Or how I learned to love my loud-as-hell sailor's mouth.
I would like to thank so many of my FB friends for posting various articles on the pervasiveness of rape culture and the responses that have been drilled into women (including me) on the "correct way" rather than the CORRECT way to respond. To hide. To excuse, ignore and shrug off behaviour that is just NOT supposed to be acceptable. If I hadn't been reading so many of these over the past few weeks I wouldn't have responded the way I did this afternoon and I'd be crying right now instead of having a celebratory cider.
(To preface, I was on my way home from work and so was wearing a moderately-high v-neck teeshirt and jeans. But even if I was dressed for a fetish event this would have been unacceptable.)
On my way down Helmcken, talking on my headset, I glanced around as I am wont to do to check for out of control cars and ax-wielding maniacs (I have PTSD hyper-vigilance, okay?) and apparently the fact that I was not spitting at him attracted some man walking around a parked car. He walked nearer to where I was walking behind two women of the same general skin-tone as he, so I hoped he was approaching them seeing as his arm was spread wide in that scooping-people-together way.
No luck.
He stepped in sync with me and I cringed, stepped in the opposite direction from him and prepared to placate someone overly-friendly with comments about hating to be touched (PTSD, remember?) even with a friendly back-pat.
But he didn't pat me. He didn't even touch me. Instead, he leaned his head down as I stood in shock and made kissing noises and kissy-face at my breast.
Seriously.
That happened.
I honestly, if I hadn't been reading all those supportive posts and articles, would have made a sickley smile and started to jog away. But I didn't.
Instead, I calmly told him it was wrong, and then I looked from my own breast up to his pulling away face...which was smiling. So I asked what he was doing and when he still smiled at me, laughing, I told him he wasn't a nice person.
No, No I didn't.
What I did was loudly say "that's fucking disgusting." asked him "what the fuck, dude, seriously?!" And when that didn't get through to him I yelled, just 100metres away from St Paul's, that he was "a fucking horrible asshole" and told him to fuck off.
Surprisingly, the person on the other end of my phone didn't seem that surprised by what they heard...perhaps I swear too much?
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3 comments:
Good for you! <3
Thank you for giving this asshole the public recognition he deserves. his fucked-up expectations (and those of creeps like him) are validated when women aren't prepared to make a scene. The next time this urge takes him he might feel a little... more... nervous.
That's so awesome! You did a great job! He deserves so much worse, hopefully he'll get what's coming.
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