Second article for Secular Woman's Sexual Assault Awareness Month series
by Shanna Wells, follow her on twitter
A follow up to her first article on Street Harassment.
It’s summer in Philadelphia. The sky scraper in which I work is just three blocks from Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell. Behind the Hall is a shaded green space, an enviable place to be on my lunch hour. But to get there I must pass a construction site. As a large woman, I’m not sure which comments are worse from the all-male crew: being told I’m a hideous excuse of a woman, or being told how my body will be used for the man’s pleasure. I dissociate, seeing myself through their eyes. Just steps from where the Declaration of Independence was signed, I am a prisoner – in my office, in my body, in my gender.
I Hide Inside
The drills and jackhammers
Sting my blossom ears.
Next door, men are erecting
Another giant penis to themselves.
It juts skyward, dry humping the Universe.
I hide inside.
At noon, workmen dominate
The passive sidewalk.
They practice the manly art
Of visual molestation, connoisseurs,
Testing for body, bouquet and breasts.
I hide inside.
My buttocks and teeth clenched,
I pass, watching myself pass,
Watching them watching me pass.
I suck in my stomach, tensing for the blow.
It makes me look thinner, too.
