Brown’s Video on Listening to Shame.


She said that among innovation and change, creativity is born from vulnerability. In order to have intimacy with all things I must first have intimacy with myself. I must let go of guessing at what others want, and first consider what it is that I want. That takes great vulnerability.

Looks like I have a great deal of work to do.