Tag Archives: women

The Dreaded Question

24 Jan

Why are you so angry?!

 

I get asked this question a lot. Infrequently when I am actually angry. A few weeks ago my coworker and I had a little bit of a rush. Nothing serious, but enough for me to put on my “make all the drinks as fast as you can” face. That face is blank. That face is not making jokes, it is not having pleasant conversation, it is making you your tequila and pineapple (ew, gross) while taking an order and checking an ID. That face is efficient. In the midst of taking an order and alerting someone that I would be with them in a minute, this dude who is a friend of my coworker tried to hand me his cell phone attached to the charger for me to plug in for him. I looked at him and, quite politely I thought and while wearing my can’t you tell I am working?! face I said to him,

Sure. Just as soon as I finish all of the tasks that make me money.

He looked stunned. I walked over to the register and said to my coworker

I think I might have scared your friend.

We looked down at the bar and there he was, sitting there holding his cell phone with the charger still attached looking forlornly at the place where I was previously standing. I have to admit I felt a little bad. Not badly enough to go talk to him about it because (a) I was busy, (b) you all should know better than to ask a busy bartender to plug in your phone because none of us actually give a fuck as to whether or not you can receive text messages and we also are not your secretary and (c) don’t they sell those little external chargers and don’t they cost roughly the same as the bar tab you just ran up? My coworker and I had a little chuckle and when it calmed down a bit I figured I would smooth things out with his friend. I cleaned the area around him and made a few smart and witty observations about some idiot wearing a pocket protector as part of his Saturday night get-up. He seemed more or less amused. I got a smile out of him, anyway. I skipped back to my coworker to tell him about how I had made everything great again at which point he giggled and said

Yo he was like, why is she so angry?!

UGH! So here’s the thing. It wasn’t like, why was she so angry that time when I acted as though I was the only person in the bar and requested she do me a favor that I wouldn’t pay her for when she had like 15 orders in her head and was, in fact, at the very moment that I asked her in the midst of actually taking one of those orders? Because I wasn’t actually angry in that moment, if we’re being accurate. I was ever-so-slightly irritated (it takes a lot more than that to register on the anger meter these days). But I can see why he would perhaps perceive it that way. What he was asking was why is she so angry. Like, as a person, all the time. And it made me think back to all of the other times people, read: men, have asked me why I am so angry when I was simply telling them no. Here are a few times when I have been called angry when I have, in fact, not been angry:

That time I said no to an invitation to go out to dinner. I am simply not interested and besides, you asked me out after your 5th whisky neat and I am at work, sober and I am thinking about being in my bed, alone (okay, fine, my cats will be curled up at the bottom of it but whatever).

This one time I refused to serve this smarmy asshole a drink. I was angry the last time he came in when I was standing at the bar in my running clothes talking to my friend and, without recognizing me, decided to sit practically on top of me and drape his arms all over me. That was not the first time that happened, either. And if we’re being honest I was actually quite happy to ask him to leave. I’m pretty sure I was smiling.

And while we’re on the subject, all the times I am not smiling. I like smiling. I do not, however, smile all the time. First of all, I am fairly certain my face actually would freeze like that and how awkward would that be if someone told me something horrible had happened and I was staring at them with a stupid grin on my face? And secondly, no one smiles all the time. People smile when they are laughing and having fun. They do not smile when they are doing things like taking out the trash, walking to the gym, or serving the never-ending wall of people in constant need of beverage refills. And just because a person is not smiling does not mean that person is angry. They could be feeling all sorts of other things: sadness, non-smiling happiness, contentedness, nothing at all. They could be thinking. They could just not give a shit about you one way or the other. And please, while we are here, never say the following thing:

Smile, sweetie, it’s not that bad.

Maybe it wasn’t that bad before but it is now.

Here’s another important thing, though. Sometimes I am angry and that is okay, too. There are a lot of things to be angry about. But the way that men ask that question

Why are you so angry??

Reads the same as

Why are you so emotional??

Or better yet,

Why are you so irrational??

It is disempowering and makes it feel as though our lived experience is somehow less important, less real, or as if we are less capable of engaging with our own lives. What we are angry about is petty. It is a woman’s problem, not a real one. (It goes without saying that any extreme response to something means we are on our period and therefore can not be taken seriously.) I was actually one time put in real, actual danger involving a man with a gun and then, weeks later when recapping fallout from the experience was asked why I am so angry. Why?! Why am I angry?! Because I could have been shot! With a gun! And died! Fuck yeah I am angry! I am angry about that experience and why it happened and what happened after but that does not make me angry as a human being all the time and it also is a completely and totally rational response to a really scary experience that is in the past and is therefore not something to be actively afraid of. I mean, what? Am I supposed to be all

Nah, it’s all good, bro. No worries.

Now that is what I call irrational. Because it is decidedly not all good and there are worries.

So let’s just recap: Just because I am not smiling does not mean I am angry. I might just be busy, or thinking, or whatever. When I tell you no, it does not mean I am angry. It simply means no. Let’s move on. And when I am angry, there is good reason for it. And you shouldn’t have to ask why I am angry because I will tell you in no uncertain terms exactly why. It will be very clear. And it will be just as justified, or unjustified, and rational, or irrational, as when a man is angry. Crazy, right?

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

No, Doree Lewak. Just No.

20 Aug

I.

