People told me that I would become nicer when I became a mom. I hate when people lie to me. Having twins (or as Dreamy Eyes says: "2 freaking babies at the same time!!!") is both the greatest thing on earth, and super annoying... in public. I hate taking them to the store or to an event not because they are a lot to handle, but because EVERYONE wants to tell me about their brother's wife's sister's best friend's twins and worse, wants to touch them. I get the twin questions all the time, and my answers have become snarky when people clearly interrupt something I'm doing:
"Do twins run in your family?!" -"No. They can't even crawl."
"Do you have twins in your family?" -"Yes. They are right here."
"Hey! My cousin's friend has twins." -"Hey! Me too!"
"Are they identical?" -"Yes"-"So are they a boy and a girl?"-"You already have that information from the last question."
My favorite people to see in public are other moms with double strollers. We just pass each other and exchange a look of exhaustion and "I know, right? Everyone is terrible. My best greeting for you is shared silence."
But I think I would be a bit more tolerant of these experiences if people would stop thinking that it is okay to touch my children, or anyone, without permission. Over the past few weeks people have mistaken my stroller for a political statement. Oh sunshine, I've been this way long before a rich idiot got caught saying degrading things on a bus. Why? Because consent is important and I have intended to teach my daughters that fact from day one. I intend to teach others that whether you are a granny with 15 grandkids, or the leader of the free world, there are no exceptions to consent.
When I was making my baby shower registry I asked people to give the girls books instead of cards. I'm sure there are tons of books I will dislike, but I made sure to ask friends not to buy my girls the book called "Too Many Kisses!", which was formally titled "Stop Kissing Me!" in the first edition. I read this book while babysitting (they have wonderful parents, I am not criticizing them at all) and I couldn't finish it out loud. It is a story of a duck and a poodle. The duck keeps kissing the poodle with big, wet, sloppy kisses, and the poodle hates it. The poodle continually tells the duck to cut the shit, but the duck only comes on stronger. When the poodle finally sees that this is a matter too big for her to handle and tells an adult, the adult takes the duck's side and tells the poodle that the duck is just giving kisses to show love, and that the poodle should not only be more accepting, but return the affection. What. The. Actual. Hell?!
When the girls were born almost two months early I was very cautious about their tiny, fragile immune systems. I did not allow visitors who did not have a whooping cough vaccine. People would say "So if I show up are you going to keep me outside and hold them up in the window?" Yes. Because it's not about what you want, and no means no. How dare you attempt to guilt me into letting you compromise my standards and the health of my children! After about 2 or 3 trips out of the house I realized that EVERYONE wants to touch babies. I get that. I also really like touching tiny hands and kissing little cheeks and I would love to do so to every baby I see. But that doesn't mean I should. Just as most of us like kissing handsome faces and squeezing a well toned, dreamy butt, that doesn't make it okay to go around doing so without asking. I went online to look for some ways to avoid unwanted baby attention. I found some signs for car seats and strollers that say things like "I'm a preemie and your germs are just too big for me. Sorry! Please don't touch". If those signs help protect some babies, great. But seeing this made me all the more frustrated with the world! Sure, my infants can't read those signs, but I refuse to have them provide an excuse and an apology for saying what happens to their bodies! So I made my own signs. They say "Just because I can't say "no" doesn't mean you may touch me, so...ask my grown up." and "RESPECT and age don't differ much. ALWAYS ask before you touch." They still rhyme, I'm not a monster.
It surprises me how much attention these signs get. Most people read them and go away. A lot of moms love them. Some praise me for making a statement. Some people flat out ignore them, and go so far as to lift up the covers I also have and touch the babies anyway because "they have grandchildren". The cover lifters are the ones I start touching back and telling them "It's ok. I have a gramma" before telling them sometimes several times to stop touching my kid.
Then there are the people who say that my signs are "a little too much" for a baby. They tell me that my signs make them think of the rape cases going on in this day and age, and how consent gets confusing when people are drunk, or in a relationship, or when one party didn't actually say "no", but just "let it happen". Um, no. No it doesn't. When I tell them that I intend on educating my daughters about their bodies and unwanted touching from the moment they were no longer protected by my also non-consenting, but constantly rubbed belly, I am criticized for taking away the magic and innocence of childhood by teaching them about adult things at such a young age. I agree. That sucks that I am going to have to talk about people putting things in or on or near parts of them that otherwise would only be brought up during potty training. I would MUCH rather spend my time reading about princesses and dinosaurs and making pillow forts without a care in the world. But that's not what I get to do. Also, stop saying things like "in this day and age". Unwanted attention has been going on since the beginning of the human race. It just took us this long to figure out that it's ok to talk about it.
