There are no such things
as ordinary mornings, not for me anyway. Sometimes, when the sun starts rising
and shining through my broken blinds, I can feel something approaching. This
morning I slept in. It was only an extra 30 minutes but it’s amazing what half
an hour can do. After praying the pre-dawn prayer, I did my usual unhealthy
skim through my phone: Emails, texts and Facebook. Nothing significant and so I
decided at this hour, I could afford one more nap before heading off to work.
The second time around,
my phone skim brought me something new, a Facebook message from yet another man
eliminated out of my life this season. I say another because I recently made a
harder elimination in order to regain myself and my life back, and I am
grateful. I am grateful to God for finding my way before I really was taken far
off track. I am grateful that I am happy, strong and wholly content again.
Interestingly enough, these two men and their stories intertwine.
The departure of the
first man brought about the nosy speculations of male #2. Mind you, the latter
is of my father’s generation, married and a parent, but who says that means
much these days? What fuels his high school childish behavior is beyond me, but
a week ago I received the dreaded red flag icon notifying me of the no longer
accessible Facebook message (yes, I have refused to download the Messenger
app). Knowing it was from him, I got suspicious. He’s been a harasser before
disguised as just a guy trying to pull off the hip routine. I brushed off his
behavior for the reasons I will explain later. When I opened it, I found it to
be an invite to an event. However, the way it was worded (a copied and pasted
thing) and what the event was itself, appeared very shady and I knew the motive
behind the message—invasion of privacy. It must have been far more difficult to
maturely conjure up a hello…how are you…did you get a divorce? Or better yet,
find the maturity to not ask. But then there it was. After I politely declined
the invitation, without any introduction, any question, any appropriateness, bam!
The invasive attempt to dig into my short-lived marriage.
True, I may not have
changed my nonexistent Facebook marital status to now read Divorced, but it’s no longer a secret and I made no effort to hide
the fact. Nothing can be more empowering or uplifting for a broken woman than
coming across quotes and internet memes that remind her of her worth and value
after losing sight of both for almost two years. Yet, it was deemed a cry for
help; and for Arabs, an opportunity to interject. So I left his message alone,
reminding myself that I owed this man and every other man NOTHING. That was a
mistake I just escaped from and will not allow myself to fall into again, in
any other way.
Then this morning, when
the red flag appeared again, and his name sat highlighted in the Facebook
inbox, I knew his harassment was coming. His all to familiar resenting tone
infuriated me as he demanded a response. Somehow though, I chuckled, stumbling
out of bed to get started with my day. I envisioned my established father, and
if he were to have a Facebook account where he wasted his time harassing younger
friends about their personal lives! My fingers began immediately formulating a defensive
response, giving him an absolute huge piece of my mind about his invasion of
privacy, his rude inappropriate behavior, and what a disappointment he was to
be ambushing me with his falsified event invitation. But then I stopped. I
erased every letter and word and put my phone away.
When I was younger, and I
would watch films where a girl was victimized in some way—be it bullied by the
popular girls in high school or manipulated into an embarrassing situation—I
would get so frustrated and wonder why on earth these women never spoke up to
defend themselves or explain that the situation was not their fault. But now, I
get it. I get the invisible forces that prevent us women from retaliating and I
also recognize how the value of that golden silence only grows.
Being silent in the right
way can save you from a great deal of messes. I know that it saved me from a
lot of bad roads I almost took in my relationship. The concept of silence also
gave me a deeper perspective today, on my two-hour commute, where I started the
personal debate of whether or not this individual, this friend, should be deleted from Facebook.
It comes with a raging
fire, this territory of Facebook deletion or blocking. You face heat and hate
and are dubbed many awful things. Years ago I deleted and blocked a girl who
had done something terrible to me with her lies. It was a simple click and I
knew that now there would be no connection with her since I had done my best to
distance myself from her and her likes offline. She still found a way to attack
me for that—the act of blocking her from Facebook. It was amusing as much as it
was amazing. The sociologist I am does indeed find fascination in these
creatures. Even my family was in awe. I implemented my silence mantra there
too, realizing she didn’t deserve an ounce of effort. With this man however, I
had to think just a bit more before deciding because there was slightly more of
an investment. Not only was he connected to me on Facebook, but so was his
entire family, people I actually respected and admired. The debate then became,
did I want to delete him and lose the whole family or should I suck it up and
give his pathetic behavior yet another excuse? Because I knew, if only he was
gone, and the rest remained, I would face a wrath that I really don’t have time
for nor do I deserve.
