The Five Strands of A Sedentary Empress

so what if I have no reason?

"Invalid Entry" 

I was born in Toronto, moved away from it when I was five, only to return to it when I turned twenty-two. A lot changed in the years between.

Upon moving back, we decided to live in the eastern end of town called 'Scarborough'. I think we chose it because my grandparents had lived there when I was very young and because I sort of knew the area, though not especially well. It was when we moved back that I saw it was more flavoured than it used to be. Whereas the seventies saw a mixed bag of ethnicities in small, contained pockets, the nineties were entirely different, with huge Asian populations in each corner, and the centre flooded with Indian, Jamaican and Dominican immigrants. 'Black' here is not so easily defined as 'African-Canadian', as many are immigrants from the aforementioned countries, though there are certainly those who have been here for generations and would likely identify as 'African'. Of course, there are many South Americans too, and my friend base after a while was largely made up of Brazilian, Venezuelan, El Salvadorian and Chilean while working in that area of town. In short, the English/Scottish/Irish Toronto of the early twentieth century is basically gone, and what is left is a collage of varying skin colour and language.

Though I love it, for so many reasons, I admit to asking our realtor to finding us a rental home in an area of town where we would not be the minority. My realtor was a happy, smiling Asian man and he nodded respectfully when I stated this. He understood, he said, and this was common practice for 'his people' too. When moving somewhere new, most of us will opt for what we know instead of what we don't. It's fear mixed with common sense, I think. What I had meant, though, was not that I had an issue with anyone's lineage or skin colour. I was referring to wanting to live in a 'middle class neighbourhood', a place filled with families, people mowing lawns on Saturdays and a family dog in the backyard and nationality wasn't much of a concern. I didn't feel any need to justify my reasoning further because it made perfect sense to me. So, he found a house for us which suited our needs perfectly, a semi-detached with a fenced-in yard and quiet neighbours in the adjoining home. The landlord was also Asian, and he would only speak with R. because he didn't seem to think women had any sort of brain and would ignore me, my sister and my best friend whenever we spoke, even though we each paid a quarter of the bills. While this really bothered my friend Kyla, I shook it off. Prejudice is pretty much everywhere, and that wasn't a battle worth picking.

A couple of years later, Kyla, myself, my sister and my sister's friend decided to take an evening stroll around the neighbourhood. We were talking about the movie we'd just been to see, taking note of the scent of barbequed meat in the air and the warmth of the night. As we chatted, I noticed a man on the opposite side of the street walking in the same direction as we were. He was white and admittedly, we all relaxed when we took note of that. Though my sister's friend Gillian was half-black, she later commented that she too had felt more assured when she saw that the man was white. So, we continued talking and basically ignored the man, who started to speed up until he broke into a swift jog and disappeared around the corner up ahead. A night-time jogger is nothing to fear, right? Especially one who seems to fit so well into the neighbourhood.

As we came up to the corner around which he'd disappeared, I absent-mindedly looked in the direction he gone, only to see him lying on his back on a lawn under a fully illuminated street light. My first thought was that he'd fallen and injured himself, and I said to Kyla in a whisper 'Look over there!'. She looked, gasped and said 'Keep walking, don't look at him'. Well, I thought this was a little bit odd until curiosity had me look over to him again, and I whispered back, 'What's he doing with that pop bottle?'. Kyla grabbed my arm and whispered again 'It's not a pop bottle.' At once we all realized that this man was masturbating for our benefit, lying on someone's front lawn, a few yards away from where a group of children were playing while their parents sat, unaware, on the darkened front porch. He had an eerie smile on his face as he worked his arm up and down, unwavering in his determination to finish, and we moved ahead silently, feeling a little sick.

As is my way, I stopped a few houses down and suggested we go back and beat him to a pulp. There were four of us, I reasoned, we could easily knock him senseless (surely, he'd never call the police), and I was genuinely shocked when the other three looked at me like I was the one masturbating on a front lawn. How dare he victimize us just because we were women! How dare he spread his perversion all over the yard of decent, tax-paying citizens! But, they'd have none of my rage. They were too frightened to put up a fight. Perhaps they were right, but I still kind of wish we'd taken a little bit of the night back for ourselves by hammering him until he cried.

In retrospect, I realize that the only thing I was guilty of was wrongly assuming he would be harmless because of his skin colour. Whereas I am occasionally at fault for fearing what I don't know, I never considered that not fearing someone because of what we appear to have in common is just as stupid. This kind of thinking is what allows serial killers to get so much work done. At the risk of being too open, I admit that my caution used to be reserved for specific men: saggy-panted, gold-toothed gangbanger lookalikes were never high on my list of people to smile at, nor were shaggy haired, unwashed looking individuals. Young, dark-skinned men who moved swiftly with a hood over their heads, hands in pockets, eyes fixed on the ground in front of them or groups of late-teen boys who would be hooting or hollering to one another were also to be avoided. Now, the issue has ceased to be one of race alone. Now, I find it wise to cautious around all the men because it makes sense to be.

If I'm going to be wrong, I'd rather be wrong about someone's innocence when the street is dark, rather than wrong about their guilt. I'd rather be in a large group, or be near a well-lit sidewalk than be trusting of any man walking in my direction. While it isn't very optimistic of me, nor is it particularly kind, the world we live in doesn't afford women the luxury of being starry-eyed when she's alone. We no longer live in a world of manners, much less one in which a woman's safety is assured. The offending party could be seventy-odd years old, or they could be just beyond the crack of puberty, but most of the time their physical superiority over females is intact and ready as a weapon. While I will concede that there are higher rape statistics in certain minority groups, all of my personal experiences with sexual perversion/violence have been perpetrated by white men: the woman who was being attacked behind the bar in the alley way as my friend and I walked by, scaring the attacker off, the boy who tried to pull me behind a line of trees in order to molest me, the teacher who may have molested my sister when she was twelve (she's blocked a couple years out of her memory but all the signs are pointing in this direction, aside from the fact that he was dismissed some years later for sexual misconduct), the boy who tried to rape my best friend behind the building where they worked (she hit him, he went down in a pile), the guy who whacked off next to my sister on the subway and of course, the jogger on the lawn. Looking back now, I realize that being fearful of a man because he was black or native made very little sense when the people I knew had always been more of an imminent threat.

So, yes, sometimes a stereotype has merit, because they tend to evolve from a pattern. This aside, though, violence, particularly sexual violence, is largely an 'any' man's thing. When I walk down a street and see a male figure coming toward me, or hear one following me, I will continue to look for safety. I won't be smiling or meeting their eyes because this is reckless and stupid. I'm sure every rape victim who did this before being attacked wonders why they were so trusting before the violence happened, and I'm not interested in second-guessing my actions if I should happen to become a victim.

It is not my fault that I have been forced into viewing men as predators. I never wanted that. It is not my fault that there are stereotypes and that I occasionally buy into them. It wouldn't make sense to dispute them. Of course, there are exceptions and I am full aware of them but to try to live my life in hope of them being the norm would be dangerous and naive. Sometimes, you have to take a step back and think about whether your desire for peace and harmony is more illusion than reality.

I intend to always keep a distance from strange men after dark. I don't have to justify it to them or anyone else.