🖤 Fight like a G-I-R-L 🖤

THE MYTH: if you were stronger, he wouldn’t be able to hurt you.

LIVING IT: we stretch our legs after running. i tell her my South African thighs chafe and she says she’s worried her skinniness makes her look like a little boy. we crowd over her phone and watch serena williams, streaking through wins as if she forgets she’s capable of losing. she is an unapologetic black woman; a big red target is painted on her. we google her for workout tips and the first sixteen links are about how she’s “too manly,” “too fit”.

THE MYTH: nobody would mess with you if you were something powerful, like a marine.

LIVING IT: the week before she deploys, we have a sleepover. in the late night, she whispers she’s terrified. not of the war, not of death, not of any of it. of the rate women in the army are raped. one in three. she holds up her hand against the black ceiling and whispers “i will have more fingers than chances of getting out of there in one piece.”

THE MYTH: if you knew how to fight, you wouldn’t be in this mess. learn karate.

LIVING IT: once i bit a man so hard i drew blood. i spat it into the gutter and then threw up. nobody saw what almost happened to me. nobody was there to verify my story. it would be his word against mine. i think of how i was crying, of how he held me down, of how his only mistake was leaving his hand within reach of my teeth. of how a few inches would have meant the end for me. when i punched him, my entire strength meant nothing. he was six-foot-three. the lie here stems from the idea that all rapists are in alley ways, waiting to jump poor women. the lie here is that it’s always a situation you have control over; rather than someone you need to drive you home after.

THE MYTH: just be more assertive when you say no!

LIVING IT: another girl was murdered for speaking up last. i didn’t even notice because i thought it was a repeat of last week’s headline. she was stabbed to death because she wasn’t interested. i think of her saying a sharp “no” and how already her murderer is being called a mentally ill and confused boy, a good man who wasn’t given a chance. i think she is more brave than i; who remember too many kisses i have been trapped in. i think of the night i once closed my own fingers in a door trying to escape someone and how for weeks after they were swollen. how i hated myself while i nursed them.

THE MYTH: girls choose to be powerless. the body has ways of shutting down those things. if you didn’t want it to happen, you wouldn’t let it.

LIVING IT: i am small enough that one arm is enough to pick me up. my body is policed into a small waist. when he threatens me, i shut down, turn ghost. later i will yell at myself. what was i thinking? why didn’t i run? why didn’t i scream? what did i think was going to happen if i just lay there and wished it into ending? i carry the prize of being afraid in my bag: pocket knives, cat-eared knuckles, keys. keep my hair up so they can’t grab anything, wear multiple layers so i’m not tempting, the myth here is that it’s my behavior that determines my fate. it’s how much i drink, it’s where i go, it’s how chaste i might be. the myth here is that it is a random attack, that there is something i can do to prevent it. that i must prevent it. when i close my eyes i taste blood, the scream i swallowed, the worthlessness of a punch. once my brother was almost mugged. he simply turned to the man and said, “no.” once i said “no” to a man and he threw me down as if i weighed nothing. i remember the way the floor felt; how i was more surprised than anything. i was seventeen. the myth here is that somehow, impossibly, i could have been ready. that i could have been better if i’d been some sort of martial artist, had taken krav maga instead of ballet. i once kicked someone in the nose. i remember the way his beard tasted when he forced a kiss on me. my father sighs. not all men are violent rapists, my father tells me. but later when i am spitting out someone’s flesh, i am reminded i should have been ready. i should have been ready. the fault is with me.