Let us be clear: Rape is not about sex. It is about power and violence and control.
We know a sex strike cannot stop rape. Our strike is meant to get the attention of those of you who think you are off the hook, those who do not rape but who allow it through your silence about those who do, through the tiny things you do every day that make girls feel like they are less than you, that make girls feel afraid. Even if you do not rape, you still hurt women. Even if you do not rape, you feed rape culture by not actively trying to stop it. It is time for you to know this. It is time for this to end.
We hereto declare that the young women of Prescott High School are officially on a sex strike.
Make friends with your hands, boys.
Sincerely,
The Nowhere Girls
US.
The notes are everywhere—on walls, on ceilings, on floors, inside lockers and backpacks and purses—bright fluorescent late-night printouts from some unsuspecting parent’s printer. The school is littered with them. They will be cleaned up, but they cannot be unseen.
“What the fuck is this shit?”
“Is this serious?”
“Have Eric and Ennis seen this?”
“Fucking bitches!”
These are the words said out loud, with laughter, with rage, with ridicule. But there are also slight smiles, imperceptible nods of the head, invisible support that is so far hidden.
Girls walk through the hallway a little taller. They meet one another’s eyes, share smiles with girls they never would have thought to acknowledge before. They keep their secret, and it burns like sunlight in their chests.
*
Erin sits at a desk in the back corner of the school’s front office entering data into a computer spreadsheet. Her desk is not quite hidden, but it is pretty close. She is almost comfortable.
One thing Erin has learned during her time in the office is that Principal Slatterly likes to keep her office door open, and she always has a fan going. “She’s going through the change,” Erin overheard Mrs. Poole say while gossiping with one of the guidance counselors.
Erin overhears a lot in her corner. Sometimes people forget she’s there. Or even if they know she’s there, they somehow think she’s not capable of hearing them.
Like right now, Erin can hear every word of a phone conversation Principal Slatterly is having in her office. She heard Slatterly say, “This is Regina Slatterly returning Chief Delaney’s call.” She heard her silent waiting. Then she heard a series of almost meek “Yes, sirs,” as if Slatterly were a child being scolded.
“We’re working on getting all the flyers down,” Slatterly says. “The situation will be contained.”
Erin stops typing.
“I don’t think we have anything to worry about,” Slatterly says. “The girls aren’t doing any harm. It’ll fizzle out in time. . . . Yes, sir. . . . No, sir. . . . It’s just, I’m not so sure they’re actually doing anything illegal. . . . No, of course not. . . . I understand. . . . Yes, I’ll take care of it. . . . Okay, I’ll talk to you later. Tell Marjorie and the kids I say hello.”
Erin hears the phone rattle back into the console. Then she hears quite possibly the loudest sigh in the history of sighs.
She turns her head very slowly until she is looking over her shoulder, straight into the principal’s office, straight at Slatterly seated behind her big desk with her head buried in her hands, her fan ruffling the thinning hair on the top of her head like soft feathers.
*
Amber Sullivan has Beginning Art for second period. It’s already a throwaway class, even without today’s substitute teacher. They’re supposed to be working on self-portraits, making a collage of the things they most care about, things that define them. Some students are texting or playing games on their phones; a few are asleep, heads cushioned by arms and jackets. But, mostly, people are talking.
Amber sits at her table in the corner and silently flips through old, wrinkled magazines, looking for pictures to add to her collage. She cuts out a picture of a tree. A mailbox. A cat. She glues them on her piece of red construction paper in no particular order. She cuts out no pictures of people, nothing resembling skin or body parts. The only intention she has for this project is that it should be impossible to read any meaning into it, that it should reflect nothing real of herself, that it should not give her away the way art always claims to do.
The only other person in class who appears to be working on their project is Grace, who is sitting on the other side of the room. School has been in session for three weeks already, but Amber only just started noticing the plain, chubby girl who always seems to be staring at her whenever she looks her way. It’s like she suddenly appeared out of nowhere, and now it’s impossible to ignore her. She doesn’t look at her the way other girls look at her, with a mix of ridicule and hostility in their eyes, the words “slut” and “white trash” on the tips of their tongues. Maybe this girl just doesn’t know any better.
“Fucking chicks, man,” says the asshole named Blake at the table next to Amber’s. It is impossible to ignore him, too. “I bought Lisa a quadruple grande caramel some kind of bullshit that cost like six dollars, and she wouldn’t even give me a fucking hand job.”
“Lisa?” says another guy. “She’s in on that Nowhere Girls bullshit now too?”
“Yeah, can you believe it? She was all, ‘I don’t have to hook up with you if I don’t feel like it,’ so I was like, ‘Then why are you wearing that skirt that’s so short I can practically see your ass?’ and she was all, ‘I can wear whatever I want,’ and I said, ‘Yeah, but if you wear something like that, you can’t expect me to behave myself,’ which is like totally reasonable, right?”
“Totally.”
“But then she started bitching about how blaming women for sexual assault because of what they’re wearing is, like, bad or something, and I was like, ‘Who said anything about sexual assault? I just wanted a hand job,’ and then she threw the fucking drink in my face!”
“She has a point, though,” says a third guy at the table. “It is kind of a dick move to just expect her to want to hook up with you whenever you feel like it.”
Blake and the other guy look at him, like they’re waiting for him to say, “Just kidding.”
“What the fuck, dude?” Blake finally says. “She, like, totally ruined my car seats.”
The guy just shrugs.
“But at least there’s still one girl left who won’t say no,” Blake’s friend says, not even bothering to lower his voice. “You should have called Amber.”