Zahra Gordon

…the personal is always political 

…the personal is all ways political.

Last July I had Flow internet service installed at my apartment. As it turned out, the room best suited to host the modem was my back bedroom. A few weeks after the service was installed, I got a phone call supposedly from a Flow technician. The man on the line said that Flow was doing a routine check on newly installed services. They were in the area and wanted to ensure that my connection had been properly installed. I wasn’t at home; wasn’t scheduled to be home for hours. I explained this and the tech guy said “no problem” then hung up. No one from Flow ever called back about this check-in.

I thought nothing of it until I came across a Facebook post from Flow a few months later. The post was a warning to customers noting that Flow technicians always use branded vehicles and that all interactions with Flow are preceded by an automated call. I read the post multiple times. I even sent Flow a private message explaining the nature of the call I’d received. They responded to let me know that they do not do routine checks on services after they’ve been installed. Of course, the call I got was not preceded by an automated recording.

That’s when the fear and horror struck. I was burdened with questions:

• Who was the man that called me?
• Where did this man get my phone number?
• How did he know that I’d recently installed Flow?
• How did he know my name and where I lived?
• Was he working with the Flow technician who actually installed my service? The same man whom I’d let into my bedroom?

The scariest questions I had were:

• What would’ve happened if I was at home that day?
• Would I have had a choice?

 “You called on the Prime Minister to do something about crime. I am not in your bedroom, I am not in your choice of men” – T&T Prime Minister Dr. Keith Rowley at a recent public forum. This statement was made days after a 23-year-old woman was murdered in a cinema parking lot following a domestic dispute.

And now, Rowley has me asking:

• If I’d been robbed, raped, had my throat slit, been strangled and left to rot in a shallow ditch or any combination of these atrocities, would I have been held responsible for making a poor choice in male Flow technician?
• Am I making poor choices by living on my own?
• Am I making poor choices by wanting to use the Internet?
• Again, would I have had a choice?

The Prime Minister’s statements were reckless in a society where women are this vulnerable. His victim-blaming was an unfortunate, missed opportunity to set the tone for more nuanced and critically engaged conversation surrounding violence and domestic violence in particular. I shouldn’t have to be afraid of the cable guy.