P-C, yeah. You're so sweet, and we know that. But there's no way MB could know that, plus as a celebrity, she's probably had so many wacko encounters in her young life.
I feel the need to recycle a post.
Here's What It's Like, Growing Up in Girl-shaped Skin
When you're little, you want to big a big lady some day. You think mommy's bra is pretty. You love make-up, and the clothes she wears out on the nights when she and daddy hire a babysitter. You're into the whole deal.
When you get into the upper-elementary school years, if you're not one of the early developers, you're certain you'll remain a child forever, and feel like a misfit. At some point, a boy verbally confirms your worst fears in this area.
If you are one of the early developers, you're in 6th grade, walking down the hall in your little elementary school where you've always felt safe, and just like a kid; you're wearing a brown sweater, with one of those (this probably pre-dates you) koala bear clips, clipped to the cowl neck, and Sean M--a boy you've known since kindergarten, and never had a problem with--grabs your breast and laughs, "Yep! They're real." And it doesn't help that Jon F, bless him--another boy you've known since kindergarten--puts Sean up against the wall, because you just want the whole incident to disappear. Well-meaning Jon is just attracting more attention.
Once you finally decide you can abandon the undershirt you've been wearing over your bra (to hide the tell-tale lines), someone snaps your bra at school, and you want to die.
You're walking to school, and Patrick--boy from your neighborhood, who's been the bane of your existence, since before any of you knew what sex even was--is still threatening you, but this time, he has you up against a garage on the street where you school is. Up against your neck is the rusty rake he has in his hand. Someone was throwing it out. It's trash day, after all. And instead of the childhood taunt that he's going to suck your blood, he's now telling you he's going to rape you. You don't know what that means, but you know it isn't good, and you censor out that comment when you're telling mom about the incident.
Your best friend's period comes early one month, and she's only in 6th grade, doesn't have any supplies with her, and goes home, so embarrassed it takes her mother 3 days to get her to go back to school. When she does, there is snickering.
You walk down the street, and grown men look, or beep, or yell something to you. You're walking down the street to play Barbies with your best friend.
In 7th grade, you hear Chuck talking in the hall--he sits next to you in math, or maybe science--telling his friends that if Cheryl "doesn't let [him], [he's] just going to fucking grab it, anyhow."
You get to class early; you're the first one there, and 10th grade geometry teacher--Mr. B--from a very well-known family in town, tells you to stand up straight and show yourself off.
You're in a car with Mark, a boy you've known for years, and he won't stop, even though you're being perfectly clear that you want him to. And he's strong. The best ending this scene can have, is you somehow hitting or yelling at him, and him taking you home, and thinking you a "bitch" there after. (Thankfully, that's the one I had.)
All those things happened to me (okay, the period thing happened to my best friend). And don't think I had it bad. I was sheltered, grew up in a nice town, with nice kids, and got out relatively unscathed.
Most men are decent, and respectful, and kind, and honorable. They appreciate the pretty, the sexy, but in their real lives, they think their wife of 20 years, wearing one of their T-shirts to bed, is hotter than a hot thing, because of who she is, as she's looking how she looks.
They encounter fewer women in a sexual/ized situation in a year, than a predator does in a week. The predator sexualizes everyone and everything. And few women get through adolescence, and probably no women get through (continued...)
( continues...) life without some of this crap, in one way or another.
So, no. Not all men, not even most men are predators. But the predators strike all of us in one way or another. And yes, of course nice, decent men have sexual appreciation of women. But when you've grown up a girl, sometimes it's hard to separate the wheat from the chaff, and so your mind develops these rules, borders, end zones. To some women, just a not-so-coarse appreciation is creepy, and it's not because women hate or think less of nice men, or expect them to be eunuchs. It's because the predators have struck at (or attempted to) all of us, even if it's only to a mild extent. We don't necessarily walk away scarred, and battered. But we each have our own hot buttons.
I'm not ignoring the locker room crap that young men have to take. I am saying that (as a gross generalization) women are probably more easily squicked when a guy is crude (and crude is, granted, quite subjective), because (again, this is a gross generalization) in general, sexually, the average man has the capacity to be more of a physical threat to a woman, than the other way around.
Nonian, I dealt with a similar obscene caller when I was at a similar age. Asked me all kinds of questions about "pussy" that bewildered me, because I'd never heard that word used for anything but a cat.
I had this same experience with a caller talking about his cock. I'm all "um, what's up with the rooster thing?" And then I think I hung up on him.
{{{{{{{{P-C}}}}}}}}}
You are, officially, one of the Really Good Guys. Please understand that.
Yeah, sorry, that's shady. Either walk up and say something, or don't, but following at all in any way is shady.
Yep. No matter how innocent or harmless it may be to you, that sort of thing *freaks* women out. Also, always making sure you sit behind a woman on the bus, every day, and following her off the bus (making sure she leaves first)? Not a way to make friends.
It's hard being human.
That too.
In OMG news, I'm getting all this dirt on strange and stupid stuff that happened at a friend's wedding I attended. 2.5 (? maybe 3) years ago. Amazing, the undercurrents, a very few of which I noted. And there is stilll fallout (not for the bride and groom. They're perfectly happy. Just convinced further they are surrounded by insane relatives.)
Women have routines? Do women here have car-reaching routines?
A couple of my co-workers were a bit put out that they'd honked at me in traffic and I hadn't looked over.
Fuck, dude, I'm a
woman.
I can't start looking over every time someone anonymously tries to get my attention, unless I think there's a crisis underway.
They didn't get it.
And you know what? I'm prepared to stumble into a crisis someone was trying to warn me about (the irony would be that they were trying to tell me about the stalker ahead) than engaging random men in public.
Which isn't to say I won't engage in casual conversation, but the more urgent his need is for said conversation, the more likely I am to ignore him. In fact, the last time I engaged in a conversation with a strange guy, he wouldn't go disengage until I skedaddled to my parents. Wanted instead to tell me what a geek he'd been at 15.
Signed,
Also followed, stalked, wanked at, and generally perved on.
Allyson! Didn't you see the news??? Don't go look at the water. It kills people.
{{{{{{{{P-C}}}}}}}}}
You are, officially, one of the Really Good Guys. Please understand that.
Oh Christ no. I don't need that hug. After Cindy's post, after all these posts, I definitely need to {{{{{{{{all women, ever}}}}}}}}}. I mean, I know these kinds of things happen, but it's so awful and I'm almost crying that they happen to people I actually know.
Do women here have car-reaching routines?
I wouldn't say I have a routine, no, though of course I have the "pay attention to the world around you just in case someone's lurking and wants to kill you" switch flipped when I'm walking alone at night, and I'll choose safer routes and so on.