Well, sort of.
Coming from a sheltered home school world with no brothers to rape me, and no experience with how boys act, getting into the world of EMS was a huge change for me. I didn't know what was and was not normal. I took my cues on social behavior from all of those around me. In EMS, a lot of responders spend most of their lives at the station, and there is usually someone grabbing the 5 seconds of sleep that they can at any given hour of the day. One station where I worked had what I hope was a unique group of boys. They had this "game" where they would see how many people they could get to touch their testicles. It was not unusual to wake up with a "sleep mask" on your face (use your imaginations). The first time this happened to me I was disgusted and terrified, but no one else in that crowd really seemed to care, and they all thought it was funny, so I figured this was just how people acted in the real world. Plus, the boys doing this could have snapped me in half, so I didn't bring it up and just started sleeping with my face down. Why wait until now to bring it up? Because I had accepted it as normal and forgotten about it until recently. Because it took this long to dawn on me that "Hey, that wasn't ok, and it's not my fault for sleeping face up that it happened to me".
I've written before about my date rape experience. I told those close to me about it the day after it happened. I wrote a blog about it. But that was all. I never filed a police report or pressed charges. As we have all seen lately, I am not alone in that course of action at all. People told me that what happened was my fault, because I had originally consented. And people wonder why women don't report their assaults. I'm sure there are many reasons. For me alone the reasons range from not actually knowing it was wrong until years later, to not wanting to report it because I would have to see him again, to fearing for my safety or my job, to just not wanting to deal with it and hoping to forget.
Now I want to ask some serious questions. Have you ever been assaulted? Touched without your consent? Date raped? Spoken to in a fashion that made you feel what was happening was YOUR fault? Pressured into doing more than you wanted? Tickled, hugged, kissed, pinched, or worse by someone you and your family trusted? How long did this continue?
Did you tell anyone? How long did you wait?
Did you go as high as the police? Court?
It's a serious read, but I want you to read the story of my beloved friend, Alicia, who wrote her story.
Reporting an assault is a GIANT hassle and many people just make you feel like all they see is a scarlet letter.
I've asked these questions to many women. The answers given to me have been similar to mine. The only parts of the stories I do not believe are that they are telling me the whole story. We bury so much of this deep down, hoping that it will just go away. But what I have found over and over again is that the age that most of those women at their FIRST assault was 5.
5 years old.
So I wonder, when would people suggest I start talking to my daughters about what is right and wrong, and doing the very, very best that I can to keep that avenue of communication constantly open? Is it acceptable to allow them to be touched without and against consent now, just because they can't understand and because people are just trying to show affection? No. It will never be ok for ducks to kiss poodles against their will and it will never be a child's fault for being too cute and irresistible.
When I play a princess for children's parties there is usually at least one kid who doesn't want to take a picture with me. I appreciate when parents respect their kid's wishes on this. When parents tell their child to go give me a hug or kiss, or try to hand me their protesting child, I won't take part. Parents will say "Sorry, she's shy" and I tell them that makes no difference. I tell them that they never need to apologize, nor give an explanation for why they are saying "no". If someone doesn't want to be touched, I don't touch them (outside of obvious life saving procedures, but those worlds don't normally cross). I ask them if they would like to fist bump or sing a song, but it's ok if they don't. This often surprises parents. After a while, the child usually warms up and we get a picture, or we get one with the parents, or I photo bomb without touching the child. Children deserve to have their space and bodies respected.
The sad thing is that I don't think there is a woman reading this who doesn't have her own story of someone taking things too far. You may have kept it quiet for decades. You may keep it quiet forever. I hope you don't. But if and when you decide to tell your story, I hope that people don't make it even worse for you. Being told it was really your fault or questioned as to why you waited "until now" to speak up only makes more women stay quiet and allows behavior like that duck's to continue.
I used to think one of the most terrifying things that could happen was that I would be assaulted. Then I had daughters.
I hope that soon we will live in a world where saying "no", or saying nothing leads to, well...nothing.
