Screaming to be Seen

A couple months ago, I was sitting in a Southwest Airlines wheelchair, waiting to preboard my flight. Passengers were disembarking in one long, hurried rush. Suddenly, I felt a jolt of pain and screamed.

A young woman, dragging her wheelie bag in her right hand and reading the phone in her left, had slammed into my tender right ankle. I was recovering from surgery, and my ankle was wrapped in an air cast/boot. The woman didn’t break stride. She cast a quick look over her right shoulder. Never said a word. Never acknowledged my presence, the wheelchair or the pain she’d inflicted. She kept moving and kept reading her phone.

In a wheelchair. Using a walker. Navigating with a cane. These last few months of my disability and delicate, hard-earned healing have humbled me, taught me new lessons about invisibility and empowered my anger–and my scream.

As a young woman, I felt the rage of being marginalized and ignored, but I never expressed it. I held it in and fought, in futility, against it.

There are too many times to mention. Only in these most recent years have I begun to acknowledge the many ways I’ve been assaulted, deemed inconsequential, rendered invisible.

When I was an undergraduate student in France, a man ambushed me on a run, in broad daylight. I broke free and started to run away from him. He chased after me. I quickly realized I couldn’t outrun him. I turned and faced him. He lunged at me and wrapped his hands around my neck. I fought, and he released me. Throughout this entire assault, I never once screamed.

“On se verra,” he said, as he strolled away. We’ll meet again.

He was right. I didn’t meet him again, though I’d meet his type again and again.

And the aftermath. At the police station. A second assault. In many ways far worse than the one that stripped me of my grandmother’s cross I’d worn around my neck. The assault that left me with bruises and scratches. And my life. Because I fought for it.

Two policemen leaned in and grilled me with questions. Asked me to repeat all the vulgarities–in French–that the man had hurled and hissed at me as he chased me and then choked me. They asserted that he couldn’t have been French. I insisted that he was. They rebuked me and dismissed my report: as an American, I clearly couldn’t tell the difference between a Moroccan or an Algerian and a French man, a white French man, a Liberte-Egalite-Fraternite French man.

Hours after my attack, they drove me around the area where I’d been assaulted and asked me if I saw the man. More insult to injury. The guy was long gone. They were having a great laugh at my expense while I struggled to express my fury in my rudimentary French.

There were other assaults and acts of intimidation early in my career. When I was walking on a sidewalk, again in broad daylight. In an office where I worked. Each time was an ambush; each time I fought. Each time I asked for help, justice. From the police, from my bosses. And each time it was men who dismissed me. Blamed me for provoking the men by my mere presence.

Each time I fought, I freed myself from the man who attacked me. Yet, in the aftermath, when I fought for my dignity, for justice, I always lost. My appeals and outrage fell on the ears of deaf men in power. And the anger and the screams built inside me.

Early in my journalism career, I based myself in Cairo, Egypt. It had been my dream and goal to be a foreign correspondent. I was a contract photojournalist and had representation by a French agency.

I had been following the unfolding, underreported story of the civil war in Liberia, and I pitched the story to the photo editor. He wouldn’t offer any support; however, he would guarantee publication and suggested I go “on spec.” On speculation.

I was in Ivory Coast preparing to leave for Liberia. With the help of a colleague, I’d secured the necessary contacts, intel, a car and a driver who had worked recently in Liberia. Just as I was preparing to leave, the editor in Paris sent me a Telex. He instructed me to wait for another photographer, a man. He said he was worried that I was inexperienced, and this photographer would be a good companion for me. Wait! What?

I’d already done all the prep, and I was ready to leave. Not to mention this guy would be repped by the same agency and thus cut into my potential photo sales. I was furious. I protested. And I waited.

When the guy arrived, he hijacked my ride and all my preparations. He took control of the trip, and I let him. As soon as we crossed the northeast border into Liberia, Charles Taylor’s rebels hijacked our vehicle. Since we’d lost a day in country once our vehicle was returned, the guy decided to travel at night, against the advice of our driver. Rebels leaped from the jungle at makeshift, multiple checkpoints, yelling and pointing guns at us. We proceeded, making terrible time under dangerous circumstances before the guy decided that’d we’d better stop for the night.

I learned a lot on that first trip in a conflict zone: don’t hide behind a car when I’m caught in crossfire; don’t let anyone hijack my plans or imperil my safety, chocolate is an essential food item.

When I traveled to northern Iraq a year later, I traveled alone. I relied on my instincts, made my own decisions. I carried the lessons I’d learned in Liberia–and I carried the anger and resentment that I’d held in check, by holding my breath and stifling my outrage. I made my way, my way. I returned with compelling images and a renewed sense of self and purpose.

After years overseas, I returned to the States. I continued to encounter bosses that offered assignments to my male colleagues, who suggested I answer phones. Photojournalism had few women in supervisory or management positions during much of my career–and fewer women covering conflict. I have always believed –and continue to assert–that a woman’s eye, a woman’s perspective–is vital.

At this point in my career, my highlights are now grey, not blonde; and, I’ve discovered a new kind of invisibility, though still familiar and frustrating. Now I let my experience inform my reactions. I challenge the people who refuse to see me.

Before the pandemic lockdown, I was standing at an airline counter to check in for my flight. I was the only one in line and a woman agent was assisting me. A tall man in a business suit walked up, right into me. He started asking her questions.

I turned and said: “Hey, I’m checking in.” I stared at him. His response: “Oh, I didn’t see you.”

Literally, I was invisible to him. It took a few more moments while the agent and I ignored his continued questioning and she finished my check in. He finally stepped away to wait his turn. I looked at the agent. She shook her head. She’d seen it, probably experienced the undesired invisibility.

So now, when a man steps into me, steps in front of me, cuts in front of me or marginalizes my presence in any way, my response is not that of my younger self. I don’t let the slight go and hold onto my anger. I don’t politely defer and avoid the “spectacle” of a public challenge. I’m not embarrassed to assert myself.

I take the opportunity to take a stand for myself. Make myself visible. Choose the moment to express my outrage and educate those who are paying attention.

I don’t let men hijack my ride–or my power.

I’m not afraid of my anger. I’m not afraid to scream to be heard–and seen.

Copyright 2021 Cheryl Hatch ALL RIGHTS RESERVED