It was about 2:30 in the morning on a Wednesday and I was covering a shift at my local bar.  My customer’s glasses were all filled so I decided to take a quick walk across the street to read the handwritten sign left on the front door of my (now-shuttered) favorite coffee shop.  I walked down the ramp, eyes glued on my destination, when it happened.  The whistles.  The kissy noises.  The comments about my shorts, my boots, my legs, my hair, my body, my face, my value.  I looked over and saw the driver of a garbage truck looking at me with a foul little sneer on his face.  Before I even had time to think the expletives started exploding from my mouth.  I was in the middle of the avenue in the middle of the night, arm outstretched, finger pointing, telling him whatever the hell it was that traveled quickest from my brain to my vocal chords and out of my mouth.  I can’t imagine it is much worth repeating.  I took out my phone, took a photograph of the truck’s license plate and went back to work.

II.

My friend and I decided to go for a walk.  As we made our way down 5th Avenue we were forced onto the street by some sidewalk construction.  While walking past an especially freaky-looking piece of heavy machinery we heard it from just above our heads.  The whistles.  The kissy noises.  The comments about our shorts, our boots, our legs, our hair, our bodies, our faces, our value.  As we walked past the cab of the truck, another wave of bullshit washed over us.  My friend took out her phone, took a photograph of the truck’s license plate and we went back to our walk.

III.

I went on the internet yesterday and came across this article, written by Doree Lewak of the New York Post titled “Hey ladies – catcalls are flattering! Deal with it!”  I would like to just say two things here before we get going.  (1) I am not a reader of The Post, I just clicked on the link this one time because I am a sucker and (2) the Wikipedia page about Doree Lewak that I linked describes her as a humorist, something I wholeheartedly disagree with.  Now, let us carry on.

In Lewak’s article, she talks about what summer means to her:

“…heat, hemlines and hard hats.  It’s the time of year when I can parade around in a skimpy dress with strategic cutouts that would make my mom wince.”

But Lewak doesn’t just dress this way for herself, no ma’am.  She looks forward to the opportunity to

“brazenly walk past a construction site, anticipating that whistle and ‘Hey, mama!’ catcall. Works every time — my ego and I can’t fit through the door!”

Do you want to experience that feeling of validation?  Well, just follow Lewak’s advice.

“Walking confidently past a mass of men, making eye contact and flashing a smile shows you as you are: self-possessed and playful. The wolf whistles that follow will send your ego soaring.”

And how!  Maybe buried underneath all the rage and disempowerment I felt at being objectified by complete strangers in the middle of the night, and in the middle of the afternoon, was my rising confidence.  Oh wait, no, on second thought I am pretty sure it was actually just fear.  Fear that responding to these men might send them over the edge or that not responding to them might cause them to hurl their own version of hateful vitriol in my direction.  There is no blueprint for how this goes.  Each circumstance is different.  And, sad as this is to say, I almost consider myself a professional at handling street harassment.  I think I could practically put it on my resume.  I assess my environment — are there people around, is it light out, are there easy exits, is there a business I can walk into, do I know the neighborhood — before I decide whether or not to respond.  If it seems unsafe, I scowl and walk on.  But if I am about 90% certain everything will be okay, I take the risk and speak my mind or I whip out my phone and take a photograph.  Ms. Lewak is correct when she says that “feminism is” (at least in part) “about self-empowerment,” but I think she needs to do a little bit of reading and figure out what the word “empowerment” actually means before she starts throwing it around and aligning herself with the feminist movement.  There is nothing empowering about being yelled at from the cab of a garbage truck or a piece of heavy machinery or anything else for that matter.

Oh, and about that.  Belle Knox?  Really?  Belle Knox is an incredible young woman and I have the utmost respect for her.  I think she is having a huge impact on the way we see, and talk about, pornography and the sex industry at large and that is incredibly important and long fucking overdue.  But there is a serious difference between a woman on a street and a woman in a professional working environment.  Belle Knox is, when adult films work the way they are supposed to, in control of her environment.  There are safety protocols.  She knows what is going to happen and, perhaps most importantly for this particular argument, she is consenting to the activities she is engaging in and if she becomes uncomfortable, she can say stop.  And that matters.  When I, any of my friends, and yes, Miriam Weeks (AKA Belle Knox), walk down the street and we get hollered at, we are not consenting to that.  If we become uncomfortable, we cannot necessarily make it stop.  We are not safe.  We have to assess our environments to make sure that our response to harassment does not put us in a physically dangerous situation.

I am sorry that Ms. Lewak thinks all the rest of us somehow got it wrong.  That what many of us see as hurtful, demeaning, frightening and dehumanizing is actually something we should embrace and, yes, even court.  You know what?  Fine.  Doree Lewak is welcome to go about her life, finding her worth in the “primal” utterances of strangers on the streets.  But perhaps she shouldn’t tell the rest of us how to feel.  Or maybe she should read the comments on her own article.  Maybe she should read Diana’s comment:

“But telling other women to “get over it” and respond to catcalls (i.e. street harassment) like you do is deeply inappropriate. For some women—particularly women of colour and women living in poor neighbourhoods, who are at a higher risk of catcalls turning into actual physical violence—street harassment is an issue of safety, not preference. There are tons of blogs by WoC documenting this exact phenomenon. I can’t imagine that they appreciate you giving permission on their behalf to the catcallers who make their streets unsafe.”

Or Astoria Grey’s,

“That’s really great that you have had such a positive experience and enjoy the street harassment you receive. Maybe it has something to do with being 20 years old when you received your first ‘cat call.’ You were probably in a much better space for receiving attention about your body than I was when it started happening to me. Growing up in NYC, my street harassment began at a much younger age. Men telling me to look at them with my beautiful eyes, or to smile more, or commenting on the length of my shorts. It made me feel exposed and vulnerable and not in control of my own body. I still cringe at how these remarks made me feel and can still make me feel nearly 15 years after they began.”

