It was a chill afternoon in the early 2010s when me and my childhood friend ran away from a security officer in our housing complex. He was calling us, “neng,” a way to address women in Indonesia, while smirking at us. We were barely 10. Another serene morning was ruined by my family’s long-trusted chicken porridge guy. He was looking at me sensually as I came out the house with a bowl on my hand. My hand was still too short to grab the door knob and all I wanted was a breakfast. Years later it is a memory so vividly ingrained without having to dig deep.
I grew up a brave girl. I liked talking to the minimarket cashier, saying hi to strangers on the street, crashing into adult conversations, and made friends with parking men, security officers, small diner owners, you name it. I ended up an anxious woman, walking on pins and needles. I side-eye men I don’t know, release pent-up anger towards men on my Twitter, avoid genuine friendships with men, and wish to be invisible whenever I go out of my bedroom. But I wish I don’t have to.
One day back in high school, we were plucking wild rambutans when a friend asked me, “How are you so close with all those boys?” referring to our male classmates. My answer ever since elementary school would always be, “they’re easy to have fun with. Just throw one joke and they’ll be your friends.” Male friends have always had a bigger share of significance in my social life until my last year of high school. I was never that so-called tomboy, but I was never a feminine either. To me, befriending male friends require less emotional responsibility compared to my ever-oversharing circle of female friends. This emotional withdrawal that I persisted throughout my school years was equivalent to the absence of one thing, though: a sense of safety.
Being a child and all, I was far from understanding what safety actually is. As long as I get home safe and not receive any snack from strangers, like how every parents would tell their kids, I assumed I’m safe. It was not until in secondary school where I first needed safety the most. A male school staff accidentally opened the classroom door when me and classmates (it was an all girls class) were changing for our PE class. I happened to be the one closest to the door, which he saw. A weird and new sensation of heat rushed from my feet all the way to my head. I wasn’t certain whether it was embarrasment, guilt, or fear. What I was sure of was my whole body tremble. In the next few days, he was throwing handkiss to me from a far. I still don’t know why. I was a flat-chested hijabi girl. From that point on, the same rush of heat took over my bodily sensation whenever I see a glimpse of him even from 20 meters afar or 3 stories away, and my initial response was always to hide.
My classmates started to notice that and some offered a form of safety I needed at the time: a warning. They would warn me so I could have more time to hide faster or to stay still with my face covered and not draw his attention. Back then it was enough and my heart would stop beating so fast. It was a turning point where I figured out that I can be emotionally vulnerable with female friends instead of having to withdraw from my feminine nature. And my relationships with male friends? Oh, it went the opposite way.
I noticed they started to demand more. More attention, more ownership, more reciprocation. They would be the one to withdraw from the friendship when their desires aren’t being met. What I used to see as fun and joyous became a testament to my subsistence. I always had to have something I would willingly exchange, or I’ll be abandoned, easily replaced, never to be acknowledged anymore. And I was abandoned, replaced, and no longer acknowledged. This obviously happened repeatedly.
That alongside previous experiences of being stared and gazed at sensually, daily catcalls of my unattractive features and objectively unarousing physique, being put on a pedestal as object of specific desire, not forgetting the constant rejection of genuine affection, which all happened since I was a little girl, fucked up how I view men and my personal sexuality as I transform into a woman. It influenced me stronger than my religious background I confessed with frustration to my parents I will never get married to a man, or at all. Men and sexuality lingered me with a sense of danger I despised all of them but mostly my body. I was ashamed of it and I hated looking at my skin.
God bless, that godforsaken view changed. An ex-boyfriend from high school proved me wrong. I don’t always have to feel dangered around men, I can feel safe. What did he do? Acknowledging my fear of his kind and asking for permissions, on top of firm boundaries that he has set for the best of us. I felt safety again for the first time in years.
God forbid the fear make a comeback, but apparently not right now. I was drown in flashback of my high school past lover when my whole body was trembling again in class not a long time ago. It wasn’t only due to fear. It was disappointment, disbelief, and a poignant distress of irony. A close female friend of mine expressed her disregard of the danger I felt from what I deem as an assault.
It was last year’s christmas when I wished to be uglier. I had just received a confession of what the confessor deemed to be a “divine love” (I puke whenever I think about this). He sent me a jewellery which I threw away, and a letter which I teared and with relief put in the trash bag. I countless times think whether it was a wise response, and more often than not the people-pleaser and masochist moralist in me would answer no, but I had zero regret. Our interaction never exceeded the number of my left hand fingers, I only knew his name, and I wish my friend never had to read out loud what the confessor thought to be a poetic “divine love” declaration. “I’m sure God made you for me,” is one line I remember, aside from, “your silky long hair.” For fucks sake I wish my hair was greasy and frizzy. I wish I hadn’t smiled so much and offered kindness I rather people pray for my death than letting someone I barely know have a sense of entitlement to claim my existence. “What was he thinking when he decided to put the tip of his pen on that cursed paper of confession?” has always been my question. And this, I called as a sexual assault whether people agree or not, and I will later prove it to be true.
The irony is that I expected my female friend to be an ally, as a woman who also have faced a form of creepiness (because apparently not everything is sexual assault!) from men. The world which we live in is nuanced with the reality that women are more physically and sexually vulnerable from men, especially from a biological perspective. And women have been long oppressed and regarded as second-class citizens. We are more prone to abuse and manipulation. These of which are clear indication of power imbalance. For that reason, I always presumed my female friends to treat fellow women from a women perspective, which I supposed should’ve manifested in the act of listening and validating when one is faced with an assault or harassment. This helped me learn safety isn’t about which gender could provide. It’s who wants to provide.
Her message that I’ve deleted but still painfully pierced through my heart did make me rethink whether I was overreacting and being delusional (in a bad way). But I came across what I would quote from the book Know My Name, a memoir by Chanel Miller, “The phrase, sexual assault, is a little misleading, for it seemed to be less about sex, more about taking. Sexual assault is stealing.” There I realized if someone is entitled enough to steal my autonomy of my existence and body, be it hair or ear or toes, I am entitled enough to call it an assault. A sexual assault.
Apart from the consultation with my therapist regarding this, I try to calm myself down and trace back how this seemingly gender-centric (turns out not!) shitstorm have affected me. I was never touched, never got physically raped, yet I feel terribly harrased and awfully wounded. I came to one conclusion: I’ve always feared being stripped of the entitlement to my physical, mental, and emotional autonomy, which a lot of men have done throughout 19 years of my life, and which some women have invalidated.
The security officer, the porridge guy, the school staff, the weirdo who confessed and the rest of history left unspoken were feeling entitled to do what they did. I was a girl, innocent and would buy into anything, and had no intelligent dominance or physical power. Now I am a woman, who is seen as submissive when I am trying to be kind, and seen fuckable when I participate in the society. The gender power imbalance that is particularly reinforced by the patriarchal society will continue to allow men to feel entitled, without ignoring the fact that women can be guilty in this too.
I have always wondered why religious scriptures, even those concerning women, are mostly written and dictated by men, why women’s health and psychology are defined by men, why men have more control over what a woman does and doesn’t in general, and why women are always made to believe our response to the reality that we are facing isn’t the truth. The answer is the same as what backed up the legacy of sexual violence, harassment, and assault towards women.
Entitlement.
