Are you serious?
If a woman is polite to you, it does not automatically mean she wants to sleep with you. I should not have to say this.
You may have seen news about The X-Files and the fact that Gillian Anderson got offered significantly less money than her male co-star to return to the series. See, even if you are a lead in a cult classic and get your show back on the air after a zillion years, you are still a woman. And things are still ridiculous.
No surprise, then, for regular folk that even the places you’d expect to be welcoming and safe for women just aren’t. I’ve got two tales of hideous male behavior — at the elementary school, somewhere typically full of good vibes and happiness and all that. I’m left frustrated, angry, and tired.
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A friend is chatty at pick-up where the parents mill around waiting for the wild children to be released. She speaks to a father; they talk weather and not much else.
She sees this man at Toys R Us. They are friendly. Until he begins to bemoan how his wife left him; yada yada yada.
Then he offers her $300 for sex.
At a school event, my friend sees the man and his wife, very much together.
He waves and says hi each day at the end of school, as though nothing is amiss. He is, apparently, not embarrassed by his actions or my friend’s refusal.
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I am in a parent meeting about a school issue. Two women, three men. Three men whom I have never met before. But this is a school thing; I have an advanced education degree and oodles of experience.
We discuss all sides of the issue. One man in particular takes charge of the meeting though he is not the organizer. Everything about him rubs me the wrong way — a sort of corporate-speak superiority.
I mention a potential conflict of interest with another party that will be to be addressed before we move forward.
Bossy Man says, in response, “just don’t be all emotional.”
I am in shock. I have displayed no emotion whatsoever. I don’t know this person and I have no history with him. I want to scream and put him in his place, but instead bite my lip repeatedly and doodle on the paper in front of me so as not to derail things.
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I’m disheartened. I’d believed that elementary-school engagement was one of few spheres where misogyny was not rampant, where women were valued. That has been my past experience — frankly, there’s just one male on campus in the first place.
If a woman is polite to you, it does not automatically mean she wants to sleep with you. I should not have to say this. If a woman has an opinion, it does not mean she is emotional. For the record, telling a person she is being emotional is one of the most condescending things a human being can say to another, even when it is true.
I should not have kept the peace. I should have stood up, literally and figuratively. I regret it. In the follow-up meeting with Bossy Man and many others, he was shut down (not by me) and I was deferred to as the expert by those in charge.
I should be magnanimous about it, but I’m not. Still gloating.