At 11 o’clock at night, you moved across the train car to sit far too close to two girls about half your age so you could interrupt our conversation to tell us how pretty we are. We said thank you, have a good night, and went back to our conversation.
You interrupted us a second time to say that you didn’t want to bother us, but we needed to hear it, how pretty we are. We said cool, thanks, have a good night, and went back to our conversation.
You interrupted us a third time to say you wouldn’t say anything else, you didn’t want to bother us, you just had to let us know. We said have a good night, and went back to our conversation.
This seemed to perplex you. You came all that way across a train car to bestow upon us this life altering knowledge - the fact we were pretty - and all you got was a polite thank you? You grumbled about gratitude, about how you better not end up on facebook, were we putting you on facebook? Why was my friend looking at her phone? Was she putting you on facebook? All you’d done was tell us we were pretty.
At this point, my friend says, “Sir, we’re trying to have a conversation. Please don’t be disrespectful.”
This was when you got angry. Disrespectful? YOU? For taking the time out of your day to tell us we were pretty? Did we know we were pretty?
“Yes, we knew,” says my friend.
Well, that was the last straw. How dare we know we were pretty! Sure, you were allowed to tell us we were pretty, but we weren’t allowed to think it independently, without your permission! And if we had somehow already known - perhaps some other strange man had informed us earlier in the day - we certainly weren’t allowed to SAY it! Where did we get off, having confidence in ourselves? You wanted us to know we were pretty, sure, but only as a reward for good behavior. We were pretty when you gifted it upon us with your words, and not a moment before! You raged for a minute about how horrible we were for saying we thought we were pretty, how awful we turned out to be.
I took a page out of your book and interrupted you. “Sir, you said you wouldn’t say anything else, and then you kept talking,” I said. “You complimented us, we said thank you, and we don’t owe you anything else. It’s late, you’re a stranger, and I don’t want to talk to you. We’ve tried to disengage multiple times but you keep bothering us.”
At this point, our train pulled into the next stop. My friend suggested we leave, so we got up and went to the door.
Seeing your last chance, you lashed out with the killing blow. “I was wrong!” you shouted at us as we left, “You’re ugly! You’re both REALLY UGLY!”
Fortunately, since our worth as human beings is in no way dependent upon how physically attractive you find us, my friend and I were unharmed and continued on with our night. She walked home; I switched to the next train car and sat down.
So, strange man, I know you’re confused. I don’t know if you’ll think about anything I said to you, but I hope you do learn this: when you give someone something - a gift, a compliment, whatever - with stringent stipulations about how they respond to it, you are not giving anything. You are setting a trap. It is not as nice as you think it is.
But you’ll be happy to know that when I sat down in the next car, a strange man several seats over called, “Hey, pretty girl. Nice guitar. How was your concert?”
“Thanks. Good,” I said, then looked away and put on my headphones, the universal sign for ‘I’d like to be left alone.’
“Wow. Fine. Whatever. Fucking bitch,” he said.
Fucking creepers. May I ask how feminism or anything similar would actually have prevented this from happening? This ya already socially unacceptable.
Men - because to be clear, I called them ‘strange men’ because they were strangers to me, not because there was anything abnormal about them - act this way because they are raised in a culture that lets them believe their time and opinions are more important than the time and opinions of women, and that as a consequence, they are owed women’s attention. They are socialized to believe women should be grateful to them for their attention, and that they are being denied something rightfully theirs when women are not.
Raising someone with feminism, the idea that all sexes/genders are equals and thus no party is beholden to or more important than another, would have prevented this by not allowing men to grow up expecting ‘rights’ that are not actually theirs. You say this is socially unacceptable, but there were 20+ people on that train who actively watched us being harassed and did not say a word. It is socially unacceptable, but this kind of thing happens to me and many other women multiple times a week, with often more traumatic results.
So, yes, I believe more feminism would prevent sexist moments like this. Also, water is wet, the atmosphere is 78% nitrogen, and cheese is addictive.
This was not sexist, this was an awkward man, possibly trying to get a positive reaction versus a neutral or negative one that was displayed, based off of the context you showed. Awful that he interrupted your conversation, and wanted to be engaging socially, whatever his reasons that motivated him. Generalizations of a certain biological sex does not help society as a whole, and the ideal of feminism does not help. The people who “actively watched” you be verbally harassed possibly believed you were perfectly capable in handle yourselves. You’d probably be more upset if there was another man that told the strange man to back off, due to him possibly being “chivalrous”. I find the whole event to be amusing for the awkwardness of the conversation and would only had stepped in had he’d been physical. I really don’t see how this event was “sexist”, and only say that you’re really reaching.
