Warning: sexual assault triggers.

In December 2012, my new employer sat behind his desk and read off sexual harassment guidelines to me. He is LDS and was very matter-of-fact but uncomfortable, which is how I would like every employer to be when discussing distasteful realities. Perhaps seeing me as the average mother-and-housewife, he was apologetic when he had to give not-at-all shocking descriptions of inappropriate behavior directed to female employees. “Don’t worry,” I said drily. “Most of these things happened to me when I worked in Manhattan.”

I was not a dynamic dresser back then. (I am not a dynamic dresser at all; I will be 39 in two weeks and I prefer ironic/geek-themed tee shirts, jeans, and shoes that are usually sneakers, thongs or a slip-on style. I do like sweaters and boots in cooler weather.) I had serviceable pant suits, or skirts and blouses. When I tried to imitate more stylish coworkers, I usually failed in some detail or another.

Also, I worked 80 hours a week and was always exhausted, so I stuck to the basics of hygiene, neat appearance and minimal makeup.

The company Christmas party rolled around. I dressed in a sweater and matching skirt, not my normal office-wear, as it had a bit of shimmer to it. The sweater had a boat neck but fit loosely and the skirt went to my shins at least. I probably wore heels in honor of the occasion.

Once work was done for the day, I headed over to the St. Regis hotel. I think we had the top floor for the party; investment banking firms have a reputation to uphold so they need a swank look, trays of sumptuous little bites, and endless, endless alcohol.

I am an introvert and I hate big parties, so I was very nervous. My preferred cocktail was a “martini, two olives, lightest touch with the vermouth, please,” so I went to the bar and ordered one. I am sure I ate some of the savories and desserts. I watched the bosses dance with the administrative assistants out on the floor and was a little unsettled by it: old white men in expensive suits dancing with middle-aged women of various ethnicities in their slightly-too-tight, brightly colored work clothes. The men danced a little too close and grabbed at the women, and both grabber and grabb-ee laughed like it was nothing. It was like a game I couldn’t grasp the rules of, made louder and coarser by the beers, wine and cocktails people were enjoying on the company’s party budget.

I make it sound nightmarish, but it is pretty normal for most people. It was nightmarish for me, all the discordant noise of music, conversation, and braying laughter, the dim lighting, the crush of people. Oh, how I hate being in a closed space with so many people!

I was a member of the very small publishing department. This granted me some autonomy the administrative assistants didn’t have: I didn’t actually work for the analysts. I had no desire to dance, no clients to woo, and no need to watch the insanity on the floor. I headed back to the bar, where the junior analysts were stationed. They were all my age or a few years older, many of them single since they worked about 100 hours a week, paying their dues so they could one day be on the dance floor, grabbing at administrative assistants. I know I thought one was quite cute, and I know he thought of me not at all in that way. He was with another junior and they were chatting and drinking beer. I’d shaken, for the time being, this little sorority girl of a coworker who would be, in a few more months, the downfall of my department, and I stood by them at the bar, letting the second (third?) martini work on my nerves.

Casually, the cute junior’s friend reached over and groped my bottom, all the time not looking at me or even pausing in his conversation. I was absolutely frozen (I don’t fight or flee, I freeze) in shock, and he carried on his exploration of my behind for a good two minutes, which felt like an hour.

It is surreal to be groped at a company party. At a fraternity party or a cast party one comes to expect it; it’s just college, we’re only practicing at being grownups. Everyone is drinking, no one is thinking. But I’d been to bars with coworkers before and everyone managed to be civilized and respectful. I guess the added strain of the holidays made average guys go insane that night, because I was groped at a Wall Street party while wearing the most conservative outfit in the room.

Later I shared a cab with the cute junior, who was a complete gentleman besides the fact that he knew his friend was molesting me at the party and he never said a word nor, indeed, paused in his conversation. We hovered in opposite corners till I got out at Grand Central, tired and deflated.

What bothers me the most now, in light of the rape culture that is spinning out of control, and as a mother of three boys, and as a human and a woman, is that while I was disgusted to be groped at frat parties and cast parties and company parties, I thought it was normal, and that I couldn’t do anything about it.

And all these years of all these men and women, now approaching middle age and beyond, staying silent while it happens, thinking it was normal, that we couldn’t do anything about it, has led to the escalation of this culture. Girls are no longer just groped at parties. Now we have Steubenville, and this morning I just read of a 13 year-old girl and two 18-year-old athlete rapists in Connecticut. And there have been many more in the intervening years.

Part 2 tomorrow.

[All of this comes from MY experiences, MY study, MY prayers, MY opinions. Your mileage may vary; and I respect your choices. After all: "We claim the privilege of worshiping Almighty God according to the dictates of our own conscience, and allow all men the same privilege, let them worship how, where, or what they may."]

I’m “just a small-town girl,” though my town was the biggest thing going within 20 miles or so. I would marvel at the kids who would come into my small city from their towns and villages, saying we had more to do. Well, I guess so; we did have a two-screen theater and a great local pizza joint, as well as our own AM radio station.

I had the small-town life, with a dad who was always working and mom who stayed home with us for the most part, though I could tell she didn’t like it much. And from an early age I understood that all three of us daughters would be attending college and having careers. Since it was understood from my earliest memories, I never thought it would not happen, nor did I understand that in the larger world, not every kid went to college. If I’d known that in many parts of the globe, girls had no chance at secondary, much less tertiary, education, I would not have believed it.

