Thursday, January 18, 2018

Really nicely

This is an interesting interview. Here's my favourite part of it, which is great and accurate, it's the kind of thing a lot of men don't recognize as a thing:

"...the reality is that women get this message - and we've been getting this message for a long time - that you have to be really nice to men. You have to reject them really nicely if you're going to reject them. And you have to kind of let them down easy. And you have to be sweet. And I think it can be pretty hard for women, especially young women, to switch gears from that messaging to suddenly, oh, now I need to advocate for myself. I'm going to advocate for myself in this really assertive way."

This whole thing is gross, but in my opinion it wasn't actual assault. It was however, far more than "'just' a bad date" as McEvers puts it. There's a larger conversation here.

My two cents: when you've said no a bunch of times and then say yes just to get the guy to stop pestering you and get the humiliation over with, it's not consensual. Not actual rape now (maybe?), but might as well be. At the very least, he needs to know that his behaviour isn't sexy in any way, it's revolting. I'm really glad she texted him with a full description of what was gross and wrong about it all, I can only hope he takes it on board (though it really didn't sound like he did).

Thinking a bit further, I think he's genuinely sorry they didn't see it the same way and he's sorry she had a bad time, but he needs to realize she had a bad time because he ignored what she wanted, no matter what he's telling himself.

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