Okay, read this (and if you're really ambitious, some or all of the 14 pages of comments) and get back to me:
http://jezebel.com/5046087/when-the-nice-guy-down-the-street-makes-you-uncomfortable
I'm really of two minds. On one hand, as a woman, absolutely I know the creepy/leering/overly familiar guy who makes you feel uncomfortable and like you wanna take a bath after any interaction. On the other hand, my boundaries on this are apparently more fluid than a lot of other women's. I get the idea that some would be upset by three Home Depot employees converging on them in the electrical aisle proffering help just because they're wearing perfume/showing a tiny bit of cleavage/lacking a Y chromosome. Me, as is well documented here, I take it as my rightful payback for putting up with the past 35 years of PMS and the pain of childbirth, and milk it for all it's worth. Similarly, I never mind a non-skeevy compliment on my appearance. If the guy behind the counter at Dunkin Donuts wants to tell me I've got the most beautiful eyes, or a possibly gay/possibly flirtatious Boston cop wants to put his hand on my arm and tell me my jacket is fabulous, I am gonna crack up laughing and say "thank you", not get offended, not be creeped out, and certainly not feel like OMG, they're probably going to leave their worksite, follow me down the street, and rape me.
Which brings me to this, a quote from one of those many pages of comments:
In "The Gift of Fear" De Becker puts it well. He says ask a male friend when the last time they feared for their lives and usually they have to think a bit. Ask a woman and they'll say, 'do you mean this month or this week?'.
Really? Really??!?? Wow. I hope this is authorial hyperbole, because if you don't actually live in, say, a war zone, going through your days frequently in fear for your life is a little...much...and I hate to think of how and why these women are actually being conditioned to feel that way.
xoxo
2 comments:
Another check mark in my little notebook of how low the threshold of fear/panic/name your anxiety has gotten for Americans suffering under the 24 hour news cycle.
Growing up in a cold place, I never knew I was supposed to fear for my life when the temperature reached -1 F. Apparently I am, and I'm so improved by that knowledge :/
De Becker clearly didn't talk to Boston commuters. In six+ years on 128 or the Pike, I feared for my life at least once a week, and without a broadcast journalist to tell me to be afraid.
De Becker apparently didn't talk to gay or transgendered people either, for whom "this month" probably is valid. But they're not mainstream and don't count.
--old grump, signing off--
My favorite recent news hysteria was the weather teaser of "coldest temperatures in years!"
Except years was, like, 3 or 4, not 29 or 72. Coldest temperatures in years, my fat sweatpants-clad ass.
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