Addressing sexual abuses, trauma and our gendered roles in society through Restorative Justice is a big step in the right direction.
I ran into one of my ‘hims’ before Covid.
He’s a Rotary club member in a small rural town and the Rotary Club runs the Tulips Against Cancer sale each year. He was my banker. And he was also on my #MeToo list.
In my mid-thirties, I was renovating a house with a big project under my belt to open a bed and breakfast/coffee shop/antique store with my then husband and my two baby kids in tow. I asked my banker to come visit the project renovation site in order to better appreciate how fabulous the finished place would be and how low the risks were to loan me the money.
I told him, before our walk through, that I’d take him to lunch at the cafe in town… to discuss the numbers.
But he said, he preferred to go to the auberge on the hill top. So we went there.
Once seated, I excitedly talked him through my business plan and explained how enthusiasm would make up for any lack of real hospitality or antique experience. I told him that my passion and commitment would be enough to make the business work. I only needed his agreement and his financial backing to float me.
I remember him looking at me from across the table, with his blond comb-over in his shiny blue suit, smiling and rubbing his hands together. I was waiting for his advice about my project and the approval of his financial support… but instead, he cocked his head and cooly said,
« How about taking a room? »
My mind veered and screeched, as I wondered what I’d done wrong? How had he ever misconstrued my business plan outline and ardor for my project as physical interest in him? (Isn’t it amazing how we do that! How immediately we blame ourselves! Right?)
Flabbergasted, I gathered my chutzpa and asked him who he thought he was and why he thought I’d invited him to lunch in the first place? I told him it was indecent to speak to a young female client like that. I told him I was married, as if that mattered. I told him I would tell his company. But he was the bank manager after all, so there was no one above him. There would be no sanctions. He couldn’t have cared less and I knew it. No one cared about sexual harassment in the French countryside in the early 21st century. Who was I kidding?
So when I ran into him among the tulips several months ago, I had to introduce myself.
He knew he knew me from somewhere, but just couldn’t put a finger on it, he said.
« Young. Franco-American couple. Tiny town. Big house. Ambitious project. Important Loan. Lunch… then aggression, » I reminded.
A twinkle came to his eye. But not the good kind.
« What you did that day was inappropriate and unwanted. You were in a position of power. You sexually harassed me, » I said matter of factly while selecting my buds.
« I was only trying my luck. » he grinned back lamely with feet planted in his muddy garden boots.
« No. That’s not the truth. You put me in a compromising situation. Because you were a man and because you held the power, you asked me to sleep with you during a business lunch. Your totally unsolicited proposition and the way you overstepped your boundaries affected me so deeply that day, that I’ve carried the pain around with me for all of these years. Imagine that!! That was the textbook example of sexual harassment. »
Turning my back, I continued my flower purchases as he waited for me outside the entrance to the makeshift sales tent.
I had been carrying that story around for twenty years, I realized. Just one of those typical moments on my #MeToo list. We’ve all had them, haven’t we? Those uncomfortable occasions when a man makes a woman feel powerless, dirty, belittled, sullied and objectified. The times when he strips her of her intelligence, her strength, her knowhow and her dignity… making her feel like a piece of meat or just a hole.
I have no doubt that in those same exact instances, from his vantage point, the guy is simply making a proposal because he happens to have a pleasant impulse. I can even fathom that these men often even want our pleasure too. I do not believe all men in such situations really want to hurt us, consciously disrespect us or force us into something we do not want. The majority are perhaps not even trying to twist our arms nor have any conscious intention of making us do something we’ll find uncomfortable.
Men are perhaps sometimes just overcome by their sudden physical and sexual animal impulses and are offering up suggestions without weighing consequences. No matter who we are, how out of context, how inappropriate or how crazy… men just seem to prioritize their dicks.
And if his dick is saying he’s ready, I guess they just assume we should be too.
Even at professional lunches, dicks are surely often telling their owners to just go for it. They’re pointing up and beyond, after all… so, I imagine, they are awfully hard not to listen to… thick, rigid and penetrating as they are into a belly. Owning a dick would make anyone fidgety… especially at a business lunch.
But especially also when society has trained men to act and lead and dominate, to suggest, to make the first move, to take control. … and women to accept, to adhere, to appease and to wait for the man’s first move. Women have so often been raised to please men and their manly desires before considering, or even in spite of, our own.
If vaginas had more of a say or more of an upper hand per se, just like dicks, things would be different. If more women spoke out openly about their desires and pleasures, perhaps men would feel less inclined to blurt out their fantasies in any fucking random situation. If vaginas had historically been allowed to voice their fancies openly and pursue them freely, perhaps men and their dicks would not feel forced to force themselves upon women.
If our society had taught us that men and women were equally powerful, smart, able and useful… then women and our vaginas would never have been relegated to second fiddle. If we had had more power and more choice in society we would not be waiting passively for the man to make his move. And men would not feel it their position or obligation to make that move whenever they and their dicks felt so inclined. Especially during business lunches.
So that day at the tulip field, as I walked out of the tent with my arms full of flowers, my former banker pulled me aside and apologized without « buts » for putting me in such a compromising situation.
And I accepted.
And I felt relieved.
And forgiving him like that allowed me to meditate on the power of restorative justice. Our world is waking up so quickly these days to the despicable conduct that had previously been accepted. The world is waking up to the consequences of gender division, gendered expectations and gendered behaviors. The world is realizing how much less effective we are as a group, when people are not considered and treated as complete equals :
Equally educated, expected, supported and paid.
So I really believe it is time to consider Restorative Justice as the way we can open up the discussions regarding sexual abuses and the trauma they cause and how gendered roles in society only exacerbate the whole equation.
By allowing people to come forward and formally share their experiences in a controlled environment, society would be bearing witness, recording and uncovering the truths about abuse and about trauma. By using the power of acknowledgement, listening and hearing, rather than punishment, as a mechanism to treat past offenses, our global society would learn, grow and heal. A restorative communication formula would help elucidate how our behaviors came to be and why gendered expectations are so limiting. Speaking openly to one another in such a context would help create a road map for more open, present-moment communication between people of all genders and all persuasions.
It won’t make the acts okay and doesn’t mean people would be excused from what they did. Restorative justice can’t erase what happened. But being able to communicate how the act made us feel and be heard by a perpetrator, as well as by other witnesses, would make a victim’s healing far more real.
Restorative justice would help us move to a higher and truer level of closure… But in until it becomes an integral part of our justice system, I highly recommend my forgiveness method: surprising, public, clear, concise… and in the middle of a field of flowers!
