Picture it: A warm sunny morning, and I had just gotten off the bus. I was on my way to an appointment at the local hospital, and was engrossed in following the directions from my map to notice anything out of the ordinary. So, as I was walking, I hear heavy bass coming from a suped-up Chevette. I glance over at the car, and these two knobs start honking. At first, I paid no attention, because every woman has been honked at by jerkoffs before, and the last thing you want to do is give them any satisfaction by noticing them. So, I kept walking. And they kept honking. They were honking so much that I thought they were trying to warn me about something, so I looked around to see if there was someone following me or if I had toilet paper stuck to my shoe. There wasn’t, and I didn’t.
I went back to looking at my map, and was getting frustrated that it depicted the hospital’s main entrance incorrectly, which meant that I would have to backtrack. It was because of this that I didn’t really pay any attention when the two morons from the Chevette pulled over ahead of me and got out of the car. They left the car on, with the radio blasting, in hopes of showing me how cool and with it they were. They looked like they couldn’t be a day older than 16. As I walked toward them, they starting hitting on me, saying such romantic things as “hey you! Beautiful!” Losers. I kept walking. Still, they persisted. “Hey! Excuse me, beautiful! We just want to talk!” As I walked past them, shooting them one of my famous “fuck off and die you worthless excuse for a man” looks, I started to think about what possesses guys to treat women in this way. Honestly, do they think calling out to a woman they don’t even know and yelling at her that she’s beautiful is going to melt her heart? As if one boorish shout from this macho man is going to affect her in such a way that she’s going to turn to them and say, “yes! Take me now you sexy hunk! I’ve been waiting all my life just for this moment!” As if.
So, there I was, lost in these thoughts, when all of a sudden it hit me: if I had been thinking more clearly, and had not responded to these guys in the kneejerk way I’m used to (ie. “Go fuck yourself, pig”), I would have been intimidated. I mean, they wanted my attention so badly that they pulled over, and got out of their car, but had left it running. There were two of them, and I had to walk in between them to get by. Under any other circumstance, I would have felt threatened. Of course, these guys were such pathetic losers, I’m sure they would have peed their pants if I had given them the time of day, but still. It made me angry because no matter where women are, and no matter how far we say we’ve come, we still experience this kind of shit.
I was talking to Dingman about it, you know, to get the “male” perspective. His take on it is this: these guys aren’t interested in the women they shout obscenities at. Instead, they’re trying to impress their pals, to show them how cool and macho they are. My advice to them: it doesn’t work. Get a new hobby, jackass, and stop bothering me and every other woman out there. We don’t like it, and one of these days, we’re going to come after you and kick your sorry ass.
S.
