In the spring of 2010 I was living in a place where I had only dreamed of since I was ten years old. I had been able to study abroad in Italy, the country that birthed some of my favorite artists of all time. That was the main reason for being there: not the food, I mainly ate sandwiches everyday, not because of the language, I was terrible at it anyway, and not because of the men, even though they would become a distraction soon enough.
I was lucky to room with a girl from New Jersey whom I became fast friends with. We will call her Hillary. She was tall and fashionable with dark brown hair and striking, exotic, blue eyes. She had been in a long-term relationship with a boy in Pennsylvania so she made it clear that she didn’t want to be unfaithful to him and I had no intention of getting myself involved in any flings (at least that was our plan).
The first two months of our time there, I dragged Hillary from city to city and from museum to cathedral to look at beautiful medieval and renaissance art that made me swoon and Hillary yawn. After our quick flight to Paris to look at the Louvre and Barcelona to marvel at Antoni Gaudí’s architecture, I took pity on her and promised we would go out in Perugia, the city we lived in, do a little drinking, a little dancing and cut loose essentially.
Unlike the rest of the Americans who had been partying since the night we arrived, we weren’t sure where to go. We decided to try out a place that we had only heard about. Just down an ally off of the famous Piazza IV Novembre, there was a discoteca lined with smokers on the outside and drunk dancers from all nationalities on the inside. It was called Rock Castle with a romantic Italian brick décor, a bar in the center and a stage and DJ in the front.
The first time I went there it overwhelmed me. I had no idea why anyone would find a place like this to be fun. It was overcrowded and seemed impossible to dance, I also had no money to buy drinks. But a promise is a promise. I had told Hillary that we’d have fun, and this was her idea of fun. Every weekend we went out, sometimes a couple times a weekend. And what was funny was that I actually began to enjoy myself.
At the time I had long wavy blonde hair that came down to my waist. It brought so much attention that Hillary and I decided to call it my “flag” being that it would flag down every Italian man I came in contact with. At night Hillary would receive complements for her eyes, and I would get them for my hair. It became easy to just hang about and be offered drinks by total strangers. Of course I was paranoid, and rightly so, and made sure I could see the drinks being made by the bartender themselves. I began to enjoy dancing, making new friends and embrace the nightlife.
However, there was one trouble with this type of fun: There are men that are on the look out for women who want a one-night stand. In Italy they were a great deal more aggressive about trying to find those women. There was a great deal of groping and harassing behavior. Men would follow us up and down streets and force us to dance with them. It was something that both Hillary and I accepted as a part of the nightlife, but never liked it.
One day on a school trip Hillary and I were complaining about the men who harassed us.
“Its so gross, I don’t understand why these guys would think we’d like that” Hillary groaned.
“Dude, I know. Oh man, you’re grinding up on me, now I want you so bad.” I added. We rolled our eyes.
An American boy who we teased relentlessly since we had met him decided that this was the point to chime in.
“Guys, you know that it’s your fault, right? I mean if you go out, then you’ve gotta expect to be hit on.” It was always a bad idea for anyone to interfere with one of Hillary’s and my conversations.
We looked at him with amused irritation. It wasn’t the last time he had said something stupid.
I turned to Hillary. “Oh yeah Hillary. Its your fault if you go out at night.”
“Well it’s your fault that you go out at all.”
I started to laugh. “Well its your fault for being a female.”
“Well it’s your fault for being born!” By this time we were laughing so hard that we weren’t very understandable to anyone. The boy rolled his eyes being that he had witnessed this before.
But the truth is that society tells us that there are two type of females in the world: The so called prudish type who stay at home waiting for their future husband, and the other, the slutty types who go out at night, just asking to be harassed or worse. Regardless on whatever happens to them, they were asking for it.
This is an incorrect and oppressive view on women. Why should it be that women should fear for themselves if they want to have a good time? Why is it that we should just accept the men who harass women or worse and it is blamed on those women? It is the men who should be shamed for behavior like this.
Too many women throughout time have bought in to the idea that regardless on what the situation was, it is their fault. Their fault for dressing that way. Their fault for being a tease. Their fault for drinking. Their fault for going out that night. Obviously there are situations that women put themselves in that might have been smarter had they not been in that situation. But it doesn’t matter. The men who harassed them, assaulted them, raped them, are the ones to blame.
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