Or Nicole Leigh’s,

“I was 11. My friend and I used to walk by the highway the boarded our neighborhood and we’d count how many men would scream at us from their cars on our walk to meet each other. And we BOTH looked 11. None of us developed early or anything. “

Maybe then she will realize that what she sees as empowering is actually dangerous and damaging for the majority of us.  So, Doree, next time you go for a run and some guy starts running “with” you for 5 blocks because he thinks you’re hot, let me know how empowered, flattered and safe you feel.  Because that happens and it is scary as fuck.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Street Harassment: The Close Proximity Whisper

13 May

Okay, ladies, I’m sure you’ve all experienced this:

You’re walking down the street doing what you always do which is minding your own goddamn business and going about your day when you see a man walking towards you.  You notice him looking but he says nothing, doesn’t exactly ogle but his eyes linger on you a little too long for optimal comfort.  As he gets closer you brace yourself for the upcoming comment, the kissy noises, that terrible clicking sound.  Nothing.  You think you’re home free but then, just as he passes you he leans in and whispers ever so quietly,

“God bless.”

You can feel his breath on your face and the hair stands up on the back of your neck.  You turn around, angry, but he is already halfway down the block making his way to where ever he is headed.  No one around noticed a thing.  He’s in the clear.

If I had to rate types of non-physical assault style street harassment from one to ten, ten being my least favorite, I think that approach would get the crown.  It is worse than the passing car, the obvious stare, the invitations to go out, the whistles from rooftops.  For me, the close proximity whisper is one of the most invasive forms of harassment.  In the United States, we have such an engrained idea of personal space that when someone invades it there is no ignoring it.  That person made the choice to enter into my space, he knew it would make me uncomfortable and he didn’t care.  The feeling of his breath on my skin only adds insult to injury.  It is one step away from him putting a hand on me.  It is infuriating, disempowering, and disgusting.

The close proximity whisper is something that has been driving me crazy for a long time.  I almost forget that it even happens until one day some dude whispers “smile baby” in my ear and I go through the fucking roof.  But he didn’t touch me and there is no opportunity for a strong worded retort, really. It always takes too long for me to register what has happened and by the time I do my only option is to scream like a banshee at some asshole’s receding back.  The reason I thought of this now is that the other night this happened to me only it was on a crowded train and it was terrible.

So I was with a friend of mine and we were heading to Crown Heights to visit his friend at the bar she works in.  When we got onto the train it was relatively empty but we opted to stand.  I have been standing a lot lately.  It’s a thing.  Anyway, we were standing in the little door alcove on the wrong side of the train (AKA the side the doors open on) so every time we stopped somewhere we would split up; he would stand to one side of the doors and me to the other.  We’d reconvene in the middle once everyone got aboard.  When we stopped at Atlantic Avenue the train got swamped.  We couldn’t meet in the middle again so he stayed to his side and I stayed to mine. Right next to me was a really tall (this is all relative considering I am pushing 5’4″) man somewhere in his late forties if I had to guess.  The second the doors closed he leaned over and, right in my ear whispered,

“Are you a mommy?”

It took me a second to understand what he had said.  It was Mother’s Day after all.  I gave him a small smile and said no and then resumed staring blankly in front of me, my left arm grasping the subway poll, my right hand resting on my left shoulder, as much of a protective stance as I could muster considering I had no room to move.  He leaned forward again,

“You look too young to be a mommy.”

I glanced over at him, raised my eyebrows and did a very slight head nod in an attempt to acknowledge he had said something to me without inviting him to say anything else.  A moment later his hand “slipped” off whatever he was holding and hit me in the chest, landing hard on my breastbone.  I instinctively checked to make sure my necklace didn’t vanish — it hadn’t but it wouldn’t be surprising to me if it had because people just love to steal shit from me — and felt thankful I had the foresight to cover my boobs with my arm.  I glanced over at my friend who had been looking at me protectively, not sure exactly what to do and, I imagined, taking cues from my behavior.  The man apologized.  I shot my eyes up to him without turning my body in his direction.  Then, seconds later, as we approached a stop he put his hand on my shoulder, leaned in much to close and whispered,

“Have a wonderful day.”

He was all up in my space.  He was touching my arm.  I thought maybe he was getting off at that stop and felt a momentary rush of relief but the train doors opened and he made no move to exit.  At that moment my friend called over the heads of the half dozen people in between us and asked if I wanted to get off and walk.

Fuck yes.

We got off the train.  I didn’t look back to see the man’s reaction when he realized that I was traveling with someone and that someone happened to be years younger and much more solid than him.  My friend and I talked about it for a minute, him not knowing the man had touched me because he was unable to see through all the people.  From his vantage point all he could see was some guy whispering in my ear and to him, that was enough to want to get me out of the situation. I put it out of my head for the remainder of the night but now I am thinking about it.  And here is what I am thinking.

