Obligation
April 15, 2008
I know I was going to make my next post about the events following Sex 2.0 but the events of tonight have me so angry that I wanted to blog it.
I had a great day, high from the amazing weekend filled with respectful, amazing, sex-positive people. I slept in, went to hang out with friends for a while, and decided to go downtown to see a friend’s band play.
I arrived at the show an hour after the start time listed on the ticket. The gates to the club are closed. I called my friend and he said the show was starting much later. So I walk to a bar/coffee that I frequent pretty much every day. I go so often for coffee that all the staff knows me unless they only work nights. I walked up to the counter and ordered a glass of merlot. Well, this is when I notice two very drunk disheveled older men looking at me. No, not just looking, leering. I got pretty creeped out because every single time I glanced in their direction they were staring. Hardcore. So I drink quickly and made the decision to walk to a nearby coffee shop to grab coffee in the interim. While on the way to the other coffee shop I notice my friend working the door at the bar across the street. I was waiting for the light to change when two other creepy drunk older men decide to strike up a conversation with me. After being very short with my answers, I tell them that I am not interested in talking to them. Yet, they still continue to ask me personal questions. Luckily the light changed and I crossed the bar to meet my friend.
On my way back to the club a little later I decided to talk to a cabbie at the street to see how late he would be out so that I could catch a ride home after the show. He said 4am and offered to give me his number so I could call him when I was ready. He asked me to ring his phone so that I could make sure I had the correct number and I did. Big mistake. About a half hour later he calls my phone. I am at the show so I hit ignore on my phone. He leaves a message. Then he calls again. By this point I am so freaked out I am almost in tears. I called a friend who picked me up. This is the same friend who drove me to the conference on Saturday. Remind me to bake him cupcakes.
I am just SO FUCKING TIRED of not being able to go out as I please. Why should I have to take a friend with me to a place I am comfortable being at? Why can’t I leave others alone and have the same done to me? It is unacceptable for men to feel that I am obligated to speak to them because they have cocks. What right do you have to treat me like a piece of meat only meant to be fucked? Yes, I know I should probably take a friend, but if none of my friends are available does this mean I should sit at home and be miserable? I volunteered at the sexual assault center in my town and it is fucking ridiculous how much violence is enacted upon women on a daily basis. Why can’t we teach our sons and our daughters to respect others boundaries and to not be a fucking creepy person?!!! My lovely day ended with me feeling like a victim. Fuck you, creepy men.
And fucking websites like these do not help– How to be the creepy guy at work and How to be the creepy guy on campus. These websites are NOT FUNNY, you assholes. It is NOT okay to stare at my tits. It is NOT okay to objectify me. It is NOT okay to make me feel victimized.
April 16, 2008 at 2:37 am
Ugh, I’m so sorry that this happened to you, honey!
April 17, 2008 at 12:56 am
[...] Obligation « Exposing the cherry “I volunteered at the sexual assault center in my town and it is fucking ridiculous how much violence is enacted upon women on a daily basis. Why can’t we teach our sons and our daughters to respect others boundaries and to not be a fucking creepy person?!!!” (tags: assholes men women feminism violence harassment) [...]
April 18, 2008 at 5:38 pm
Thanks, Ellie. I am fine now but I was really upset when I wrote this. <3
May 1, 2008 at 2:34 am
Obviously you should be able to go out without being harassed. That shit with the cabbie is just fucked up.
But those articles are kinda funny, actually, or rather somewhat more amusing than properly funny.
The point being that no guy actually wants to be creepy. Creeps don’t get laid– they are creepy mostly because they’re unhappy. These articles are actually about NOT being creepy. Most creeps are just desperate and lonely unconfident undersexed guys, not any more dangerous than every other guy, and no more likely to objectify you. It’s more that they (and obviously you) feel that they’re unqualified to get with you, and so some will just stare from a distance and get whatever little enjoyment they can, and others will make hella creepy passes. It sucks, sure, but I’d wager they’re far more unhappy about the situation than you are.
