Pondering in Translation: Consent, Culture and Control

A self-reflective examination of being taught to freeze, but learning how to say no.

Content Warning: This piece contains references to non-consensual touch. Please read with care.

You’re five years old, standing in the candy aisle of the local shop, staring longingly at a chocolate bar. Your mom or dad has already said no. The transaction is done, the bags are packed. You’re dawdling, hoping indecision will turn into mercy. Instead, a hand grabs your wrist, not hard enough to bruise, but firm enough to move you along. No explanation. No room for protest. You’ve learned what many children do: that your body is not always yours to command.

Later, it's an auntie’s hug you didn’t ask for, a teacher’s guiding hand on your back when you didn’t want to be touched, a principal’s fury as she grabs you by the wrist and tightens angry that you committed the crime of sitting at the wrong lunch table. Each moment a small moment of survival. Each moment of survival chipping at the idea that permission is taken, not something you give.

The floor is cold beneath my bare feet. This is an unexpected detail I’ll remember more clearly than her face. I’ve just stepped out of the scanner at Marrakesh airport when a woman in uniform gestures vaguely toward me. I pass without triggering any alarm, but she motions for me to come towards her anyway.

I go to her obediently.

No beat.

No pause.

No explanation.

Just her eyes scanning me.

Then her hands pressing against my breasts and feeling fully what is there.

I don’t ask what she’s doing, I’m in shock.

She never informed me beforehand or gave any indication that there was a problem.

I don’t say “stop.”

I don’t even know if I’m allowed to.

My silence is read as consent.

My friend watched my face, searching for a mirror of her own shock.

I caught up to her and I asked her, “did the same thing happen to you?”

She said, “yes but they also touched me…”

And then she points at the space between her legs. A place that oneself, or a lover or a doctor with medical intent could touch.

Our stillness was read as surrender.

Is this is how I was taught to behave?

I pause for a second, unsure of what to do. I’d spent years teaching my body that my voice did not protect it. This was not the time to carry on this habit. I’ve started to walk a path of reclaiming responsibility by speaking the truth as it arises within me.

The reminder to myself that my voice is here to protect my body.

This was a moment to acknowledge within my body that yes, it was feeling fear and violation.

But this time I’d try to do something about it.

I went to the police box next to the security check and explained what happen to an officer. I asked him, “is this the normal protocol?”

And first, he didn’t understand.

There was a language barrier. So, I tried to explain again in more medical terms.

Once he seemingly understood he told me that this is her job and she knows what she is doing.

I wondered if he understood my question about being informed first, not the questioning of this standard procedure, and wondered if there was something being lost in translation, so I tried again, “ And that means her job includes not informing, or telling us, before hand?”

He asked me, “where do they do that?”

I explained to him that in my experience traveling through EU countries, the USA, Japan, and Mexico, it was standard procedure to be informed in advance if physical contact was necessary. In each of those places, I was told beforehand that I would be touched.

He responded by saying that Morocco is not any of these countries. Morocco is not like USA.

He added that if I believed Moroccans were racist, he could share many examples of Moroccans experiencing racism in the USA. He asked me if I wanted to see it on his phone?

I said, no because I know racism is an issue in the USA. I just wanted to understand if this procedure was normal to be conducted without any information before.

He told me that the security guard’s supervisor would come to talk to me and hear my story.

I told him that his and the officer’s choices were a window into the world of Morocco. In that moment, I didn’t know what else to say but my truth: that the guard, who touched me without informing me, and this police officer, who stood as authority, were my point of contact with this country. And whether or not it was fair, their words and actions felt like they represented something larger than themselves: their society, their system and their worldview.

He told me again that I spoke funny, laughing he told me to wait there… and left.

My intuition told me that nobody was really going to come.

I went to the gate wondering if I had been to sensitive or emotional. How could I have brought this conversation up in a different way to communicate better? Maybe this really was just the normal approach here and I should just accept it at face value.

As I sat outside my gate, furiously researching others’ experiences, I was searching for context—had anybody else experienced this same thing? I scrolled, skimmed, refreshed. I needed to know I wasn’t alone and I wanted to understand whether this was a normal procedure as the police officer had defended. I didn’t trust his judgement of the situation.

I could feel the disconnect to my body lengthen as my headspace took over. My brain was buzzing with trying to logically sort out the next steps while addressing the inevitable doubt that crept forward. Was I just playing out the script of an overly emotional and too sensitive woman? Misreading the room and not understanding a country and it’s independent customs?

I thought what could I do to get more context and clarity? Should I engage with the travel community on TripAdvisor, on Reddit, call the US embassy, contact the airlines that I was using to fly through?

I put my hand on my chest to calm the internal chatter.

I asked myself: did I protect my body with my voice?

And from deep within, a yes reverberated through me.

Not loud or triumphant, but certain and true.

I’d spent years teaching my body that my voice did not protect it. Today I broke that lesson. Even though my perspective was challenged, my reality was questioned, my experience reduced to a story I told my body that I would protect it.

I contacted the Swiss airlines to report this and ask, yet again, is this the normal approach?

I was informed, and I quote: Passengers should always be informed of the procedures being carried out, especially in sensitive situations, and we will express this concern to ensure better practices moving forward.

Flash forward to this sunny day back in the safety of my home. As I type and edit this piece my blood boils with every word I rework. Rereading the exchange with the police officer pulls me back to that moment. My face flushed, my heart racing through my chest. I was doing everything I could to stay composed, to not be dismissed as just another hysterical woman.

A common concept about consent is that it’s clear: permission is there or it was not extended.

There is a yes or there is a no.

But I wonder: what if my whole life trained me to whisper when I meant to scream?

To say ok, when I should say f*ck off.

What if I was taught to freeze instead of flee?

Is this the truth that women carry buried under years of conditioning?

I hit the keys hard, fingers tense with memory.

All I can think is this: the body remembers. Even when you try to forget.