Our Bodies, Ourselves (153 page)

Many women who experience stalking feel forced to move residences, change jobs, or alter daily habits. Stalking can also involve damaged property and strains on personal relationships.
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Sometimes stalkers not only stalk the woman, but also follow partners, children, or other family members to “get” at the woman being stalked.

Although stalking is considered a crime in all U.S. states, prosecution presents challenges in many places. In thirteen states, the initial offense is considered a misdemeanor, and it is not until there is a repeat offense that stalking is considered a felony. Many actions such as persistent calling, sending gifts, emailing, or waiting at the victim's place of work or home are not crimes and are, in fact, considered—in different circumstances—positive actions. For this reason, stalking can be difficult to prove. For many of us who seek help from law enforcement agencies, the only course of action is to charge offenders with nonstalking crimes, such as burglary, vandalism, sexual assault, and violation of a protection order. Many law enforcement personnel lack the proper training to handle stalking cases.
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According to a Network for Surviving Stalking survey, police often do not take stalking seriously, with half of the participants reporting they were told they were being paranoid; 17 percent were told by police officials that they were lucky to receive such attention.
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Stalking is unpredictable and dangerous. Here are some tips on how to proceed if you are being stalked:

• Change your patterns—vary your actions and your travel routes.

• Keep a log of all encounters with the stalker and a record of all attempts to reach you.

• Don't communicate with the stalker or respond to attempts to contact you.

• Make a safety plan. (See
“Making a Safety Plan” on.
)

• Let your friends, family, and neighbors know you are being stalked. Circulate a picture and physical description of the stalker.

• Protect your personal information (bank account information, private records) by using a safe for documents and a shredder for discarded documents.

• Install dead bolt locks (ask your local locksmith for recommendations) and hide all keys. Nonpickable locks and restricted locks are expensive, but if you have the money, it may be worth the investment. If you have the funds, install an alarm/security system.

When I was sleeping over at my grandparents', I awoke in the middle of the night and noticed my cousin touching my private parts. He told me to shush and that everything was fine. He explained to me that this is what cousins do and that it was okay, but it should still remain our little secret. Since he was ten years older than me I listened to him. He did it whenever he came over, and I never knew what he was doing was wrong until two years later when my best friend moved back to her grandmother's without her mom. She had to come back because her stepfather had raped her, and it had started out with just the touching. It wasn't until this moment that I knew what my cousin had told me was a lie. I became very scared to tell everyone. I didn't want my mom to get mad at me and I didn't want to be taken away from my family. I decided to keep it a secret.

Sexual abuse of a child occurs when an older or more knowledgeable child or adult forces, tricks, threatens, or pressures a child into sexual awareness or activity. Sexual abuse is an abuse of power over a child and a violation of a child's right to normal, healthy, trusting relationships.

Although the common image is of a male abusing a female child or teen, women also commit sexual abuse, and boys are also victims.
Trusted adults who abuse children and teenagers include parents, uncles, aunts, siblings, cousins, stepparents, grandparents, coaches, babysitters, teachers, clergy, and day care operators. The abuse is called incest when the abuser is functioning in the role of a family member, whether or not he or she is biologically related to the child. (In some states, however, foster parents are not included.)

The extent of incest and childhood sexual abuse is hard to measure because of lack of reporting and uniform definitions and the limits of memory. Also, partly because children rarely receive education that would help them recognize sexual abuse, children frequently do not know that they are experiencing sexual abuse at the time, or cannot give a name to it, even though many later do. A conservative estimate is that one in five girls and one in thirteen boys in the United States have been sexually abused as children. Other sources cite figures of about one out of six boys and one out of four girls. In 2004, the U.S. Department of Justice reported that 15 percent of all sexual assault and rape victims were under age twelve, and 29 percent were between age twelve and seventeen.
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Incest and sexual abuse of children take many forms, including different kinds of body contact (for example, sexual kissing, sexual touching and fondling, and oral, anal, or vaginal sex). Sometimes the abuser uses sexually suggestive language, or shows private parts, or exposes children to adult sexual activity like pornographic movies. Abuse may also include verbal pressure for sex, and having children pose for pornography. The abuse often begins gradually and increases over time.

The use of physical force is rarely necessary to engage a child in sexual activity because children are trusting and dependent and are taught not to question adult authority. Because of this, children may have no physical signs of harm. Sexual offenders often use the child's trust and dependence to initiate sexual contact and to ensure continued sexual access to the child.

Sexual abuse in childhood has lifelong consequences. Some children and teens run away from home to escape abuse; experience depression; or use drugs, alcohol, food, or sex to dull the emotional pain. Victims of sexual abuse who act out may do so by abusing others. Often survivors of childhood sexual abuse blame themselves long after the abuse has ended—for not saying no, not fighting back, telling or not telling, having dressed or acted a certain way, or trusting the abuser. The young woman whose cousin molested her continues:

Today I am in college and this secret has turned me off toward men. I get very jumpy when a man tries to touch me or kiss me and that is why I have not had sex with a man. I just can't do it. And it makes me mad because I would love to have a husband and a family but I just can't bring myself to let a man hold me.

It can help to remember that what happened was not your fault. Those of us who have been sexually assaulted in any way are not to blame.

Healing from the trauma of incest or early sexual abuse can be helped by talking about it with people who can understand and empathize. Try to find someone who will listen to your individual experience rather than decide in advance what you should be feeling or what effect the abuse has had on you. Talking with others in counseling or in support groups may break the silence, help us gain perspective, and end the isolation. Some of us find it helpful to confront family members who abused us. Survivors must be prepared for the possibility that the abuser will deny the assaults and fail to provide an appropriate response when confronted. As with any decision about healing, we must make our own decisions about the steps we want to take.