Just a few miles away
from my office I came to a concluding question: What do I value from Facebook?
What about it is so key that it must involve this particular family? The final
answer? Nothing…that would really benefit or involve them. The initial answer?
Facebook is my tool for campaigning efforts (literature or events) and
connections (the friends that have gone international to be honest). Facebook
is where I share ideas, advertisements and work that as an artist and a writer
I would like to share with the world. And yes, the world that can value it
appropriately and provide it the constructive critiques, not the degrading
ones. And that was it, right there, clear as day. I asked myself as I took the
elevator up to my floor, “Why else is there a Facebook blocking tool if not to report spam or abuse?”
I realized then how we,
women, are conditioned to always fear. We fear being disliked or unaccepted. We
absolutely fear being labeled, especially if the labels are crazy or
melodramatic. We fear being humiliated. And we fear the backlash, which we
often face for speaking up. For simply standing up for our human right of
dignity! So instead we oblige. We turn the other cheek and create excuses to
brush off the abuse and the harassment. Now the stronger of us, we will know
when the major line is crossed and take action after a bit of tolerance. The
strongest of us however, will never even allow the original fine line to be
neared. I used to be one of the latter until recently. It takes one slip and
you can lose it all. It also takes agonizing years of hearing every label set
upon you for being a good, moral person who values her dignity and self and
refuses to allow anyone to trespass her on any level. I fell into the first group,
but the good news is I still had the courage to put my foot down when that
major line was crossed—in both scenarios. So I took action, blocked these
individuals from life, on and offline, one by one, and you know what? It feels
phenomenal!
The irony was how it all
just wrapped up so eloquently with what happened at work only a few hours
later. My inbox housed an urgent email. Apparently as a manager, I was mandated
to complete a two-hour workplace harassment prevention training. I laughed and continued
laughing even harder as I went from slide to slide, reading about the very same
thing I had learned to detect in my own life and change. But there was
something very disturbing underneath that training and it was the way that even
by law, no disciplinary action was taken until something drastic enough had to
happen—like rape or quid pro quo harassment. And don’t even get me started on
the statistics of how many women often find themselves practicing the wrong
kind of silence to save themselves, their reputations and their jobs.
What kind of a sad world
do we live in today where a woman is so afraid of not finding something better
out there, she settles for something horrible and inhumane? At one point I
caught myself yelling at the monitor after reading one of the real life
scenarios. “What? Oh my god, just quit!” I looked around, remembering it was a
reenactment, and started to think about this hypothetical woman who represented
a great deal of non-hypothetical women today. Who are trapped in their possibly
terrible jobs, with abusive and manipulative superiors, and seriously cannot go
anywhere else because this economy has destroyed the opportunity to get
anything anywhere else.
Even I, who has recently
faced some harsh attitudes from two fellow employees, caught myself doing the
same thing. “Oh I won’t complain to the director because he will either think
I’m just causing drama in the new job or he will approach those two and then
they will hate me more and retaliate.” Apparently, retaliation is punishable. Whoop-de-doo!
But when someone pushes past you with a snort and a very disturbing harsh
demeanor, after you say, “Good morning!” with a smile, everyday for 90 days and
you actually start to feel it just may be racism, despite the fact that you
NEVER pull the racism card out ever, yeah, you can’t do anything there until he
acts out.
What a concept it is to
ingrain in the minds of women that these things are okay and should be
tolerated. That literally was one of the scenarios: Woman is molested by the
company’s star performer and manager tells her to brush it off because the
accused harasser is too valuable to lose right now. Once upon a time I put up
with similar things—the little crossed lines and the big crossed lines—I just
didn’t want any more labels. Somehow, I still got the labels, some that I never
even expected. Failure. Disappointment. Emotional. Dramatic. Crazy. Delusional.
Too serious. Blah blah blah. However, it’s these labels that fuel me to
continue down this path of filtration.
If women are going to be
labeled and criticized either direction they take, why not at least take the
direction that involves far less harassment and abuse? I would rather be
labeled by ignorant people who don’t have any morals or value dignity because I
chose to stand up for myself, than stay in an abusive or harassing situation
and hear far worse than a label. The greatest reminder we can give ourselves is
that we live for a purpose, sometimes one that can be greater than we know. Our
efforts will not be harmed by the removal of these toxic people, both on and
offline. We will not miss out on anything. On the contrary, we will remember
our worth and find that the paths to our missions are clearer and lighter.
