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| "No, really, do keep talking." |
Ladies, gentlemen, variations thereof, and none of the above, we all know one kid who inexplicably fails to irritate us beyond all reasonable belief. It's not like this person is a bad person per se, it's just that you can't seem to enjoy this person's presence in the slightest. There's this kid like that in my group of friends. Just when I think I'm being too hard on him and he's not like he's a puppy murderer or anything and I should stop being a Queen Ice Bitch, he opens his mouth and I remember why I don't like him. It's gotten worse since he found out I'm a big old dyke, too. (That type of person always gets worse when you come out, don't they?) But not in the way you'd think. He seems to assume that I share a set of ideas about women that I most certainly do not. His idiotic comments actually illustrate an interesting ideological divide that I'd like to sketch out today.
Walking from lunch to class a few days back, he and I had a detailed and uncomfortably one-sided conversation about women. Pretty women, to be precise. He had started off by complaining to our group that girls have no idea how little control boys have over their thoughts, and how hard it is to concentrate when an especially fine looking lady is preening. I took it upon myself to point out that I in fact did understand the phenomenon he was alluding to, and that while I am vulnerable to pleasant daydreams about crushes of mine during an especially boring test, I am more than capable of turning my thoughts back to whatever it is that I should be doing. And of course I, as a decent, emotionally mature, and empathetic human being, do not allow whatever feelings or thoughts I have about someone I am romantically interested in to cause me to disrespect them or invade their privacy.
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| I swear to god I don't actually stalk this woman. |
This is where things started slip a little bit down that good old slippery slope.
He went on about how different things are because I'm a girl, and therefore have no sex drive and, like, and it's different for guys. He then related a personal anecdote which I really could have gone without hearing. Apparently a pretty young woman in a stylish, revealing outfit walked into his class the day he was scheduled to take a particularly difficult test. He raved about how he was basically salivating over this girl and the intricacies of her outfit and couldn't focus on his test. I got more and more uncomfortable.
"Jesus Christ, man," I tried to tell him, "I play for your team; I'm not one of the guys. I don't want to hear this."
But as a female, I am spoken to, not spoken with. So he continued his potentially lurid tale as I continued to tell him that I was absolutely done with this topic. He finally shut up when our class was called to order.
There were a few uncomfortable implications in his story. He never harassed her, but I picked up undertones of an all-too familiar idea: Women are supposed to be held accountable for the thoughts of the men who look at them. If men don't view them as human beings with their own feelings about how they present, that's the woman's fault. If the thoughts and feelings men have about women prevent them from behaving a certain way, or cause them to behave a certain way, that's the woman's fault too.
There was also a barroom air to his retelling. Even though, according to him, I couldn't possibly sympathize with how hard it was to pay attention and couldn't tell him that he could just buck up and finish his damn test, I was expected to sympathize just enough to drool over this girl with him. The way he spoke about this girl took on the sexual braggart tone that men take when bragging to each other. I'm one of the guys when guys want to objectify women and find a willing ear to listen, but a overly-sensitive, easily offended woman when I point out that I'm attracted to women too and I don't sound like that.
Well maybe I don't want to be that willing ear.
I am a woman, and a feminist. I believe that women should be treated with the same consideration as a man. I don't expect women to dress or act a certain way that is to my personal preference. I believe that a woman's worth is not calculated by her sexual history, or physical attractiveness, or childbearing ability, or docileness, or ability to prop up the men in her life, or any of the other sick metrics the patriarchy used and uses. I believe in a woman's autonomy, in her ability to decide and live with the consequences of her own decisions. I believe in women.
I am also a lesbian. I like looking at girls. I like being looked at by girls. I like flirting with girls. Yes, your pure and unworldly writer has sexual fantasies about girls, too. But that doesn't invalidate any of what I said in the preceding column. And I think that's why I infuriate certain types of men. My existence challenges them thus:
I am sexually and emotionally attracted to women, while maintaining respect for a woman's integrity of self.
Gentlemen, what's your excuse?
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