It is bad enough to have someone whisper in your ear and keep moving but to have that person violate your personal space and continue to stand there is totally fucked.  It put me in an incredibly uncomfortable situation, one that I could not extricate myself from.  It’s like, there I was, stuck with all these people around me and then this guy who was just toeing the line, seeing how far he could push it.  I was bound, in a way, by the manners we as women have been taught.  I didn’t want to sharply tell him to stop, as I normally would if I could walk away, and then be stuck standing next to him, with the eyes of all the other passengers on me.  I didn’t know what their reactions would be, whether they would support me or think I was a loon.  I mean, all he was doing, really, was talking.  And the first touch could easily have been excused as an accident.  I started feeling like the best course of action was to keep my eyes down and my mouth shut, to not draw attention and maybe it would just stop on its own.  (In my personal experience, this reaction never really has the desired effect.)    I didn’t want to have to defend my reaction to a bunch of people who might not support me and then remain there, shamed.  I thought if I just stood there, more or less unmoving, as nonreactive as possible, he would back off but he didn’t.  He just kept toeing the line, kept inviting me into this seemingly innocent, but incredibly invasive, private conversation that I had absolutely no interest in participating in.

It’s a weird thing, to step out of your own tendencies.  I am pretty outspoken about this sort of thing, normally.  Especially when I am in New York.  That might sound like a weird thing but this is my home, I have lived here for a long time and I know when I should say something and when I shouldn’t.  Before I react strongly to a comment, I note the time of day, where I am, whether or not there are people around. At 4am I keep my mouth shut, but in the afternoon, in a parking lot stuffed with cars, I will say my piece.  I take the shock and awe approach.  I am especially good with words when I am angry and I think that the mouth I have takes casual harassers by surprise.  It gives me the chance to tell them about themselves and march off before they regroup and think long enough to come up with something better than “bitch!” But being stuck in a subway car, pinned in place by the sheer quantity of people, can really make you revert back to socialized habits.

Anyway, a lot of times I think back on things and figure out how I could have handled it differently, better.  There’s always something.  But in this particular case, even with the luxury of space and a few days time, I cannot for the life of me figure out how I could have behaved differently.  I didn’t feel unsafe, really.  What I did feel was the society in which I was raised, one that teaches girls to keep quiet.  I thought about all the times people have told me that it is unsafe for me to speak my mind, that it isn’t worth it.  But I can’t stop thinking about how this guy won. How by not telling him what he was doing, I was complicit in it, I was saying it was okay.  Sure, I got off early, sure, it was clear that I didn’t want to be near him, but I don’t know.  It is very possible that me telling him to back the fuck off, as much as he could considering the circumstances, would have set him off, or would have fallen on deaf ears, but I also could have been the first person to say it and maybe, hopefully, the last person he did it to.

Being a woman is hard.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Rebekah vs. Rob, (Documented) Battle #2

17 Jan

So you know how sometimes on bad television shows one of the male characters will say something along the lines of “I could have any woman I want?”  And you think to yourself two things: (a) what a stupid line and (b) could you imagine if people actually said that?  Well you know what I found out a few weeks ago?  They do!  And it is just as ridiculous and amusing and untrue as you might assume!

So remember that time I wrote that blog that I never thought I would have had to write about bringing your own booze into the bar?  And how, you know, you probably shouldn’t bring your own booze into the bar?  Well, it just so happens that the star of that post is definitely my least favorite customer ever and might actually also hold the title of person I like least in the world.  Well, of the people I’ve met, that is.  So he gets to star in not one but two blog posts! His name is Rob.  Rob is just like, not nice.  He thinks he loves women but he actually hates us.  He doesn’t respect us, he thinks we are all stupid and, as I learned the other day, he thinks he is irresistible.  Men, am I right?

So my issues with this guy goes back years.  He is one of those guys who just harasses women.  He thinks he is god’s gift and therefore that anyone in possession of breasts and a vagina is lucky if he decides to give them the time of day.  Only the thing is, he is loud, obnoxious, and extremely fond of chanting which is something that I honestly thought went out of style when people outgrew fraternity membership.  Apparently I was wrong, again.  So, whatever, he incorrectly thinks he’s a ladies man.  Okay that wouldn’t be so bad except that whenever he is in my bar I have to watch him like a hawk to make sure he doesn’t make women uncomfortable.  As an aside, I think that the mark of a good bar is one in which women, either alone or in groups, feel safe and comfortable coming in and hanging out.  I love nothing more than to see a few single ladies at the bar, not out to meet anyone, just there to chat with the bartender or read their book or watch sports or whatever.  If you have women flying solo, I think you are doing something right.  At my bar, we do occasionally have women there alone and I really don’t want to lose that because some asshat decides that she is reading her book only to pass the time until he comes and impresses her with his wit, good looks, and intellect.  But that’s what Rob thinks.  Women are just going about their lives preparing for the moment when they meet him.  His excellence.  The sexiest and most awesome-est man alive.  It would be maddening if it weren’t so hilarious.

I could practically write a book about how much I don’t like Rob.  I have been hoping against hope that Rob would just melt away or at least move to the Bronx or something.  It seemed like no matter what he did — call me a cunt, annoy women enough that they mouthed the word “help” to me to get him away from them, ask for buybacks, try to sneak away without paying on the regular — he never seemed to get kicked out.  And then he snuck booze in and I was like “this is finally the moment!”  And he had the nerve to not only pretend he didn’t sneak booze in, but to subsequently go over my head and call my boss and tell her how unreasonable I was for accusing him of sneaking the booze in because he would never, ever do that.  Only he did do it.  I don’t like, go around the bar planting bottles of illicit vodka in the bags and coat pockets of people I don’t like.  I’m just observant. Anyway.  That was a lot of build up for the following story:

So last Thursday I approached the bar on my way to start my night shift and I heard it.  From the street.  The voice.  The chanting and the yelling and the general obnoxiousness.  I walked into the bar, happily greeting the people I enjoy (which, honestly, is like 95% of the people) and then I arrived at him and he was  all “hello, Rebekah” in a tone that made it abundantly clear that he felt like he could do whatever the fuck he wanted and I just stared back.  I then proceeded behind the bar and told my coworkers that, after 8pm when I took over, he was not getting served because he was the ass who brought his own liquor in.  They both essentially responded with the same thing:

It was that guy?!?  I wish I had known because he is such a fucking douchebag.