Sexual harassment is unwanted sexual attention. It includes leering, touching, repeated comments, subtle suggestions of a sexual nature, pornography in the workplace, and pressure for dates. Sexual harassment is not limited to the workplace or school. It can include doctors with patients, welfare workers with clients, and police officers with the public, and occur during any interaction involving an abuse of power. In addition to men harassing women, women can harass other women, and men can be harassed by other men or by women. Sexual harassment can escalate, and people who are being sexually harassed are at increased risk of being physically abused or raped.

In the workplace, we may experience a direct or implied threat, such as, “Have sex with me or you will be fired.” A hostile work environment can interfere with the ability to do our job, whether the harasser is an employer, a supervisor, a coworker, a client, or a customer.

Socializing at work often includes flirting or joking about sex. While this is sometimes a pleasant relief from routine or a way to communicate with someone, this banter can turn insulting or demeaning. It becomes sexual harassment when it creates a hostile, intimidating, or uncomfortable working environment. Refusal to comply with the harasser's demands may lead to reprisals, which can include escalation of harassment; poor work assignments; sabotaging of projects; denial of raises, benefits, or promotion; and sometimes the loss of a job. Harassment can drive women out of a job or the workplace altogether. Poor women, immigrant women, older women, and teenagers are especially vulnerable to sexual harassment because they often have less power in the workplace and greater difficulties finding other employment.

When sexual harassment happens in a school setting, it can have devastating effects on a young person's life. One sixteen-year-old girl describes her experience:

It came to the point where I was skipping almost all of my classes, therefore getting me kicked out of the honors program. I dreaded school each morning, I started to wear clothes that wouldn't flatter my figure, and I kept to myself. I'd cry every night when I got home, and I thought I was a loser.…Sometimes the teachers were right there when it was going on. They did nothing.
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A college student looks back:

My coach sexually harassed me for the majority of my senior year in high school. I was heavily involved in the activity, and we had a close relationship—one I had always assumed was strictly platonic. I turned 18 early senior year, and after my birthday things began to get strange. I didn't really think anything of it, but his actions got progressively more blatant. After talking to older girls that had already graduated, I learned he was well practiced in his harassment—he never did anything physically obvious, but the things he said, asked, and implied made me so uncomfortable I couldn't go near him. I stopped participating in the activity I had dedicated my high school career to. Even now that I have moved across the country and stopped all communication, thinking about the activity, him, or anything related makes me nauseous. My male adviser in college makes me uncomfortable, even though he has been nothing but polite and professional. I blame myself for not noticing, for running away instead of standing up to him. I used to see myself as a strong, take-no-shit woman. I'm afraid I'll never be the same.

Because there is a strong taboo against identifying sexual harassment, when we first experience it, we may be aware only of feeling stressed.
We may develop headaches, anxieties, or resistance to going to the setting in which it occurs. It may take us a while to realize that these symptoms come from being sexually harassed. We may blame ourselves and wonder if we did something to provoke the harassment. We may also be afraid to say no or to speak out because of possible retaliation. But when we take the risk and talk with other women, we often find others who are being or have been harassed and have responses similar to ours.

I experienced a graduate school sexual harassment scenario with an adviser and trusted colleague. It got ugly, then it got uglier, and we have managed to bring reconciliation (through a long arduous process and a restoration of power) to ourselves and to the department. Facing that situation, challenging the behavior, defining my own boundaries, reclaiming power, and then, eventually, opening up to reconciliation, forgiveness, and dialogue, was one of the most empowering experiences of my life.

Sex work is an umbrella term that refers to a variety of jobs within the sex industry, including prostitution, exotic dancing, phone sex, and work in the pornography industry. The majority of women involved in sex work in the United States do so involuntarily, out of economic desperation. Women involved in prostitution are often recruited when they are young, frequently by boyfriends, family members, or other people they know. Some have run away from home as teens—sometimes to avoid sexual abuse or physical violence, or to escape antigay or antitrans hostility—before being coerced into sex work with promises of money and security.

I ran away from home, and I met a woman who brought me to her boyfriend, who I later found out was a pimp, and that guy raped me, over and over.…He then brought me to his friend, another pimp, and sold me to him, and from the age of 12 years old until I was 35 and too drugged out to work, I was a prostitute.

Poverty and the lack of economic alternatives are what drive most people into sex work. The majority of sex workers worldwide are women of color, and/or very poor. Women (and children) at the bottom of the sex work ladder end up having to work in higher-risk settings and perform the unsafe acts demanded by some clients, like sex without a condom. They are often trafficked across state lines or from other countries. (For more information, see
“Sexual Exploitation of Women and Sex Trafficking,”.
)

A smaller number of women who work in the sex industry actively choose to do so for various reasons, including money (for those in control of earnings); a sense of power and independence; or as a way of working out personal issues. Activists among voluntary sex workers affirm that sex work, when chosen, is a valid and not shameful occupation and that good working conditions, decent health care, control of one's earnings, and protection from harm are crucial. They advocate for resources and services that will provide sex workers with medical testing and treatment, condoms, and help with negotiating safer sex. One such activist group is the Sex Workers Project in New York (sex workers project.org), which uses “human rights and harm reduction approaches” to protect and promote “the rights of individuals who engage in sex work, regardless of whether they do so by choice, circumstance, or coercion.”