It’s sunny right now, and pretty hot, but we’re supposed to get thunderstorms shortly. Of course I have errands to run, and far-flung ones too.
Always how it goes.
Today I asked a simple question about where people buy couches these days, as my parents had gotten a recliner and a love seat for what’s essentially a den here and the items haven’t worn well.
And I expected my usual Spoutible conversation that happens when you raise the mundane. Instead, I got a crude answer from a man.
There is no way he did it for my benefit, there’s nothing about my profile that would indicate I’d enjoy that kind of humor, especially out of the blue in that way. He’s followed me for a while, and he knows better.
We know why you men do it.
To provoke a reaction, to exert some control, to remind us that we are always supposed to be ready and agreeable to sexualization of anything. I was supposed to laugh in some way, and let him get whatever it is you men get out of making us uncomfortable.
But I’m me, so I didn’t do that.
I asked him why he did it.
So far, he hasn’t responded.
Right about now, you might be asking whether it’s “appropriate” for me to “single him out” or “embarrass” him or talk about it like this and I want you to sit with that for a second, if that’s where your thoughts went. Because I have a question for you too.
Why?
Why wouldn’t it be?
He wrote the comment on a public site, in response to a benign question that is now getting no genuine answers, possibly because people see that and get turned off. He felt it fine to commandeer the conversation in the fastest way men do: sexual innuendo.
That was his choice, without concern for my reaction to it.
So why is protecting him from sharing my own thoughts my responsibility?
It is not.
It was a boundary testing, which I find men do with me from time to time. Just to see.
Well, now he sees.
As does everyone.
It’s a quarter way through the 21st century and why men aren’t willing to internalize this, I don’t know. But making comments like that, out of the blue, is gross. It’s creepy. We do not think it’s funny. We do not think you’re smart.
Instead, it makes us think you’re icky. Because it’s an icky thing to do and you know it. Especially when you don’t actually know a person.
I was supposed to respond or not, but then just sit with the gross feeling of that comment. But I won’t do that.
We don’t have to do that.
Don’t be a creep.
And have a great Wednesday, all people who are not creepy and don’t make sexualized comments to strangers.
A Bit to Read 
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