That thing men call you in Philly

He was talking to me.

My friend Susie and I chatted quietly while the previews rolled. The woman in front of us turned and asked, “Are you going to be quiet during the movie?”

“Of course,” I said. She faced the screen again. The next preview was funny and Susie and I laughed together. That’s when I heard the man.

“You’re giggling,” he said. “Bitch.”

Susie and I froze. And then I turned slowly around. Two men sat behind us, with one empty seat between them. “It was me,” the man on the right announced, brusque and bold. I faced forward again.

“What should we do?” Susie whispered.

“Nothing. Don’t escalate. Men are dangerous.”

I tried to enjoy the decadent costumes, the royals riding glorious through the mud, the architectural marvel of 16th-century coiffure. But as we watched a film about two of the most famous female monarchs in European history, brutal, beautiful, and bold, it was as if I could feel the disgust radiating from the man behind me. Susie and I didn’t make a sound. And we didn’t change our seats.

Same shit, different day

Recently, I was walking to meet a friend at my favorite falafel place, Mama’s Vegetarian on 20th.

“Excuse me, miss, would you like to look at this?” a man asked as I crossed the street. He was holding something in his hand I couldn’t see and moving to block my path.

“Leave me alone, please,” I said as I swung wide around him.

“Well fuck you, you bitch!” he shouted.

At the 2018 March to End Rape Culture, a speaker at Thomas Paine Plaza asked the crowd what a man in Philadelphia says when he accosts you in the street and then doesn’t like your answer.

“Bitch!” a crowd of hundreds immediately shouted.

What would Elizabeth do?

When the movie ended and I stood to gather my coat and purse, I stared (perhaps emboldened by the queens onscreen) at the man who had insulted me. He ignored me. Then, as he walked out of the theater next to Susie and me, he cackled to his companion, “Did you see the look she gave me?”

I stopped outside the theater and looked into his eyes. They went wide above a thick, mean smile.

“What? Why you looking at me?” he said.

“I don’t think it’s right for you to call a stranger a bitch,” I said calmly, and turned to the door. “I’m not saying any more to you about this.”

“Can you believe that?” the man sputtered. “These girls were talking in the theater.” He pointed at us. “You know, you are the worst kind of people. The worst. You bitches! BITCHES!” He hurled the word at us as we walked away.

Victims, perpetrators, and bystanders

To women who walk around Philly and hear this every day, let’s talk about how it feels. The stone in your stomach; your hot speedy heartbeat; the throb of embarrassment, fear, and anger; the need to get away.

I say women because I identify as a woman, but I really mean everyone who suffers the effects of patriarchal rage: cis women, trans women, cis and trans men with feminine gender expressions, nonbinary and gender-nonconforming people. I see you. I’m with you.

To people who do not routinely have curses shouted at them just for walking around town, think how it would feel if you walked into work, a show, or a date with your nerves singing from a stranger shouting a slur at you.

Do you think I deserve it when it happens to me? If not, what are you doing to make a world where men don’t call me bitch? Do you think it’s not your problem? Not going to get involved?

If you think there’s nothing you could possibly do, or if there’s nothing you want to do, you are the problem, just like the men who insulted me on Sunday.

Abuse marches on

Writing this essay pressed the air out of my chest, my throat clenched and tears spilling. I would rather be tough and cavalier than admit that these men — and maybe you — chip away something I don’t know how to reclaim.

Maybe I cry because I’m a survivor of spousal abuse. The realization that abuse from men will continue to follow me wherever I go makes me feel like a thread in the wind, despite everything I’ve overcome. As Queen Elizabeth I says in Mary Queen of Scots, “Men are cruel.”

In more than a decade of walking around Philly and experiencing this harassment, never once has someone else on the sidewalk spoken up for me. The women passing who hear it lift their eyes in a mute and helpless instant of perfect commiseration before walking away as fast as possible. Before it happens again.