Women, Men, and Sexual Aggressiveness: My Experiences. Or why I peed in a coffee can for a year.

I have a good friend who is as much a tea party conservative as I am a liberal. He is in his 80s, I am pushing 70. In the midst of recent allegations about Donald Trump’s predatory behavior against women we got into quite a discussion over this sordid situation. In it, my friend wanted to replay the litigation and impeachment proceedings against Bill Clinton in 1998. In comparing Clinton to Trump he argued that both men should be held to the same standards, something with which I  agree.. If that's the case then Donald Trump needs to answer to a judge just like Bill Clinton did when impeachment charges were brought against him. He may not have been impeached, but he did pay a price. He payed an enormous fine and lost his license to practice law. But Bill Clinton isn't running for president, Hillary is.

Cutting Bill out of the discussion, my friend then tried to argue against Hillary because she had tried to get even with the other women while, at the same time, standing by her man.  While it may be wrong to have done so, she is not the first wife, nor will she be the last, who find themselves in similar situations. My friend and I live in a small town. We both know the stories of women who have sought revenge against their husbands’ infidelity, whether it was damaging a new little red sports car, or buying large ticket items with a forgotten credit card in his name. I am guessing that Hillary Clinton followed Ann Lander’s advice by asking herself if she was better off with or without her husband. And decided to stay married.

But, in writing this piece, my intention is not to add to the Trump versus Clinton argument, but to write about how it feels to be a woman victimized by sexual aggression. For I have been there twice in my adult life and I have a great deal of empathy for the women who are now coming forth accusing Donald Trump of inappropriate behavior.

The second incident occurred sometime between mid-September 1971 and May, 1972, while I was a 24 year old Captain in the Army Nurse Corps, stationed at Fort Knox, KY. At the time I was the head nurse of a three wing, 75 bed unit (or ward) for male surgical patients. Some of our patients had infections from wounds they’d gotten in Vietnam, others were young recruits in the midst of basic training who needed their tonsils or appendixes removed.

One day I was in the storage room, stocking the cart I used to carry sterile supplies around the ward as I went about changing patients’ dressings, a job I loved. The chief of surgery came into the room. Did he need anything? I asked.

His reply startled me.

“Can I look at your breasts?”

What. The. Hell?

Other than telling him “No,” I didn’t know what to do. Should I go to one of my ward masters –senior non-commissioned officers who were my administrative assistants and were well versed in the ways of the Army-- and tell him? Ask him for advice? Should I go to the Chief or Assistant Chief Nurse to complain about what had happened? To be honest, I was too afraid. Every single consequence I could envision from this encounter spelled my doom in some way. This was the Army, after all. Sexual harassment happened.

For the following few weeks every time I was found myself alone with this man he asked the same question. “Can I look at your breasts.”

Finally, in exasperation I unbutton the top three buttons of my uniform, and pulled up my bra. “See they’re boobs. Are you satisfied?” I honestly don’t remember if he attempted to fondle my breasts. I never told another person. I was too embarrassed. Twenty years later I discovered the doctor had asked the same of my good friend Carol. And her response was quite similar to mine.

“Why didn't I go to someone with greater authority than mine?” That was the question my friend asked during the heat of our conversation. Well, why didn't I? Because it was 1972, and it was the Army, where anything short of rape was often ignored. Because I liked my job and I didn't want to be transferred to another unit. Because it could happen again on another ward. Because it was the Army and it was 1972. Because I was getting out of the Army in the spring and would soon thereafter marry a fellow Captain whose respect for me was unconditional. Because I rose above the event, as so many women do.

Unfortunately, it was not the only time I faced sexual aggression and the first experience changed my life forever. I was 22, in Officers’ Basic Training at Fort Sam Houston, Texas in the middle of July. I lived in my own room, with two windows,  on the second floor of my dorm/barracks.. What I didn't have was air conditioning, and it was terribly hot.

My fellow female “medical officers:” nurses, doctors, physical therapists, dietitians and hospital administrators, had been warned repeatedly by our instructors that our barracks were not under lock and key, that there had been instances of sexual assault, and that we must keep our own rooms locked at night. In spite of this warning many of the women who lived on our floor disregarded our instructors’ advice and only engaged the security chain, leaving the door partially open, in hope of a cross breeze.

