Hello.

I am here again because I needed to process my emotion. We had a Gender sub today and I feel so defeated facing the class again with a sad face. The discussion was well within my emotional threshold but as we go on to the succeeding presentations, I was triggered and I cried heaps thereafter.

 

As I looked back on that particular experience, I think the decisions and how I deal with people and with work reflects my traumas. People are wired that way; we react to things. No matter how uncomfortable those are, we make try to make sense out of it because if we don’t, it would consume us.

 

Anyway, the story that I shared on the class was that time where I had a pretty casual conversation with someone in our agency. I told him that I was harassed while I was walking along the streets of our hometown. The perpetrator was riding what you call in our country sikad and out of nowhere, he pinched my calf. It was intentional because the road is quite wide and I was walking at the sidewalk that to get near me would entail an intentional menuever of the sikad. After sharing this experience, this guy that I was talking to asked me: What kind of clothes were you wearing by the way? I remember really having the urge to say nasty things to him but I bit my tongue and said, I was wearing a knee-length short and a t-shirt. And the conversation has gotten worst at this point because he said, “You are fair-skinned that’s why.” All I could say at that moment was “That’s not how it works” and ended the conversation from there. 

 

For you to understand why I cried at the class, this is how it went. It was because Kate, who was presenting something after that, said that usually, victims of sexual harassment and/or rape are blamed for their actions. Question like “What are you wearing?” “What are your actions prior?” “Maybe you were asking for it?” My stand on this last question is the form of another question: “Do you think that the babies who got raped were asking for it?”

 

My thought process on this has been 3 hours already after crying buckets for a similar situation. The things that I’ve shared in the class are just a fraction of what I have experienced thus far so I’m good, generally. A few of my classmates also messaged me and thanked me for sharing, some of them have experienced way worse than what I have experienced. I hope they are okay.

 

Anyway, just leaving these ideas that would best described what I feel tonight and what I have learned so far:

-       The happiest people are the saddest ones.

-       Hurt people hurt people

-       Food won’t let you down

-       To show dominance/free us from the hurt, we get back to the people who hurt us.

 

Anyway, Gender is like a therapy now. Hope all is well with everyone with all the weather and the floods. 

 

I’m okay, I will be.