Eventually he came up to the bar to order a drink from me.   I told him he wasn’t getting served.  A heated conversation followed which I will not recount for you.  He then had the nerve to walk over to my coworker and order a drink from her, in secret, because obviously I would never notice.  Except what he didn’t know is that when I am working I have super sonic hearing!  (Also, she told me.)

Me:  You tried to order a drink from my coworker? What part of you are not getting served do you not understand?
Rob:  I did not.
Me:  You are such a liar!  She just told me you did and also, I heard you.  You know what? Just leave.  You know where the door is.

But I guess he didn’t actually know where the door was because he wouldn’t leave.  He wouldn’t leave because he is a fucking idiot who thinks that the world was made for him.  And then he tried to argue with me about it which is never a good idea.  Not only do I hold a grudge, and not only do I never forget when people are disrespectful shitbags to me and the place I work, but I also HATE when I ask politely for someone to leave and they fight about it.  This is my house, motherfucker.  Get out of my face.  But oh, he spends so much money in the bar and he has been coming for years and how dare I and all the other shit.  I decided to spell it out for him.  I explained to him exactly why I don’t want him in the bar.  Not only did he bring his own booze in, but he lied about it and tried to get me in trouble.  He called me a cunt and a bitch a few years back for standing up for one of the many women he harassed over the years.  He feels entitled to buybacks and whenever we have new bartenders he always tries to take advantage of them.  He chases customers out with this chanting and his general obnoxiousness and, oh yea, he always tries to walk away without paying for his drinks.  He got very caught up on the part about harassing women and that’s when he said it.

I could have any woman in the world I want.

I think that I actually might have spit in his face accidentally when I explosively laughed.  Seriously.  It was SO funny.  I then responded with probably my favorite line that I have ever said ever in my entire life:

There are 13 women in the bar right now and only one of them would fuck you and she is your fiance.  I am still trying to figure out how much you paid her to agree to that arrangement.

Meanwhile, his poor fiance was sitting at the end of the bar by herself waiting for him to stop parading around the bar with this stupid trophy that he had won for winning in fantasy football.  I told him that he should just stop making an ass of himself and leave and maybe he should speak to his fiance who he had not acknowledged the entire time she sat at the end of the bar waiting for his sorry ass.  He then said the following thing:

Rob:  Why don’t you talk to her?  I talk to her every day.
Me:  You’re engaged to her!  Jesus, what is wrong with you?!

He then, and I kid you not, asked my coworker out on a date.  While his fiance was sitting like 4 stools away.  And when my coworker said “I thought you were engaged” he actually had the nerve to say “who told you that?”

It’s like, what?!  These people exist?  And they walk around amongst us as if they are normal?!  Man oh man.  Eventually he left.  But not until he gave me a piece of his itsy-bitsy mind.  It took me from like 8 to about 10:30 to get his sorry ass out the door.  He just wouldn’t leave because he thinks he is entitled to be anywhere he fucking pleases.  Oh and, in the meantime, he tried calling, texting and facetiming my boss from the backyard while she was downstairs in the office to bitch about how I wouldn’t serve him.  Being in a room with this guy and his overly inflated ego should be considered a form of torture.  No joke.

Luckily for you this story has a happy ending.  He again called me a cunt (people love that word) and he is no longer welcome in the bar.  As far as I know, anyway.  This guy has like 9 miserable lives so I’m fairly certain he will weasel his way back in which means more stories for you!  Finally, Rob comes in handy.

Tags: , , , , , , ,

Because Women are Defined Forever by the Politicians they Fuck

24 Jul

I am an avid reader of The New Yorker.  For the first few months I received the weekly magazine, I awaited its arrival with baited breath.  I was riding the train to and from class in Manhattan on a near daily basis and had plenty of time to rip through the half dozen or so articles, the Talk of the Town, the book and movie reviews, the satire.  When I first started reading it, I read it from cover to cover, making sure not to miss a thing.  I was almost compulsive about it.  As time went on and I stopped going to and from the city as often, I began to fall behind.  I now have issue upon issue filed away that I have yet to touch and still I save them, sure that one day I will return for all the valuable information I didn’t have time for in the past.  I refuse to intentionally discard any of them, so consider myself slightly lucky for the loss of a few issues over time.  (Of course, the obsessive side of me is agitated by the holes in my carefully organized collection.)  I am actually half convinced that one day I will be found dead in my apartment, crushed under the weight of piles and piles of back issues of my favorite magazine.  

Recently, I have been in a slight New Yorker rut, toting around unopened issue after unopened issue.  Today I decided all that would change.  I grabbed the July 22nd issue that has been wrinkling in my shoulder bag (a shoulder bag that, by the way, is imprinted with an old New Yorker cover, how predictable) and decided to quickly read through the Talk of the Town so I could more quickly get to the article I was really interested to read, an article by Rachel Louise Snyder called “A Raised Hand:  When domestic violence turns ugly.”  Well, I got waylaid by a Lizzie Widdicombe piece called “On the Couch:  Comeback” that touches upon the return to the political scene for two disgraced New York politicians:  Eliot Spitzer and Anthony Weiner as comptroller and mayoral candidates respectively.  I have actually been thinking about how to address this exact topic for some time and Ms. Widdicombe, whom I normally enjoy quite a bit, gave me just the fodder I needed.