One weekend my friend Joanne and I partied with a group of friends. I’d left relatively early—about 2 AM Sunday morning. Joanne stayed. She and I lived across the hall from each other in rooms directly above the side door to the building. With a window fan blowing full force, I went to bed as usual, wearing only a pair of panties, covering myself with a sheet, after properly locking myself in.

Around 0630 I was awakened by the sound of the screen door on the main floor, below,  slamming shut. Wondering if the party had lasted all night I got up to check on Joanne. She was in her room, sound asleep, with only her door’s chain in place.

I have no explanation for what happened next. After checking on Joanne I went back to bed, but I failed to lock the door. I was just falling back to sleep when I felt the sheet being pulled off me. It was odd. At first I thought I must have kicked it, or maybe it was from the fan, but as it continued to slide, exposing my naked torso I sat up, and saw a man standing at the bottom of my bed. I screamed and he ran.

 My screams woke up a number of women on our floor, and one of them called the MPs. They parked me in the front passenger seat of their squad car while they—we—went to answer someone else’s call for help. They had had a busy night, breaking up several fist fights, getting between husband and wife in a domestic dispute, and responding to two reported robberies. They took my report while they drove. When I asked them what they intended to do about it their reply was, “Nothing.” They were not unsympathetic, but they had far more serious concerns, laughed off my fear, and took me back to my barracks.

            I had grown up in rural western Pennsylvania, ridden my bike alone many times, studied in Europe, walked through some unsavory neighborhoods in Pittsburgh during my first two years of college, and never felt threated. That night I was still frightened; so terrified I slept on a couch with the lights on in the living room of an apartment where one of my friends lived.

            Those 30 seconds changed me forever. I stopped walking outside alone at night. If someone on the street, even during the day, came up behind me I quickly crossed the street. Unusual sounds in the middle of the night terrified me. When I came home to an empty house after working a night shift I patrolled the house, looking for predators, with a butcher knife in my hands.

My first duty assignment was Letterman Army Hospital in San Francisco. When the Zodiac killer struck a mile from the apartment complex where I lived I had a full blown anxiety attack.  I saw a psychiatrist who explained I was not going crazy, but having a normal reaction to frightening event. He taught me self- hypnosis to ease my anxiety. The next year, in Vietnam I peed in a discarded three-pound coffee can at night because I was afraid to leave my room to use the toilet.

            After my husband and I married, I relaxed, but during my final semester of graduate school Jim took a job in another city. I lived with him Thursday evening through Monday morning, but on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday nights, I slept with a butcher knife under my pillow, in our cute apartment near the university. On Monday evenings I usually had dinner with a friend whose husband was working on a PhD at a university in another city. When it was her turn to cook she walked me across the street to my apartment. I was that scared.

When I began to read about PTSD I could tell that what I was going through fit the pattern, especially my hyper-vigilance and sensitivity to noises. But PTSD was for men who had been in combat, wasn’t it? How could those 30 seconds have caused me to feel so vulnerable?

  For a long time afterward I blamed myself. My carelessness in not locking the door was at the root of my problem.

And that is the point. Women who find themselves in the company of sexual aggressors or predators often feel as I did: “If only I hadn’t made eye contact in the elevator, if only I had crossed the street, if only I had called 911. If only I had not answered the door, or accepted a ride from a stranger when my car broke down.” The list is endless.

Fortunately, in the decades since my experience our society has come to see experiences like mine as part of a pattern of sexual aggression against both women and yes, sometimes, against men. Yes, the predator is obsessed by something sexual, but at its heart, sexual aggressiveness is less about sex and more about power. And it is for that reason women—and abused men-- often don’t report an inappropriate sexually charged encounter. We do not believe we will be heard or taken seriously. Or that anything other than a “good ole boy” slap on the back will happen to our tormentor. Or, worse yet, deprived of his good name, our tormentor will find a way to get even.

If nothing else our society’s recognition that the sexual victimization of women goes far beyond rape,  allows women to come forward to talk about their experiences. But it takes guts, especially when the predator is someone famous. And that is why we cannot dismiss accusations against Trump. There are now too many women telling similar stories that happened in different cities and different years for this to be some sort of plot, depriving him of the presidency, as he currently asserts. It took one brave woman, former Miss Universe winner Alicia Marcado, to tell her story for the floodgate to be open. Not just for women abused by Trump, but also for women like me to tell our stories.