What I encountered when my water heater was broken

On February 21st, I came back from my New Year holiday exhausted and stinky, longing for a hot shower. Then 30 minutes after I arrived my apartment, I found that my water heater didn't work. I thought maybe it fell asleep after 2 weeks' rest. The next morning it was still not working so I dialed a number glued to the surface of the heater, and the person answered the phone assigned a maintenance worker to mine the next morning.

The worker called me that afternoon, confirmed the time as 7:30 the next morning. He sounded polite and considerate, confirmed details with me for my convenience. He came a bit ahead of time the next morning, looked neat and nice. He went directly to the water heater in the kitchen and started working. after a few minutes, he asked me to go there and told me the control panel was broken, it couldn't be repaired but only changed and offer a price. I texted my landlord to see if it is acceptable. My landlord didn't accept the price so I tried to negotiate it with the worker but we didn't get to an agreement. Then I thanksed him and asked him to leave, said maybe I would call him later to see if I need his service. But he found there was water leaking from a tube, so he started to repairing it.

He put his wrench on a nut on the upper part of the tube, asked me to stand there holding that wrench and took out another wrench to tighten/loosen the nut on the down part. He was trying hard with great strength so he was hitting me constantly with his body. Then he stopped, I asked him if it was done. He said no and asked me to hold the wrench and tighten/loosen the nut again, until when I found this a bit weird: 1. he was hitting me with his crotch; 2. I found him turn the nut right then left then right then left for several times. But I'd rather tell myself I thought too much. He stopped again and asked me a third time to hold the wrench, and hit me again with his crotch and started breathing heavily and trembling visibly. I realized I was right, so I told him to just leave it there, "it's OK like that, thanks." I said, and gestured him to leave.

Guess what came to my mind when I found he was actually harassing(is this the right word?) me? Scare. So when he was organizing his tools, I went back to my bedroom, came out with the 1-meter handle of my vacuum and stood in the living room with the metal handle in my right hand and my phone in my left. Luckily, he came out of the kitchen and opened my door and left with asking me to call him for any water heater problem. I quickly went through the whole encounter, figured that he has my address and my number, he knows that I live with my cats, and if he was a perverted criminal he could easily figure out a plan to do whatever to me. 

Even now I am writing about this, my heart is still pounding. After that I imagined various cases of him torturing, raping or even killing me without anybody noticing. I am, after all, a single woman living alone. Although I wanted hot shower at my apartment very much, I didn't dare to call any maintenance worker to come. I didn't even dare to tell anybody this incident to ease myself off. I was afraid of being asked, what were you wearing? What did you say to him? What did you do? Why did you ask him to come early in the morning not other not-so-dangerous time? See, that's why I said so many times you need a boyfriend! You could have lied that your boyfriend is out jogging and will come back by any minute!

The more I thought about it, the more angry I got. I am a human being, I have my basic rights. I have the right to feel safe in my own apartment. I have the right to feel safe when I walk on the street no matter what I wear. I have the right to feel safe when I came back late at night even I am drunk. I have the right to not be victim shamed or blamed. But do I really? How many are just rights on paper to women? And how many are not even on paper?

After the anger I felt powerless, I still do now. I couldn't talk to a friend because I was afraid to be hurt a second time; I couldn't go to the police because I didn't have any evidence, I didn't even know his name; I couldn't punish him or stop him from doing the same thing to the other ladies who would use his service in future; Nor could I protect myself from other similar incidents in future......

Then I tried to tough up and convince myself that the maintenance worker doesn't have the gut to come back to do anything bad to me, he was just a pathetic person who wanted to take advantage of a girl sexually. But who gave him the confidence to escape from punishment morally and legally? If I were a boy, would this happen when the maintenance worker is a girl?

We started living in a modern society a hundred years ago, came into information era several decades before, but we are still in some sense under developed. The racist and sexist jokes, the victim blaming culture, the stereotypes oppressing both women and men, the ignorance of the gender discrimination in political fields/company management team, the misleading messages media continually feed us......

Belonging to half of the human species, NOT being a MINORITY, I always dream that someday women and children are not mentioned together and women are not viewed as a weak group; I dream that both genders feel equally safe unconditionally, that we feel equal happiness, joy, sorrow, hurt and understand each other; I dream that both genders have the same political, economical, financial rights legitimately and societally(in the unspoken rules); I dream that in near future the status to gender equality is beyond my expectation and imagination......

Joy is not an expert in gender studies, so please tell me I'm wrong at some point

I hope there won't be people coming to me and trying to comfort me in the way I hate.

Do something for gender equality please.