necessary roughness

Things have been a bit tougher around here lately, not easy going like tomatoes growing in the Southern Spring sun, not like usual. 

The part time worker in the office is destroying the calm friendliness we had going. No one likes her. It's sad, almost, but she asks for it. I'm not the kind to befriend the unfriended, I have to say; it's one of my negative qualities I guess. Part of me thinks that if you have no friends, there's a reason, and I don't like the extra work. I suppose it's selfish. Anyway, she tries too hard to impress the bosses, and in the process puts the rest of us down. She's the newest to the group and so should know her place, and live in it for a while, but instead she seems intent on becoming the boss's best friend by slowly but surely making a fool of his current best friend and our coworker. It's a complicated situation, but suffice it to say my boss sees through this, my coworker sees through this, the rest of us see through her, and as soon as her loud, intrusive, and brash self leaves the office, we tend to congregate in one area with "ugh"s and "finally"s all around. I don't know why she's still here, frankly, other than she has a skill set that we need temporarily for the office, and it's easier to keep her around that perform another job search for a temporary position. She'll be gone in October, fingers crossed. 

I usually avoid confrontation, sometimes at all costs, sometimes even when it's good and will cause positive change. But today I started a fight. Our printing company was very unhelpful today when all I needed was some help. Ever come in contact with someone who's rude and difficult just because they can be? This guy had me reenter our address 30 times (really, 30, no exaggeration) on his website today. We were ordering 10 different sets of cards, and the address was deleted twice from all ten cards-- his website's fault, not mine. In the end, I wrote him a nasty email about how his website had better be efficient for his printers because it certainly wasn't customer-oriented, and apparently I caused quite a stir. All I can hope is that they'll change their ways so that next time I don't waste an hour typing an address he already has on file over and over just because he's too rude to do it himself.

A 21-year-old girl was raped on our town center recently. She was alone at night, and a man pushed her into an alley and forced himself on her. We live in a small town, and our center is always full of people at night as that's where all our restaurants and bars are, so she must have been in a back alley or it must have been very late, after most people had gone home. It's scary nonetheless. The police have no leads. Random acts of violence occasionally occur in this town, like someone getting purse-nabbed in a beauty shop parking lot. That man was caught on his way out of town and was from two states over. That's usually how it happens-- someone passing through. Or family violence, boyfriend on girlfriend violence. I can't think of the last time I was in the center at night alone, but it will be a long time before that happens again.

Any time I think of myself in that situation, I picture myself fighting with all my might, struggling and flailing and aiming for the spots that would hurt, like eyeballs and the throat and that lower area men like to protect. I wouldn't stop, I'd be like a mad woman unleashed. I don't know how much it would help. I'm not the largest or strongest woman. I took a self defense class and know some tricks though, like how to pull my arm away from someone who has grabbed me by pulling towards their thumb and forefinger as that's the weakest part of their grip. Or by folding one knee on top of the other if he's got me on the ground. I was a gender studies minor, so I know too much about rape, too much for my delicate mind, like how most rapists don't actually finish, how 3 in 4 rapes go unreported, how many reported ones are never prosecuted, how rarely the prosecuted are found guilty, and how the guilty on average don't go to prison for more than 6-8 years. All that violence, for just 6 years.

The best thing I learned was to not be afraid of hurting them, not to be afraid of necessary roughness. Women, especially us Southern gentile women, are taught to be polite in all cases, meek in all circumstances, passive and obliging and quiet. Don't make a scene, don't talk back, don't stand up for yourself. No one ever says don't fight a rapist, no, but it somehow melds into that, so that when the police officer said "Ladies, hurt him. Hurt him good. Don't think about it, just fight" a light bulb lit up for me. Fight for your life. And I would. 

Of course, having never been in that situation, how would I know what I'd do? That's the interesting thing about being a human. We never know how we'll react until we have to. 

I've decided to fight back more often. To embrace some conflict and debate. Not too much though. No one likes a brash, loud, intrusive woman, do they?