Just today I was ranting about the return of Spitzer and Weiner, lamenting the fact that if a female politician were to “sext” someone a photo of her tits or use the services of an escort, her career would be over.  There would be no comeback attempt because there would be no chance of anyone taking her seriously.  She would be a whore.  She would be a bad example for our children.  People would be digging into her past, looking for any sexual deviance.  If she had made an allegation against someone for sexual misconduct, it would be dredged up, analyzed and mocked, more so even than at the time it was filed.  She would go from being a respected politician, to being maligned by the newspapers in the same way as was Ashley Alexandra Dupre, the “call girl” who’s mere existence brought down Spitzer,  a woman who was, after all, simply doing her job.  Dupre, as it turns out, is more than just her job.   According to the assistant editor of Rolling Stone Andy Greene (as quoted by Widdicombe), Dupre was a singer with a voice “not much worse than Britney Spears.” But, he continued “it’s a really tough road for her to have a music career because she’s a prostitute.”  Apparently, her time as a sex worker makes it near impossible for anyone to imagine her as anything other than that.  Dupre is a prostitute, Spitzer is someone who gave in to temptation; Dupre lacks morals, Spitzer is merely weak.  For many Americans, being a paid participant in the sex trade devalues a person, and yet high powered men who pay for the services of women like Dupre can get their lives back in order with a few well-timed apologies and maybe a publicized visit to a therapist. Spitzer, after all, was given two shots at being a talk show host.  And now he is back in politics.  None of this is to say, of course, that people utterly forget what happened, that the offenders aren’t mocked ruthlessly (I mean, Weiner, really? The jokes write themselves!), or that a return to the political scene is easy.  The point is that a return is possible, which it is not for women.  Until recently, Dupre wrote a sex column for the New York Post because once you’ve been a sex worker that’s pretty much all people want to hear out of your mouth.  Anyway, back to Widdicombe’s article.

In her short piece, Widdicombe talks about the entrance of these two men back into the political scene.  She takes the approach of analyzing their “infidelities” using the perspective of marriage councellors, making the argument that these two men need to salvage their voter-politician relationship much in the way they had to salvage their marriages.  (Granted, this is going to be much harder for Weiner given the recent release of more information about his sext-ploits.)  In conversation about Spitzer’s return, one therapist she spoke to, a Doctor Jim Walkup, said that voters “remember the look of that woman” (italics mine), referring to Dupre.  And, a Doctor Christina Curtis added, “his wife” — Silda Wall Spitzer — “having to go up to the podium, and the humiliation.”  She is remembered for, and defined by, her humiliation.  The New York Post, oh-respectable publication, called her “the first door mat” and I think I read somewhere that she blamed his visits to Dupre on herself.  Patriarchy at its finest.

I actually don’t really know where to go from here.  I guess part of it is that I would expect for The New Yorker to have a more nuanced discussion, even in a short piece, of the roll that gender plays in all of this.  The writers have been known to say much more with much less words.  These men have taken advantage of their power and privilege and although they were forced to resign their seats at the time, they are still relevant.  But what about Dupre?  She is just “that woman.”  And despite her high powered career, our national memory of Wall Spitzer is best captured in these words by Katy Waldman of Slate:

“Silda Wall Spitzer impressed herself into our collective memory when she stood, chalk-gray, beside her husband as he resigned from the New York governorship in 2008. It was a wrenching image of devotion or delusion, depending on your take…”

I guess what I am looking for is a simple admission that when these high-powered men take their dicks out, there is collateral damage and that the damage generally has a female face.  Monica Lewinsky, after all, is remembered for little more than that stained blue dress but the reality is that she wasn’t simply an exploit, she was and is a person.  Furthermore, despite the fact that Bill Clinton earned himself the unfortunate nickname “Slick Willy,” his opinion still matters.  His support of Barack Obama makes a difference.  He is still respected.  And yet the only thing that matters about Lewinsky, even all these years later, was that she gave the President head in the oval office.  These women are all human beings.  They deserve our respect and they deserve to be acknowledged for something more than simply their involvement in some dude’s temporary political undoing.  We have to acknowledge the power dynamic that exists between a well-established, well-respected, powerful man and the oftentimes much younger women that get wrapped up in, and brought down by, their after hours activities.  We have to acknowledge that men of power, and specifically straight, white men of power, get a pass from us when they fuck up, even when they fuck up over and over again.  Sure, give Spitzer and Weiner another chance, but lets not use it as an excuse to unearth topless photos of Dupre.  The women that get caught up in all this are simply living their lives, and they deserve to go on living it outside the shadow of some powerful guy.  They also deserve a second chance.

Tags: , , , , , ,

Hey Random Dude Talking to Me at the Bar: My Body Language is Intentional

14 Feb

Over the lifetime of this blog I have written quite a number of times about being a girl out in the world.  I wrote about my feelings on street harassment here, and about this guy who spit on me a few times here, and then about this time when I got aggressively poked in the face by one of my customers and it was really scary here.  I have never, however, written about being a female customer in a bar and so that is what I am going to do right now.

I am sure that some of you, dear readers, are going to think that I am overreacting.  But what I talk about here is symptomatic of a larger issue which is that, as a woman, I feel as though some people think that I exist for public consumption.  That me being somewhere is an invitation for someone to enter my personal space.  That if I am alone in a bar or a cafe, that clearly I want someone to talk to me, that I am asking for someone to approach me, that I cannot possibly want to be sitting by myself.  But the thing is that I am a strong, independent woman and I don’t need a man by my side at all times to demonstrate that.  I don’t need a protective buffer.  My body language and facial expressions, which I know from experience speak loud and clear, should deter someone from approaching me at certain times unless, of course, they are so full of themselves and entitled to think that their presence in my world is necessarily a positive, and welcome, thing.  Okay.