Here’s something to think about: if a really super hot guy did the same shit, would you have anywhere close to the same reaction? Or would his hotness make you far more likely to be okay with his behavior, and regard it as a timid and weak but valid mating ritual? Would you feel so put off if you caught an attractive young couple both staring at your tits in admiration? You’d probably feel somewhat complimented in either case, even if you weren’t at all interested in doing something with them.
I mean, being left alone in public is a nice idea, but if people didn’t try to engage with people they found attractive, how would anyone meet anyone except by being formally introduced? I have to think the current system is more freeing for women than one in which talking to or making eye contact with strangers is verboten.
Obviously it’s pretty imperfect, the whole thing. Guys are assholes, and women for some reason usually like assholes, which continues a vicious cycle only made worse by media reinforcement of such stereotypes. But you worked in a sexual assault center. You know how much more likely you are to be assaulted by an acquaintance, so you should know the creepy guy isn’t so much of a real threat as it often seems. Not to say you should go around chatting up the creeps and feeding their egos to boost their weak self-esteem– you’re going out to the bar, not working at a strip club, and it’s not your job to go about making sad fucks feel better about themselves. Just try to keep it in perspective.
Ultimately, it’s up to you whether you want to be afraid of people. This is the world we live in, and it is shit and beauty in mostly equal measures. You’re a hot young female, so if you go out by yourself, you will have to deal with an inordinate amount of unwanted attention. I’m not saying you dress to gain attention (I like to dress well for my own self-image, though it’s hard to extract that from doing it to gain more attention coming from more attractive women), but if you don’t want to have to fight off creeps, yeah, you do need friends or you need to frump it up and look unapproachable. Sorry.
Guys don’t really have it much better. If you’re respectful and considerate as a guy, you probably won’t have the option to be a slut unless you’re just so good looking that girls are throwing themselves at you. You’re probably a little boring in bed because you don’t want to dominate girls who are by and large raised to be submissive because you want to respect them and their boundaries (only true to your upbringing you would rather be an asshole sexually so you barely even enjoy the mediocre sex), not to mention you’ve less experience with fewer girls and probably haven’t even been made aware that lots and lots of girls choose kinkier sex because they enjoy it more. Because you’re boring in bed you’ve probably been dumped more times than you’d want to remember for a series of assholes who really turned her on. So now you’ve got low self-esteem and you see this super hot girl walking down the street and you can tell she doesn’t want to know you, only you haven’t seen a pair of breasts up close in six months, and probably not a set as nice as these since that strip club at your friend’s bachelor party three years ago, and you look, or you make some truly awful pass. That’s a creep for you. That’s 90% of the creeps that are out there.
I know, because that was me. Then I lost a bunch of weight and started dressing well and became a lot more bold and confident and now I have an inordinately hot girlfriend who dumped her boring boyfriend for a guy who was enough of an asshole to really turn her on without being so much of one as to make her feel like shit about herself. Go figure. You can’t just tell people to not be a creep– it’s fucking hard and it took me a huge amount of working on myself and learning about women and sex and psychology before I could even hope to be cool around good-looking women, or any women, really. It’s taken me years of hard work to reduce my creepiness.
So cut em some slack, would ya? Life is hard for everybody.
May 1, 2008 at 11:51 am
[...] is the comment in question. It is an EPIC FAIL, as you will see from the number of stamps it required. (It actually [...]
May 1, 2008 at 4:43 pm
I know, because that was me.
Okay.
It was at that point in the too-long comment that I went back and read the whole thing as if the commenter were Sy Sperling (not just the Hair Club president, but also a client). Far more entertaining that way.
Now, if only I weren’t so sleep-deprived, I could go into how he’s revealing an unhealthy share of self-loathing, all tied up in a past he believes is far behind him, but most likely kept nearby in a bedroom closet full of anxieties.