Privilege granted me arrogance. My first job was at McDonald’s and I was more than competent at all that sort of work. The manager offered to send me to Hamburger University, and I gave him my most disdainful look and informed him that I was going to a REAL college, thanks. (I bet if I’d gone and owned one or more franchises today, it wouldn’t be so awful every time one of the vehicles lost its mind.)

Anyway, matter-of-fact feminist upbringing = me. Small-town privilege and mentality = me.

Enter college. Now mind you, I went, on very partial scholarship, to a small, pricey liberal arts college downstate. I put in my time to get there, make grades, and stay there, but there were hundreds of kids whose parents wrote one check every August that covered tuition and housing. A monthly check straight to the student covered the rest. Essentially, I was attending a bastion of privilege.

Or so I thought.

I was heading with a friend to her room in the largest dorm on campus after a meal in the dining hall. A breezeway/lobby connected the student center, where we took said meals, to that dormitory. That night, the breezeway was hosting a sit-in. The entire black student union was assembled to protest an injustice. For the life of me I don’t remember what. I turned to my friend, a dark-skinned Italian girl, and said “What’s going on?”

That night, I learned that just because I had not experienced something personally, didn’t mean no one had. And racism, which I somehow thought had been dealt with neatly during the 60s and 70s (because I never saw it in my 99.99999999% white town), was thriving. It thrived enough that my Italian friend, who came from a real city 30 minutes from mine, had herself been perceived as black and endured discrimination because of it. Another friend was biracial and racism was matter-of-fact in her life. I had poor friends who faced another kind of public disapproval.

Did I become an all-loving, all-embracing crusader for the right in my freshman year because of these friends? Well, no. I had a very average secular college life. But the seeds were planted, and when my life was different, when I was stripped of pride and arrogance and left to make myself in a better mold, the seeds started to blossom very slowly.

I have always considered myself a feminist. But it’s just in the last three years or so that I feel I understand what it really means. It was very easy to be a woman before. I was never denied anything I wanted because of my gender. In some cases, I was given it precisely because I was a woman: there were far more scholarships granted to women by my college because even in the early 90s the writing was on the wall. Overall, women get better grades (though the valedictorian and salutatorian will usually be males from the hard sciences). Overall, women cause less trouble of the campus security/police involvement kind on campus. And overall, we clean our rooms better.

Some women in my chosen church feel that they stand on uneven ground because they were born female. There is a fantastic list of some ways we feel unequal here. Some women have never, but never, felt unequal or trod-upon one day in their lives. To them I say, I am so happy for you. I rejoice with you. Can you find it in your heart to mourn with those who DO feel so? Surely if you are happy and content, your compassion for those less fortunate will overflow. Yet others say the church itself does not make women unequal, but that there are “a few” misguided members here and there who treat others unkindly, and it is a chance for growth for everyone. To them I say: not good enough. I have read dozens of stories where the abused member was disfellowshipped, excommunicated, or relegated to the position of social pariah, and the abuser, protected by his brotherly priesthood bond, was slapped on the wrist and then adulated.

Long ago, when we lived in Utah, a married-student ward lesson in Relief Society focused on pornography and how to deal with it. The president talked about having all the passwords to the cable box, computer, and email accounts for her husband’s protection. Vague hints about a satisfactory life in the bedroom (you know, that “give it up when he wants it and he will not stray” mentality) were put out there. As I watched women being instructed to treat their husbands like children, to take responsibility for grown men’s choices as they did for their toddlers’, I felt the spirit stir within me so strongly that I could not have stayed silent if I tried. I stood up and told them that if their husbands wanted to look at pornography, they would find a way. If they looked at it, it was their choice and on their heads, not the heads of their wives. If we did everything in the world to protect them from using it and they did it anyway, all we would do was bring guilt upon ourselves. “If only I had imposed more passwords!” “If only we’d had sex more often!” I stood and spoke in a voice that was not my own with words that did not come from my own head.

Actual feminist by choice = me.

Later, the bishop’s wife called me to thank me emphatically for speaking up. She had seen the direction the lesson was going, felt the heavy air of guilt falling on the heads of good women, and hoped somehow the tide would turn.

I am always going to stand up for women. I am going to rejoice with them when they succeed. I am going to mourn with them when they are cast down. I am going to speak up, again and again, for the sake of women and young women in our church. And I know I will often be ignored. I was ignored when I served as the Stake Young Women’s Secretary and I proposed going a different direction on Standards Night, a direction that might help young women and their parents understand why they might find it hard to stay chaste until marriage. Honestly, I just wanted someone to acknowledge that girls have sexual feelings, too, and to stop saying we needed to dress/act a certain way for the sake of the young men. We have our own problems to deal with first so we can help others.

I am going to do this work because I am called to it. And wow, is it ever proof that the Lord calls the unqualified.

So yes, I will wear pants to church tomorrow. Not as an act of defiance or a political statement. Simply as a statement of solidarity, and a way to say “hey, some of these social norms, which I have never been very good at following anyway because I didn’t grow up Mormon nor in Utah, are prideful and weird and stand in the way of true discipleship.”

It remains to be seen whether I am associated with men like the bishop and stake president in CO who are on the lookout for pants and will call any women wearing them in for a worthiness interview, or the one in WA who offered his support and wants to know when anyone says or does anything that is degrading to a woman in his flock.