Recently I realized that it is really difficult to go straight from spending all day in the study center of my school reading about urban agriculture to the drunken mess that is Thursday nights at work without being a little shell shocked and irritable.  So, the past few weeks I have left the study center 45 minutes early to head to a small bar near my work to unwind with a glass of wine and my beloved New Yorker.  I have no intentions of talking to anyone other the bartender and even she I only want to politely order from and then be safely on my way to “alone,” unwinding time.   Would it be nice if I could actually be alone?  Sure.  But sometimes we have to take what we can get.  The first week I did this the bar was pretty crowded and I was sitting alone somewhere in the middle of it, scarf wrapped around my shoulders (it was one of those super-cold nights and I just couldn’t shake the chill) nose deeply in magazine.  I was not looking up or around.  I was not making eye-contact with anyone other than whatever cartoon happened to be on the page I was reading and I am pretty certain those cartoons weren’t looking back at me.*  Anyway, some dude that I guess was sitting at the end of the bar closest to the door whom I hadn’t noticed because, as I just said, I was not looking around, walked by me and, as he passed said quietly

“You’re looking very elegant tonight.”

I muttered a quick ‘thank you,’ thinking it possible that I knew this man from my bar seeing as how I work only a few blocks away.  I looked up and caught his eye when he did one of those “look back over the shoulder to see if I had heard him and then wink in a super awkward way that makes me think he thinks he is way sexier than he is.”**  I definitely did not know him.  I tried my best to look uninterested and went back to reading.  (Also, in my mind a scarf wrapped around my shoulders over a teal sweatshirt is not exactly what I would call elegant but whatever, to each his own I suppose.)  When it came time to leave, I packed up all my things and could sense him looking at me from the end of the bar, awaiting the chance to talk to me again as I inevitably walked past him out the door.  I resolved myself to look straight ahead and avoid eye contact, in hopes that if he was a regular at this bar that he wouldn’t take a brief conversation now as an invitation for more conversation later.  He said a quick and quiet “good night” and I returned the pleasantry with the accompanying smile that I reserve for people that I feel I should be polite to but really would rather ignore.  I didn’t slow my steps and walked out into the chilly evening, en route to a night of work and forced socializing.

The following week I decided to give the same bar another shot figuring, hey, that guy wasn’t really that bad.  I mean, he wasn’t pushy or anything.  He didn’t know that I wasn’t interested in talking.  I walked into the bar and walked straight towards the end of the bar that was completely empty.  There was no one within 5 stools of me.  Perfect!  I opened my magazine, pulled my glass of wine and my water in close, and got to reading.  In the middle of the article I realized oh, hey, I just read like three paragraphs and retained absolutely none of it due to brain over-saturation so I directed my attention to the bookshelf directly in front of me and started looking at the items on the shelf.  I then looked back down at my magazine and just at that moment I felt a hand on my shoulder (why?!) and I heard someone say, quietly,

You look sad.

I looked over and there he was.  The same man from last week.  Maybe.  They all sort of look the same at some point.  Touching my shoulder.  I looked at him and said, in a way that I hoped came across as partially light-hearted but mostly bitchy and authoritative,

This is what I look like when I’m happy.

He looked a little shocked so I smiled a half smile and added

I am just decompressing after a long day before work.  I’m fine.

I looked back down at my magazine, hoping he would get the picture, but no.  He started asking me what I was decompressing from.  What I had been doing all day.  Where I had to be that I started work so late in the evening.  None of this conversation is particularly interesting so I will not recount it here but I do want to ask a few questions.  Why in the world was this guy talking to me?  Why was he touching my shoulder?  What about my posture, about my face in a magazine, about me staring directly in front of my seat making eye contact with no one was inviting of conversation?

Okay, so here’s the thing.  If I go to the bar by myself and I sit there, no reading, looking around, smiling at people then yes, sure, come over and say hi.  There would be something about my body language that would be inviting, that would say that maybe I felt like meeting people.  And this guy doesn’t know me.  He doesn’t know that I don’t go into a bar to have a glass of wine and meet someone new.  I go there to be alone because most of the time I am surrounded by people that I have to interact with and it’s nice to sometimes be surrounded by people all doing their own thing.  Sometimes its nice to be alone in public.  For those reasons I try to make it abundantly clear by my body language and behavior exactly what I want and what I want is to be left alone.  What I do not want is someone who does not know me at all to tell me what mood I look like I am in. That’s basically as bad as walking down the street and having a stranger say “smile princess” or “come on, sweetie, it’s not so bad.”  You know what?  Maybe it IS so bad.  Maybe I just got really bad news.  Maybe I have a tooth ache.  Maybe I am deep in thought.  Maybe I don’t want to be condescended to on my way to buy a box of tampons.  Maybe I am not here for your enjoyment.  Maybe I do not owe you a god damn thing, including a smile.  You didn’t do anything to deserve it.  What I also don’t want is someone who I don’t know touching me unless it is a warning touch like “you are about to get hit by a car.”

Basically what it boils down to is this:  I was alone.  I was not near anyone else.  I was minding my own business.  I tried to make it clear through my behavior that I wanted it that way.  That is why I sat as far away from everyone else as possible.  It wasn’t so we could have a private area to have an extra secret conversation, it was so that we wouldn’t have a conversation at all.  Take a hint.  Be aware.  My presence somewhere is not an invitation.  And just because I responded to your compliment with a terse “thank you” last week does not mean we are friends.