Well I wouldn’t see any part of this amusing, more times then I can count on my hands I’ve been"complemented" and met with really awful responses when I don’t praise someone endlessly… Yes some guys are awkward which is unfortunately bundled up it these kind of interaction. But the problem is when people are instantly hostile when you don’t drop everything and pretend it’s the first time someone’s every noticed you let alone called you pretty! Imagine it’s so women saying this to a guy, if she reacted the same way she’d get called out on being a bitch or what have you… I’m in a shit mood some my writing is terrible but here are two examples;
At the shops waiting for people doing my own thing and someone calls me pretty. I’m preoccupied but I look up and say oh thank you and go back to what I was doing only to have them mutter that they did me a favour and it’d pay to not be so emo. Like sorry I’m on the phone and didn’t drop everything… Perhaps I could say “I was at fault for not engaging in further conversation”
And more recently on a train had a dude compliment my bow to which I replied the same way “oh thanks” and he wished me a good day as I did to him. That was it. Same response from me but boy it’s nice to not feel like I’m a bad person for not saying how amazing and nice they are for complementing me??
Ugh I doubt any of this makes sense or helps but I really can’t look at the situations I’ve been put into and find them funny…..
Thanks for the response and the perspective, and yes they are two different incidents that happened. I find that these compliment baiters to be funny, because they just want attention too, but aren’t observant of the environment they’re in. The situation is uncomfortable, sure, especially when they resort to negative attention seeking behaviors, but for her to contort it to a sexist deposition is something that I’m confused about and don’t agree with at all. These people were probably not taught the art of communication and observation. They don’t need feminism for that. They need to experience a social life.
It’s got nothing to do with sex. There is a pervasive psychological thread where men chase and women are chased. It’s not always in a sexual way. It’s a power thing. These awkward men don’t seem to approach other men. Why? Because those men might chase back. A person could get hurt that way. But, women, our subconscious tells us, do not fight or chase.
Might a social life help? Depends on the crowd. A crowd of people who object to such behavior and socially reward the opposite might nip those shenanigans in the bud. But, those shenanigans might never start if a child of any gender is taught, starting at a young age, that nobody owes you any reaction.
I’m awkward myself. Right now, I’m out of my comfort zone for the next three days and I don’t know what to do. But my first instinct after years of being told to be nice and stay passive and quiet is to hold back and remain silent. Why? Because girls don’t approach. They do not engage. They are engaged. I live in terror that someone will take offense to my trying to stick up for my personal freedom and space and attack me. It happens everyday and in every country. Would a social life help? Maybe. But that assumes I’m socializing with people who won’t push or get aggressive.
And there is where feminism comes in. It doesn’t start as sex, it might not end as sex. It begins with how we’re taught power and behavior. It ends with either what happened above or the opposite.
^ Yep, this.
Also, an interesting intellectual disconnect: a guy can experience this situation and “find the compliment baiters amusing,” whereas most women in this situation have been raised to be careful and behave so they won’t get raped or murdered by a stranger, told all the ways to not make themselves a potential victim, consumed media that is just a repetition of stories of women being hurt for essentially existing. It’s not particularly funny or amusing to me since every time it happens, I have to wonder, is this the man who’s going to snap and end my life?
But, fine, whatever, let’s say for a minute that these are just a couple of awkward guys who don’t know how to interact with women and are handling it badly. Let’s say they’re men who have been brought up consuming that same media, where the man has to be in charge, rugged, emotionally controlled, suave, and the initiator of all potential romantic interactions. Let’s say that they fall short in some way and can’t emulate the ideal male image perpetuated by society, so they can’t figure out how to interact in social situations, so they just begin to experience a deep level of frustration and despair that they can’t express to anyone, since men are supposed to be tough and unemotional. Let’s say this emotional cycle continues until it results in them lashing out at strange women because they can’t figure out how to get their attention, even though it is the one thing they want and feel they deserve.
You know what would prevent men feeling like this? Feminism. Because our society puts just as much pressure on men to fill sometimes unachievable roles as it does women, and a society where we were equally allowed to fill a variety of roles regardless of race/gender/sexuality/etc would not hold that same pressure.
If this had been a woman near our age, this never would have happened because womxn generally don’t do this shit to each other.
I think the thing that amazes me the most about the people still complaining about this three years after I posted it is that they have this idea that every time a man is within fifteen feet of a woman, that woman starts screaming harassment at them. I don’t assume every man that talks to me is hitting on me, which is why this blog is not bloated with every conversation I have ever had with a man; I assume the ones who are actively hitting on me and also not taking social cues or outright “no”s as an answer are hitting on me, and I call them out when they feel genuinely threatening, like above. It’s truly amazing (in the most sarcastic tone you can read that in) that people can read a written recounting of a situation and be completely confident that they know significantly more than anyone present how the situation went down and should have been handled.
If you compliment someone, you are not owed any response more than “thank you.” You are not EVEN owed a “thank you.”
What if the Vera only took the humanoid form they did upon coming to Earth in order to better communicate with humans? Or they took that form even earlier given the amount of Ushidraces in the universe and decided it was good enough to go meet humanity with. The point is, what if the Vera have a true form that’s totally different? Or they might not have a corporeal form at all. Hmm. Decisions decisions.
