It takes courage to say you’re afraid

One morning a few years ago, when I was in grad school, I was hurrying to a conference I’d helped organize. It was earlier than I liked getting up, and I was trying not to spill my coffee on clothes a few shades nicer than I usually wore.

I was walking quickly across campus, thinking about the paper I was about to present, hoping the sandwiches I’d ordered would be OK. As I got closer to the building where the conference was happening, I passed a group of men who were sitting around a delivery van. One of them gestured at me, and said to his companions, “How’d you like to drag that into the back of the van?”

I’m telling this story not because it’s the most sexist or scariest thing that’s ever happened to me (I wish) or because it’s the most sexist or scariest thing to ever happen on a university campus (I really wish) but because of my reaction.

I didn’t do anything. The comment was so incongruous, so foreign to how I thought of myself, that I felt totally unable to respond.

It was one of those moments when your subjectivity is called into question — you realize that your personhood, the sense of self that makes you knowable, is just a concept, a bunch of air and words.

At that moment I couldn’t afford to give the comment any credence whatsoever, so I put it out of my head immediately and went inside to give my paper. I didn’t tell anyone at the conference, or any of my friends later, and in fact I don’t think I’ve told anyone about it, until now.

When I heard about online threats made against feminists at the University of Toronto, I thought of this incident for the first time in many years.

These threats were of a very serious nature. They were posted on a Toronto culture blog by a commenter with the handle “Kill Feminists,” and described using gun violence on a massive scale against feminist professors and students, in a manner that was chillingly familiar to those of us who remember the Montreal Massacre on Dec. 6, 1989.

Students, professors and employees of the university were justifiably worried, and the university responded with gravity. It issued statements declaring its support of its feminist staff, and told staff and students they had the right to refuse unsafe working conditions.

The university has been criticized in some corners for giving too much cre- dence to someone who was “clearly” a wing nut. Well, there are wing nuts, and there are wing nuts with guns.

And there is everyday misogyny and violence against women, and it can be very hard to tell the three apart. “Don’t Feed the Trolls” is a common and often advisable motto, and yes, many terrible things are said on the Internet and never carried out, but there’s something about responding to a direct threat with the dictum “Keep calm and carry on” that leaves a bad taste.

What my own experience suggests is something that fits into a larger pattern in how we see women’s responses to the threat of violence. The key thing to remember is that no one wants to think of herself as a victim. It’s not fun or cute or charming.

It’s degrading; it takes away your very notion of personhood. You go from human to thing, a thing that can be thrown in the back of a van, or murdered and forgotten.

And as much as I don’t want those images in my head, I especially don’t want them in other people’s; speaking about it can be difficult, if not paralyzing.

In an age where women are routinely told we’re overreacting and being hysterical, that we should just calm down and ignore the bully, there’s absolutely no social capital to be gained by faking victimhood.

It takes courage, not cowardice, to say you’re afraid, and say it publicly. When a woman says she feels threatened, we ought to listen, offer support and mobilize.

The posts were quickly deemed not a threat by the Toronto police, and I desperately hope they were right. It seems business as usual has resumed at U of T, and the university’s faculty and staff should be commended for their courage in taking a stance against misogynist violence.

Because even if this particular poster turns out to be a “harmless” inciter of hate (as though violent speech and death threats are harmless), there will be others, and there will be an atmosphere of fear and suspicion to fight, and we had better have each other’s backs.