Also, to the guy the other night who tried to draw my while my friend was outside having a cigarette, no.  That’s weird.  Also, I took a peak at the other “drawings” on the page and I’m pretty sure they were all stick figures.  I’m pretty sure I could do that, too.

* I am thankful for this realization because if I thought they were looking back at me I would have a whole other post to write.  Mostly, it would be elucidating my experience in the psych ward.

** In reality he really wasn’t sexy at all.  I’m pretty sure he was about 25 years older than me.  Thanks but no thanks.

Tags: , , , , , ,

Some (belated) Thoughts on the Debate and Politics

9 Oct

So I’ve been thinking a lot about the direction this country is going since the (embarrassing) debate last Wednesday night.  As I sat on my sofa, watching these two men vying for a job as President of the United States of America my stomach dropped.  To be entirely honest, the feeling in the pit of my stomach actually kept me from sitting through the entire debate and the residual discomfort will, very likely, keep me from watching any of the other three.  Maybe this feeling will pass and I will give it another go but I doubt it.  Anyway, here are some thoughts.

I am someone who believes in government, who believes that it is important for there to be some sort of check to business expansion, that there should be services provided for people who, for whatever reason, are unable to provide those services for themselves.  Yes, politics can be dirty.  Yes, politicians can be corrupt.  But I am entirely unwilling to write this entire system we have built off and characterize everyone that makes up our government, and the government of other countries, as clowns.  Perhaps I am idealistic but I do not see a better outcome if we scratch the whole thing.  I think the system needs changing, the rules of the game need changing, and the behavior of our politicians  need changing.  All this was very clear by the disaster that was the first debate of this election season.  But I do think the system can still work and, a lot of times, actually does.  I think the system relies a lot on those of us who spend the time reading and learning and take the time to speak out against things, or in support of things, and go out and vote.  Just vote.  As a good friend of mine said the other day, write someone into the ballot if you have to.  Make a statement.  Let people know what we have, the options we have, does not work for you.  That is how change starts.

But I am off track.  Back to some thoughts.

Thought #1.  How can two candidates spend the amount of time they spent talking about healthcare and never, not once, mention that women pay more than men do for healthcare across the board?  Our rates are higher.  We, ladies, are pre-existing conditions.  ObamaCare actually addresses this issue.  Obama never mentioned it.  Romney certainly was not going to given his new found distaste for women thanks to Rick Santorum, Paul Ryan, et al.  So, Obama, let me say this to you:  think about us, like, really.  You did a great thing with ObamaCare.  You included us in there.  Flaunt it!  Women are watching, we are listening, and we care about more than just jobs and education and tax rates.  (Don’t get me wrong, we care about those things, too.)  We are smart, we educate ourselves, we know what makes us better off.  We vote.  God damnit, we matter!  We matter a lot.  We fight an uphill battle every day against things we might not even be able to articulate.  We are so immersed in a world in which we are undervalued, in which we are considered less than, that it makes a difference when a policy is written that actually takes us into consideration.  You did a good thing, Mr. President.  Own it.  Show that you care about women and that Romney and Ryan still think that our internal organs and lady brains somehow make us enigmas.

Thought #2.  Clean coal.  I’m sorry.  Really?  Clean coal?  There is nothing clean about coal, really.  And if you gut the EPA, as the plan is, then there is absolutely no incentive whatsoever for industry to try and make coal cleaner.  Here’s the thing about business.  Business wants to be efficient, and business wants to make money.  Profits.  Period.  Business doesn’t wake up one day and say “oh, hey, I feel like doing a good deed, let me go ahead and spend millions and millions of dollars to lower my carbon footprint.”  No.  If there are no regulations, business has no reason to clean up.  And who can blame business for that?  But guess what?  A few decades down the line when the earth is even more polluted than it is today, when polar bears don’t even have small bits of ice to depressingly float around on in all of those gloom and doom NatGeo specials, and most of the energy sources we rely on in the good old US of A are depleted, a lot of other countries will have come up with other ideas.  And they will have businesses that work on them.  And those businesses will be making money.  And we will have no EPA and water that catches on fire when you bring a match close to it.  Clean coal my ass.  That ship has sailed.  Actually, no, that ship tried sailing and instead sunk.

Thought #3.  Shut up about PBS.

Thought #4.  I think manners are really important.  One of the things that always gets me into hot water at the bar in which I work is that I really believe people should have manners and should respect those around them.  I consider this a high expectation when copious amounts of alcohol and late nights are involved.  I am going to go out on a limb and assume that there was no alcohol involved in the poor performance delivered by both the President and Mitt Romney.  It would be inappropriate and, besides, Romney is a Mormon.  Anyway, the smug looks they both delivered have got to go.  And the interrupting.  I’m pretty sure I learned to let people have their turn to speak in kindergarten.  Or!  Maybe we should institute a talking stick at debates.  Could you imagine?  It would go like this:

Obama:  So, if you look at Romney’s plan, he wants to cut 5 trillion dollars from blah blah blah blah

Romney:  That!  That is not true!  That is not in my plan!

Jim Lehrer:  Now, Mitt, do you have the talking stick?

Romney:  (looking down at his very empty hands) No…but..he started this round and…

Lehrer:  No talking stick, no talking.

Now that’s a debate I could get behind.

More thoughts undoubtedly to come.  But for now, dinner.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Newer Entries →