Whisper Network

by Chandler Baker

Because Sloane was voicing something we all believed, which was that we knew the difference. How did we know when behavior was inappropriate? We just did. Any woman over the age of fourteen probably did. Believe it or not, we didn’t want to be offended. We weren’t sitting around twiddling our thumbs waiting for someone to show up and offend us so that we would have something to do that day. In fact, we made dozens of excuses not to be. We gave the benefit of the doubt. We took a man’s comment about the way our high heels made our calves look as well intentioned. We understood the desire for us to draw a line in the sand—this was okay, this was not okay. No such line existed, or at least not one that we could paint. But trust that by the time we were working, our meters had been tested dozens of times over. We were experts in our field.

“Stop. You hear me? You stop that. When another woman offers to help you, you take it. You understand?”